MLB '24 Regular Season Thread

Seeing a couple of clips from this, and it feels like I'm watching the series finale of an underrated show I've never seen until now.
Nice career for this guy. Fourteen seasons with one team, won a batting title, led the league in some other categories a couple of times, had 1,800+ hits and 200+ home runs, four-time all-star ... not too shabby. Too bad he played on some bad Rockies teams and most people outside of Colorado probably have no idea who he is.

 

Had they played him a little more before age 26, and had he been able to stay healthy in 2021 and 2023, we're looking at 2,200 or 2,300 hits. A very good player who stuck with the Rox when he probably could have moved elsewhere and had more team success.

 

Charlie Blackmon played at Modesto in 2009. My high school coach and one of my teammates were coaching in the Rockies organization and they were at Modesto that season. I arranged a couple of visits when they came south -- San Bernardino early in the season and Lake Elsinore later. I didn't know anybody on their team, but after watching early workouts and regular batting practice, I told my guys that, to me, Blackmon stood out above the rest. They nodded and said he was special, he was a second-round draft pick so they were expecting good things from him. He just seemed to have the "it" factor, the way he carried himself, the way he took care of his business, the way he treated his coaches and teammates. So I kinda followed his career and was glad to see I was right about him.

 

A.J. Hinch used today's season finale as a dress rehearsal for three possible "bulk reliever" candidates. They all failed.

Kenta Maeda, with the exception of being lights out in relief against Baltimore last weekend, was throwing BP. Casey Mize came in and couldn't find the strike zone. Then Keider Montero got lit up for three more runs to put the game out of reach.

Honestly, that might be Mize's last appearance in a Tigers uniform. For a 1-1 pick, he's been underwhelming at best. In between a myriad of injuries, he's been prone to the long ball, can't put anyone away with two strikes and certainly ruffled the feathers of President Scott Harris when he took the team to arbitration over $20,000 -- after missing the entire 2023 season. He'll be 28 in May and is 9-19 with a 4.32 ERA in 59 career starts.

He needed a breakout season, or at least the promise of returning to form. He's done nothing to think he'll ever regain whatever he had going for him at Auburn.

With Ty Madden and Jackon Jobe reaching the bigs, Harris now has a possible 2025 rotation of Skubal, Reese Olson, Madden, Jobe and either Montero or someone on the free agent market.

I get the feeling Harris and Hinch have reached the end of what they can do with him. I expect him and possibly Matt Manning to get packaged for a veteran third baseman or corner outfielder.

So reading between the Lions, Skubal gets the ball in Game 1 against Houston. Then Hinch has to decide how to cobble something together. I would guess Olson (who hasn't thrown more than 70 pitches after coming off the IL) paired with Jobe in Game 2, then an opener/Madden if there's a Game 3.

I'll wait until the playoff thread to tell you why the Tigers are going two-and-que against the Astros.

 

Tigers Astros in the playoffs? lol ok.

 

He got ruined the last couple of years by the Giants insisting they could run bullpen games three or four days a week. It failed spectacularly in part because those guys were torched.

 

Mets-Braves, Austria-West Germany '82. Get to know the comparison.

 

The winner of Monday's game 1 will be urged to put forth a normal lineup with normal effort, but there's no way the manager of that team should use a real starter or his real closer. Mutual Assured Survival is the name of the game here.

 

Indeed, and props to Torey Lovullo for understanding this. From the AP gamer:

“It sucks,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it. We made this bed. We got to sleep in it, but we’re going to hope for the best. They’re two great franchises, two great managers, and I don’t think either have the gene of laying down.”

That said, it'd be peak weird fucking baseball for someone to sweep. And very Mets for that team to be the Braves!

 

You always hear about how hard it is to sweep a doubleheader. I did some brief digging. Over the past four years, 45.5% of twin bills have resulted in sweeps. That shocked me. I assumed it was going to be closer to one-third.
But this is a doubleheader unlike any other. The winner of game 1 would prefer to lose the nightcap than to see it close and proceed to extra innings.

 

If Braves win Game 1, there’s nothing to play for in Game 2 except knockout a division rival. But it more than likely would be a Pyrrhic victory.

Mets at least would be deciding between which opponent they’d face. And it would be very Mets to go full tilt only to blow a chance at advancing.

 

Just out of curiosity, what would have happened to the two games if the Braves were in and the Mets needed just one of two to advance? Say if the Padres put a real team out today (I’m assuming because they had nothing to play for) or if the D’Backs dropped another game over the last week. If that second half wasn’t needed, would they have played it?