The 2023 Running Baseball Thread

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Look, I love the fact the Dodgers fell on their faces. Love it. More than anything.

I’m just saying in a sport where you slog through 162 games in 180 days with no more than one day off between series it’s hard to ask them to suddenly take 5 off in a row and play as sharp.

I’m not saying I want the top seeds to win every year but the current system doesn’t really reward teams for being good over the long haul by making them do something they don’t do during the season.

 

Baseball is too random and variant for any playoff format to be "fair," short of just AL champ vs. NL champ.

Seeding, series length, etc. None of it matters. All teams are basically 3-2 entering the postseason, when you boil down their regular season records to a 5-game series. For series to be indicative of regular season play, they'd have to be a best-of-75.

 

You hit, or you don't hit. Those who don't hit, lose.

That's baseball.

 

Just when you thought Nic Cage had lost something off his fastball.

 

Nic Cage vs. Cillian Murphy would have been one hell of a Game 1 matchup.

 

A 60-game regular season followed by a best-of-75, who says no?

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm all good with the inherent unfairness of the playoff series format. A team that wins 55 of the first 81 games and loses 50 of the next 81 and sneaks into the playoffs has the same opportunity as a team that split 50 and 45 wins in the same stretches. That's all good with me. You're right, fair is never going to be achieved. We make it unfair by who has to play whom. The worst team in the playoffs has to play the best. The better seeded gets more games at home. That's every playoffs in sports with playoffs.

But can you imagine giving the top seed in the NBA a bye in the first round? I'm not talking the play-in layoff, I mean the top seeds having to wait for the first round to finish before they play. That potentially could mean a two-week layoff between games. They wouldn't make that schedule. Now baseball is asking the best teams to wait a week to play when everyone is accustomed to playing six times in a week.

I have no problem with top seeds losing. But I at least want to believe the lower seeds earned it.

 

Have you seen Hunter Prince’s double hit double?

Luiz Gonzalez’s double off Rivera in 2001?

Bob Stanley”s fuck*Ng wild pitch (then Buckner)?

Joe Morgan’s flare in ‘75?

Someone doesn’t hit .330 because he hits 330 rockets in a 1000 ABs. There are some pop ups behind 1B in there.

Baseball is RANDOM!! That’s part of its greatness.

 

OK? Glad we agree ...

 

Reminds me of my grandparents, who would yell at each other vehemently, despite both of them making the same point.

 

What’s with all the long-haired, bearded Philly motherfuckers?

Now that the O’s are out…. I’m rooting for T and A.



Texas and Arizona.

 

Just wait until we end up with a straight 1 thru 16 seeding regardless of league, a la the old NHL way, with the next round of expansion and the Yankees and Red Sox play in the first World Series of the new format!