MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

Watching even the fourth-best reliever on each team makes me wonder how anybody ever gets a hit.

 

I still have this connection to a time when throwing 90 was considered the big-boy plateau. A generation later, and you have to throw 90, or you're considered a junkballer.

100 mph was something you just gaped at when it happened. Now, it feels like every closer in the game is over, near or close to that number.

I'll be extremely curious what the next generation brings on that count. I don't know if the human body was built to hit 110.

 

Three or four-year careers with TJ surgery being all but expected.

And I think they’ll become like football running backs, cheap and replaceable.

The best way to make more money might be by being a really good sinkerballer and extending out the career by doing something nobody else does.

 

Dominguez yesterday afternoon showed what can happen when a pitcher goes for 110. Ball goes straight down into the ground at about the 56 foot mark.

 

We'll never know, because baseball is already unwatchable.

 

Yankee fans had a love-hate relationship with Big Stein. Fans believed he wanted to win more than make money and he’s spending what it took to win. They hated his baseball judgment. No one in baseball panicked more than George.

if Judge isn’t resigned and a stud FA like Trea Turner isn’t signed, the fans will turn against against the Steinbrenners like NY hasn’t seen before. More than the vitriol directed at Dolan, Yankee fans may avoid the Bronx if Judge is gone.

 

Crowds of 40,000+ the last week or two would like a word.

I'm not saying they haven't done just about everything wrong, but reports of the sport's complete demise are exaggerated.

 

Plus it remains wildly popular, and quite watchable at the minor-league and summer wood bat level, and at the college level in certain parts of the country.

The problem with baseball isn't baseball. It's the people who run it, and (to a much smaller extent) play it on its most-visible level.

 

IIRC, he couldn't hit by either measure.

 

The problem with baseball is it's the only league that has a commissioner who hates the sport.
If Rob Manfred liked baseball even a little bit then it would look a lot different.

 

Gary Bettman and Roger Goodell have no love at all for their sport other than the billions of dollars it puts in the pockets of the owners, which in turn nets them millions and millions of undeserved dollars. But they are better at PR than rake-stepping Sideshow Rob Manfred, which is an absolutely remarkable feat for anyone who has ever seen Bettman or Goodell speak.

 

Random thought: Imagine if Trea Turner was playing an East Coast night game in November. He'd start sliding into second at CBP, hit the ice and wind up somewhere around Reading Terminal Market.