Play their hardest at the end of the season to mess up other teams chances of getting into the playoffs.:smack: Been playing like shit all season look and now you want to play like winning matters? In baseball right now teams like
the Braves, Pirates, and Padres will not be in the playoffs and want to all of sudden care about winning when they played like shit all summer. This happened in 3 sports and it’s annoying as hell every season.
Scrubs may be in trying to make an impression. Regulars may care about performance incentives. Nobody gives a shit about being a spoiler except in very rare circumstances where there’s bad blood between a couple of teams.
Oh yes they do, it gives them motivation to end someone’s playoff hopes
if the braves are playing the phillies then it’s not the same aggression on the field
I’m a little confused by the OP.
Is he saying that those “loser” teams weren’t trying to win earlier in the season?
What does he think they should do? Maybe think “well, we sucked all year, we might as well keep sucking, cause that’s what everyone expects”?
As a fan of one of those teams (Braves), I can tell you they actually haven’t completely “sucked” since the first half of the season. Since the all-star break they are only a couple of games below .500. Given how they started the year, that is amazing.
I would argue that it’s not just playing the spoiler that motivates them, its the fact that they have found some consistency in their offense as they work through the starting pitching problems that have been there all season.
So, again, what should these teams do? Just stop trying to win?
I will admit, sweeping the fucking Mets this week was awesome, including the potential play of the year.
They still have to play because they are getting paid but that extra motivation to knock someone out of the playoffs always annoyed me
Why?
Because where was all that aggression in June?
Be annoyed no longer, young padwan, because for the most part this “extra motivation” doesn’t exist. It’s your own blinkered interpretation of reality.
You have no evidence that the teams on the bottom weren’t trying just as hard to win back in April and May. One of the mathematical certainties of a sporting competition is that for every win there must be a corresponding loss, and the total number of wins and losses for the season must add up to zero.
This means that, come September, there will ALWAYS be some teams at the bottom of the standings. Given the nature of baseball, it also means that some of these teams will win some games during the last few weeks of the season, and that sometimes those wins will change the playoff picture.
And, as others have already asked you, what’s the alternative? Should the lowly teams just roll over and take the loss? Because, given what i’ve said above, doing that could just as easily knock a team out of the playoffs as trying to win.
My team, the Orioles, are currently in the fight for a Wild Card spot. Tonight they play the Arizona Diamondbacks, who are last in the NL West and haven’t really been in the hunt all season. According to your logic, a Diamondbacks win would “annoy” you because they have somehow now decided to try harder in order to knock off a playoff team. But if the Diamondbacks roll over and let Baltimore win, all they do is give Baltimore an advantage over the other teams in the AL Wild Card race, like Detroit and Seattle. So, win or lose, Arizona’s performance tonight will have an effect on the playoff race.
Earlier today, Detroit played Kansas City, and the Royals are also out of contention for the playoffs. Detroit led until the ninth, when KC staged a great comeback, putting together a 5-run innings capped by a three-run Eric Hosmer home run, and won the game. By winning, the Royals made life harder for the Tigers, but they made life easier for the Orioles and the Mariners.
Basically, you seem not to understand the thing that you’re complaining about.
Then maybe the teams in playoff contention should play better.
The fact that they know the team they are playing needs to win to get in the postseason gives them something to play for.
That old Philosophy…“if we ain’t going, yall not either”
That’s true too
I used to run foot races. I paid money to participate and everything. I still did my best even though I never finished anywhere near the top three. Except one time, in the Army, I entered some track and field meet for fun, and wound up getting third place in the 5k.
I wonder if maybe I should have held back and let someone more serious than me come in third? Or maybe if he was a more serious runner than me, he should have done better in the first place without my help?
What evidence do you have that this is actually what happens, apart from your own expertise based on your years as a couch potato and (apparently) not very analytical spectator?
Because you understand, i presume, that simply repeating a belief over and over again does not make it true?
One NFL game comes to mind, I think it was the Arizona cards vs the minnesota vikings in 2003 and all minny had to do was win and they was in. I recall someone of the cardinals playing being pumped up to kill their chances and saying something along the lines of we can’t get it and will make sure yall can’t get in
Oh, that one game, that one time, 13 years ago.
Well, with evidence like that, how can i disagree?
One time?
It’s the norm in all 3 sports every year. That game came to mind because the vikings lost by a last second TD
You keep asserting this, with no evidence.
Do you understand what evidence is?
It’s not the norm in all three sports. There are teams that enjoy playing the spoiler against their rival, or against any team they are playing, but it’s not universal. And plenty of teams just suck.
It makes sense that individual players want to increase their records. Makes for better bargaining when a free agent.
Sure it does.
But why would this only be the case over the last couple of weeks of the year? Remember, the OP’s assertion is that teams that have slacked all year suddenly find new “aggression” and only “play like winning matters” at the end of the season when they can act as spoilers. That is, quite frankly, pretty much bullshit.
Regarding individual performance, the key hitting stats—whether averages (AVG, OBP, SLG, etc.) or cumulative (HR, RBI, etc.)—reflect your performance over the course of a season. If you’ve been hitting like shit for five months, but turn in a good performance in September, your stats for the year are probably still going to be crappy. And a home run in April helps your AVG and OBP and SLG and HR and WAR figures just as much as a home run in September.
Same principle goes for pitching.