MLB '24 Regular Season Thread

It’s amazing how often “So what did you think?” gets a better response when it comes to sports. I never would’ve been caught dead doing that reporting news. But sports? It worked so often.

 

The first SJ.com experience!!!

 

For better or worse, this is true. There are radio guys who cover half the local games, tops, and swoop in right after the sideline reporter is done asking questions and ask the broadest, most basic questions...but they get the good soundbite and I have to admit, I use it more often than I'd like to admit. They know what they're doing. It also helps there aren't any more Leylands, La Russas, etc. Most of managers/coaches these days are trained to be non-combative and will just answer a silly "talk about the game" query than bite off someone's head.

 

Phoenix had some interesting media folks in the early 2000s. I remember clearly a fight almost breaking out after a media scrum at a Diamondbacks postgame, where one of the TV guys kept elbowing one of the main beat writers out of the way, to the point where he kept hitting the beat guy in the head with the back of his camera. PR had to separate the two.

Phoenix also had a radio guy who we dubbed the interview killer because he'd ask the dumbest questions at the worst times, signaling the end of the interview. The Coyotes blew a 3-1 series to the Blues and I think lost 1-0 at home in Game 7, and the interview killer broke in to ask Jeremy Roenick his thoughts on the upcoming Blues-Stars series. Everyone groaned and left. It was brutal.

 

Yes, there are two sides to every story.

And I never asked questions like that, I didn't play high school football.

 

Yes, there are two sides ....
Sometimes the TV/radio guys ask the dumbass question that the beat guy would never ask. But it gets a really good, usable response. Some coaches just know how to answer.
Paul Westhead, when he was at Loyola Marymount, was a favorite. If there was a pointed question that would normally generate a "No comment," he had a way of phrasing an answer that was essentially "No comment" but it was a usable quote would enhance your story much better than "No comment." LMU was damn lucky it had someone as well-spoken as Westhead as the go-to in the aftermath of Hank Gathers' death.

 

Alberto Suarez allows eight hits in two innings to a last-place Marlins team batting .234 as a team. It's the third time he's been mollywhopped in the last six weeks. Not ideal.

 

It's just not sustainable. Need a couple of arms.
Another problem is that Austin Hays is done. That puts an extra LHB in there vs. LHP, and that ain't pretty lately.

 

Cards beat the Pirates and Skenes (sp?) tonight.

 

Mariners basically had their AAA team on the field in Seattle tonight, with predictable results. Angels take advantage of errors to score five runs in the fifth, and that was the ball game.

Both J.P. Crawford and Julio Rodriguez placed on the injured list today. Somehow Mitch Garver hasn't injured his oblique muscles from swinging and missing so many times.

 

..... and after beating that downtrodden team for the fifth time in a row, the giddy Angels announcers reminded that they are only 8 games out of first place. Uh, the Angels can't hit either -- they got 4 hits and scored 4 unearned runs.

 

Chayce McDermott making his debut tonight in Miami. We shall see.