Baseball

[Brooklyn]

Domingo Germán - PERFECTO!





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8KpA6Qa_3g




Yankee power!

[JoeMauer89]

Domingo Germán - PERFECTO!





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8KpA6Qa_3g




Yankee power!

72 of 99 pitches for strikes. Unheard of! Just pure domination and artistry. Really happy from German, this should get him back on track now!

Joe

[Brooklyn]

town ball in Minnesota:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDqCYwpDC8I



live ~ dunno if there will be a replay


South St Paul's Stockmans Irish is the team I've been rooting for in the past 30 years - a kid I coached played on the team many moons ago.

Fun ball for sure.


9 innings




update = Final Score:


SSP 4-7-2
CRs 6-10-2


nice game

wooden bats

ages: 18 to 35 and a hand full over that age

[JoeMauer89]

Tigers 2 Blue Jays 0 Final.

Tigers just threw a Combined No-Hitter between 3 different pitchers. Matt Manning, the starter, threw 6 scoreless with 3 BB's.

Joe

[youthathletics]

Those games are so much fun to watch.

[Brooklyn]

Am watching another town ball game as Champlin Park visits Coon Rapids.

Interesting, when the game started about an hour ago it was 90F. In less than an hour, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped by 13 degrees.

I have my window open and the breeze coming in is really nice and cool. Will soon have a dinner plate comprised of Italian sausage and beans on the side. Touch of salad, too.



{update}


din din was mmm mmm good


CP 3 - 8 - 1
CR 4 - 8 - 2


Red Birds win on walk off wild pitch. Their husky pitcher Steve Shrader won it. Big dude looks more like a pro wrestler rather that pitcher. But he's a good athlete, very mobile, quick release on pick off.

[Brooklyn]

we hadn't had basebrawl in quite a while:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4ZsV71Mzv4



that haymaker by Ramirez packed quite a wallop!

[Brooklyn]

GREAT story about Chicago youth baseball reunion:


https://wgntv.com/news/cover-story/1959 ... -memories/



https://wgntv.com/wp-content/uploads/si ... ze=960,540

[DMac]

5-5, bottom of 6th, LLWS, final game....all the marbles.
2nd pitch, HR, game over. California, LL World Champs.
Good team offensively and defensively, good young ballplayers.

[SCLaxAttack]

5-5, bottom of 6th, LLWS, final game....all the marbles.
2nd pitch, HR, game over. California, LL World Champs.
Good team offensively and defensively, good young ballplayers.

Talk about an announcer's jinx:

"Curacao hasn't given up a home run this entire tournament" and the very pitch ----> BANG!

[njbill]

Cali looked like they are cruising to a comparatively easy victory, leading 5-1, with two outs in the top of the fifth when — WHAM — Curaçao hits a grand slam to tie the game. The game had been a bit ho-hum until that point, but, boy, were the last two innings exciting.

[Brooklyn]

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/new ... 136d72e3c2


There appears to be some mystery about Shohei Ohtani. Some bad blood with management, possibly??

[JoeMauer89]

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/new ... 136d72e3c2


There appears to be some mystery about Shohei Ohtani. Some bad blood with management, possibly??

Don't think it's bad blood. He's unhappy with the constant losing. He was likely not returning to LAA anyways. This is just confirmation of that. Likely going to rehab his injury away from the team for the remaining few weeks of the season.

Joe

[JoeMauer89]

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/new ... 136d72e3c2


There appears to be some mystery about Shohei Ohtani. Some bad blood with management, possibly??

Don't think it's bad blood. He's unhappy with the constant losing. He was likely not returning to LAA anyways. This is just confirmation of that. Likely going to rehab his injury away from the team for the remaining few weeks of the season.

Joe

[Brooklyn]

@Joe

I just hope he doesn't return to Japan but stays here for the rest of his career. I really enjoy watching the old fashion two way player - that's how baseball should be played.

When I watched you play at Cretin Derham Hall, we thought you would play both in the NFL and for MLB - in fact the scouts said you were likelier to make it as a QB rather than catcher. That would have been great to see. Maybe some day we'll see the return of the two sport player as well.

[JoeMauer89]

@Joe

I just hope he doesn't return to Japan but stays here for the rest of his career. I really enjoy watching the old fashion two way player - that's how baseball should be played.

When I watched you play at Cretin Derham Hall, we thought you would play both in the NFL and for MLB - in fact the scouts said you were likelier to make it as a QB rather than catcher. That would have been great to see. Maybe some day we'll see the return of the two sport player as well.

I only struck out once in HS! If I had decided to play Football, it would have been FSU. What could have been, likely a HOF career

Joe

[Brooklyn]

@Joe

I just hope he doesn't return to Japan but stays here for the rest of his career. I really enjoy watching the old fashion two way player - that's how baseball should be played.

When I watched you play at Cretin Derham Hall, we thought you would play both in the NFL and for MLB - in fact the scouts said you were likelier to make it as a QB rather than catcher. That would have been great to see. Maybe some day we'll see the return of the two sport player as well.

I only struck out once in HS! If I had decided to play Football, it would have been FSU. What could have been, likely a HOF career

Joe

You at CDH (class of 2001) considering FSU with TJ Prunty of SPA (class of 2000) going to Miami ~ what a duo you guys were: both great QBs and baseball players. How lucky I was to see both of you multiple times [for FREE!] and, in fact, stood right near the two of you on separate occasions. My pal Big Joe D was a good friend of your grandpa. Great baseball legacy, there.

[youthathletics]

Acuna in the books. I was supposed to go to this game and backed out because of the tropical storm hitting us.

https://x.com/braves/status/17053701646 ... a82I2GssRg

[Brooklyn]

Earlier in the season we may have mentioned the new rule changes designed to speed up the game. So far about 25 minutes have been pared off according to MLB:




https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/ ... ster-games


Pitch perfect: MLB’s pace-of-play rules are showing that less is more
Some thought Major League Baseball games with pitch clocks might feel forced, rushed, even gimmicky. But the new rules have proven to be a rousing success



Dave Caldwell
Thu 29 Jun 2023 04.00 EDT
The time – emphasis on time – has come to declare that Major League Baseball has nailed its effort to speed up games. MLB people always talked about wanting to finish games in less than three hours, but they never could make it happen. Now they have.


The average time of a game in the first two-plus months of the season is 2hr 40min – a span not seen since the early 1980s – much shorter than the bloated averages of 3hr 6min in 2022 and 3hr 11min in 2021. But stats are only part of the story.

Two pitch clocks are mounted behind home plate and two above the center field fence to provide ballgames with a rhythm – and to excise all that added time for, say, a hitter to step out of the batter’s box to readjust his gloves, or for a pitcher to stroll around the back of the mound.

Baseball literati like George Will once celebrated the sport as a “timeless game”, without clocks needed, or wanted. But the poets penned those rhapsodies when games were shorter – under two-and-a-half hours on average as recently as 1976. (Will likes the rules changes, by the way.)

The pace grew languid. Fat needed to be trimmed. People don’t have three hours for much of anything now. After a minor-league test drive, MLB rules were changed for this year. Some thought games might feel forced, rushed, even gimmicky. The clocks are not obtrusive at all.

I went to a game recently to judge the effect of the new rules firsthand. The game in Philadelphia between the Phillies and the Arizona Diamondbacks, on a Monday, would be no quickie – 2hr 57min. But it would have lasted another half-hour under the old rules.

Fans don’t pay attention to those three-foot-high clocks with the yellow numerals. I’d thought they might do countdowns, like a scoreboard or 24-second clock indoors. The clocks were immediately switched off, not merely reset to 0, as soon as the pitcher and batter engaged.

The time limits sound tight, but they aren’t. Pitchers have 15 seconds to begin throwing a pitch, 20 seconds if a runner is on base. Hitters need to be in the batter’s box, focused on the pitcher, with at least eight seconds on the clock. A ball is added to the count if a pitcher fails to start his windup in time, with a strike added to the count if a batter is not locked in on the pitcher.

There is some wiggle room. Pitchers are limited to two “disengagements” – ie stepping off the rubber or trying to pick off a runner – per plate appearance. Additionally, each team is given five mound visits per game, a statistic kept on the big scoreboard at Citizens Bank Park.

Of the 18 half-innings in the Diamondbacks’ 6-3 victory, eight took five minutes or less. Only two took more than 10 minutes: Arizona’s three-run, four-hit second inning, and the home seventh, which included a mid-inning pitching change and ended with the bases loaded.

The game still ended with nine runs, about the same as MLB’s 2023 average of 9.11, up about a half-run from 2022. There were four home runs. Slightly bigger bases and a rule that limits infielders from “shifting” to a batter’s strength might have helped the teams to 16 hits.

Some thought Major League Baseball games with pitch clocks might feel forced, rushed, even gimmicky. But the clocks are not obtrusive at all.

There were no pitch-clock violations in the Arizona-Philadelphia game – and only three in 12 major-league games that night, per a brand-new Twitter site, @MLBClockViolations, put together by a Canadian sports fan and web-services director named Luke DeWitt.


(Pitch-clock violations have not disappeared as pitchers and batters have become more familiar with the rules, DeWitt told me, but players are becoming more comfortable. There were 82 violations in the first 15 days of June, compared with 146 in the first 15 days of the season.)

With restrictions brought on by the pandemic now gone, the rules changes also might have helped boost attendance to 27,244 per game through 15 June, compared with 26,566 all of last year. And summer, the height of the baseball season, is still to come.

In large part because the Phillies got hot at the end of last season and made it to the World Series, Philadelphia’s average home attendance has spiked this year, to 39,228 per game compared with 27,689 at the same point of last season, or a 42% uptick. One possible reason is that weeknight games start earlier, a benefit to families with school-age kids.

A big-league ball game is not a cheap night out. I paid $40 on StubHub for a ticket with a $48 face value to sit in Section 317, behind home plate but in the upper deck, just below the nosebleed seats. Parking was $25. A Federal Donuts chicken-tenders platter was $12.49.

The Phillies pushed up the start of midweek night home games to 6.40pm from 7.05pm, so this game ended at 9.40pm. Many families still headed for the parking lots after the seventh inning ended at 9. But they would have seen less than six innings a year ago.

Clocks have been used recently to mark time between half-innings and during mid-inning pitching changes late in games – which have practically bogged down games since there have been relief pitchers. Now, a reliever has two minutes to get to the mound.

These pitch clocks could be ominous, looming over a ballgame like an examination proctor, but the atmosphere is the same. Kids in Little League shirts still cavort in the aisles, and fans still efficiently stride to the concession stands for a mid-game beer ($10.99 to $15.99).

And, speaking of beer, three teams quickly announced they were extending the time in which they sell cold ones – from seven to eight innings – because the new rules resorted in shorter game times. Why, a fan stuck in a beer line might miss more action on the diamond!

The Phillies did not respond to my request asking if food and beer sales were down because games were shorter. But crowds have been bigger, so it might be a wash, anyway.

The Phillies lost, but I heard no one grumbling that he or she had been short-changed. After the final out, the people left in the park sort of did a collective shrug, got out of their blue seats and headed for their cars or the subway. I bet most of them will return.





✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳✳



When I've watch games in the past few weeks it seems like the new rule changes have not really shortened the length of the games. Seems like more commercials have been added. My initial hope was that we would have game lengths of 2:30 and less but it does not appear that MLB actually wants that.




Shorter games means less beer sales:


https://www.tmz.com/2023/04/12/mlb-beer ... -baseball/



But MADD is glad to see that as it reduces traffic incidents. Of course, MLB can change that by opening up the concessions an hour earlier and can reduced the cost of the suds.

[youthathletics]

It has been nice for sure.....I do miss the days when we saw "A Maddux" game. It's a shame the Braves had trouble scoring runs when they had the top pitching lineup with Maddux, Glavine, Smotlz.

From 1992-98, Maddux went 127-53 with a 2.15 ERA and absurd 190 ERA+, while throwing nine Madduxes (three times as many as any other pitcher in that span). His ultimate Maddux performance came on July 2, 1997, a Wednesday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, and featured just 84 pitches. It prompted fellow future Hall of Famer Wade Boggs -- a .328 career hitter but 1-for-13 against Maddux -- to sum up the agony of so many of the pitcher’s victims over the years. Sure, Maddux had some terrific stuff, but there was more to it.

''It seems like he's inside your mind with you,'' Boggs told The New York Times. ''When he knows you're not going to swing, he throws a straight one. He's clairvoyant. It's like he's got a crystal ball hidden inside his glove.''