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MLB World Series 2018: Eh. Dodgers/Boston. Eh.

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^ My problem with Bonds stems from his lying about using PEDs. I agree that he shouldn’t be punished for breaking a (then) non-existent rule. I don’t have a problem with him (and other PED users whose numbers warrant election) being in the HOF, as he was clearly a great player and may well have been the most feared hitter of any historical baseball era.

I also believe that Pete Rose should be in the HOF based on his exploits as a player, but he should never be allowed to work in baseball again. As you pointed out, he bet against his own team, which means he almost certainly made managerial decisions that undermined the Reds’ chances of winning. I doubt he did anything that would have attracted the wrong kind of attention (e.g., playing Kal Daniels at 3B), but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he managed his bullpen differently during the games he bet on. Who knows what the ramifications of his decisions might have been? Did he cost pitchers money in free-agency and years of their careers by overworking them? I’m not sure anyone wants to know the answer to that question, but the fact that we have to ask it is why Rose doesn’t belong in baseball anymore.
 
2 pitch, 3 out inning in minor league game.

Under the extra-inning rules, each half inning beyond regulation is started with a runner on second base. The runner is either the ninth batter due to bat in the current inning, or a pinch-runner if the batting team so chooses.
That’s how the inning in question started Friday. Rome pitcher Hayden Deal was tasked with recording three outs without letting the runner stationed at second base score. On the first pitch of the inning, West Virginia’s Calvin Mitchell hit a line drive to second baseman Derian Cruz, who then stepped on second base to double off Oneil Cruz. The next hitter, Deon Stafford, lined the next pitch to third baseman Marcos Almonte to end the inning.
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I get how hard it can be to give up the game you love, when it's basically the only thing you know how to do, but ... David, you're 35, you've made a zillion bucks during your career, and your spine, neck and shoulder are completely and utterly fucked. Sometimes you need to know when to fold 'em, as much as I enjoy the idea of fucking the Wilpons out of their insurance money.

Ar-Pharazon said:
2 pitch, 3 out inning in minor league game.

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I hate this rule so much and I hate that Rob Manfred wants to bring it to the majors.
 
Emh said:
That's a horrible, godsawful rule. :rolleyes:
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It is, and that Pat O'Conner (the president of MiLB) instituted it the minute Manfred suggested it is ridiculous, but O'Conner has run MiLB since the early '90s and was a Bud Selig toady from the start, so I guess I can't be too surprised.

I'm still of the opinion that most of these silly pace-pf-play changes that Manfred keeps proposing--outside of the pitch clock, I think he genuinely wants that--are artificial cudgels that he wants to be able to use when the CBA re-opens, in order to extract even more concessions from the union (I will bet my left testicle they're going after guaranteed contracts in 2021). But "extra innings begin with a runner on base" is possibly the most stupid of this legion of incredibly stupid ideas, because we're seeing how it results in the minors and we also saw it in the WBC: Institute that rule and get ready for sacrifice bunts followed by sacrifice flies.
 
I’m at a bar in LA and just watched the Cubs win on a walk-off grand slam.

AND the bases were loaded thanks to 2 hit batsmen.

Crazy stuff!
 
I'll take the win, but we'd better figure out how to score runs again. If we back into the playoffs, it'll be a quick exit with our starters giving up a lot and our stagnant offense.
The sad part is, some of our guys are hitting better than they have in a while, just not when they need to.
 
1001001 said:
I’m at a bar in LA and just watched the Cubs win on a walk-off grand slam.
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According to MLB Stats & Info, it was the first time in the liveball era, ever, that a walkoff grand slam broke up a shutout.
 
Timby said:
Why? Because he was only the greatest player to ever hit a baseball, but kind of a surly dick?

Don't come at me with a BUT STEROIDS argument, when baseball has literally never been clean. Babe Ruth was a fat drunk hitting against farmboys throwing 70 miles an hour in a segregated league that had seven other teams. Baseball has a long, sordid history of first segregation and following that institutionalized racism, meaning a lot of the guys held up as legends were legitimately not playing against some of the best competition out there. Amphetamines--which have a genuine, proven, demonstrable effect upon things like reaction time, which is why so many players nowadays get their doctors to give them wink-wink nudge-nudge prescriptions for things like Adderall, allowing them to get "therapeutic use exemptions" from MLB--have been passed around like Skittles in clubhouses for decades. You had Scarface-level mountains of cocaine flying around in the '80s. In the '90s, we had what is now considered the "steroid era." And I guarantee you there's some lab in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or some other Godforsaken land that's already developed some new drug that will take WADA a decade to detect and that a quarter of MLB players are already on.

Beyond that, MLB literally did not had a comprehensive performance-enhancing drug policy until 2005, meaning that even if players were taking shit (and let's be honest, a lot of them were), it wasn't against the rules of baseball.

Beyond that, as players like Melky Cabrera and Neifi goddamn Perez (oh, Neifi, how I hate you) getting popped have proven, steroids do not magically make you a great hitter or cure you of sucking at baseball. (Although the Melky thing was hilarious because he paid a guy to make a website to make it look like he had bought his supplements from a legit pharmaceutical company, which will never fail to make me laugh.) Shooting horse hormones into your ass or whatever does not equal Magic Dinger Juice.

I mean, come on, Bonds was once intentionally walked with the bases loaded. That's a whole other plane of existence. Or, to put it another way: .362 / .609 / .812. That's a line that will never, ever, ever be repeated, not even by a generational demigod like Mike Trout.

With a case like Rose, though, the minute you allow betting on games and / or don't come down on it, you immediately tell your fans they have no reason to watch because the games are meaningless. "Oh, look, Joe Maddon had Tyler Chatwood throw 250 pitches last night ... guess he must have had money riding on how many walks a pitcher could issue in a single inning." (Okay, maybe that's a bad example because that's probably something Maddon would do after smoking a bunch of weed in his RV, but you get the idea.) Gambling in baseball absolutely cannot be tolerated.

If you are going to make an intellectually honest argument to exclude players like Barry Bonds--who, it should be noted, never pissed hot--from the Hall of Fame, then you must also support the recall of players like Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, all known and admitted users of amphetamines (edit: and, if memory serves, Mantle missed the end of the 1961 season because he got an injection of a weird-ass cocktail of amphetamines, steroids and animal fluids in his hip, resulting in a massive staph infection requiring surgery); shit, let's also go after Gaylord Perry, since he's in the Hall despite being a spitballer. George Brett, pine tar. I could go on and on and on, but the Hall is filled with people who did everything they could to try to get some sort of advantage. But if you're ignoring them and saying "fuck Bonds," you're either making a hypocritical argument or playing a pretty horrible game of No True Scotsman; "the good guys cheat like this, the bad guys cheat like this."

Edit: In non-Hall of Fame news, it is August 11, so almost two months left to go in the season, and the Orioles have officially, mathematically been eliminated from winning the AL East. Ouch. :lol:
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How can you argue with this? Someone that was never caught doing something THAT WASN'T AGAINST THE RULES AT THE TIME and didn't even minutely impact the integrity of the game, versus a genuine degenerate who BET AGAINST THE TEAM HE WAS MANAGING - an act that is unforgivable.
Put BARRY IN THE HALL. Jeez.
 
Ronald Acuña Jr. led off both games in today's doubleheader with home runs. I wonder how often that's happened.
 
Emh said:
Ronald Acuña Jr. led off both games in today's doubleheader with home runs. I wonder how often that's happened.
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How rare is it for a player to lead off both ends of a doubleheader with a home run?
Very rare, it turns out. Acuna is only the fourth player to do it. The list:
  • Ronald Acuna Jr., Braves: August 13, 2018 vs. Marlins
  • Brady Anderson, Orioles: August 21, 1999 vs. White Sox
  • Rickey Henderson, Athletics: July 5, 1993 vs. Indians
  • Harry Hooper, Red Sox: May 30, 1913 vs. Senators
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I'd have thought there would be more in the early days, what with more doubleheaders back then.
 
Not surprised to see Ricky Henderson on that list. I figured it would be rare but I also didn't think it would be that rare. Thanks for the stats. Where did you get them?
 
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