Amen, brother. These black versus white uniforms this weekend are ridiculous. The names are unreadable on the white uniforms; of course, who wants to read nicknames anyway?
I watched the Royals play at Cleveland this weekend. KC, as the visiting team, wore the white uniforms. Right now I’m watching the Yankees play in LA. Yankees, as the visiting team, are wearing the black uniforms. Makes zero sense.
Thank you! I paid decent money to see two games this weekend of the Cubs vs Nats.
Couldn’t read anything on the uniforms, and who the Hell is buying those? I took a quick glance at the Cubs team store and didn’t even see them for sale.
Ok, maybe the nicknames are funny to the players. I’m very familiar with both the Cubs and Nats so at least I knew the players. Someone visiting Wrigley for the first time with only a casual interest in baseball would have been lost.
And, in general, I’m sick of the alternative uniforms dominating in sports. I get it, $$$$$. But still, a sports team shouldn’t have more changes than a Broadway show.
Oh, and get off my lawn!
Did anyone who’s been watching the Braves catch what Melancon’s “nickname” was? Because I only saw it briefly but it looked like some kind of squiggly design on the back of his jersey, rather than letters spelling out something.
According to MLB.com it was “MUH LAN SON”.
In the past at least once it was “STRETCH”.
Was there a reason for the Spy vs. Spy uniforms? Was it meant to emphasize the custom cleats, gloves, bats etc.? I did notice that all black really is slimming. Dave Roberts got it right, though:
Red Sox got rick-rolled and beaten by the Padres yesterday. A masterful prank.
The nicknames were a fun idea I wouldn’t mind seeing again for a weekend in future seasons. The monochrome was a terrible idea made worse by the inability to read anything. Doing both at once means no one talks about the good idea, just the bad one.
I don’t even like the nicknames much, but the monochrome uniforms was especially stupid.
Seriously.
Home Team: White pants, white jerseys, white socks. Black hats, black lettering.
Visitors: Black Pants, black jerseys, black socks. White hats, white lettering.
Just a little contrast and it’s all okay (still stupid, but okay stupid, not monumentally stupid).
I saw a pitchout a couple days ago. Pretty rare sight, along with hit and run plays. The days of Billyball were a heck of a lot more fun to watch than todays snoozefest of waiting for someone to hit a homer. Perhaps modern managers have found a way to maximize wins but at the same time minimize the entertainment value of the game.
Very true.
Only exciting thing left is base stealers.
And every now and then someone bunts (not often enough).
Nothing quite as exciting as seeing 3+ pitchers in the same half inning is there?
I would revise the proposed the must pitch to three batters rule. I say if you replace a pitcher in the middle of the inning he gets only 1 warmup pitch on the mound. He should be warmed up in the bullpen so give him one toss to get comfy on the game mound and that’s it. Pitching changes take too long per change. Limiting the number of relievers per team will be a HUGE step in the right direction. Late in the game the manager looks down the dugout and sees his #2 catcher plus 2 other guys. Pinch hitting is another lost art.
Sure. And each pitch has to have at least three feet of arc.
Reports are that David Glass is in talks to sell the Royals to John Sherman, Indians vice-chairman.
Stolen bases are at historically average levels right now. There were certainly more in the 1970s and 1980s but that era was really unusual. Last year the MLB stolen base leader was Whit Merrifield with 45. In 1949, the season so wonderful David Halberstam wrote a book about it, the average TEAM stole 46. And that’s only because Brooklyn pushed the average up.
There is no avoiding the fact that stealing bases is only a good idea if you’re successful the vast majority of the time (and the BillyBall A’s were, in stolen base terms, basically just Rickey Henderson; aside from him, they were middle of the road at best in terms of stealing.)
A manager’s job is to win games, not appease Goose Gossage or whatever old goat doesn’t like baseball now compared to the way they played in back in the olden days. If you want to change the game to make it more exciting, you need to change the rules (which in principle I am totally fine with) and rules meant to increase base stealing, while certainly quite possible (limiting pickoff throws, for instance) are probably not the first things you’d want to change. Pace of play and too many strikeouts are the biggest current problems, in my opinion.
I found this on SI:
“The average game in 1988 took two hours, 45 minutes and gave you 57 balls in play and 11 strikeouts. The average game today takes 19 minutes longer and gives you 49 balls in play and 17 strikeouts.”
So we are being asked to spend more time watching less action. Strikeouts are generally very boring. It used to be cool if the home pitcher was really racking up a huge K total, but today it’s just routine for that to happen. Gerrit Cole, a very fine pitcher but maybe not yet on anyone’s Hall of Fame shortlist, already has 14 10-K games this year; he strikes out at least ten men in more than half his starts, and this is a guy who doesn’t have any complete games. Bob Gibson in his amazing 1968 season had just ten 10K games. Steve Carlton in his historic 1972 season had nine.
All those strikeouts are not only dull, but they reduce the value of defensive players; if you have fewer balls in play, the skill of the fielders has less impact on the game. (More home runs exacerbates that problem, too.)
Noah Syndergaard is getting rocked in New York. 8 runs allowed through 1.2 innings vs the Cubs
this article is a bit worrying for dodger fans MSN
Apparently, the Dodgers are getting known for not being able to win the big games …
should dodger fans be worried like the article suggest ?
Platschky is a tool who makes a living hating the Dodgers in print.