Eminor3rd

MLBAM has been positioning themselves for this for years. There's a good chance that the mlb.tv infrastructure becomes one of the shrewdest investments of the past several decades. IF, that is, they can survive the painful interim period without losing too much of the fanbase for good. I will add one piece of information that I haven't seen discussed, because I've had some recent conversations with people directly involved -- not every RSN is in the same position, in terms of revenue. Some are markets are operating in the black, and the one where I currently am is telling its business partners that it has a clear path to continuing operations in the near term even if Diamond ultimately dissolves, possibly to the point of making the transition back to an independent entity. I have no way to confirm how true that is, but I can tell that it is very much the official company line. If that IS the case, this could turn into a much longer and more painful transition period than MLB is hoping, and select fans may be pretty screwed for while, as the fractured remnants of the old system continue to persist.

Well, a handful of young White Sox infielders just learned once and for all how much your manager’s public vote of confidence is worth. Hopefully Andrus really did discover another gear of some kind, because he projects to be no better than the in house options, and the cost of the acquisition isn’t the $3m — it’s the lack of development/evaluation the Sox are paying in opportunity cost. If nothing else, the Sox now know they’re on track be in exactly the same boat next year. I know, I know, I’m too negative. Complain about everything blah blah. But look, mathematically, Andrus 2022 looks like the most obvious dead cat bounce anyone has ever seen. Literally no one was buying it, there is no defensible objective argument whatsoever that he is likely to approach what he did last year. The in-house options aren’t good, but it isn’t clear at all that this even qualifies as an upgrade to them. This isn’t a big loss in a vaccuum, but it continues the Sox trend of paying a steeper and more diverse price than any other franchise to make marginal upgrades. No team more consistently robs peter to pay Paul.

Watching all the veteran minor league SP deals come off the board without any going to the Sox is baffling. Really hard to believe that these guys don’t see the obvious path to innings that currently exists, which makes me have to think the Sox aren’t trying to sign them. Which is completely bonkers.

That’s what I get for posting on mobile

Hate trading with the Rays, but that MLBTR post about Vidal Brunson being a trade candidate sure got me thinking.

Yeah, it needs to be a multi-faceted approach, for sure. My sense, anecdotally, from working in a ballpark every day when the rule was first implemented in AAA, was there was a palpable and immediate reduction in the amount of people that remained engaged and in the ballpark. I would fear you’d still lose a lot of those people if you waited a couple innings. I do think the benefits are more significant to the in-park crowd than the broadcast crowd. At the MLB level, I didn’t notice the same huge difference last year, but where I am, there aren’t currently a ton of reasons to stay real late anyway.

Yeah, I’d be totally okay with it on the post-season. I agree consistency is better — it should either be part of the game or not. Keeping out of the lost important games is almost a tacit admission that that the league even sees it as a worse/inferior version.

I don’t think anyone is looking at this like “let’s change baseball because we feel like it needs tinkering.” But this change makes sense for the same reason college football overtime makes sense: the likelihood of scoring in each possession is low in both sports, so an indefinite tiebreaker can last way too long. For baseball, this was fine when a two hour game could stretch to a three hour game, but the reality of MLB today is that the average game length is already long enough that the typical fan can barely fit it into their day. Die hards like all of us don’t care, but we have to realize that it’s bad for the game if it bleeds fans, and it’s really hard to maintain or grow internet in a product where your average consumption involves giving up on the game before it ends. I see this change as taking a handful more games per year accessible to the average fan to watch, and allowing thousands of fans to stick it out to the end of a game instead of bailing early, which is huge because that game will probably be the only one that most of those fans attend in the whole year.

This doesn’t make sense. It increases each team’s chance to score equally, and then the normal forces of the game situation take place. Differences in the home/away dynamic are already present on instances where the away team scores… it just now is more likely to happen sooner. But it’s also easier for the home team to defend, with or without more pressure. And if you think getting the first bite at it in the top of the tenth confers an advantage, you also have to acknowledge the even greater advantage of being the home team in the bottom half of the inning in instances where the away team fails to score in the top. Separately, what are the “many downsides”?

I am not opposed to ties, conceptually, but as someone who watches a lot of NPB games/has become an invested fan in a team, I can tell you that ties FEEL absolutely terrible every time, to me. I hate them. It makes it feel like the whole game was a waste of time.

I agree that’s the closest thing to a problem. But I guess I feel like it’s natural for varying base running skills and batting order luck to factor into the game situation. Admittedly that’s just a personal feeling, but it just seems to line up with how the game already sort of works — like you’re in an extra inning situation, you have an advantage of the good part of your batting order is up, etc.

I’m in the minority, but I love this rule. I don’t see how it detracts from the game in any way, and it helps to make witnessing the end of games more accessible. I haven’t seen any downsides whatsoever; the only reason to dislike it is to dislike change in general.

Or that great organization may have helped develop into a legit SS when he was younger. The White Sox player development strategy is essentially “draft guys that are so physically gifted that they become major leaguers despite their flaws,” and TA is one of the success stories, but that doesn’t mean that he was actually able to reach his ceiling.

Yeah this article and all the quotes in it could have been written by chapgpt or whatever, it essentially says nothing, BUT I think I’m ready to transition, mentally, from feeling like s%*# about how poorly the front office has handled the offseason to just rooting for the players on the field. So that feels alright.

Dogshit organization

Unfortunately, they already did.

That's in the back of my mind, too, and that thought is what's keeping from making a strong statement about it. I can ABSOLUTELY see this clown show conclude that the "official league recommendation" of standing pat until it blows over is going to be fine for the general public.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't a way around at least putting him on paid admin leave. You could make an argument that his presence is bad for the other players. But, what do I know?

I’ll be completely shocked if Clevinger ever pitches for the White Sox. The only question is whether or not the Sox get some sort of resolution that allows them to save the money they owe him relatively quickly (which seems unlikely), because that’s the only way they’re going to fill the hole in the rotation with anything other than a minor league signing.

The state of the White Sox in 2023: What's worse for their chances to win? 1. Going into the season with only four major league-caliber starting pitchers in the entire organization or 2. Going into the season with five starting pitchers, but having the entire team deal EVERY DAY with booing, criticism, and reporters asking to them to go on record about whether or not they support a current teammate who they're pretty sure is a child abuser.

Cole Irvin was a monster for us when I worked at Lehigh Valley in like… 2017? We had “twin aces” that year — Cole Irvin and Enyel de los Santos lol

Man, every time I come back and see this thread title, it makes me angrier. Both for the filthy, shithead nature of the player’s actions, and for the sorry state of the team. This Clevinger incident is probably not their fault, but when you run such a joke ass franchise you realize that this type of gut punch exposes the lack of preparation and professionalism evident in every aspect of the org. You can’t trust that they did their due diligence in the first place. You see the lack of depth and roster prep exposed before training camp even begins. You can’t trust they’ll do what it takes to fill the roster hole. Even if they do fill the hole, you can’t trust they’ll target you he right type of player. You realize how needlessly risky the process of rushing out and “beating the other teams to the market” is on these interesting but flawed project-types, and how much it sucks that the only reason to take those risks is to try to avoid paying market value on middling players. Hell, you can’t even trust they’ll do the right thing with regards to dealing with Clevinger. About the only thing you CAN trust is that whatever lessons they learn from this ordeal will probably be the wrong ones. Well, and I guess you can also trust that the media message we get will be akin to shrugging and feeling sorry for themselves for “circumstances beyond their control” yet again, never stopping to wonder if there might be a reason that those circumstances seem to happen so much more often to the White Sox than everyone else. This feels like a low point that I’m going to remember for a long time.

Jfc

Imagine how different this roster looks if the Sox signed Duvall. Because here’s the thing, Colas readiness aside — we're one random benintendi oblique/hamate/bruise injury from watching Eloy in LF and Leury in RF every day for an extended period of time.

Precisely.