2019 Rolling "Hey Chatter Chatter" chatterthread

trevor rosenthal's return: four batters, three hits, one walk, four runs and the dreaded INF ERA

Was literally just coming here to post that. Love an ERA of infinity.

At tonight's Dodgers game, Kenta Maeda's pre-at-bat music is "Slow Down" by Lights Follow, the international theme to Terrace House.

Arizona took a beating!

lol maeda, that's awesome

This Cubs-Rangers game is wild, 10-10 in the 8th.

Ended...wildly.

E. Inciarte homered (413 ft.) to deep right. on M. Zagunis's fielding error

okay: dropped foul ball, next pitch goes over the fence. lead off HR (unearned)

Cubs w/5 errors through 4.1 innings, dang.

Chris Sale looks like he's trying to pitch through an injury...

Fastball speed is down almost 10mph

Mondesi's inside the park HR pic.twitter.com/KoLwNZ5vAn

— Alex Fast (@AlexFast8) April 3, 2019

Both Bumgarner & Greinke just homered within minutes of each other.

#fucktheDH

as a Brewer fan who's watched 4 different starters lose an entire season because they got hurt running the bases, I'm gonna have to disagree

they need to learn how to hit the long ball.

clearly they need more calcium!

trevor rosenthal: not just INF but 7 x INF

3 G, 0 IP, 7 BF, 4 H, 3 BB, 7 R

even worse if you consider last year

Trevor Rosenthal has made 4 consecutive appearances in which he did not get an out and allowed at least 1 run (active streak extended today).

That's the longest streak of outings allowing at least a run without recording an out since at least 1908.

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) April 3, 2019

I don’t mind Braden’s commenting for the A’s but they don’t need to cut to a closeup of his face every other out.

wtf was up with this umpire...

https://streamable.com/9pylv

https://streamable.com/0zzf4

that is wild!

chris davis is 0-for-15 with nine strikeouts

...is that better than last year?

he does have four walks, so . . . maybe

since the O's have no win goals this year, do they let him duplicate 2018?

will the O's play above replacement level this year?

Davis vs. Rosenthal would be a battle for the ages

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/trevor-rosenthal-reaches-for-infinity

Ned on the fateful seventh inning: and his frustrations with the bullpen: "In a tie ballgame, you really try to refrain from walking the first four guys."

— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) April 4, 2019

hahaha

Carl Edwards Jr. was told recently by the league office that his new hesitation delivery was an illegal move and he won't utilize it moving forward, Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

...and he gets absolutely rocked.

Is that similar to the pause thing Stroman has been doing randomly?

tim beckham: three errors in the first inning; still nobody out

tommy pham's 40-game on-base streak is a rays franchise record

I enjoyed my first live baseball game today. It makes a fella proud to be an Astro.

wow, congrats mostly

any observations that you didn't expect beforehand?

If I am going to pay $11 a beer, there are worse ones than Hopadill. The food options are also hella better than UK stadia.

I enjoyed the national anthem more than I thought I would - a bit magical even (the first time at least) - along with the seventh inning singalongs.

I enjoyed the nervous anticipation in a bases loaded situation for the home team and the anxiety in the reverse situation more than watching on TV. Makes you realise how important some pitches are with say a 3-2 count.

I thought I would struggle to make out whether the pitch was a strike or a ball in the flesh but I generally seemed to agree with the umpire (and when I didn’t everyone else was aggrieved likewise). On that point it’s a lot more family friendly than football in Edinburgh in that I didn’t hear any swearing towards the umpire (though I did half expect that).

How many games a season would your average baseball fan go to?

Hopadillo*

Oh and thank you for whoever recommended Ball Four and I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally ( I’m on mobile and can’t easily check). Made studying the relief pitchers and guys in the bullpen a lot more interesting.

Stassi and Marisnick were dull as dishwater in the street party Q&A though and just pandered to the crowd (probably to be expected but I don’t think I learned a single thing of interest in fifteen minutes).

How many games a season would your average baseball fan go to?

This is totally anecdotal but I would guess "fewer and fewer." The increased cost of games, even bleacher seats, prevents me from going to nearly as many as I'd like—and in this regard the game is decidedly *not* family friendly.

Like I can't take my two kids to the ballpark—assuming food and drink—more than twice a year. Which blows.

Anyway I'm curious what your experience of pace-of-play was like, whether you felt the live experience felt like a slog compared to watching on tv?

depending on the year's income and the kindness of friends, i'd say I go to 7-12 MLB games a year (I have no spouse or kids)

One of the great things about ILX is something like fionnland's sharing their cross-Atlantic observations on what is normally such a radically insular board... Cheers!

Once upon a time I shared season tickets with a group of 10 friends. So 162 games in a season, half of those at home = 81 games / 10 = 8 games (2 seats). This was many moons ago when I was single and free time in abundance. Compared to last season we went to 2 games as a family (wife is a fan of the game, too soon to tell with the sprouts).

The paced, drawn-out in-game drama is indeed one of the subtle magical things about baseball that doesn't occur in other major American sport.

The last 30+ years of American foreign policy have cast the national anthem & God Bless America into some shitty greeting card pro-religious/pro-military dreck (sometimes coordinated with a military jet flyover as a reminder to our impotent baby boomers of this country's former military prowess) that I can honestly do without. Probably says more about me than anything haha.

Ball Four is an absolute classic, especially on this board (Bouton has his own thread, as does Bill Lee iirc).

ha... "Dull as dishwater" is how players are coached by their agents/PR teams to be. There's a classic film set in the baseball world currently on American Netflix named Bull Durham that in one scene addresses how being unique and individual in the game is discouraged and the ability to spout out 30 seconds of cliches strung together is the epiphany of the modern game player.

The Houston Astros are an interesting study... a team that had a recent renaissance after years of toiling in the basement of the National League's arguably weakest division, they switched to the American League and built a soon-to-be dynasty through analytics and cutting-edge information feeding their drafting/development.

Yeah, the whole national anthem thing is fucking weird, the God Bless America thing is really fucking weird, and the whole alliance with the Pentagon thing is really really fucking weird. Take me out to the ballgame is good

I think banning god bless america would be my first act as commissioner