2015 MLB thread

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Let's go with the assumption that you're right for the sake of argument. Why the venom towards the Royals (speaking generally, not you specifically)? Their fans are simply using the same tools available to everyone else, yet apparently no one else has decided to use them.

The best part will be, if they change it, the new 'rules' will likely forever be called the 'Royal Rule'.

Well, that's the exact reason there would be "venom"...because if the Royals fans are doing this legitimately, no other fanbase has cared enough about using those tools to accomplish this same result.

[Grover]

Originally Posted by cartman

The thing that is a joke is that the fucking clueless, err energized, fans think that Infante and Rios are deserving of starting, much less being part of, the All Star game.

Look, you don't like the Royals. We get it.

Fan voting is a joke. But it is what it is. If other fan bases don't vote, their players won't start. This is a bed MLB has made for itself by introducing fan voting a few years back.

I don't vote. It's stupid. But I'm not constantly bitching about the system. If it were 7 Yankees or 7 Red Sox or 7 Cardinals, nobody would care. However, it's a small market team whose fans have come out and made an effort. Put the voting back in the hands of managers and players. Or weight the fan voting differently.

It's a broken system, made all the worse by the All-Star Game 'mattering' for home field advantage in the WS. That's also assinine.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by panerd

Agree. Kyle Gibson is coming to town to pitch for the Twins today. Fun to see former Tigers in any sport.

You have to admit the Omar Infante stuff is pretty lame. I am all for loading up the ballot box for Moustakas and Hosmer and even votes for Perez or Cain but think its stupid that people would vote a "straight ticket" for the all-star game. When I was a kid I always voted for Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee but Jose Oqendo and Tom Pagnozzi were not getting my votes over Ryne Sandburg or Gary Carter. I just think it cheapens the game and takes away from the legit all stars on the Royals.

The way the online ballot was set up is the key reason why we have the Infante situation. They made it far too easy to vote a 'party ballot' for lack of a better way of saying it. It's a one-click method to find all your team's players. They need to do away with that to minimize the Royals effect that we've seen in the case of Infante.

[cartman]

I'm saying there is a much greater likelihood of a few rogue voting bots jacking up the votes then there is an energized fan base being mobilized. The discrepancy in the numbers just doesn't add up.

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Grover

If it were 7 Yankees or 7 Red Sox or 7 Cardinals, nobody would care.

You can keep saying this as much as you want, but it doesn't make it true.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by Grover

Look, you don't like the Royals. We get it.

Fan voting is a joke. But it is what it is. If other fan bases don't vote, their players won't start. This is a bed MLB has for itself by introducing fan voting a few years back.

I don't vote. It's stupid. But I'm not constantly bitching about the system. If it were 7 Yankees or 7 Red Sox or 7 Cardinals, nobody would care. However, it's a small market team whose fans have come out and made an effort. Put the voting back in the hands of managers and players. Or weight the fan voting differently.

It's a broken system, made all the worse by the All-Star Game 'mattering' for home field advantage in the WS. That's also assinine.

I think there would be even more venom if it was 7 Cards, Yankees, or Red Sox. It has nothing to do with KC whatsoever. Maybe on FOFC but not anywhere else in the country where people are bitching about it. If Jason Heyward and Mark Reynolds were starting for the NL I would think it was a fucking joke.

[spleen1015]

They've made it way to easy to vote multiple times.

You fill out the ballot, the required info and hit submit. Then a submit again button pops up. Fill in the numbers again for bot control and you can submit the same ballot again. You can do it 35 times in about 2 minutes.

Insane.

And, you're not required to fill out both AL & NL. I just submitted an all Orioles ballot 10 times in less than a minute and left the NL blank.

Lame.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

They've made it way to easy to vote multiple times.

You fill out the ballot, the required info and hit submit. Then a submit again button pops up. Fill in the numbers again for bot control and you can submit the same ballot again. You can do it 35 times in about 2 minutes.

Insane.

And, you're not required to fill out both AL & NL. I just submitted an all Orioles ballot 10 times in less than a minute and left the NL blank.

Lame.

This. When I voted, I used all four of my e-mails (work/home) and then also used my parents and my wife's e-mails to cast more votes (I did let them know in advance so they didn't think someone was hacking them when they got their confirmation e-mail).

35 votes per e-mail x 7 e-mails = 245 votes cast. I did all that in under 30 minutes.

[MizzouRah]

It's a stupid system and they need to have the team with the best record get WS home field advantage.. remove it from the winner of the AS game. In fact, it never should have been decided that way to begin with.

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

This. When I voted, I used all four of my e-mails (work/home) and then also used my parents and my wife's e-mails to cast more votes (I did let them know in advance so they didn't think someone was hacking them when they got their confirmation e-mail).

35 votes per e-mail x 7 e-mails = 245 votes cast. I did all that in under 30 minutes.

You say this like you're proud of it.

[Grover]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

This. When I voted, I used all four of my e-mails (work/home) and then also used my parents and my wife's e-mails to cast more votes (I did let them know in advance so they didn't think someone was hacking them when they got their confirmation e-mail).

35 votes per e-mail x 7 e-mails = 245 votes cast. I did all that in under 30 minutes.

And this is why the system is terrible. Nobody should be able to do this.

All-Star games should not be a popularity contest.

[Chief Rum]

I think it's plainly obvious that the system is being gamed. Someone who is a KC Fan has developed a bot or script to submit votes. I don't buy the whole "Royals fans are just crazy excited about their team" line. No matter how excited they are, there aren't that many of them.

[panerd]

Why allow more than one vote per e-mail? I guess I could see panerd's son wants to vote as well... Anyone have 35 children?

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by panerd

Why allow more than one vote per e-mail? I guess I could see panerd's son wants to vote as well... Anyone have 35 children?

Shawn Kemp?

[molson]

I think its OK if the All-Star game is a popularity context. That is, if it includes the biggest stars in the game regardless of how they're doing this season. I think that was the original intention of the game. Because making the team doesn't really work as a merits-based award when only, at best, half the season is considered, and hell, voting actually starts in late April. So if it should strictly be a performance based thing, which seems to be the majority view these days, its really only somewhere between a few weeks and a few months' worth of performance. Not really anything to get worked up over. I'd say leave the awards that matter for the end of the season when performance for an actual whole season can be considered, and let the All-Star game be a fun exhibition with the games' biggest stars.

But, this Royals thing has strayed hilariously even from a popularity-contest ideal, because these aren't close to the biggest stars in the game. Considering how easy it is to vote hundreds of times, the fact that there's only double the usual total votes (as opposed to say, 100X), makes me lean towards an newly enthusiastic fanbase rather than a bot. You don't need a huge fanbase to double the vote total when individual fans can legit vote as often as they want. Most regular fans stopped caring about the All-Star game and voting a long time ago. I buy that the Royals fans are the only ones that care in any large number.

[panerd]

Yeah I agree it likely isn't a bot and is just a very insecure fanbase that doesn't think they got enough respect for appearing in the World Series every 30 years or so. I went to college with a lot of these guys and they are so defensive about being "scorned" as Chiefs and Royals fans. (And sadly they do this with Mizzou as well)

[spleen1015]

Either way, I think it is an intriguing story. Either than Royals fans are really voting like this or someone wrote a bot to do it. If it is a bot, I hope MLB catches it and removes those votes. That would be fun.

[spleen1015]

Where are KC fans scorned? I can see Ohio St., Notre Dame, Duke, Yankees, Red Sox fans getting scorned. KC teams haven't done anything to make the fans be d-bags enough to be scorned.

Other than MBBF, I don't know another unlikable KC fan.

[Logan]

Originally Posted by panerd

Yeah I agree it likely isn't a bot and is just a very insecure fanbase that doesn't think they got enough respect for appearing in the World Series every 30 years or so. I went to college with a lot of these guys and they are so defensive about being "scorned" as Chiefs and Royals fans. (And sadly they do this with Mizzou as well)

I take it back...panerd might have actual venom towards the Royals. The rest of the world on the other hand...

[Vince, Pt. II]

A few years ago Giants fans did the same thing, though they didn't go for every single position.

Also, I heard a rumor this morning that St. Louis is being investigated by the FBI for attempting to hack information out of the Astros' database or some such. Which seems weird on so many levels.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

Where are KC fans scorned? I can see Ohio St., Notre Dame, Duke, Yankees, Red Sox fans getting scorned. KC teams haven't done anything to make the fans be d-bags enough to be scorned.

Other than MBBF, I don't know another unlikable KC fan.

Columbia, MO. And I didn't say they were scorned I said they believed they were scorned.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by panerd

Why allow more than one vote per e-mail? I guess I could see panerd's son wants to vote as well... Anyone have 35 children?

It's been as many votes as you could manage for pretty much my entire life.

I can clearly recall figuring out how many ballots you could punch at the same time without having hanging chad issues.

[panerd]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

It's been as many votes as you could manage for pretty much my entire life.

I can clearly recall figuring out how many ballots you could punch at the same time without having hanging chad issues.

Mine always sort of varied with the usher at the stadium but I am specifically talking about online. And I mean I guess I know why they want you to vote 35 times... 5 million votes looks like there is a lot more interest than 150,000 votes but it just seems like the 35 votes per email is what created this huge mess.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Grover

All-Star games should not be a popularity contest.

Yet that's what it's been since 1970, when fan balloting was restored.

Well over half the U.S. population doesn't remember it being any other way.

[spleen1015]

If fans were truly going the MBBF route, that would still be over ~23k fans voting with 7 email addresses.

I just don't see that being realistic.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

If fans were truly going the MBBF route, that would still be over ~23k fans voting with 7 email addresses.

I just don't see that being realistic.

Yup.

I was doing the math in my head the other day, and it would be ridiculously difficult for this to be legit.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by panerd

Mine always sort of varied with the usher at the stadium

Curiosity question: can you remember when they were available in stores? Specifically I remember places -- like the drug store around the corner from my childhood home -- that sold Gillette products having them.

it just seems like the 35 votes per email is what created this huge mess.

I think a LOT of things created this mess.

Perhaps none of them bigger than how relatively few people particularly give two shits the integrity of their ballot.

I mentioned punching ballots by the stack ... I didn't say anything about those ballots having players from only one or two teams. I voted with a Sunday sports page & the weekly stats info right in front of me.

[spleen1015]

At the same time, if I was writing a bot to do this why stop at these numbers? To make it look legit? Fine, but why leave out NL votes.

I dunno.

[Logan]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Curiosity question: can you remember when they were available in stores? Specifically I remember places -- like the drug store around the corner from my childhood home -- that sold Gillette products having them.

I'm 32 and remember very clearly seeing them in sporting goods/apparel stores.

[ISiddiqui]

Everyone Involved In The Cardinals Hacking Scandal Seems To Be An Idiot

Jeff Luhnow and his Astros colleagues are pretty dumb. They helped build a proprietary database for storing all sorts of important baseball operations data when they worked for the Cardinals, and then just ported the damn thing over the Astros and slapped a new name on it when they jumped ship. That’s not exceptionally stupid, but what is exceptionally stupid is the fact that they didn’t bother to change their passwords, meaning that all anyone needed to “hack” this proprietary database of sensitive information was access to Luhnow’s old master list of passwords, which still belonged to the Cardinals.

LOL!

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

If I remember right, the 35 vote number was roughly the number of home games during the voting period. So in theory, if you were a fan, you would vote the same number of times that you potentially had attended a game.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

At the same time, if I was writing a bot to do this why stop at these numbers? To make it look legit? Fine, but why leave out NL votes.

I dunno.

Why would a KC fan care about the NL?

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Why would a KC fan care about the NL?

FWIW.....there are other indications that KC fans are doing it. Aoki is doing extremely well in the All-Star balloting. Most Royals fans would love to have him back at this point.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

FWIW.....there are other indications that KC fans are doing it. Aoki is doing extremely well in the All-Star balloting. Most Royals fans would love to have him back at this point.

If you're saying KC fans instead of a bot by a KC fan, again, there is no difference. A bot-designing KC Fan could feel the same about Aoki.

[spleen1015]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Why would a KC fan care about the NL?

I mentioned that with the idea that the bot maker wants it to look legit.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

I mentioned that with the idea that the bot maker wants it to look legit.

I think it's questionable to assume they care.

[molson]

Originally Posted by spleen1015

If fans were truly going the MBBF route, that would still be over ~23k fans voting with 7 email addresses.

Or less than 2,000 fans voting with 100 email addresses. Which, if we take MBBF's time estimate at face value, would only take 7 or 8 hours over a few months. I could see some crazy fans going even further than that.

Edit: Hell, ONE fan could vote a few hundred thousand times if they dedicated 7 or 8 hours a day to this. 100 email addresses a day, 3500 total votes, that'd be around 100k a month. Hopefully nobody's doing THAT, but a small contingent of fan-boy weirdos can definitely move the needle.

[stevew]

They surely should be able to determine if large amounts of votes are coming from the same IP.

[stevew]

Originally Posted by molson

Or less than 2,000 fans voting with 100 email addresses. Which, if we take MBBF's time estimate at face value, would only take 7 or 8 hours over a few months. I could see some crazy fans going even further than that.

Edit: Hell, ONE fan could vote a few hundred thousand times if they dedicated 7 or 8 hours a day to this. 100 email addresses a day, 3500 total votes, that'd be around 100k a month. Hopefully nobody's doing THAT, but a small contingent of fan-boy weirdos can definitely move the needle.

Shit if you had your own domain you could just set up joeblow(x)@royalsfan.com emails 1-x and vote a million times in a month.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

If you're saying KC fans instead of a bot by a KC fan, again, there is no difference. A bot-designing KC Fan could feel the same about Aoki.

Sure, but this is clearly the worst bot ever. If each fan voted 35 times, and the top vote number is around 7,000,000, we're only looking at around 200,000 fans to reach that level. Even if we cut the average back to 10 votes per person, it's only 700,000 people to reach that number. That doesn't include any non-KC fans that may (gasp) vote for a Royal.

That alone tells you it's not a bot. It's just a ridiculously low number of people participating outside of KC and a couple other markets.

[JonInMiddleGA]

The variance in vote totals does suggest that it isn't a bot. Or at least not a particularly coordinated one.

[Arles]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Everyone Involved In The Cardinals Hacking Scandal Seems To Be An Idiot
LOL!

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Brewers execs must have been ill watching the last two games.

-Their former coach rolls in as manager of the AL champs.
-Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar are now likely pillars in the KC lineup for the next 5-7 years (both acquired in the Greinke trade).
-Crowd is 40-50% Royals fans and sounds like a Royals home game.

[Grover]

Pretty sure they've been ill watching this entire season.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by Arles

My favorite comment from the comments section is this:

You know what’s extra-fun? There’s a non-zero chance the database was built by unpaid ‘interns’ who were expected to have advanced qualifications and work 40 hours a week: Job Posting: Arizona Diamondbacks TrackMan Operator | FanGraphs Baseball...

It might be too beautiful to be true, though. My shadenfreude was already at dangerous levels.

[Arles]

Here's another interesting wrinkle. According to Lester Munson on ESPN, there may not be enough for the FBI to move ahead with actual criminal charges. So, what if it's determined through the investigation, that Jeff Luhnow took proprietary data/structure from the Cardinals and used it as a starting point from the Astros? I'd be interested to see if he signed any kind of NDA or exit agreement with St. Louis when he left for the Astros gig.

[cartman]

Remember back when MBBF was calling for Ned Yost and his entire staff to be fired, instead of trying to make him into the second coming of Casey Stengel? Good times.

[MrBug708]

Has any game featuring the Royals on the road been anything but at least 50% Pro-Royals?

[lungs]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Brewers execs must have been ill watching the last two games.

-Their former coach rolls in as manager of the AL champs.
-Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar are now likely pillars in the KC lineup for the next 5-7 years (both acquired in the Greinke trade).
-Crowd is 40-50% Royals fans and sounds like a Royals home game.

Nah, not really. Sure, the Brewers suck but nobody misses Ned Yost around here.

As for Cain and Escobar..... I dunno, but I'm fine with Carlos Gomez and Jean Segura. CF and SS are not the Brewers' problem. Of course Gomez should be floating around in trade rumors soon and Segura is keeping the seat warm for Orlando Arcia.

Attendance wise, Brewers are doing pretty darn good for how completely terrible they've been, drawing only a few hundred people less than average than the Royals do at home.

[lungs]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

Has any game featuring the Royals on the road been anything but at least 50% Pro-Royals?

Weekday night game... Royals get out to a nice lead, most of the crowd leaves, a few hundred Royal fans start chanting "Let's Go Royals" in the 8th inning and MBBF extrapolates that the crowd is 40-50% Royals fans