Baseball
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youthathletics
- Posts: 14663
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm
Re: Baseball
GreatBraves game tonight. Some clutch hitting and a phenomenal defensive stance in the final out in the top of the 9th.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
~Livy
Re: Baseball
Haha. Depends on which team you were rooting for I guess.
That was a great catch in centerfield and a really dumb base running mistake by Harper. Can’t say that that alone cost the Phillies the game, however.
Last year, the Phillies won the first game in Atlanta and lost the second. Here’s hoping history repeats itself.
That was a great catch in centerfield and a really dumb base running mistake by Harper. Can’t say that that alone cost the Phillies the game, however.
Last year, the Phillies won the first game in Atlanta and lost the second. Here’s hoping history repeats itself.
Re: Baseball
Agree, good game. Phillies bats have been strong, came out of the gate bangin' again last night. Came up a little short this time.
Disagree on bad base running. Harper was coming home...down to two outs, down one, gotta have that run...no guts, no glory. But for a crazy good catch he scores (I think) on that play. I'm okay with it.
Baseball is fantastic at this time of year....love it!!
Disagree on bad base running. Harper was coming home...down to two outs, down one, gotta have that run...no guts, no glory. But for a crazy good catch he scores (I think) on that play. I'm okay with it.
Baseball is fantastic at this time of year....love it!!
Re: Baseball
Nope. Bad base running. Even Thomson acknowledged that in his post game interview. Also, there was only one out. On a play like that you go 80 or 90% of the way to second base. Maybe all the way to second. But Harper rounded the bag and was almost a quarter of the way to third base. If he had stayed shy of second, as he should have, he still scores from there. You have to watch the outfielders. Both the centerfielder and the right fielder were converging on the ball. If the ball hit the wall, it was going to bounce well away from them. Although Harper is not as fast as he once was, he still is sufficiently fast that he would have scored on the play if the ball hit the wall. He would have been at least halfway to third by the time an outfielder picked up the ball.
Harper has always been an aggressive base runner. But he is past 30 now and has slowed a bit. A number of times this year he ran himself into outs by being too aggressive or misjudging the play.
Harper has always been an aggressive base runner. But he is past 30 now and has slowed a bit. A number of times this year he ran himself into outs by being too aggressive or misjudging the play.
Re: Baseball
But, again, the Harper mistake wasn’t the main reason the Phillies lost the game. Lots of people in Philly today are blaming Turner’s second error, but that only cost one run. Phillies were still up 4–1. I blame it on the fact that they failed to score two or three times when they had excellent opportunities to do so. You need those tack on runs.
Phillies held the Braves scoreless for almost 15 innings. That simply wasn’t going to continue. We got a series now.
Phillies held the Braves scoreless for almost 15 innings. That simply wasn’t going to continue. We got a series now.
Re: Baseball
Yes, one out, I said they were down to two outs. We'll agree to see it differently. Harper, I think, made the decision that the ball wasn't going to be caught then all else you said comes into play. That ball was coming off the wall and he figured he could make it home before anyone could get the ball there. Ultimately it was the wrong decision but I still don't fault him, it was mighty close (catch or not) all in all. That outfielder had to cover a lot of ground and make a real good catch, Harper obviously figured he wasn't going to be able to get it done which would give him the opportunity to tie it up.
On to the next game.
On to the next game.
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youthathletics
- Posts: 14663
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm
Re: Baseball
I think the game was lost when they pulled Jose
Alvarado…he was mowing down the Braves with 2-K’s.
Alvarado…he was mowing down the Braves with 2-K’s.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
~Livy
Re: Baseball
That was certainly a key decision point. I would have left him in. But Rob came up aces in game one with all of his reliever moves. Hoffman had been great coming into the middle of innings and hadn't given up a homer since early August.youthathletics wrote: ↑Tue Oct 10, 2023 6:07 pm I think the game was lost when they pulled Jose
Alvarado…he was mowing down the Braves with 2-K’s.
Not sure I would have let Wheeler start the 7th. Definitely would have pulled him after Olsen's single.
Easy to second guess from my couch.
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youthathletics
- Posts: 14663
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm
Re: Baseball
Harper being Harper…..what a bomb in the 5th.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
~Livy
Re: Baseball
Sure was, big blast.
No getting caught on the bases with that one.
Haven't seen these Phillies play much, their
bats have looked mighty impressive to me.
No getting caught on the bases with that one.
Haven't seen these Phillies play much, their
bats have looked mighty impressive to me.
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youthathletics
- Posts: 14663
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm
Re: Baseball
Hopefully they used up all their home runs tonight. Tough night for your first playoff pitching outing as a 20 y/o. Phillies certainly earned this one. And those two ex-Nats come through.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
~Livy
Re: Baseball
Hopefully NOT. Lol. But that is my concern as well.
Harper forgiven for the base running blunder the other night.
Re: Baseball
The Philadelphia Pathetics:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... lb-history
It’s been a demoralizing season for fans of the Oakland Athletics. The team announced its intention to leave for Las Vegas, and on the field, the A’s are wrapping up a historically bad year, playing barely over .300.
But this isn’t the worst A’s team in history. More than a century ago, playing nearly 3,000 miles away, the Philadelphia Athletics had not only the worst record in franchise history, but the worst record of any Major League Baseball team in the modern era.
The 1916 A’s finished 36-117 (a .235 winning percentage). They were so bad that sportswriters dubbed them the “Pathetics.”
What’s especially striking about that team was how fast it had fallen. Just two years earlier, the A’s had won the AL pennant with a .651 winning percentage, the final season of a five-year dynasty when the team won four pennants and three World Series titles under Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack. That 1914 team won 99 games. But after the mother of all fire sales, their win total dropped to 43 in 1915, as they tumbled from first place to last place in the eight-team American League. The downward spiral continued in 1916.
Mack, who was also co-owner of the team, faced inflationary salary pressure from the startup Federal League. He responded by selling off stars such as Eddie Collins and Frank “Home Run” Baker, both future Hall of Famers who had been part of the dynasty’s “$100,000 infield.”
“Baseball economics, a costly bidding war from an upstart professional league, and Connie Mack’s desire to rebuild the team completely turned the 1910, 1911 and 1913 World Series champion Athletics into a bottom-feeding brunch,” wrote John G Robertson and Andy Saunders in their 2014 book, A’s Bad as It Gets: Connie Mack’s Pathetic Athletics of 1916.
Back then, Major League Baseball had no divisions – just the two leagues, the American and National, each with eight teams. Sportswriters would call teams that finished in the first half of the standings “first division,” and those in the bottom half “second division.”
But the ’16 Athletics were truly in their own division – finishing a whopping 40 games behind the next worst team, the Washington Senators, who were just a game under .500 and finished 14 ½ games out of first. The funhouse nature of the standings reflected how the other seven teams padded their record against the A’s, with only the Yankees (barely) failing to play over .700 against them, at .682.
The A’s opened the ’16 season at Fenway Park, losing 2-1 to 21-year-old Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth, who had not yet been converted to the outfield to take advantage of his hitting prowess. The A’s started 0-6 and never won more than two games in a row that year. Their final two-game “winning streak” took place on the final day of the season, when they improbably swept a doubleheader against the first-place Red Sox. In an odd bookend to the season, they ended the season with a victory over Ruth, who led the AL in ERA that season. In between the first and last games of the season, the A’s were consistently terrible, including losing 20 in a row in the dog days of summer, going 2-28 in July.
Philadelphia had three 20-game losers that season, Elmer Myers (14-23), Bullet Joe Bush (15-24), and Jack Nabors (1-20). Nabors won his first start that season before losing the next 20 straight. By the following April, he was out of Major League Baseball at the age of 29 – with a ghastly 1-25 lifetime record. The team’s 3.92 ERA was decent by today’s standards. But this was the Deadball Era – a period when scoring was low and pitchers dominates – and the AL ERA in 1916 was 2.82. In fact, Philadelphia were nearly a run worse than their closest AL competitor, the Detroit Tigers, who finished with an ERA of 2.97.
The Athletics traded away stars such as Home Run Baker, weakening a once formidable roster:
The A’s lineup did feature future Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie, a lifetime .338 hitter who 15 years earlier had set the modern-day batting record of .426 for the A’s. But by 1916, Lajoie was 41 and washed up, hitting a career-low .246 in what turned out to be his final season.
Perhaps the worst part of the A’s was their defense. The team committed a league-high 314 errors, including 11 in one doubleheader. Nine players had fielding percentages under .900, including starting pitcher Nabors (.827), and starting third baseman Charlie Pick (.898), who committed 44 errors. The starting shortstop, rookie Whitey Witt, made 78 errors, but because he had many more fielding chances his fielding percentage was a tick better, at a still awful .903.
Years later, Witt recalled that Mack had imposed a new last name on him: “Mack didn’t want to write Wittkowski on the batting card every day, so he changed my name to Witt. Then, because I had blond hair, he called me Whitey.”
“I wasn’t a very good shortstop,” he admitted. “But I could hit, so Mack kept me in the lineup.” Witt played mostly outfield after his rookie season, including several years with the Yankees, where he became one of Ruth’s best friends.
The 1916 A’s finished 54 ½ games out of first place, but Mack’s job was secure. He’d stay on as manager for another 34 years, until he was 87. In all, he was the A’s manager for an astonishing 50 years, wearing his trademark suit and tie in the dugout. (Yes, he was old school.)
Although 1916 was a low point for the A’s, it was no outlier. They would finish in last place for the next five years – bringing the cellar streak to seven – before finally sneaking past the Red Sox in 1922 for a seventh-place finish.
By 1929, Mack was guiding a new dynasty in Philadelphia, when the team won three straight pennants (including two World Series titles). But in a continuation of the boom-and-bust nature of the franchise, a Depression-strapped Mack sold off or traded great players such as Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane and Jimmie Foxx, all future Hall of Famers. That led to a 12-year period, from 1935 to 1946, when the team finished last nine times.
The A’s moved to Kansas City in 1955, then continued west in 1968, when they relocated to Oakland. And as if tearing down dynasties was in the franchise DNA, the A’s won three straight World Series titles in the early 1970s – only to trade away star players such as Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman as owner Charlie Finley dismantled the team. Finley also had deals in place to sell other stars such as Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi and Vida Blue, but baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn blocked the moves, citing his “best interests of baseball” authority.
The A’s haven’t won a World Series title since 1989, so this year doesn’t represent yet another championship teardown. And as bad as the 2023 A’s have played, they’re not as bad as their 1916 ancestors, although they started the season in a bigger ditch. Through 60 games, the 2023 A’s were 12-48 (a .200 winning percentage), trailing the 1916 A’s, who were 17-42 with one tie (.288) through that point of the season.
In other words, back in early June, the 2023 A’s were on track to shatter the 1916 Athletics’ record for futility. But they’ve shown some fight since then, even putting together a seven-game winning streak that included five wins against two good teams, the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays.
History’s verdict is clear: The Athletics have exceeded the low bar of the “Pathetics.”
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... lb-history
It’s been a demoralizing season for fans of the Oakland Athletics. The team announced its intention to leave for Las Vegas, and on the field, the A’s are wrapping up a historically bad year, playing barely over .300.
But this isn’t the worst A’s team in history. More than a century ago, playing nearly 3,000 miles away, the Philadelphia Athletics had not only the worst record in franchise history, but the worst record of any Major League Baseball team in the modern era.
The 1916 A’s finished 36-117 (a .235 winning percentage). They were so bad that sportswriters dubbed them the “Pathetics.”
What’s especially striking about that team was how fast it had fallen. Just two years earlier, the A’s had won the AL pennant with a .651 winning percentage, the final season of a five-year dynasty when the team won four pennants and three World Series titles under Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack. That 1914 team won 99 games. But after the mother of all fire sales, their win total dropped to 43 in 1915, as they tumbled from first place to last place in the eight-team American League. The downward spiral continued in 1916.
Mack, who was also co-owner of the team, faced inflationary salary pressure from the startup Federal League. He responded by selling off stars such as Eddie Collins and Frank “Home Run” Baker, both future Hall of Famers who had been part of the dynasty’s “$100,000 infield.”
“Baseball economics, a costly bidding war from an upstart professional league, and Connie Mack’s desire to rebuild the team completely turned the 1910, 1911 and 1913 World Series champion Athletics into a bottom-feeding brunch,” wrote John G Robertson and Andy Saunders in their 2014 book, A’s Bad as It Gets: Connie Mack’s Pathetic Athletics of 1916.
Back then, Major League Baseball had no divisions – just the two leagues, the American and National, each with eight teams. Sportswriters would call teams that finished in the first half of the standings “first division,” and those in the bottom half “second division.”
But the ’16 Athletics were truly in their own division – finishing a whopping 40 games behind the next worst team, the Washington Senators, who were just a game under .500 and finished 14 ½ games out of first. The funhouse nature of the standings reflected how the other seven teams padded their record against the A’s, with only the Yankees (barely) failing to play over .700 against them, at .682.
The A’s opened the ’16 season at Fenway Park, losing 2-1 to 21-year-old Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth, who had not yet been converted to the outfield to take advantage of his hitting prowess. The A’s started 0-6 and never won more than two games in a row that year. Their final two-game “winning streak” took place on the final day of the season, when they improbably swept a doubleheader against the first-place Red Sox. In an odd bookend to the season, they ended the season with a victory over Ruth, who led the AL in ERA that season. In between the first and last games of the season, the A’s were consistently terrible, including losing 20 in a row in the dog days of summer, going 2-28 in July.
Philadelphia had three 20-game losers that season, Elmer Myers (14-23), Bullet Joe Bush (15-24), and Jack Nabors (1-20). Nabors won his first start that season before losing the next 20 straight. By the following April, he was out of Major League Baseball at the age of 29 – with a ghastly 1-25 lifetime record. The team’s 3.92 ERA was decent by today’s standards. But this was the Deadball Era – a period when scoring was low and pitchers dominates – and the AL ERA in 1916 was 2.82. In fact, Philadelphia were nearly a run worse than their closest AL competitor, the Detroit Tigers, who finished with an ERA of 2.97.
The Athletics traded away stars such as Home Run Baker, weakening a once formidable roster:
The A’s lineup did feature future Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie, a lifetime .338 hitter who 15 years earlier had set the modern-day batting record of .426 for the A’s. But by 1916, Lajoie was 41 and washed up, hitting a career-low .246 in what turned out to be his final season.
Perhaps the worst part of the A’s was their defense. The team committed a league-high 314 errors, including 11 in one doubleheader. Nine players had fielding percentages under .900, including starting pitcher Nabors (.827), and starting third baseman Charlie Pick (.898), who committed 44 errors. The starting shortstop, rookie Whitey Witt, made 78 errors, but because he had many more fielding chances his fielding percentage was a tick better, at a still awful .903.
Years later, Witt recalled that Mack had imposed a new last name on him: “Mack didn’t want to write Wittkowski on the batting card every day, so he changed my name to Witt. Then, because I had blond hair, he called me Whitey.”
“I wasn’t a very good shortstop,” he admitted. “But I could hit, so Mack kept me in the lineup.” Witt played mostly outfield after his rookie season, including several years with the Yankees, where he became one of Ruth’s best friends.
The 1916 A’s finished 54 ½ games out of first place, but Mack’s job was secure. He’d stay on as manager for another 34 years, until he was 87. In all, he was the A’s manager for an astonishing 50 years, wearing his trademark suit and tie in the dugout. (Yes, he was old school.)
Although 1916 was a low point for the A’s, it was no outlier. They would finish in last place for the next five years – bringing the cellar streak to seven – before finally sneaking past the Red Sox in 1922 for a seventh-place finish.
By 1929, Mack was guiding a new dynasty in Philadelphia, when the team won three straight pennants (including two World Series titles). But in a continuation of the boom-and-bust nature of the franchise, a Depression-strapped Mack sold off or traded great players such as Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane and Jimmie Foxx, all future Hall of Famers. That led to a 12-year period, from 1935 to 1946, when the team finished last nine times.
The A’s moved to Kansas City in 1955, then continued west in 1968, when they relocated to Oakland. And as if tearing down dynasties was in the franchise DNA, the A’s won three straight World Series titles in the early 1970s – only to trade away star players such as Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman as owner Charlie Finley dismantled the team. Finley also had deals in place to sell other stars such as Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi and Vida Blue, but baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn blocked the moves, citing his “best interests of baseball” authority.
The A’s haven’t won a World Series title since 1989, so this year doesn’t represent yet another championship teardown. And as bad as the 2023 A’s have played, they’re not as bad as their 1916 ancestors, although they started the season in a bigger ditch. Through 60 games, the 2023 A’s were 12-48 (a .200 winning percentage), trailing the 1916 A’s, who were 17-42 with one tie (.288) through that point of the season.
In other words, back in early June, the 2023 A’s were on track to shatter the 1916 Athletics’ record for futility. But they’ve shown some fight since then, even putting together a seven-game winning streak that included five wins against two good teams, the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays.
History’s verdict is clear: The Athletics have exceeded the low bar of the “Pathetics.”
It has been proven a hundred times that the surest way to the heart of any man, black or white, honest or dishonest, is through justice and fairness.
Charles Francis "Socker" Coe, Esq
Charles Francis "Socker" Coe, Esq
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youthathletics
- Posts: 14663
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm
Re: Baseball
Congratulations to your Phillies. October baseball just became less fun for this Braves fan.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
~Livy
Re: Baseball
Thank you. The Braves are a truly great team. Don’t know the team very well but it seems the layoff may have hurt them. Three of the four teams that got byes are now out.
The game absolutely would’ve turned around if Rojas had not caught that ball. Three runs in to be sure, Acuña on third base. Then maybe back to Atlanta for game five. Earlier in the year I had seen Rojas allow a very similar ball (not quite as tough) go off the heel of his glove.
Rojas is a good centerfielder with a lot of speed. He has the potential to be great, but he is not there yet. Harris, on the other hand, is a great centerfielder.
The Phillies got really lucky with their bullpen in games one and four. I had no idea what Thomson was doing last night and was screaming at the TV and in my texts with my brother. But he came up aces. Again.
The game absolutely would’ve turned around if Rojas had not caught that ball. Three runs in to be sure, Acuña on third base. Then maybe back to Atlanta for game five. Earlier in the year I had seen Rojas allow a very similar ball (not quite as tough) go off the heel of his glove.
Rojas is a good centerfielder with a lot of speed. He has the potential to be great, but he is not there yet. Harris, on the other hand, is a great centerfielder.
The Phillies got really lucky with their bullpen in games one and four. I had no idea what Thomson was doing last night and was screaming at the TV and in my texts with my brother. But he came up aces. Again.
Re: Baseball
The article here points out that the Braves, Dodgers and Astros all had 5 days off last year and this year. It didn’t seem to hinder the Astros too much as they won the WS last year and had one loss to the Twins so far this year in the playoffs. The Braves and Dodgers had the worst batting averages, while the Dodgers and Orioles had poor pitching allowing high ERA’s to the opposition teams. Would the time off really hinder both facets of the game?
https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb-commission ... 05806.html?
Re: Baseball
There has been a lot of talk about this new playoff format.
Will MLB change it? Wouldn't surprise me if they added two more teams in each league to the playoffs so no team gets a bye. More $$ for the sport. Hard to imagine them decreasing playoff teams (and revenue).
What to do with the first round then if eight teams per league make it? If three games, it's hard to imagine the overlords going for a 1-1-1 format. Too much travel. But the higher seed gets a huge advantage if all their games are at home. 1-2? Eh, I don't know. Best of five might make more sense with the standard 2-2-1 arrangement. Would push out the overall schedule though. WS in mid-November. Hey, no problem with global warming.
If this format had been in place in 1964, the Phillies would have won the World Series.
Maybe. 
Will MLB change it? Wouldn't surprise me if they added two more teams in each league to the playoffs so no team gets a bye. More $$ for the sport. Hard to imagine them decreasing playoff teams (and revenue).
What to do with the first round then if eight teams per league make it? If three games, it's hard to imagine the overlords going for a 1-1-1 format. Too much travel. But the higher seed gets a huge advantage if all their games are at home. 1-2? Eh, I don't know. Best of five might make more sense with the standard 2-2-1 arrangement. Would push out the overall schedule though. WS in mid-November. Hey, no problem with global warming.
If this format had been in place in 1964, the Phillies would have won the World Series.
Maybe. -
youthathletics
- Posts: 14663
- Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 7:36 pm
Re: Baseball
Interesting. Funny how all the ex-Nats are thriving; even Dusty!6x6 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 7:52 pmThe article here points out that the Braves, Dodgers and Astros all had 5 days off last year and this year. It didn’t seem to hinder the Astros too much as they won the WS last year and had one loss to the Twins so far this year in the playoffs. The Braves and Dodgers had the worst batting averages, while the Dodgers and Orioles had poor pitching allowing high ERA’s to the opposition teams. Would the time off really hinder both facets of the game?
https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb-commission ... 05806.html?
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
~Livy
Re: Baseball
The A’s ballpark is pathetic, as recent as 6-7 years ago, that park was still do-able for Raiders and A’s games.Brooklyn wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 12:34 pm The Philadelphia Pathetics:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... lb-history
Its funny.
Both Shibe Park, later Connie Mack, and Baker Bowl - the neighborhoods declined so badly, the teams has no choice but to move.
Same situation as the current A’s park.
Re: Baseball
10stone5 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 11:34 amThe A’s ballpark is pathetic, as recent as 6-7 years ago, that park was still do-able for Raiders and A’s games.Brooklyn wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2023 12:34 pm The Philadelphia Pathetics:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... lb-history
Its funny.
Both Shibe Park, later Connie Mack, and Baker Bowl - the neighborhoods declined so badly, the teams has no choice but to move.
Same situation as the current A’s park.
Over the years I have read that Connie Mack was offered some baseball talent from the old Negro Leagues which he declined due to his racial bias. If what I've read is correct, a couple of them are now in the HOF (those guys would gladly have played for half of what Mack paid to his white players). Therefore, part of the blame for his team's decline is of his own making.
As for the current ballpark, nobody has stopped the elite welfare queens ... oops, meant to the team ownership ... from investing a few of their million$ in it. But, as always, they are waiting for the city to provide them with corporate welfare subsidies. This is what the suckers ... oops, the taxpayers ... did in Minneapolis when they fell for the propaganda BS that we need a new stadium in order to get into and win the World Series. These idiots ... oops, these fans ... fell for all horseschitt, paid for a new stadium, but we still don't have a winning team as they were again wiped out in the first round of the playoffs.
It has been proven a hundred times that the surest way to the heart of any man, black or white, honest or dishonest, is through justice and fairness.
Charles Francis "Socker" Coe, Esq
Charles Francis "Socker" Coe, Esq