OffThePost.org

Should we delete "2021" from the title of this thread? Just keep one big MLB thread going and stop pretending we do an annual thread.

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Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.

Or leave the 2021 there to remind us of a time when we used to care.

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Shoresy, "It's called a sweater"

Giants won 100+ games in 2021 it's the last year that mattered.

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Did we care then? Did we really?

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Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.

I'm a Rockies fan. Baseball has been mostly shitty for us to watch since 2007 so I propose we tack on an earlier year.

Not sure if I've ever seen a city collectively freak out the way Toronto is about the possibility of landing Shohei Ohtani.

Twas not to be. Shohei goes to the Dodgers for 700M like we all figured.

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All but 2M per year of Shohei's salary is deferred. He's the new Bobby Bonilla.

Yamamoto is gonna get crazy money. The hitter and pitcher (assuming you count Shohei solely as a hitter) with the biggest contracts in baseball history could both be Japanese.

It's looking dire in Giants-land. They can't find anyone to give their money too, so I think they'll turn to people they know: Blake Snell and Matt Chapman.

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Somebody took SF's money: Korean CF Jung Hoo Lee.

They paid big time for him: 6 years, 113M. He's been great in the KBO since he was 19. He's 25 now, time for a new challenge.

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Sounds like fitting all his money into a bank will be a challenge.

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Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.

Done.

The "new" thing this offseason is signing high powered relievers with the idea of converting them into 100 IP starters/openers: Jordan Hicks and Reynaldo Lopez got deals like that, and so will Yariel Rodriguez shortly.

The days of the starter/reliever dichotomy is over. Now it's about assigning every pitcher a number of innings where they can compete effectively. So for some that's between the 60 of a closer and 180 of a starter. Somewhere in the middle.

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100 innings for a starter? That's like 3 innings/start, unless they plan to use more than the standard 5 starters. For some guys, that will screw up their routine. Unless they use someone to start 5 innings this week, and replace them with another starter/reliever 5 games later, switching them between starter and middle reliever, and hope they don't have to use them. Or is it like this guy starts for the first half of the year, and is middle reliever the 2nd half of the year?

I'm gonna go yell at someone to get off my lawn.

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Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.

I could be wrong, but I think he means 100 pitches per start.

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Oh no, I definitely mean 100 inning starter. Basically a glorified opener. 3-4 innings per start, piggy backed with a bulk inning reliever. Teams are terrified of putting non-elite starters a third time through the batting order. Tampa Bay and San Francisco are already doing it, more teams will do it soon enough.

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I guess that makes sense, but it's going to tax the hell out of the bullpen. But as I write that, I realize they probably are now anyway, if several starters aren't trusted to make the third round through the order. Like most changes, it'll just take getting used to seeing something new done on the regular.

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Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.

You could argue analytics made hockey and basketball better, and it's possibly making football better too. But IMO it has really fucked up baseball.

I thought the original Money Ball idea was smart- looking for certain stats to build a good team on a low budget. But watching the managers constantly open a book to tell them if they should change pitchers, who to put in, etc has made baseball unwatchable for me. I'd love to see a minor league team insert an AI manager and see how it does. I know that will never happen, but I think it would do about the same as "real life" managers. Another bonus of the AI manager is that it wouldn't be sitting there in full player uniform despite not being anywhere near being in player shape, even for baseball. It just looks silly and is another thing stuck from the old days that needs to change. Terry Francona had the right idea.

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Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.

I think what makes baseball different than other sports is baseball has always been more of a game, a heavily romanticized one at that. Other sports are more about who's the best, so any technological advantage is welcome. But baseball has this historical throughline and we want that purity of the game where a Babe Ruth season can be contextualized with a Shohei Ohtani season because the game is fundamentally the same in a way other sports aren't.

I think where I draw the line is robot umps. The flawed human element of baseball is baked into the game. Then again, the pitch clock ended up working so maybe I'm just being too resistant to change.

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Funny enough, the pitch clock is one of the changes I love about baseball. Too many pitchers were just walking around the mound, wasting time.

The runner on 2nd in extra innings is unnatural to me. Kind of like adding a player to hockey OT who is allowed to stay offside or something like that.

There have been lots of changes over the years that make comparisons to the Ruth era unfair. As Roger Maris will tell you, there were more games added to the season before his 61* home run season, and everybody loved to let him know that after he got 61*. But yeah, people love to try to keep baseball the same. Same reason we don't have 3 points for a regulation win in the NHL. The PWHL is doing it and I love it. NHL won't because we can't have someone shattering an ancient point total.

*Asterisks for emphasis on what Maris dealt with.

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Posting your political views on social media is like sticking your head up your ass & whispering: You're just as likely to change someone's mind, and you'll always come out looking like a shithead.