casimir

Oh, please don't misunderstand, I only look at this as entertainment. I don't consider this an end all be all as far as which country has the best baseball player.

It’s baseball. I’m used to MLB teams generally finish with records such that every team basically wins 2 out of 5 games or 3 out of 5 games or somewhere in between. The margins on any daily game over a long period are thin. So, look, all credit to Italy, they won the game. But this tournament is such a small sample of what we’re used to as MLB fans. I sometimes don’t know how to take an upset like this. And then the other angle is how each game is played. We don’t need to go any further than the pitching. It’s handled completely differently and we al understand why that is. I’ll admit my interest in this has grown with each tournament. Sure, why not, it’s early March and I’m on withdrawal from baseball. And the crowds, my goodness, the crowds for some of these games. That’s really fun to see. Sure, that buzz is tough to generate for lots of any random MLB game. It’s apples and shoelaces. But that’s one benefit to this shorter season tourney.

I think you have to have some sort of lineage to that country to play for it.

I know there’s quite a desire for 4 team divisions if/when MLB expands to 32 teams. Then the playoffs become something like all division winners (8 teams) plus a smaller number of wildcards (4 or 6). The problem with that is the increased likelihood of a team with a losing record falling into the playoffs as a division winner. The NFL allows its losing record division winners into the playoffs. In my mind, that’s appalling for a professional sports league. @chasfh has always called out that MLB owners are unlikely to want 8 team divisions as nobody wants to be owner of a team in 8th place. I don’t disagree with his interpretation of the owners desires might be. I just don’t like the math behind possibly keeping a better team out of the playoffs because a losing team wins a cruddy division. It’ll happen at some point. Along those lines, the NHL has 8 team divisions. I honestly don’t know if a team with a losing record has made the playoffs as a wildcard under the current setup, but I highly doubt a losing record team has won a division. I know they’ve had some wacky top 3 teams in the division and then there’s some variable with the final 2 teams in each conference. Maybe the last 2 are based purely on record regardless of division? Now I wouldn’t completely adhere to that, I’d just take the top whatever number of records regardless of division. So, congratulations to the NFC South Carolina Panthers, but the Detroit Lions or Minnesota Vikings are taking your playoff spot as they had a better overall record. Honestly I think a lot of this fervor for 4 team divisions is just blindly following what the NFL does.

They played 15 NL teams. All teams play against each other for at least one 3 game series.

The solution is to give every team its own division.

Epstein. Padding his Nobel Peace Prize resume. Epstein.

Nice work checking out the schedule. To your point about money, yes, that's the answer to all your questions. One of the other things that popped into my head about front loaded interleague was a parallel to college football. A majority of out of conference games are played early on. Then you get your in conference games which help shape the conference races. There might be some intent behind that, too. Maybe moreso than weather concerns.

It’s been going on now for, what, over 30 years now?

In theory you could front load. If on average there are 3 games each night that are interleague, they could go heavier with 5 early in the season and work on down to 3 or 1 later in the season. Whether or not that is done or practical, I don’t know.

I wonder if there’s a heavier concentration of interleague earlier in the season for all teams. I would theorize that’s possibly intentional. There’s a longer window to get any rescheduling of postponements for matchups that occur only once a season and might be a little more difficult to jam in somewhere. Or I could be completely wrong about that.

I hope he doesn’t have to retrieve them from the attic.

Anyone ever notice "amen" is a four letter word?

What do you mean? Is this along the lines of throwing harder over fewer pitches rather than pitching for more pitches?

There was a guy on here (MTS at the time) that went to an amateur Tiger try out. I think he tried 2B or LF. I think he knew nothing would come of it, but wanted to go anyway. That was a while ago. I think the grade scale was 20-80. I never understood why it started at 20 and ended at 80. Somebody has that answer. @gehringer_2? @Edman85?

Are we sleeping on Trei Cruz making the roster?

I don’t think they’re going to find MLB type options right now. Not unless one of the current rotation goes down.

I had none of the 5 tools. A reverse Yahtzee.

Nice area.

Tanking.

You can never have enough pitching.

I agree, I think there is something to being strong up the middle. What I wonder about is range in this day and age of defensive positioning. Is range as important as it used to be? Certainly having that skill set works well regardless of where the fielder sets up.

Hold on, they created stats with BAcon? That's tasty.

Just make it happen. We won’t care why.

50? I’ll take the over.