Tyler Glasnow getting the ball in Game 1 of the World Series for the Rays. Blake Snell will get the ball in Game 2.
2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Collapse
Recommended Videos
Collapse
X
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Tyler Glasnow getting the ball in Game 1 of the World Series for the Rays. Blake Snell will get the ball in Game 2.I can't shave with my eyes closed, meaning each day I have to look at myself in the mirror and respect who I see.
I miss the old days of Operation Sports :(
Louisville Cardinals/St.Louis Cardinals -
OSFM23 - Building Better Baseball - OSFM23
A Work in ProgressComment
-
Comment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Im rooting for Tampa, but if I were betting on it I'd have to go with LA. Hoping for seven games, otherwise sports watching is over for me, since the NHL is on a wierd schedule now.
Sent from my SM-G930P using Operation Sports mobile appComment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
I think there's a chance the Dodgers could wipe out the Rays. I hope I'm wrong as I'd like to see a good World Series. But there's this voice in my head reminding me that the Dodgers won the last time we had a significantly shorter season in 1981.
If it's pretty apparent the Dodgers are going to come through, I hope they manage to throw Vin Scully in there for an inning on at least their local radio network. I feel like he deserves to call at least an inning of a Dodgers World Series Championship (I know he was around for their last one in 1998 but that was a long, long time ago) and we need it to balance out some of the bad in 2020.Last edited by bhurst99; 10-19-2020, 08:36 PM.Comment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
From last year. These are the Rays:
The MLB Coach Who Played Only T-Ball
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla.—Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Tommy Pham wanted help with his defensive positioning one day earlier in spring training, so he sought guidance from a trusted adviser. It wasn’t Kevin Kiermaier, the two-time Gold Glove-winner who patrols center field at Tropicana Field all summer long. It wasn’t Matt Quatraro, who handles the team’s outfield instruction.
Pham sought the perspective of a 28-year-old with a math degree from Princeton whose entire playing career consists of T-ball in Canada at the age of 5.
Jonathan Erlichman is a pioneer in baseball. After six seasons working for the Rays in research and development, he is now the first full-time analytics coach ever to join a major-league staff. In his new role, he will use his knowledge of data to assist manager Kevin Cash with in-game decisions and provide real-time information to players.
Every organization has analysts, statisticians and web developers on the payroll. Some teams even have a numbers guru travel with the team as a member of the front office. But those people wear polo shirts and khaki pants and watch games from a box high above the field. Erlichman has a uniform—No. 97—and will see the action from the angle of the players.
Which means when Pham consulted with Erlichman, the conversation didn’t take place by his locker or at a desk. It happened with Erlichman on the field during practice, glove in hand, shagging fly balls with world-class athletes.
“I wanted him to see the trajectory of the bat and how the ball comes off the bat,” Pham said. “Other teams’ analytics guys, they just see the numbers from a computer, from a piece of paper. He’s seeing it in-game, in-person, and he can apply what the numbers say on the computer and on paper to what he’s actually seeing.”
Baseball has been moving this direction for a while, a natural progression as the implementation of empirical analysis has graduated from a radical revolution to an established paradigm. The Houston Astros laid the foundation for this as early as 2017, when they deployed Sig Mejdal, one of the industry’s most respected quants, as a coach in the minor leagues. The Rays followed that experiment last spring, putting Erlichman in the dugout for a handful of Grapefruit League contests.
After Mejdal’s stint with the Single-A Tri-City ValleyCats, Morgan Ensberg, that team’s manager, said that if he ever landed a big-league job, he’d want an analyst on the bench. He predicted the practice “is going to become the norm in baseball.” In January, the Rays hired Ensberg as their Double-A manager.
“Analytics is intruding in every industry there is,” said Mejdal, now an assistant general manager for the Baltimore Orioles. “Whenever a human being is expected to make a decision, especially in real time, having an analyst nearby will help the decision-making.”
Nonetheless, Erlichman crossing the threshold of the clubhouse feels like a seminal moment in a sport where much of the innovation has happened in board rooms and executive suites. Nobody like him has ever been allowed to enter the players’ daily lives in such an intimate way.
Erlichman grew up in Canada loving hockey, playing on the club team in Princeton. His interest in baseball came later, almost entirely from a statistical standpoint. While hockey was just starting to wade into the shallow end of the analytics pool, baseball had an entire ocean of data to explore and a desire for people to dive in.
The Rays initially brought Erlichman on as an R&D intern in 2013. By 2017, he had become their director of analytics. This season, they decided to name him a coach. Though it has yet to be determined whether Erlichman will be stationed in the dugout during games or just outside it, he will be close enough to Cash to take part in his decision-making. He will certainly be on the field before games.
“I see it as more of an opportunity to gain different perspectives and be able to see a lot of the things that go on on a day-to-day basis, or potentially in games on a play-to-play basis that you don’t see when you’re further away,” Erlichman said.
The appointment of Erlichman demonstrates just how far the game has come. In 2004, shortly after Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow first broke into the industry in the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization, he visited the organization’s Double-A affiliate in Tennessee. That team’s manager, Mark DeJohn, wanted Luhnow, the ultimate outsider, to sit in the dugout for a game, but a higher-ranking Cardinals executive nixed the idea.
It makes sense that the Rays would be the first to take this plunge at the major-league level. They are known as arguably the most innovative and progressive franchise in baseball, using their ingenuity to win despite low revenues and a payroll that consistently ranks among the lowest in the sport. They were among the first teams to rely heavily on defensive shifts, a now-ubiquitous concept. Last season, they popularized the “opener,” the practice of starting a game with a relief pitcher in order to gain advantageous matchups. They finished with 90 victories.
The Rays, Cash said, ask their players “to buy into what is considered off or different from the norm.” Making somebody who has never faced actual pitching in his life a coach qualifies. Whether it will succeed will depend on whether the players embrace Erlichman as one of them.
“Him being in uniform sends a message that you know he is one of the staff,” said Chaim Bloom, the Rays’ senior vice president of baseball operations. “He is on the inside in a way that somebody who just happens to be traveling with the club might not be.”
Cash said he plans to consult with Erlichman during games the way he would with Quatraro, his bench coach, for opinions on lineup and pitching changes. But perhaps more important will be how Erlichman’s daily presence can improve the Rays’ analytics efforts.
Erlichman’s talk with Pham, for instance, gave him a better understanding of how outfielders perceive fly balls coming off the bat, enabling him to build more sophisticated models to aid in defensive positioning. The Rays want those discussions to be a constant, on the field, in the locker room and on the team plane.
Other teams will likely follow in the Rays’ footsteps. But Erlichman will always be the first to be given a uniform. That’s why for the Rays’ first spring training game, he made sure not to wear a sweatshirt or pullover over it. He had to show it off.
“I don’t think my parents would have been happy if I never wore the jersey,” Erlichman said.OSHA Inspector for the NBA.Comment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Kershaw really needs to step up and be the first ballot HOF regular season pitcher he is tonight. None of this double your career ERA, blow up inning nonsense. And this is the playoffs, so sometimes you need to win a game where your offense only scores you 3 runs. No excuses.Comment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Are they gonna do the 20 minute pre-game where the players/staff are introduced individually and someone sings the anthem? Or is that just an all-star game thing? Either way it drags. Should ditch some of the pomp and circumstance in the pandemic.Comment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Yay, I get to watch the crappy international broadcast feed.OSHA Inspector for the NBA.Comment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Willie Mays stepping into the batter box.OSHA Inspector for the NBA.Comment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Come on Diaz, ask for help at 1st.OSHA Inspector for the NBA.Comment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
5-inning Glasnow about to go...5 innings tonight.OSHA Inspector for the NBA.Comment
-
"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." - Rogers HornsbyComment
-
Re: 2020 World Series: Tampa Bay Rays vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Not sure what I think about Pederson's bling, but it sure shines.OSHA Inspector for the NBA.Comment
Comment