Well, we may have the strangest play of the season on Day One.
With Justin Turner on first, Cody Bellinger hits a deep fly ball to left field, which is caught by the leaping left fielder, who then drops it over the fence for a home run.
BUT!
Justin Turner only sees the ball in the fielder’s glove, and thus turns around to sprint back to first base, passing Cody Bellinger in the process. After much umpire and manager discussion, Bellinger is credited with a single and called out, and Turner is allowed to score.
A fly-out, turned into a two-run homer, turned into a single and RBI with an out.
Yeah, Toronto deserved the win. It’s not sour grapes, but I hate that little league shit too. Why not have batters hit off a tee if a game goes 13 innings? Or have a thumb-wrestling contest instead?
Judge up with the bases loaded and 1 out. GIDP. Runner on 3rd in 9th with 1 out. Modern managers may not believe it, but there’s a play where you bunt and the runner on 3rd scores if the ball is well placed. But no, it’s “homers and strikeouts, that’s how we live. Homers and strikeouts, that’s how we die.”
Looks like the Mets/Nats opener is postponed until Saturday.
I just signed up for MLB.tv for the first time. Since I now live on the other side of the country I think I should be able to see almost every Mets game on streaming except when they’re on the west coast. (Is Las Vegas “out of market” with respect to California teams? I’m guessing probably not. I’m also guessing I can prolly use some VPN shennanigans to get around the blackout.)
Speaking of Vegas, the Aviators opener will be on May 6. There’s about a 25% chance I may be fully vaccinated in time to go.
You think Judge should be bunting with the bases loaded? That is definitely an opinion.
The runner on 2nd rule is terrible. It would slightly less terrible if they waited until the 13th inning or something.
Pretty clear that we are headed to another record year of TTO outcomes. I do consider it progress that MLB seems to recognize this is an issue and hired Theo Epstein to work on fixing it. Theo was an Athletic podcast and sounds like he fully understands what the problem is. While I don’t think all of the minor league experiments will be worth enacting, I think they are all reasonable things to test.
I have to admit that after last season I didn’t hate it as much as I expected to. I still hate it, I just hate extra-inning games more.
I’d like it better if it only were employed after 12 innings. But I actually would prefer it if a game were declared a tie after 12 innings (except playoff games). At that point, I find my interest in going to bed exceeds my interest in seeing who wins.
You know, I would be a lot more comfortable bringing back ties than the auto runner on 2nd crap.
I like your proposal.
Now time for pitch clocks and shortening the commercial breaks by 20 seconds each. Oh and batters have to stay in the box barring some special circumstance. Those 3 would speed the game up in a good and meaningful way.
Yesterday’s Cubs game vs. Pittsburgh is an excellent example. The Cubs got exactly two hits, struck out 13 times, and walked 11 Pirates batters. The final score was Pirates 5-3, and the game took exactly 4 hours to play 9 innings.
