If each of the earlier runners was waiting to see Hernandez leave 3B to avoid being squeezed, his hesitation caused their hesitation in a chain reaction of oops.
OTOH, if each of the earlier runners had the same sort of “WTF is going on; what do I do now?” hesitation from watching the fielding and the throw towards the infield, then yes, two of them would almost certainly have been doubled off. One for dead sure and unless the defense also had a brain fart or wild throw, they’d quite likely get two.
Switching gears, and I hope this is seen as in-scope for the thread …
Clearly the advertisers have been wargaming the likely WS matchups for the last month or so. Based on the very early returns as of now, it’s shaping up that a West Coast “long-form I-5” series between LAD & SEA is the way to bet.
Which makes all the games in the Pacific time zone, keeps all the players well-rested with rather short commute flights, and which probably causes a lot of folks in the Eastern & Central time zones to declare “who cares?” and tune out.
Of the 4 possible matchups, which do we suppose the advertisers prefer to maximize their results and why?
In terms of advertising, I would guess it would be Toronto and Los Angeles. The two biggest cities, media markets, and crosses the most time zones for the most viewers - along with the USA and Canada international aspect of it.
Going back to that play, it was also a little strange that Contreras didn’t just throw the ball to Durbin, who was standing on the third base bag the entire time. I mean, he had time and it was the safest possible way to record the out, but I think most players would have thrown the ball.
I’m thinking it amounted to a hidden ball play. The catcher rightly understood that everyone on the Dodgers was baffled, and he wasn’t all that sure about his own guys.
By trotting rather casually out towards third he could avoid the risk of throwing to somebody whose brain was off. Once he was a little past halfway and the runner on second had not yet left for third, the catcher knew the out was in the bag; he could run the remaining distance to 3B before the runner could.
From the catcher’s POV it was a bird in the hand.
Upon further review …
The MIL 3B was standing on his bag giving the catcher the “throw me the ball” signal with increasing urgency. He did that the whole time the catcher was trotting towards 3B with an eye on the runner near 2B. It seems the catcher either just greedily wanted to get both outs, or perhaps was so focused on watching the runner on 2B for signs of him taking off that he missed his own 3B signalling to him.
I have a pet peeve here, in that they are positioned suboptimally. The regular 1B/3B can call all fair/foul calls along the line like they normally do, so these guys should thus have responsibility for balls flying past the foul poles and catch/no catch calls (as well as fan interference on possible HR balls) in the deep areas of the outfield. I’d thus put them fairly deep in the power alleys.
I’m sure that they far prefer either matchup which would have the Dodgers.
The issue with the Blue Jays is that, yes, it’s a big market, but it’s a Canadian market, and that may depress U.S. viewership, too. In the AL, I imagine that they would have strongly preferred the Yankees or Red Sox over any of the other options.
Not only may viewership be depressed, but a lot of advertisers don’t want to spend their U.S. advertising dollars to reach a Canadian audience.
The cynical POV is that given the four teams left, a lot of advertisers would prefer the Dodgers just play intra-squad games for a maximum target audience.
Is it simply max viewer headcount, or is it more nuanced?
If any given national advertiser is paying a fixed price per ad regardless of WS teams, then them wanting max viewers seems a no-brainer. But I’d expect the ad contracts that had to finalized months ago to be more elaborate than e.g. “$200k/15 seconds, period”
Care to share any general or specific insights? We have about 60 minutes to waste until the first pitch.
Will advertisers stop that? Will the games start at Prime time on the East coast to maximise viewship on the East Coast (on the west coast people are likely to watch anyway)?
Yup, that’s likely the case; network ad space for all seven hypothetical WS games was likely already all sold weeks, if not months, ago, based on projected audience size and demographics (which is based on previous years’ viewing).
From the advertisers’ standpoint, they’d like to see an even bigger audience than the network’s projection, as that gives them bonus viewers, for which they don’t have to pay any additional money. They’d also like to see games that aren’t blowouts (which will cause viewers to tune out early), and they’d like to see the Series go for six or seven games.
From the network’s standpoint, they really really don’t want a low-viewership Series, as that would make them liable for “make-goods”: additional airings of advertisers’ ads (at no additional cost to the advertisers), due to not hitting the viewership projections that are in the contracts. In other words, the advertiser paid for 15 million viewers for an ad, and only 10 million saw it (because apparently fewer people cared to watch a Milwaukee-Toronto game, or whatever), and so, the network would have to run additional airings of that advertiser’s ad to make up the difference.
The network would also likely want to see the Series go seven games, as ratings for the games are likely to be much higher than whatever their usual prime-time programming would draw.
Edit: also, the network (Fox, in this case) has paid a crap-ton of money for the rights to televise this, so they want high ratings and as many games as possible, to justify their outlay. And, they use the games as opportunities to promote the rest of their programming, which can be extremely valuable, especially if there’s high viewership.
The games’ start times will be dictated by the network and MLB, and will likely be agnostic to the time zone that the game is being played in. A Dodger home WS game will probably start around 5pm Pacific, so that it’s in prime time for the eastern half of the country.
To change subjects a bit. We are in the middle of a massive cloudburst in Santa Barbara and the storm is moving south. I wonder how weather might be a factor.
Nah, it’s sort of a greenish-gray. But, it’s only been named AmFam Field for a couple of years (it used to be Miller Park); maybe they’ll repaint it red during the next painting cycle.
