You both might be right, but the MLB is somewhat hidebound and I doubt they’re quite ready to let a team be in Vegas.
As to the Virginia area, usually see places like Virginia Beach/Norfolk, VA or any of the 3 in NC.
Charlotte, Raleigh or Greensboro/Winston Salem area.
True, but the last 2 years of his playing career were under Maddon, so I’m sure he picked up a lot.
Perhaps this should be saved for the hot stove league thread, but MLB is considering a drastic reduction of the minor league system. I think this is alarming, with fewer men playing professional baseball, the talent pool from which MLB is going to draw will be smaller and it’s going to degrade the game even more than the past few commissioners have done. Not to mention a lot of towns that support their minor league teams are going to lose out.
The proposed reduction is only 42 teams, so just one per club for most teams and a few will drop two. It’s also not that they will be killed; their affilation will be dropped, and at least some - maybe as many as half - would then move into a special unaffiliated second-chance league for guys trying to work their way back into organized ball.
There’s more to it than this, but honestly it kind of sounds like baseball is trying to improve. Part of this program is trying to cut expenses that aren’t doing anyone any good in anticipation of paying minor league players more.
I guess the question is, if each team has 25-30 fewer guys in the system, will it make a different on available talent, specially if there is also a second chance league? I don’t know that it would. Let’s be quite clear; there are a lot of guys in the minors right now who are kept around because the team needs guys to put on the field, and who have next to no chance of being big leaguers. If every team is forced to choose a little harder and cut twenty or thirty men, yes, the odd long shot major leaguer might fall through and be lost, IF they also fail in the second chance league and don’t catch on in overseas ball. I don’t see how the impact would be that great though. Surely it can’t be greater than the impact of not adding another 40 minor league teams from where we are now, right? And nobody seems to think they should do that.
What Exit:
I’d say more likely than either of those is somewhere in North Carolina (Charlotte is the 800-pound-gorilla, but Durham is more baseball-crazy) and somewhere in Tennessee (more likely Nashville than Memphis, but both have excellent baseball foundations). All three other major sports leagues have teams in those two states.
Plus I’m not sure how the political situation in Portland would work as there are definitely a lot of fairly hard left and anti gentrification activists in the city that might throw out endless objections and I’d assume the team would want to be in downtown, it’s truly an amazing city in the summer.
I tend to agree, this isn’t the 1940s where scouts had to travel around and some guy could come off a farm somewhere and be a major league prospect. Minor league baseball is fun for what it is, but even me as just as fan can often tell after a few innings the guys that are just out there to fill a spot on the roster because you’ve got to have 9 men out there. I imagine the teams that will have their affiliation removed are the ones that struggle drawing and/or haven’t upgraded their facilities in a long time.
Also, college baseball is becoming almost like a minor league system as well. There really just isn’t a need for a huge traditional minor league system these days
Memphis, I know, is already home to the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate.
Nashville is small for MLB, but, granted, most remaining cities are.
If you assume you have a billionaire and a stadium, the best city is, I am afraid, New York or LA.
OK, you want to limit this to cities without existing teams? Montreal, by a wide margin, is the biggest handy market. Again, we’re assuming a waiting owner and a new ballpark. You’d get the fans.
Somebody at Fox really needs to create a Hammond organ version of that fanfare, then it won’t sound so out of place.
Stras is getting robbed here.
Holy crap. Are we…are gonna win this?
Shhhhhhhhh!
Yeah, we have to rely on our shaky bullpen now.
I can’t recall the last time a team like Washington came out of literally nowhere to win the WS, but they’re 2 games away from exactly that. 6 weeks ago, anyone would have told you, “Yeah, sure, the Nats are, well, a good team.” They wouldn’t have told you with a straight face that they’d be 2 games away from the title on Friday.
Which is working out.
I don’t think that at all. I certainly have seen them as a contender this whole time, especially in mid-August when it seemed like they were putting up double digit run totals every other game (there was a 20-game stretch where from mid-August to early September they averaged 8 runs a game.) Of course, some of those games the pitching left a bit to be desired, as well, but they have been a team capable of prolonged explosive offensive streaks. I am not in the least bit surprised they’re doing as well as they’re doing. For me, out of nowhere is one of the regular season underperforming Cards teams that have one the WS in the past 15 years (like the 2006 team, which at least won its shitty division, or the 2011 Cards. I suppose they weren’t completely “out of nowhere,” as they’ve always been contenders, but the Nats have also had a streak of strong teams in the playoffs lately, though not terribly successful.)
At game 50 the Nats were 19-31.
It’s 12-3, 2 outs in the 9th and this bullpen has me nervous.
Hopefully you’re less nervous now!