MLB 2021 Season Thread

[GrantDawg]

Braves cruising early, but Charlie broke his leg in the 3rd inning. I hate it for him so much. It leaves a big hole for the rest of the series.

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[GrantDawg]

But just to know how tough Charlie Morton is, he got three outs including striking out Altuve with the broken leg.

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[bob]

2 1/2 hours for 5 innings…

[JonInMiddleGA]

Shades of Bob Gibson, pitching with a broken leg.
Hat tip to Charlie Morton for giving all he had

[Swaggs]

Always been a fan of Morton. It seems like he's been flirting with retirement the last few seasons. If the Braves win it all and this was his last appearance, you can't do much better as far as leaving a legacy behind.

[Drake]

Morton took me from an anti-Astros rooting interest to a "Yeah, Atlanta!" rooting interest.

[HomerSimpson98]

Originally Posted by bob

2 1/2 hours for 5 innings…

4:06 for a 9-inning 6-2 game. This is why baseball is dying.

[JPhillips]

Baseball isn't dying, at least at the MLB level. From 2001-2019, revenue increased every single year.

[miami_fan]

I have accepted that I am not watching any sporting event that requires me to stay up until midnight on a weekday and rarely on the weekend. The parts of the game I saw last night was enjoyable even without a real rooting interest other than wanting Dusty to get a ring. This was not one of those games that had nothing but home runs, strikeouts and walks. Those are the worst.

[Ksyrup]

I went to bed around 11:25 even though I wanted to watch the last 2 innings. I got up at 5:25 and I'm just not forcing myself to stay up anymore.

[lungs]

Mets appear to want an exec from the Brewers, but at this rate they may have to settle for the janitor.

[Swaggs]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Baseball isn't dying, at least at the MLB level. From 2001-2019, revenue increased every single year.

This is from a Pirates-centric site, but pretty good stuff in this article on the topic:

First Pitch: Major League Baseball is… – PBN Pirates

The gist of the argument (that I took away, at least), is that MLB as a business is thriving but MLB, as sports entertainment, is declining due to the owners focusing so much on media deals that pay a fortune for live sports but require more commercials. The commercial delays slow the game down making it less appealing to watch. With that guaranteed media income and, and without any payroll caps or floors, owners in many markets have far less dependence on selling tickets or concessions and filling the stadiums. It makes some sense shifting to this model because it sure seems like media advertising rates increase in value more than the average fan's ability to be able to continue affording high ticket prices does and will in the future.

As a tangent and for some boring dystopia-like stuff: this would suck but it makes me think about the possibility that, at some point, a professional sports league could exist with multiple teams in just a few (or even one) market that only produces live television content. If there are 10-12 professional baseball or basketball teams in Southern California or Miami or Dallas-FW and they just play each other to create live baseball content, wouldn't some professional players choose that lifestyle over the constant travel and being away from home? After watching fan-less sports in 2020, I think football and basketball games definitely miss having fans, but there didn't seem to be as much difference with baseball. Although, I'm a Pirates fan and there isn't much difference between empty stadiums and their typical attendance any way.

[bob]

Ignoring the rumor of the players and their side pieces in each city, I always thought that basketball was the most likely to have this happen and that it was dumb of the NBA to show them how with the bubble. They could easily drop 10-15 teams, consolidate rosters, and have a player run and owned league.

Pick a few cities (Vegas, LA, Orlando or Miami) and you are set.

[sterlingice]

If you make it a wholly regional sport, though, you're not going to have a real limit on the national interest

SI

[Ksyrup]

I think the point is that the locations are irrelevant since no one is going to the games, it's just a TV sport and people will root based on personalities and perhaps eventually settle on a favorite team that has nothing to do with location.

[Swaggs]

Exactly. We aren't there yet, but in thirty years, I would bet that the broadcasting deals will grow exponentially more than the amount of money a family of four has to spend at the ballpark will.


This probably works more clearly with professional basketball due to the smaller rosters, less developmental time between amateur and professional level of play, and the fact that the NBA has done a lot more work on being popular worldwide (vs the NFL and MLB). If LeBron asks 120 of the best players in the world to join him and they get their teams affiliated with companies rather than cities (NASCAR teams can apparently get up to $35M per year for primary sponsors for 38 broadcasts a year), and then sell world-wide broadcasting and merchandise rights (maybe even throw in some H-O-R-S-E and dunk contests during the offseason), I feel like they could cut the billionaire owners out and probably earn more.

Baseball is probably a little tougher with teams needing 40+ players per year and needing developmental leagues.

[sterlingice]

I think the underrated part of this is having even just 1m fans in the stands in each stadium is a big advertisement every night or 81 nights a year. There were "only" 45M people who went to games this year but that's still a ton of fan engagement you're not getting at home. It's why I thought MLB was really stupid to shrink the minors. Sure, it costs a small amount of money but it's a lot of advertising and fan engagement that kills off future generations. TV, you can turn off and not care about after a few boring seasons but you're not going to have those memories of going to a game with your family or meeting your favorite player or whatever that hooks you for much longer.

SI

[GrantDawg]

Braves are up 2-1 after 2 hitting the best hitting team in baseball. Somehow they have to win at least one of the next two games. They both are slated to be bullpen games because of the Morton injury. I would say really they have to get tonight's game. If they burn their best arms tonight on a loss, then it is going to be really hard not to go back to Houston down 3-2.

[GrantDawg]

The Braves starter for tonight is Dylan Lee, who has 4.2 career innings in the majors so far, 2.2 of those in this post season.

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[Ksyrup]

Baseball is broken. This is how you want your championship to be decided?

Also, a field reporter auctioning off shoes to benefit your minor league players ain't a great look either.

[miami_fan]

I thought the teams were carrying extra players? A team can only replace a player if it is COVID related like the Braves did for Soler?

[GrantDawg]

Braves replaced Morton due to injury.

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[miami_fan]

Oh ok.

[GrantDawg]

Donald Trump is leaving the game now that a guy named Jose sent one over the wall.

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[GrantDawg]

I have a hard time believing the Braves are one win away from winning it all. It just doesn't seem real.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

Baseball is broken. This is how you want your championship to be decided?

You mean by one team out scoring the other team? Winning within the rules is the only thing important. If they trotted out guys throwing underhanded soft pitch and won, I would be fine with it. Why? Because it worked.

[sterlingice]

I think there's a big argument to be made that what is good for the sport as a whole and what is good for an individual team has diverged quite a bit over the last decade

SI

[Galaril]

Good on the Braves.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

I have a hard time believing the Braves are one win away from winning it all. It just doesn't seem real.

It's been a while. With all the success they had in the 90's and early 00's, they should have won more. Maybe a start of another great ride.

[jbergey22]

Braves have been an excellent franchise for years. Hopefully, they win it and re-sign Freddie.


As for the game. It will make it tougher and tougher to market their games when you cant advertise the great pitching matchups of years past. If Pedro Martinez vs Roger Clemens couldnt get you to watch I would question your true baseball fandom. In 2021 with Gerrit Cole vs Jacob deGroom you might get 6 innings from one of them.

From a pure marketing standpoint, bringing in all of these unknown pitchers isnt going to help bring in new fans or even bring in fans from other teams to watch your games.

Watching old your tube games from the mid-late 80s is so much better than watching the current version of baseball IMO. It was fast paced and there was constant strategy. Now.... the only strategy is when to bring in a new pitcher.

Im starting to come around to the idea of both leagues having a DH and you lose the DH once the starting pitcher leaves the game. Previously, I wanted both leagues to have the pitcher hit(more strategy) but now I just want some incentive to leave the starting pitcher in at least 6 innings.

NFL is killing the running back and MLB is killing the starting pitcher. College football already killed the magical New Years Day from the past. Maybe I just hate change.

[markprior22]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

Donald Trump is leaving the game now that a guy named Jose sent one over the wall.

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Is Jose here legally?

[Ksyrup]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

You mean by one team out scoring the other team? Winning within the rules is the only thing important. If they trotted out guys throwing underhanded soft pitch and won, I would be fine with it. Why? Because it worked.

From a viewing fans' perspective, this sport sucks now. This has nothing to do with winning within the rules, integrity of the game, etc. Plainly, it's a shitty version of the game.

I'm not a traditionalist in any sense - I'd be fine with the DH and extra innings rules continuing, and both leagues should have had DH the moment teams decided not to put any time into trying to improve pitchers' ability to hit. I just have no interest in watching strikeouts, walks, HRs and all-star game pitching rotations.

[GrantDawg]

Grand Slam in the first inning for Adam Duvall. I think that is a good sign.

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[JonInMiddleGA]

You can dig up the articles if you want, I'm just going to lazily paraphrase them.

Basically, in 1999 (when the Braves were last in a WS), roughly 1 out of every 3 people in the TV market watched.

This year? The number is just below 1 out of every 4.

*it ain't streaming, don't bother trying that. The streaming numbers released by Fox have been atrocious, so low that I questioned whether there might have been a glitch in the matrix somewhere.

[Ksyrup]

I first heard the "HR are rally killers" garbage at least 5 years ago from one of ESPNs feature college softball analysts. I had no idea it had made its way to MLB.

[spleen1015]

I don't even know what that means. HR score runs. What's the problem?

[Ksyrup]

The theory is that base runners cause stress and lead to bigger innings because it's some sort of piling on/momentum thing, but a HR kills that momentum but giving the pitcher a low stress situation with the bases cleared.

[GrantDawg]

I'm rooting for more Braves rally killers then.

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[GrantDawg]

They said there are 145k people at Truist and the Battery right now.
Edit: and that is after they stop letting people in about 3 hours ago.

[Ksyrup]

It not only ignores that a HR guarantees you the runs it scores, but it ignores the idea that the extra 3-4 baserunners it takes to keep the hypothetical rally going is kinda hard to do before you get 3 outs, high stress or no.

I suppose it's a reaction to anecdotal evidence based on innings ending right after HRs, as if there's some guarantee that the batters following a single or double instead of a HR wouldn't have gotten out.

[GrantDawg]

Of course, all that runs counter the old guys who use to argue base runners "clog up" the bases. And neither of those views are analytic based, which values extra base hits and walks. Baseball opinions and buttholes. Everybody has them.

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[Ksyrup]

If Gonzalez had hit a grand slam instead of a single, they were guaranteed 5 total runs scored that inning. Instead, he kept the rally going and they only got 3 runs.

[spleen1015]

I'll take my HRs. I could be biased though. My kid is a power hitter.

[Lathum]

Wow. Jerry Remy died. Loved hearing him call Red Sox games

[Ksyrup]

I had no idea you didn't actually have to touch first base to be safe. That's why the Braves didn't appeal.

[GrantDawg]

If he had been tagged after he passed the base, he would have been out. Touching the base after he passes it won't make him out.

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[Ksyrup]

Right. Of course, I believe the umpire blew it completely by signaling safe. Technically, I don't think he should have signaled anything and let the play continue until he was either tagged or returned to the bag.

[GrantDawg]

Three run rally killer by Soler!!

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[Lathum]

Wow. He launched that into the sun....

[bob]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

Three run rally killer by Soler!!

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To be fair, they didn't score after that.