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chasfh

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Everything posted by chasfh

  1. chasfh
    lol i stopped reading here
  2. chasfh
    In all seriousness, it makes perfect sense that the party that is actively working toward achieving single-party rule would have no interest in a multi-party debate. After all, that suggests that they agree that this is a democracy where voters deserve to choose their leaders, and Republicans simply have no interest in that.
  3. chasfh
    Again, several years too early on the prediction.
  4. chasfh
    All part of the long con.
  5. chasfh
    All that said, I suppose we can dream on the idea of Chris Fetter and team unlocking a great deal of latent talent that would push the pen up to the top tier of the league. We can also dream about Scott Coolbaugh unlocking Miguel Cabrera's youth and helping Miggy deliver a 30/100/.300 season for one last hurrah.
  6. chasfh
    Put it this way: if the bullpen as constructed turns out to be the Tigers' strength, they might challenge 2003 and 2019 at the bottom of the franchise.
  7. chasfh
    Uhhhhhh ... Well, I guess McCosky's gotta work in this town, so ... FWIW, ZIPS is far less impressed: Here's some bonus commentary about the bullpen from Szymborski's write-up: While ZiPS generally likes the rest of the Tigers, we come now to the bullpen. Think of the characters you’ve disliked the most in TV and movies. For ZiPS, the Tiger bullpen is like a horrible mashup of Andy Bernard, Neelix, Councilman Jam, Ted Mosby, and Scrappy-Doo all smashed together into a Katamari ball, destroying every bit of joy in the universe like the slime from the second Ghostbusters movie. ZiPS doesn’t project a single member of the bullpen to be clearly better than ordinary, and unless I’ve somehow programmed an algorithm with a ridiculously specific, targeted hatred, the Tigers would be wise to make some additions here, especially if quick contention is the plan.
  8. chasfh
    Imagine how much less of the world would have the vaccine if Trump were president instead of Biden.
  9. chasfh
    You're barking up the wrong tree here, new guy.
  10. chasfh
    The vaccine does stop the spread. Typically speaking, when someone who is vaccinated is exposed to the virus, the presence of the vaccine in the system prevents the body from taking on sufficient enough load to make them very ill, and also to spread it around. Get enough people vaccinated, and the spread of the virus dissipates to negligible levels, and we can all go back to shouting at each other in loud bars. As long as there's a substantial segment of people who militantly avoid vaccination, when exposed to the virus, they will ingest it in substantial enough quantities to spread it around, and so many of them will get very sick. And since such people tend to congregate as a group, that's what's been keeping the virus alive for the entire country, and has remained dangerous and mutational for that segment of it.
  11. chasfh
    Sliding in with his hand way up in the air like that, no wonder the Babe's stolen base rate was only 48%!
  12. chasfh
    This guy:
  13. chasfh
    We were told if you pay players a ton of money and there was a huge penalty involved, that will prevent gambling.
  14. chasfh
    Agree. Too many home runs leads to pitchers taking more time between pitches to allow them to gather their strength so they can throw another maximum velocity/maximum spin pitch in order to pile up too many strikeouts. Deaden the ball to reduce home runs so pitchers can pitch to contact and trust their fielders to make outs, so they can just serve up a 90% pitch to most hitters and say here you go, hit it and get yourself out, which doesn’t require several extra seconds to gather strength for.
  15. chasfh
    Wasn’t it Reggie Jackson, talking about fastballs versus Nolan Ryan’s fastball, that sure he likes ice cream, just not ice cream being forced down his throat? Something like that? That’s kind of how I feel about home runs in the game. I’d like them to be a little less common and thus a little more special than they are now.
  16. chasfh
    I would guess that home run/not home run for batters, and strikeout/not strikeout for pitchers, would be probably popular prop bets.
  17. chasfh
    I never said I don’t give a flying fuck about what you think. I never made it about you. Unlike you’re clutching pearls comments, which was definitely about me. As for your whatabout comment regarding alcohol, I’m not railing against that because games haven’t been fixed because of alcohol. In any event, I hope you’re right about the idea that gambling scandals can be prevented by paying players a ton of money and making huge penalties for not complying. Who knows, perhaps Pete Rose wouldn’t have gambled on games in which he had a duty to perform if he had only been paid a ton of money and knew there was a huge penalty for doing so.
  18. chasfh
    I never said I don't give a flying fuck what you think. I don't know where you got that. By your argument, the problem is not the potential of gambling to create scandal the way it literally has many times before—the problem is people who profess fear for the integrity of the game precisely because gambling has created scandal the way it literally has many times before. That's nonsense, brother. Your idea that gambling is harmless fun that hurts no one is laughable. In environments where gambling has been legal and illegal, there is a clear competitive integrity problem with gambling in sports that's been revealed over and over many many times in fixing scandals in both distant and recent history. And that's not even contemplating the social, psychological, and financial damage that gambling, a DSM-5-defined addiction, has wreaked on people throughout history. I would say that someone who believes—I mean seriously believes—that American sports could never experience a fixing scandal in a legal gambling environment—despite that several non-American sports have experienced fixing scandals in a legal gambling environment, and that American sports have experienced fixing scandals in a non-legal gambling environment—is pretty naive.
  19. chasfh
    I think the biggest barrier to a revelation of a major betting scandal in American pro sports would be stonewalling of the media. Baseball has no interest in the black eye a gambling scandal would inevitably land on its face. Shit, man, MLB Network won't even run the movie Eight Men Out on their network anymore. Not only does each of the four North American major sports leagues run owned-and-operated networks that many fans rely on for much of their news, they have also gotten a lot a lot smarter about controlling which writers from outside media get access to teams and players. Remember how Fenech got shit-canned from the Tigers beat? That wasn't because he was banging some girl in a parking garage, or whatever that bullshit scandal that one rag blog claimed about him. After all, if the best writer in the game can get fired from his MLB Network gig for making gloves-on criticisms of Manfred in a publication not even owned by MLB, how many baseball writers are going to risk their professional necks following the crumbs on a baseball gambling scandal for however long it takes to properly expose it?
  20. chasfh
    Also, fewer pitching injuries and more innings from starters, which would probably lead to fewer pitchers needed on active rosters. Maybe we would even see a return to 11-man pitching staffs and a couple additional bench spots for position players. Perhaps platooning could make a big comeback in the game.
  21. chasfh
    I also don't give a flying fuck about how much increased revenue leagues and team owners make from their association with gamblers. That doesn't make it a better game on the field, as far as I'm concerned.
  22. chasfh
    Even though I couldn't give less of a shit about how much gambling is a major part of international sports, there are plenty of examples of game-fixing in the legalized gambling era, like this, this, this, this, and this. I don't think legalized gambling is good for the game of baseball, and no amount of your shaming me will make me change my mind about that.
  23. chasfh
    The frog is getting warmer.
  24. chasfh
    All of these reasons you give for your interest waning in the game are good and valid. To me, they pale against the big reason my interest in the game is in real jeopardy: the integration of gambling into the very fabric of the game. From showing odds and money lines on the MLB Network crawl, to programs about betting on that and many baseball team RSNs,to gambling-related drop-ins on radio and TV game broadcasts, and the eventuality of seeing sportsbooks physically erected within stadiums, the suddenness with which Bsseball has chased after the gambling buck has been breathtaking and appalling. I honestly fear what that might do to the competitive integrity of the game.
  25. chasfh
    You're playing my song. How many years have you guys heard me advocating the idea that deadening the ball will solve practically every problem in the game that has evolved since Chicks Dig The Long Ball started? The reason is simple: pitchers are afraid of giving up home runs. So pitchers have to be super careful to every hitter in the order, because every hitter can take them out of the park. They are trying to induce swing-and-miss on every pitch with maximum velocity and movement, so they end up throwing more pitches per plate appearance and taking more time in between pitches to maximize the gathering of their strength. That might be layering an extra half hour onto game time all by itself. But batters are still trying to jack the ball, which means they're always trying to pull it over the fence, so the shift makes sense to employ on most hitters. Deaden the ball to 1980s-level, and you'll have fewer homers, which means pitchers can pitch to contact, which means batters would need to hit 'em where they ain't instead of hit 'em over their heads, which will eliminate the shift on all but the scariest power hitters. there would be fewer homers, fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, more action on batted balls. I bet fans would come back to see that.
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