the pitch clock is counting down to the MLB 2023 REGULAR SEASON THREAD

all three of my hs homers were on the road (because the LF pole at my home field was 470 and i was incapable of not pulling the ball)

and all of them were surprising to me. hitting a ball square on is an absolute joy, but i can only imagine what hitting a no-doubter is like

http://capricorncity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Homer-Simpson-at-Bat.gif

it me

From an Athletic piece today:

1984 Tigers, 31-5. Won World Series.
1902 Pirates, 30-6. No World Series (the first was in 1903).
1939 Yankees, 29-7. Won World Series.
1928 Yankees, 29-7. Won World Series
1912 Giants, 29-7. Lost World Series.
2023 Rays, 29-7. ????

Impressive, no doubt. But as an indicator of World Series potential, the Rays’ 29-7 record means only so much.

All of the other teams on the above list, except for the ‘84 Tigers, advanced straight to the Series after finishing with the best regular-season record in their respective leagues. The ‘84 Tigers needed to first beat the Royals in a best-of-five league championship series. The 2023 Rays, if they win the AL East, would need to win a best-of-five division series and best-of-seven LCS to reach the World Series.

another thing about those early teams is that their record over the first 36 games represented a larger proportion of the season

also they didn't have wild card, division, and league championship series to toss the coin on

oops, sorry clemenza, i see yr quoted text alludes to that

I feel a little bad for the Rays in that they could go 110-52 and odds are it will amount to absolutely nothing.

(Not that a handful of other 105- to 110-win teams in the wild-card era didn't face the same steep mountain.)

i don't know anything about old baseball, but doesn't it seem like starting 29-7 in 1912 would be more the product of luck than in 2023, when there is statistical analysis and player conditioning and video analysis and AI and etc etc

Almost no home runs in the game would significantly reduce luck imo (round bat, round ball)

Almost every home run in 1912 was inside the park, so speed, fielding etc all come into play - but none of it comes into play for ye good olde dinger

the distribution of team quality was wildly variant in the early game. so many of the best players were not allowed to play in MLB, the modern minor league/farm development system was decades away, and i have to imagine there were a lot of shenanigans with owners who didn't care about the quality of the team

in those days, if you had a good nickname and a notable mustache you would basically be the starting shortstop

To me 29-7 in 2023 is more meaningful in 2023 than 100 years ago...but I'm at work in a kindergarten class right now and would need some time to explain that!

I've just become more and more skeptical about everything either pre-Ruth, pre-war, or pre-integration (not quite sure where to draw the line). I will say, when I scrolled through some AL standings from the early '20s, the gap between the top and the bottom wasn't noticeably different than today.

if you wanna see something fun, check out the 1899 Cleveland Spiders on bbref:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CLV/1899.shtml

finished 20-134, which was only 6 wins under their pythag. they fired their first manager Lave Cross after he went 8-30 and Joe Quinn somehow managed to go 12-104 the rest of the way. their best pitcher, Jim Hughey, pitched 32 complete games and nearly 300 innings. his ERA was 5.41. they hit a grand total of 12 home runs on the year. shit, I feel like *I* could've played on that team

The year before that the Spiders were a respectable team and Cy Young was their main pitcher. He pitched nine years for the Spidermen. They lost the '92 Series to the Beaneaters, which I'm still mad about.

andrew mccutchen hitting dingers in a pirates uniform just feels right

BREAKING: #Rays place RHP Drew Rasmussen on 60-day IL

— Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) May 12, 2023

end of year Rays' rotation will be their current AA team at this rate.

The Nationals are close but nobody’s home run celebration touches the Mariners

No. Doubt. pic.twitter.com/s6tWfAYQFc

— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) May 13, 2023

You'll put somebody's eye out with that thing.

Seriously! I assumed it was plastic but it’s not!

It stands six and a half feet tall, weighs nearly 30 pounds and was so sharp out of the delivery box that its spikes have been dulled. The Mariners’ new trident, unveiled after each home run and bestowed to each slugger who goes deep, is as profound as it looks.

Absolute

Adding insult to tonight's proceedings: the Citi Field video board briefly just shut off during an at-bat, causing a momentary stoppage in play. When it turned back on, it displayed a massive Rays logo. Fans booed.

Then José Siri hit another homer.

Rays 7, Mets 1, top six. pic.twitter.com/KRgwtT8BNr

— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) May 17, 2023

John Schneider: "shut up, shut up fat boy, shut up"

George Costanza must be up to his old tricks pic.twitter.com/WaLyHZyeYA

— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) May 16, 2023

A’s win with a Ruiz walk-off single: pic.twitter.com/Fi2yY8RLMu

— Jessica Kleinschmidt (@KleinschmidtJD) May 17, 2023

wow absolutely no one there for the 12th

dying @ the rays logo

It’s incredible. Just unreal how you can fuck up that much

paid attendance in oakland last night was 3,261 so there was barely anyone there to begin with

and the place seats 47K for baseball (56K if they took the tarps off mount davis)

ftr, class a dayton drew more than twice that last night (to see the home team get no-hit)

at least brent rooker is off to a nice start

btw . . . rich hill!

Dustin May:

May’s velocity was down in the first inning, topping off at 95.8 mph. He was replaced on the mound by Dylan Covey.

In between innings, May met with Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts and pitching coach Mark Prior. He then left down the tunnel.

This is the same elbow that May had Tommy John surgery on in May 2021.

May is 4-1 this season with a 2.68 ERA and 32 strikeouts.

no wonder the a’s are moving to vegas?

Really a sad state of affairs for a historic franchise. The early 70s A's were what got me interested in baseball.

xp cos the ownership was running the franchise into the ground and giving the fans nothing to watch? Who’s going to watch them there?

Oakland had a couple of good runs in terms of attendance: the Henderson-Canseco-McGwire era (six consecutive years over two million, almost three one season) and the Moneyball years (five consecutive years ditto). Mostly they've been middle of the pack, and often worse than that. Their early-'70s WS dynasty drew about 2.8 million over three seasons--not as awful then as that would be today, but not particularly good, either.

only been there once, but i thought it was actually a decent place to see a game (to be fair, i grew up going to three rivers stadium, so basically any park with real grass is cool to me). i guess the enormous foul territory isn't ideal. and yeah it's not 'nice' like a post-camden yards park

but if you spend 30 years cutting everything to the bone while trying to extort the locals to build you a stadium -- and then finally make concrete moves toward leaving -- not too many people are gonna be interested in seeing a team on a 36-126 pace take on arizona

May’s velocity was down in the first inning, topping off at 95.8 mph.

Time was, a pitcher would be ecstatic about hitting 95 on the gun!

Speaking of Reggie (I won't start a thread), big day on the Jaded but Nostalgic Old Guy Calendar: happy 77th. I saw him twice: in 1969, when I was 7, the year he was threatening Maris's HR record at the All-Star break (remember nothing, but I later determined the game was close both geographically and on the calendar to the Manson murders); and in '87, his final season. I remember my dad and I left a couple of innings early and missed one of his last HR.

When I lived in New York, the one time I managed to go to Yankee Stadium--I think it was in 1992--happened to be on Reggie Jackson Day. I wasn't even aware of the occasion until we got there. I got really choked up seeing the man himself.

The one time I was there was pretty close to that--'87 or '88, obstructed view in left field, I think.

I briefly got to meet Mr October in Finsbury Park in London in the summer of 2019. My kids' little league team had somehow organised a skills day with a bunch of former Yankees and Aaron Boone. It was like walking around in a dream. Rivera, A-Rod, Pettite, Matsui, Beltran, and, uh, Nick Swisher. Reggie spent quite a bit of time with the kids, giving them tips on their stances and their swings. Other than that he frankly seemed kind of grumpy and mainly just hung out with Beltran eating BBQ which is fair enough, I think they'd arrived that morning from the East Coast. Cashman was there too and I had a long talk with him about the 'best team ever' years, and which Post and the Daily News reporters he got along with and which ones he didn't. Now that I think about it even Manfred showed up! He gave some boilerplate speech. But the Yanks donated an entire half-container of brand-new Rawlings gear to the team, I guess it was probably worth thousands. Just an incredible day. I'm told Reggie will only sign baseballs on the "sweet spot" where the seams come together at their narrowest, but both balls my kids gave him had already had those spots taken and he signed them anyway. Getting soft!

Oh, man--would love to meet him. His WS quote--"The only thing I don't like about playing in the World Series is I can't stay home and watch myself"--is one of my favourite ever. (Really enjoyed his old-guy book with Bob Gibson.)

Checking game logs, I'm not even close on the game my dad and I left early. It might have been this one, which was '83, four years before he retired.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/06/18/Reggie-Jacksons-two-out-three-run-homer-capped-a-four-run-California/2210424756800/

Memory fading.

             1-run   Other
Athletics      7-7    3-28

RHP Trevor Bauer has been sent down to the Baystars farm and will pitch Sunday.

https://t.co/evCwzztDuF

— Yakyu Cosmopolitan (@yakyucosmo) May 20, 2023

couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy

so is madbum done? it's been almost a month

Here’s the video of Trevor Bauer getting taken deep by the first batter he faced in his first game since being demoted to the minor leagues in Japan. pic.twitter.com/TiOUCjfd8m

— sky (@GonsolinRBW) May 21, 2023

straight into my veins

crazy that his agent popped into the thread to immediately agentsplain this

He chose to be sent down!

Long may his suffering continue.