general 2021 MLB discussion thread

willson contreras is still a cub, i am surprised to learn

rockies traded mychal givens

Jon fucking Lester, maaaaaan

I thought he wasn’t allowed to pitch without David Ross?

Orioles said to be demanding very high price for Tanner Scott and Paul Fry and at this rate, who knows, maybe they'll get it

apparently they didn't

Really hate the Berrios deal. A lot to cough up considering the Jays have three teams ahead of them for the last wildcard spot.

― FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Friday, July 30, 2021 5:41 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

He'll be a Blue Jay next season if I understand correctly.

He will (assuming no work stoppage)

hey everyone, check out the Cleveland Guardians website at https://www.clevelandguardians.com/

sick

Big match against the Beekeepers on Sept. 1st.

I'm glad Rickett's f'ed up the Cubs. They can lose for another 100 years while those a'holes own the club.

I grew up watching the Cubs on WGN back in the 80s, but the Ricketts are scum. They make the McCaskey's seem lovable by comparison.

it’s the end of an era but nick madrigal is good! codi heuer is good! pete crow-armstrong is good!

with Hader on the Covid-19 list, the Brewers signed John Axford, one of the most beloved closers in Brewers history. 38 years old and now sporting a mostly-white beard, he came in with a 6-0 lead and went hit batter, flyout, single, single, RBI walk, exiting the game on what appears to be a torn UCL. it's, uh...what's the opposite of a fairy tale?

that's the john axford i know

well I guess they got what they paid for (he was traded for a buck)

in the meantime enjoy this

Victor Robles lets his praying mantis friend know there's one out. pic.twitter.com/7xHkgOtatP

— Major League GIFs (@MajorLeagueGIFs) August 3, 2021

well I guess they got what they paid for (he was traded for a buck)

― frogbs, Tuesday, August 3, 2021 3:31 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

which one?

Very nice eephus thrown by Brock Holt, I am proud to say

ffs

MLB, Barstool Sports in significant talks to broadcast games

MLB and Barstool potentially could team up to create a new type of broadcast with a focus on in-game gambling.

This doesn't mean I have to find out what that is, right? I feel like I just have some general miasmic sense that it's an annoying site that likes crypto and broiness.

An update from the Colorado Rockies regarding the incident at the end of yesterday's game: pic.twitter.com/4cCS8peKnU

— Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) August 9, 2021

the yankees blew four saves last night — and won

man congrats to Jake Arrieta for signing that contract when he did

Corbin Burnes just struck out 10 in a row, which ties an MLB record

wainwright threw a Maddux last night, a 2-hit shutout against the pirates. on 88 pitches!!

daaamn

arrieta placed on unconditional release waivers

I didn’t know about this, but he’s apparently a bit of an asshole.

morbs was willing to overlook it

but yeah the cubs seem to be getting to 85% by cutting/trading away vaxxholes like arrieta and rizzo

ps i have never seen 'field of dreams' and also fuck this entire exercise

I loved it lol

I was going to put that game on the bar TVs, but our local cable co. had let its contract with the Fox affiliate expire and was running Newsmax on that channel. Fortunately the Little League World Series regionals were on.

I assumed it was over because pf the angels on MLB channel but whatever field of dreams is good

i am surrounded by corny indie fucs!

Wait I thought the indie stance would be anti field o dreams

looked like a crazy game, would have been a good one to watch.

Field of Dreams: book good, movie bad

I think this is the official corny indie stance

yankees lost, so i am now okay with it

sheehan

What made last night’s game great wasn’t Kevin Costner or the corn stalks or the emotional manipulation. What made it great was Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton and Eloy Jimenez and Jose Abreu and, oh man, Tim Anderson. What made it great was Michael Kopech pitching out of a jam, Luke Voit turning an unassisted double play, Tyler Wade mixing in some of that Deadball smallball with a bunt single and a steal. What made it great was baseball players playing baseball.

Some people came away from last night saying baseball should have more events like this. I came away from it wondering what it would be like if the other 2,429 games on the schedule got this kind of treatment. You know why last night’s game looked so good? Because Fox produced it like an NFL game. It treated it like an NFL game. It celebrated it like an NFL game.

It’s funny, after baseball spent decades turning itself into a television afterthought, we’ve now had two games on broadcast television, outside of normal windows, in five days. The Cubs and White Sox were on ABC Sunday night, and the Yankees and White Sox were on Fox last night. This used to be more common, of course; NBC started showing night games regularly in the 1970s, and ABC picked up that baton in 1976 but slowly backed away from prime-time baseball over the course of the 1980s. The CBS deal, which started in 1990, included no weeknight prime-time games on network TV, and the feature games of the week shifted to ESPN.

The story of the last 40 years has been baseball becoming a lesser presence on network TV and the NFL becoming a TV behemoth. That’s not something that just happened, though. MLB chose this path, chose to partner with networks that treated the sport like an afterthought for six months, chose to diminish itself on the national stage, chose to regionalize itself.

It’s time to make different choices. Last night's lesson isn’t that events are cool, but that baseball is cool. Hell, forget what happened in Iowa. Last night, Shohei Ohtani threw six innings, allowed one run, and hit a double. Home Run Derby champ Pete Alonso walked off the Nationals to create a virtual three-way tie atop the NL East. The Giants, an incredible story, won again to stretch their NL West lead to five games. If you can’t find three hours a week to put those stories and a hundred others on prime-time television, you’re not a partner.

For three decades MLB chose to let television treat it as a stepchild. What we saw last night is what happens when a baseball game gets treated like a football game, promoted as a game you have to see, produced with the best of everything, selling superstars you have to watch.

MLB has to stop apologizing for itself and demand that kind of treatment all the time. What we saw from a cornfield in the middle of nowhere last night could just as easily be broadcast from Chavez Ravine next week and Citi Field the week after that and the Trop the week after that. Big games between contending teams featuring huge stars, buried not on channels 206 and 587 but on 5 and 11, promoted and broadcast proudly the way Packers/Cowboys or Patriots/Steelers are.

The signature scene in “Field of Dreams” is a speech by James Earl Jones’s Terence Mann. “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.” In just three minutes, Mann makes the case for baseball more passionately than anyone in baseball has made for it in fifty years. The game needs that now. It doesn’t need gambling partnerships and crypto deals and NFT plays. It needs the game’s stewards to stand behind its game and its players and proudly demand what it got last night, all the time.

meanwhile, people in iowa are blacked out from watching the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox, Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals and Milwaukee Brewers! crazy

it's like please, please, don't watch baseball. especially if you paid for it

people in iowa, you must go the field of dreams to watch baseball. it is the only place where mlb will let you watch baseball

If you build it, they will begrudgingly come and complain about the beer prices

chris sale is set to return from the dead soon

yeah Hulu dropped the Brewers games and it basically took me from being able to rattle off all the players' stats to not even knowing who's all on the team anymore. MLB should do something about that!!

Manfred feels quite demonstrably the worst of a long line of bad baseball commissioners

And I feel he has not even come close to reaching his nadir

pic.twitter.com/AaaZ2tiQxj

— Lindsay Zoladz (@lindsayzoladz) August 14, 2021

The stars seem to have aligned for the Barves at just the right time. Their strength of schedule looks pretty favorable for the rest of the season too.

this afternoon I took a nap and had a dream about a bar poker game that I did not go to (it was last Friday and I really wanted to play but backroom bar games are kind of a dicey proposition right now). in this dream a guy is telling me about the cash game and who was all there and he mentions that the big winner in the cash game was Barry Zito. I have not thought about Barry Zito in years, never really paid much attention to him, and now he's like the one guy named in this random dream of mine? was he in the news or something lately? how did this get caught in my subconscious?

it means barry zito was dreaming about you too