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MLB 2017: The Yankees are dead, Yankees burn in hell

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I wouldn't be against MLB shortening their season to make the playoffs more like the NBA.

This is unlikely to happen. The MLBPA wants to go back to 154 games, but every time that's come up in CBA negotiations, the response from ownership has been, "Fine, but you need to agree to across-the-board rollbacks in salaries to cover all the ticket sales, parking and concessions revenue we'd lose." I'm pretty sure Marvin Miller would rise from his grave and eat Tony Clark if he ever agreed to that.
 
The Cubs finally clinched the NL Central, the long way round.

They're kinda "peaking at the right time", but I'm still concerned with their starters and how they have a hard time scoring runs without the longball.

The bullpen has been better lately. Hopefully that trend continues.
 
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Yeah, they have a lot of holes, arguably too many to make a deep playoff run. Arrieta finally found his arm (but was rushed back from the DL so quickly that he had to modify his delivery to avoid tweaking his hamstring), but Hendricks and Lester are maddeningly inconsistent and Quintana lives and dies by the strikeout. Wade Davis is still lights-out, but the rest of the bullpen is up in the air, and Carl Edwards looks like he's just exhausted.

Offensively, the lineup is full of question marks. Schwarber finally found his swing but God only knows if that will last, Rizzo's been having a down year by his standards, Heyward is Heyward, Contreras is still dealing with that hamstring, Baez is still swinging from his heels at everything in sight, Russell's allergic to walks, Almora's terribly streaky and Zobrist looks like he's finished.

Also, fun / depressing: Seasons with 100 or more RBI and .700 OPS or lower, after 1900:

1964 Joe Pepitone, Yankees, 100 RBI, 0.698 OPS
1990 Joe Carter, Padres, 115 RBI, 0.681 OPS
1993 Ruben Sierra, Athletics, 101 RBI, 0.678 OPS
1997 Joe Carter, Blue Jays, 102 RBI, 0.683 OPS
2003 Tony Batista, Orioles, 100 RBI, 0.659 OPS
2017 Albert Pujols, Angels, 100 RBI, 0.677 OPS

Edit: What the fuck, the Cubs are the first defending World Series champions to win their division since the 2009 Phillies.
 
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I think if they play matchup with the lineup, they can put a potentially dangerous lineup out there vs. most starters.

Maybe it's true that a WS winner has a major hangover the next year. Not that the Cubs, Brewers or Cards looked like teams that really wanted the division at any time this year.

It was a war of attrition in the NL Central, so whichever team took the division would probably get bounced in the 1st or 2nd round. I hope the Cubs can pull it off, but it ain't exactly easy unless you're the Yankees.

WS Win Streaks.jpg
 
1993 Ruben Sierra, Athletics, 101 RBI, 0.678 OPS

Ruben Sierra was such a colossal waste of talent. What I most remember about him was his absolute refusal to take walks. Tony LaRussa confronted him about it, and the two got into a shouting match after Sierra said, "Name me one person who walks a lot who's any good."

LaRussa erupted. "Frank Thomas! Barry Bonds! Wade Boggs! Those guys aren't any good?"
 
I think if they play matchup with the lineup, they can put a potentially dangerous lineup out there vs. most starters.

The issue is that they're going to be looking at Scherzer and Strasburg, and I fear that because Maddon has a tendency to crawl up his own ass, he may well try to play matchups. The roster isn't deep enough for that.
 
Supposedly Terry Collins is gone at the end of the season. A lot of the issues with the Mets aren’t his faults. Even the stuff that is his fault, like over using certain pitchers isn’t really his fault. He was good for the Mets but overall I’m not sad if he goes. I’m just not sure who wants to jump into this dumpster fire.
 
Supposedly Terry Collins is gone at the end of the season. A lot of the issues with the Mets aren’t his faults. Even the stuff that is his fault, like over using certain pitchers isn’t really his fault. He was good for the Mets but overall I’m not sad if he goes. I’m just not sure who wants to jump into this dumpster fire.

What's Dave Magadan doing these days?
 
This story from 2 days ago claimed Fred Wilpon save Collins' job. I can't believe he's lasted this long. Talk about being comfortable in mediocrity.

With that, and all the injuries, I can't believe any player would ever sign there.
 
I wonder why it is that there are so many homers this season. Unless everyone discovered a new PED that the tests haven't caught onto yet, it doesn't seem like we have significantly worse pitching than other eras. Maybe better conditioning science that favors the offense?
 
I wonder why it is that there are so many homers this season. Unless everyone discovered a new PED that the tests haven't caught onto yet, it doesn't seem like we have significantly worse pitching than other eras. Maybe better conditioning science that favors the offense?

While I am almost certain that a large percentage of the league, if not a majority, is still on some as-yet-undetected substance (or they're all on HGH, which still can't be reliably picked up in a UA, despite WADA throwing a ton of its ridiculously limited $30 million annual budget at developing new tests), because if there's one thing the history of sports cheating has taught us, it's that these biochemists are always finding ways to escalate the war, and almost invariably they're two or three steps ahead of investigators. BALCO going down didn't result in Signature Pharmacy's downfall, and when Signature Pharmacy got busted, Biogenesis was there to pick up the slack, and so on.

But that being said, this is one of those environments which can be rather easily explained by Occam's Razor:

1) A lot of teams are very much monkey-see, monkey-do, and recent World Series champions have lived and died by the long ball.
2) The Statcast system was installed across the league at the beginning of the 2015 season, and that's led to an increased focus upon metrics such as launch angle and velocity. Those metrics aren't just for show on broadcasts; teams use them to evaluate and guide player performance (though obviously different teams do this to different extents).
 
Sounds like Stanton's on the market. Way to engender loyalty with your fanbase, Jeets.

Edit: Also, in good news for Mets fans, both Warthen and Ray Ramirez have been tossed. Every pitcher in the system probably just breathed a sigh of relief.
 
^I always thought that Jeter was a douche and that he shared more of the blame for his on-again/off-again feud with A-Rod than his psychophants would have the rest of us believe (then again, he learned from Mattingly, who told Jeter that he “faked it with Boggs” for years). Now, he seems to be proving my hunch correct.
 
Eh. Both Jeter and A-Rod are pieces of shit.

No argument there. I’m actually more interested in the fact that Mattingly and Boggs never actually patched up their rift, which formed in part because Margo Adams, a woman with whom the latter had an affair, said that Boggs resented the attention Mattingly received. “Donny Baseball” was apparently none too happy when he learned of the comments.
 
Ugh, physically painful to admit, but the Yankees got pretty decent pretty quickly. Was hoping for a lengthy rebuild process, but they hit on a couple kids earlier than expected, and they're bouncing right back. Not that I expected anything of the Twins, but was briefly happy when they jumped out to a 3-0 lead and chased the Yankees' ace immediately.

Either way, feels like Houston vs. Indians for the AL side of things anyway, so ALDS is just foreplay; can't see the Sox or Yankees realistically getting past them. Never know, I suppose, but that's how it looks on paper...
 
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