2014 MLB Thread

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I don't know if it is the camera angle or what, but that picture looks like you are in a minor league stadium.

+1, pretty much my first thought too. If that's a major league stadium then it's a pretty intimate feel, based on that pic at least.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I don't know if it is the camera angle or what, but that picture looks like you are in a minor league stadium.

Must not of had the Sony seats!

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I don't know if it is the camera angle or what, but that picture looks like you are in a minor league stadium.

Sitting close to the field + no upper deck in the shot.

If you haven't been to Kauffman Stadium, you should. It's an amazing place to watch a game.

[Grover]

Jumped on the Royals bandwagon in mid-June after not paying attention to baseball for 6-7 years.

I feel as if I've made a good decision so far.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

+ no upper deck in the shot.

I imagine that's the part that gave me that impression. It's just so ... odd to see that angle (if you're familiar with the Turner Field layout you'll know why it looks so different/unusual to me)

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

WOOHOO!!!!! LET'S GO BOYS!!!!!

[sterlingice]

That was a really fun homestand. Now for a trap series in Minnesota

SI

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

The Royals are now 2.5 games out for home field advantage in the playoffs.

The zombie apocalypse must be at hand.

[Chief Rum]

If the playoffs started today, Detroit would be out of the playoffs (along with the Yanks and Sox). The Angels and Mariners, both in the AL West, would play one game in Anaheim in the wildcard, and the winner would play the AL West champ A's. And Royals and Orioles would play in the other playoff matchup.

Personally, I would absolutely love that. Well, except switch the A's and Angels.

[sterlingice]

I'd take it

SI

[bhlloy]

We've secretly switched Mike Trout and Kole Calhoun... Let's see if anyone notices

[claphamsa]

walkoff double for Ramos... Nats are pulling away from the braves. that being said, im glad im going tomorrow, since no way the GF would have waited for a 8th inning comeback.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Looks like another 50% off day for Royals fans at Papa John's tomorrow! This month is making Papa John very poor and Royals fans really fat.

A win tomorrow would give the Royals their eight straight series win. That's crazy good.

[dawgfan]

First order of business for Rob Manfred is to address the umpiring situation. Still too many of these douchebags that are hyper-sensitive and looking for a fight:

http://deadspin.com/tony-randazzo-ej...ive-1623029409

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

First order of business for Rob Manfred is to address the umpiring situation. Still too many of these douchebags that are hyper-sensitive and looking for a fight:

http://deadspin.com/tony-randazzo-ej...ive-1623029409

Obviously, this was a situation that should not have happen, but the general nature of your statement isn't very accurate. The number of these types of incidents is WAY down, especially with the advent of video review.

Also, I have a fraternity brother who is a MLB umpire (did both All-Star game and playoff games last year). He said that they've weeded out the problem umpires quite a bit over the past 5-10 years with results-based evaluations that are very focused. The umpires are MUCH better than they were even a decade ago as is the management of those crews.

[dawgfan]

The weeding needs to continue.

[Logan]

I don't often sit down and watch a full game (especially the following), but the home plate ump for Mets-Cubs basically refused to ask for help on check swing calls. He would make the call on his own, saying the batter went around, and literally every time he did, the overhead shot showed he was wrong and he was getting it wrong for both teams.

I think he checked down to first once and it was on a ball way down in the dirt where he probably wasn't looking at the swing.

[sterlingice]

I'm long past ready for computer called balls and strikes. I don't want to take away any umpire jobs- they can still do out and safe but balls and strikes need to be automated.

SI

[lungs]

The Brew Crew beating Clayton Kershaw was great satisfaction for the series @ LA Dodgers, but sweeping the Dodgers was just a cherry on top.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

And Gardenhire gets tossed in the first inning. Guessing he doesn't want to watch the rest of the game anyway.

[Dutch]

Joe Maddon not happy with cheers for Jeter at Tropicana - WFLA News Channel 8

Sad, but get used to it. St. Pete is 75% New Englander retirees and vacationers!

[ISiddiqui]

To be fair, its also why Tampa Bay is going to lose that team.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

To be fair, its also why Tampa Bay is going to lose that team.

The only option is to move it to Tampa...the Lightning sell out...the Bucs are back above 85% capacity....a small Tampa Rays stadium at channel side would sell out.

[Dutch]

...but since that wont ever happen...yeah, they are about done. Nobody wants to go to a home game and listen to that...trust me, its not fun or worth it.

[Chief Rum]

At the start of the season, I was really upset at Scioscia for the Angels getting off to yet another poor start.

So, obviously, now that the Angels have the best record in baseball with a good team, but not one I would say is the most talented in baseball (i.e. Dodgers, Tigers, Nationals), I have to admit I was wrong and Scioscia should be applauded for his methods. They do seem to be working.

Although kudos also to DiPoto, who effectively re-worked the bullpen across the space of the season and who has apparently managed to do this with the **ahem, Baseball America and Keith Law** 30th-ranked minor league system providing key pieces throughout the roster.

[Vince, Pt. II]

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/2175354...w-battles-tarp

So the Cubs' grounds crew failed as only Cubs can fail this evening, and the field was completely swamped. The rain was stopped for more than 2 hours until the game was finally called due to the field being unplayable, and since the visiting team had played 5 full innings, it was a complete game and the Cubs won.

I have to imagine that the Giants will be filing a protest, and that they have a pretty legitimate gripe here.

[miked]

Interesting things I did not know about the Royals. I had no idea it's been 30 years since they were in the playoffs, and 20 years since they have finished above 3rd place. In the last 20 seasons, they have only finished above .500 twice. Even more amazing is that, despite the fact they are in 1st place for the first time in 30 years, they still can't draw fans. They are a bottom 5 attendance team this year, what gives?

[CraigSca]

Not a Royals fan, but I'll just say that after 30 years, they're probably waiting for the other foot to drop and their eventual death spiral. It takes a while before fans to catch up to a team's doing well.

Just looking at Baseball-Reference, it took a while before Yankee fans, in the late 90's, began showing up in large numbers. It took until 2003 for the Yankees to be #1 in AL attendance. Their first World Series in 15 years (1996) only saw them draw 7th out of 14 ball clubs. The year after their World Series victory saw them at #6 in attendance. People like to see winners, but even then, it takes a while for it to show.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

Not a Royals fan, but I'll just say that after 30 years, they're probably waiting for the other foot to drop and their eventual death spiral. It takes a while before fans to catch up to a team's doing well.

Just looking at Baseball-Reference, it took a while before Yankee fans, in the late 90's, began showing up in large numbers. It took until 2003 for the Yankees to be #1 in AL attendance. Their first World Series in 15 years (1996) only saw them draw 7th out of 14 ball clubs. The year after their World Series victory saw them at #6 in attendance. People like to see winners, but even then, it takes a while for it to show.

This. It's not easy to convince a fan base that you're heading in the right direction when you've sucked for so long. We're the team that had a playoff team in the 90s, only to see the season cancelled. People forget that this team greatly underperformed for the first 100 games. They were 48-50 only a month or so ago and people were calling for the coach and GM's head. Also, the owner is not very popular. He's repeatedly pocketed money rather than increase payroll even when the fans have showed up in big numbers.

The last month has been the exception, not the rule. They've won 22 out of their last 27. The best part has been the fan response on the road. Royals fans have been coming out in droves at road games. Last night's game was a perfect example. The game was in Colorado, but it looked and sounded like a Royals home game. They were showing crowd shots and you saw lots of noisy Royals fans with a few pissed off people in purple. What those people in purple were experiencing is something that we've had to deal with for THREE DECADES!!! TV ratings are setting records. This isn't something that happens around here.

I watched the Royals win the championship when I was nine from the stands. I knew several of the players and got to go to the games with my family. I'm nearly 40 now and haven't see a playoff game since then. I can guarantee you that I will openly weep if we win the division this year. It would be so special for our fan base. I can remember when we used to win the division every year. Little did I know as a kid how good we had it.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by miked

Interesting things I did not know about the Royals. I had no idea it's been 30 years since they were in the playoffs, and 20 years since they have finished above 3rd place. In the last 20 seasons, they have only finished above .500 twice. Even more amazing is that, despite the fact they are in 1st place for the first time in 30 years, they still can't draw fans. They are a bottom 5 attendance team this year, what gives?

Just a little history for the uninitiated. I'm not a longtime Royals fan, so maybe MBBF or others can pick up the slack here. I started watching the team in the late 90s when I went to school at Kansas. The team hasn't made the playoffs since the 1985 World Series and has had those two winning seasons since the strike. Last season was one.

The other was 2003, a really flukey 83-79. A perfect symbol for that team was Chris George, who was 9-6, the team leader in wins when he was sent packing in early July to Omaha BECAUSE OF AN ERA OVER 7! Saying the team had 75-win talent is probably generous (look at the pitching staff! look at it!)The team probably had the talent to be about a 75 win team, at best, but started out 9-0 and 17-4, building a 5.5 game lead before giving it all back by mid June at 32-32 and being 5.0 games back. They got hot again, getting to 10 games over with a 7 game lead at the All Star break in mid July but had managed to cough it up by August 1. They were never in the lead in September and finished 7 games back.

Keep in mind where this team was and where they are going. The team was a blah 29-32 on June 6th. It's not exactly the stuff large crowds are made of, particularly for a team whose Manager and GM jobs are on the line, had mortgaged large chunks of the future last year (James Shields trade) for what looks (and could still be) a pair of non-playoff teams, and are "all in" this season.

Then, back to what CraigSca said - we're all waiting for the possible death spiral. It's already happened once this season. After that 29-32, the Royals reeled off an improbable 10 game winning streak to jump into 1st by 1.5 games. The last 6 of the winning streak were on the road. Thursday they lost in Detroit to snap the streak and Friday night's loss in front of 38K at Kauffman dropped the Royals out of 1st. One month later, they were back to 2 games under .500 and 8 games back. There was never a chance for the fans to get behind the team.

Ever since that time, the team hasn't stopped winning. They've won 22 of 27 and with Detroit's collapse, have tenuously climbed into 1st place. The last weekend series drew 28-35-27 so I think fans are starting to buy in.

Then we get to the real crux of the problem. There's been a lot of losing and there's nothing left on the bandwagon. There's a whole generation of lost Royals fans who have seen the following loss totals in their lifetime (1996 until 2012):
86-94-89-97-85-97-100-79-104-106-100-93-87-97-95-91-90
There's not even hope most of those years. I mean, a fan of a .500 team can squint and say they have a chance at the playoffs. Hard to do that with a 90 or 100 loss team. Joe Posnanski writes as only he can about it just the decade from 2000-2009: The Royals Decade

This is why parity is good in sports in finance and in play. You crush fanbases for two decades plus and it's only natural for fans to stay away. And, yes, there's a significant amount of ineptness in the Royals front office but it's in a lot of front offices. It's no coincidence that this coincides not only with KC's largest payroll ever at $92M but their highest rank (19) since the mid 90s. But, while football can be forgiving and a bad front office in Cincinnati can get into some playoff appearances or Cleveland can get Lebron James in the NBA (twice even!), baseball's structure makes that all but impossible (*with Oakland and Tampa, arguably the two best front offices in the game as sometimes exceptions). So, it's not just a lot of losing but also the feeling of no real hope for improvement. It's a real recipe for a lost generation of fans.

*EDIT: Oakland, Tampa, and Minnesota are cited as the "small market success stories". But both Minneapolis and Tampa should be considered mid-market. Minneapolis is 16th in size and 15th in media market while Tampa Bay is 18 and 14. Oakland has the squirrelly case of sharing the market with San Francisco and getting a bad end of the share in a crappy stadium. Point, Billy Beane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...tistical_Areas
http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TVB_Ma..._2013-2014.pdf

SI

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

This. It's not easy to convince a fan base that you're heading in the right direction when you've sucked for so long. We're the team that had a playoff team in the 90s, only to see the season cancelled. People forget that this team greatly underperformed for the first 100 games. They were 48-50 only a month or so ago and people were calling for the coach and GM's head. Also, the owner is not very popular. He's repeatedly pocketed money rather than increase payroll even when the fans have showed up in big numbers.

When has that happened? Glass pocketing money, yes. Fans showing up in big numbers? It's never really happened since he's owned the team:
Kansas City Royals Attendance, Stadiums, and Park Factors | Baseball-Reference.com

The team has never broken 1.8M fans or higher than 10th (out of 15 AL teams) since he's owned them.

The market's just not that big. Only Milwaukee and Cincinnati are smaller media markets in MLB (http://www.tvb.org/media/file/TVB_Ma..._2013-2014.pdf) and Milwaukee is the only smaller city (List of Metropolitan Statistical Areas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

SI

[lungs]

Brewers vs. Royals World Series, it's coming.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by lungs

Brewers vs. Royals World Series, it's coming.

Most here would love to see the I-70 series revisited again. That would be epic.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by lungs

Brewers vs. Royals World Series, it's coming.

And TV executives just shuddered, not quite knowing why.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

And TV executives just shuddered, not quite knowing why.

I just figured that seeing you had responded in this thread that you were picking apart my market size assumptions above

SI

[korme]

The Reds couldn't find any shittier way to be losing these games.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

I just figured that seeing you had responded in this thread that you were picking apart my market size assumptions above
SI

Nah. I was just mostly being amused at the "a squirrel just walked across my grave" reaction a Mil-KC series gave every TV exec

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Vince, Pt. II

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/2175354...w-battles-tarp

So the Cubs' grounds crew failed as only Cubs can fail this evening, and the field was completely swamped. The rain was stopped for more than 2 hours until the game was finally called due to the field being unplayable, and since the visiting team had played 5 full innings, it was a complete game and the Cubs won.

I have to imagine that the Giants will be filing a protest, and that they have a pretty legitimate gripe here.

I'm usually not a fan of protests, but the Giants have a legit gripe here in what could end up being a pivoal game. At the very least it should have been a suspended game.

[Vince, Pt. II]

That was my thought as well. Then again, if we're playing the letter of the law game, the rule book has six conditions laid out for a suspension of a game, and this is clearly NOT one of them. And just a week or two ago, the Giants got a free run because of the letter of the law (catcher "blocking" the plate when the runner was 15 feet away at best when the ball got there). So I guess it all evens out. But it's supremely frustrating to have events completely outside the control of the players involved in the game force an outcome like that.

[Logan]

Just ask the Cubs nicely and I'm sure they'll happily vacate this win.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by Logan

Just ask the Cubs nicely and I'm sure they'll happily vacate this win.

That's the part that cracked me up... Seeing someone from the SF side arguing the Cubs did this intentionally to get the win. No, sir, its just incompetence on the Cubs part.

[Butter]

Originally Posted by korme

The Reds couldn't find any shittier way to be losing these games.

This season is over, it's about time for Operation Shutdown.

[sterlingice]

I'm sure they'd much rather have the loss and the better spot in next year's draft

SI

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Most here would love to see the I-70 series revisited again. That would be epic.

Fuck that. The Royals, I'm willing to give a pass.

The Cardinals can burn.

[sterlingice]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Fuck that. The Royals, I'm willing to give a pass.

The Cardinals can burn.

This.

SI

[Chief Rum]

Say what you want about the Cards, but at least they would burn the right way.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by SackAttack

Fuck that. The Royals, I'm willing to give a pass.

The Cardinals can burn.

We could have another blown call at first base. This time they'd get screwed when they decide to not reverse the call after review

[Vince, Pt. II]

MLB upholds the Giants' pr

[cartman]

wow, I can't remember the last time a protest was upheld. Was it all the way back to the Pine Tar incident?

[JPhillips]

I think MLB had to get on top of this. Teams could have "problems" with the tarp and then with removing water on a semi-regular basis.