MLB 2014 season thread

It's 11:45 p.m. Central time, roughly three hours after the delay began, and the Cubs just announced that they're hoping to re-start the game shortly. Bottom of fifth inning.

 

And from teh Twitters, I understand there was nary a drop on the South Side at the Sox game.

 

Now that I'm home and see it on the big screen, it's worse than I thought. Its ridiculous that MLB allows the grounds crew to settle the game in that situation, and it's why the Cubs will always be a joke.

 

Cubs win! Cubs win!

After the Giants demanded a delay of four hours to try to let the field dry -- and with players still sitting in the dugout at 1 a.m. Central time -- umpires finally call the game. There is no rule in the book allowing for the game to be suspended due to rank incompetence of the home team, so they had no choice but to give it to the Cubs.

 

Best part: If any part of the tarp-unrolling had been mechanical and malfunctioned, the rules would allow for suspension for completion at a later date. But human error forces them to give the home team a win.

 

Theo has a whole new outlook on how to build a winner.

The gopher-hole outfield is next.

 

Epstein's grounds crewmen are placeholders for the blue chips on the farm.
They have five or six of the best young tarp rollers you've ever seen down there.

 

Chicago teams have been doing this shit for years.

Under Leo Durocher in the late 1960s, the Cubs famously grew their infield grass long to slow down hard grounders.

And the Bill Veeck White Sox sloped the baselines to keep teams from bunting on them (so that the balls would roll foul).

 

If there is a conspiracy, MLB could be tired of the Giants making a postseason run boring as fuck to watch.

 

Giants file an official protest with MLB, per Andrew Baggarly.

 

If MLB wanted to, I suppose they could gin up the tarp roller as a "mechanical failure" because it did appear to be soaked still from the pregame.

But Baggarly last night was talking about a Rangers-Yankees game a couple of weeks ago that was declared over under almost the same circumstances (minus so much buffoonery, of course).

 

Giants were scheduled to play the Cubs in a spring training game at Cubbies' new complex in March, but that grounds crew dumped all the water off the tarp into center field, creating a lake. Same crew???