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2023 MLB Thread; Say Hey, Charlie Hustle: Rest In Power, Willie. RIP, Pete.
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by CP1708,
- Start date
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Thats wild they knew lucky charms was positive but let him play, and then he comes back to celebrate.
Very American tho
Very American tho
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Dodgers gotta get some severe penalties for that. Knowingly putting people’s lives at risk is disgusting 
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MLB is in no place to tell the dodgers anything about punishment, fines or a penaltyDodgers gotta get some severe penalties for that. Knowingly putting people’s lives at risk is disgusting
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Health and lives at risk
Stealing signs
Stealing signs
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Lol right?Health and lives at risk
Stealing signs
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Salty in here ...
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Already forgot who won the WS. Thank god I have this thread to remind me
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Just beautiful
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Wonder if we're gonna see a strike or lockout in 2021 with the new CBA upcoming and COVID sticking around.
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I don't care that it was 3 years ago, it's still F the Houston A%$holes, I mean Astros, with their cheating a%$es.
They really proved they can't win a
after 2017 without hidden cameras in the center field of Minute Maid Park, banging trash cans, and stealing signs. 
I can't believe bootleg looking Luchador ****** Jose Altuve won 2017 AL MVP cheating his a#$ off. He hasn't been
without cheating hard.
They really proved they can't win a
after 2017 without hidden cameras in the center field of Minute Maid Park, banging trash cans, and stealing signs. I can't believe bootleg looking Luchador ****** Jose Altuve won 2017 AL MVP cheating his a#$ off. He hasn't been
without cheating hard.
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Why the Rays took Blake Snell out while he was mowing down the Dodgers in Game 6
The Rays' ace owned L.A. twice through the order. What was behind manager Kevin Cash's ill-fated decision to hook him?
The Tampa Bay Rays are one of baseball's two youngest franchises, and this season was just their second World Series appearance. They lost in five games to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008. So when Tuesday rolled around and it was Game 6, it marked the closest Tampa Bay had been to a championship so far. It was objectively the biggest game in franchise history.
The biggest moment of Game 6 came in the sixth inning. That's when Blake Snell got the hook. Afterward, while the Dodgers and all of Los Angeles were celebrating their first title in 32 years, that moment hung over the Rays. It will hang over them and their manager, Kevin Cash, for some time to come.
Through five innings, Snell was about as good as a pitcher can be. He had faced only one batter over the minimum. He had struck out nine Dodgers hitters. He had given up one hit, a Chris Taylor single that was the only hard-hit ball against him in the game. He had thrown only 69 pitches. His team led 1-0 on Randy Arozarena's first-inning home run.
On Snell's 70th pitch, he got A.J. Pollock on a popup. On his 73rd pitch, Austin Barnes looped a single to center, a 91 mph drive that fell under the threshold of a hard-hit ball. It ended a streak of 10 straight batters Snell had retired.
Snell had done all of this against the Dodgers, a historically good team with a historically good lineup.
Mookie Betts was up next to step to the plate. The leverage index on the play was 2.12, according to FanGraphs, meaning it would have more than double the impact on the game's outcome than an average play. Only one plate appearance in the game had a higher leverage index. It was arguably the biggest in-game moment in the history of the Rays.
In the bullpen, Cash had his best reliever, Nick Anderson, ready to go. For most of baseball history, this would have been a no-brainer. Snell is a recent American League Cy Young winner and the Rays' No. 1 starter. He was throwing as well as he has all year, and his pitch count was exactly what you want to see when an ace starter is trying to carry his team on his back. Take him out of the game? Are you serious?
But this is not most of baseball history. This is 2020, and the Tampa Bay Rays are the most 2020 team of them all. That's a compliment. No team has gotten more out of playing the percentages and working the margins for every strategic advantage that can be mustered. The Rays Way got them to Game 6 of the World Series. Also: The Rays Way might have cost them Game 6 of the World Series.
Snell looked stunned as Cash emerged from the dugout. But reality soon set in, and the lefty issued what appeared to be a colorfully worded protest to the decision he knew had already been made. He was coming out. Anderson was coming in.
"The only motive was that the lineup the Dodgers feature is as potent as any team in the league," Cash said. "Personally, I felt that Blake had done his job and then some. Mookie coming along, the third time through, I value that. I totally get and understand the questions that come with it."
It was the wrong move. It was the wrong move because it didn't work. Would Snell have continued to put up zeros? We will never know.
The decision is not hard to defend statistically, and we will do that. There also are some numbers that work against it, and we'll throw those out there too. However, first we will consider what most longtime fans watching on national television -- most of whom do not necessarily watch the game with analytics at the back of their minds -- were seeing.
They were seeing an outstanding pitcher dominating the best lineup in the game, doing so while barely breaking a sweat. He was stepping up in the way fans always hope their aces will be able to step up when the stakes are high. There was no reason, to the eye of the median baseball fan, to take Blake Snell out of the game. The principle of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" leaps to mind.
"I wanted to keep going," Snell said. "I felt confident with the way I adjusted, seeing them for the second time [through the lineup]. I believe in myself and what I did. Third time through, fourth time, if needed -- I wanted to go the whole game."
That Cash did remove Snell will surely result in a spate of "computers are running the game" rants. Doing so removes agency from Cash, who as Snell's manager has a reading of the numbers but also the feedback he gets from his pitching coach and his own eyes, from watching Snell time and again. The decision to go to the bullpen was not that much different than L.A. manager Dave Roberts pulling future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw in the sixth inning of the Series' Game 5 despite a pitch count of just 85.
But there is one chief difference: When Roberts went to his bullpen Sunday, his bullpen did its job. When Cash went to his Tuesday, his bullpen faltered.
So why did Cash do it?
The first thing to consider is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Snell had a 3.24 ERA this season, tops among the Rays' regular starting pitchers, with an ERA+ (131) that would have ranked in the top 25 in baseball if he qualified for the leaderboard. But Snell didn't qualify because he averaged just 4.5 innings per start. He didn't complete six innings in any of his 17 starts, including the playoffs, entering Game 6.
And of course, Snell didn't get through six innings Tuesday, either. It's not unheard of for a Rays starter to do it. It happened nine times during the regular season but only twice during the playoffs. It's not because of pitch counts or inefficiency, though Snell has been inefficient at times. This is just what the Rays do, and whatever Snell showed in Game 6, it wasn't enough to convince Cash to depart from the practice he has followed all season long.
Rays veteran Kevin Kiermaier admitted that the move was deflating, given the degree to which Snell was dominating.
"Even though it was a 1-0 lead right there, the way Blake was throwing, we thought he could get through two or three more innings, potentially, given what his pitch count was," Kiermaier said. "Baseball works in mysterious ways. It was unfortunate to see, but we had a certain formula all year and we won a lot of ball games with that. We went with our gut, and it just didn't work out for us."
Betts would have represented the start of Snell's third trip through the order. Including the playoffs, Snell faced the same hitter a third time in a game only 34 times this season. Against lefties -- there were 10 of those -- he allowed a .700 OPS. Betts isn't a lefty, though. Against righties for a third time, Snell allowed a 1.072 OPS.
That sample is small, to be sure. So let's look at Snell overall for his career. Third time through against lefties: .472 OPS. Against righties: .800. It also should be noted that Betts isn't just any righty. He is Mookie Betts, whom some consider to be the best player in baseball right now.
"I get it, the third time through the lineup," Snell said. "But I think I'm going to make the adjustments I need to make as I see them that third time. I just believe in me, in myself. I didn't walk nobody. For most of that game, I was dominating every outcome possible. And that lineup is so talented."
There was some chatter about Betts struggling against lefties this season, which is true. His OPS this campaign, including the playoffs, was .601, easily his worst single-season mark. However, does anyone really think Betts has suddenly developed an inability to hit lefties? Or is it a small-sample fluke? Before this season, his lowest OPS off southpaws was .835, and his career mark, even with the 2020 numbers included, is .885.
Then again, there was the way Snell was hammering the top of the Dodgers' lineup. He had faced Betts, Corey Seager and Justin Turner a total of six times through the first five innings of Game 6. He struck them out all six times. According to ESPN Stats & Information data, it was only the second time a pitcher had done that against an opponent's 1-2-3 in a World Series game. The other guy to complete the feat was the Dodgers' Sandy Koufax, who did it against the New York Yankees in 1963.
The problem is that while we knew Snell was throwing the ball well, it's harder to make a case that Cash could have expected the same from Anderson. Through Oct. 6, which was Anderson's first appearance against the Yankees during the AL Division Series, he had a 0.86 ERA for the season with 30 strikeouts and three walks in 21 innings with only one homer allowed.
However, this year's playoffs were the longest in history, with 16 teams trying to navigate four rounds to get the 13 wins that would mean a championship. It was a grind, especially for the relievers. Anderson made seven more appearances after that outing against the Yankees. He gave up at least one run in all of them. He blew two saves, took two losses and posted a 7.20 ERA with five strikeouts, four walks and three homers allowed in 10 innings.
But since we keep bringing up sample sizes, we have to point out that those 10 innings are a minuscule sample. Also, if the Rays saw something in the way Anderson was throwing -- something off or diminished -- then Cash wouldn't have been using him as the relief ace in the most important moment in the most important game of the season.
Nevertheless, we leave it to you to decide the key question: Was Cash choosing a pitcher performing at his nadir over a pitcher performing at his peak? For his part, Cash insisted that it wasn't a predetermined, automatic decision. It wasn't an easy one, either.
In any event, all that is left is the box score. That box score indicates that Betts doubled off Anderson, pushing Barnes to third. Anderson then threw a wild pitch, scoring Barnes and sending Betts to third. Betts scored on Seager's grounder to put the Dodgers ahead. When asked if he regretted the decision, Cash could only laugh.
"Well, yeah," Cash said. "I regret it because it didn't work out. I feel like the thought process was right. Every decision that is made, that end result has a pretty weighing factor in how you feel about it. If we had to do it over again, I would have the utmost confidence in Nick Anderson to get through that inning."
The Rays entered the inning leading 1-0 with their ace rolling. They exited it down 2-1 with their frustrated ace watching from the dugout -- and many of their fans wondering why, how and for what reason.
The reason is that the Rays are the Rays, and Cash is Cash. If those things weren't true, they would have never been in position to be second-guessed over one of the most crucial moments in franchise history. Hopefully, after the sting wears off, that can be the solace.
Cody Bellinger says he was shocked after the Rays decided to pull Snell in the sixth inning. He also describes how happy he is for Clayton Kershaw to become a champion.
As for the Dodgers, Seager, Roberts and Betts were all asked about the Rays' decision to pull Snell when they did. All admitted they were happy when he departed. Betts put it best and -- fair warning, Rays fans -- his response will not be a source of the solace you are looking for.
"Man, it was kind of like a sigh of relief," Betts said. "Had he stayed in the game, he might have pitched a complete game. I don't know what would have happened, but he was rolling. He was pitching really, really well. That was the Cy Young that came tonight. Once he came out of the game, it was like a breath of fresh air."
The biggest moment of Game 6 came in the sixth inning. That's when Blake Snell got the hook. Afterward, while the Dodgers and all of Los Angeles were celebrating their first title in 32 years, that moment hung over the Rays. It will hang over them and their manager, Kevin Cash, for some time to come.
Through five innings, Snell was about as good as a pitcher can be. He had faced only one batter over the minimum. He had struck out nine Dodgers hitters. He had given up one hit, a Chris Taylor single that was the only hard-hit ball against him in the game. He had thrown only 69 pitches. His team led 1-0 on Randy Arozarena's first-inning home run.
On Snell's 70th pitch, he got A.J. Pollock on a popup. On his 73rd pitch, Austin Barnes looped a single to center, a 91 mph drive that fell under the threshold of a hard-hit ball. It ended a streak of 10 straight batters Snell had retired.
Snell had done all of this against the Dodgers, a historically good team with a historically good lineup.
Mookie Betts was up next to step to the plate. The leverage index on the play was 2.12, according to FanGraphs, meaning it would have more than double the impact on the game's outcome than an average play. Only one plate appearance in the game had a higher leverage index. It was arguably the biggest in-game moment in the history of the Rays.
In the bullpen, Cash had his best reliever, Nick Anderson, ready to go. For most of baseball history, this would have been a no-brainer. Snell is a recent American League Cy Young winner and the Rays' No. 1 starter. He was throwing as well as he has all year, and his pitch count was exactly what you want to see when an ace starter is trying to carry his team on his back. Take him out of the game? Are you serious?
But this is not most of baseball history. This is 2020, and the Tampa Bay Rays are the most 2020 team of them all. That's a compliment. No team has gotten more out of playing the percentages and working the margins for every strategic advantage that can be mustered. The Rays Way got them to Game 6 of the World Series. Also: The Rays Way might have cost them Game 6 of the World Series.
Snell looked stunned as Cash emerged from the dugout. But reality soon set in, and the lefty issued what appeared to be a colorfully worded protest to the decision he knew had already been made. He was coming out. Anderson was coming in.
"The only motive was that the lineup the Dodgers feature is as potent as any team in the league," Cash said. "Personally, I felt that Blake had done his job and then some. Mookie coming along, the third time through, I value that. I totally get and understand the questions that come with it."
It was the wrong move. It was the wrong move because it didn't work. Would Snell have continued to put up zeros? We will never know.
The decision is not hard to defend statistically, and we will do that. There also are some numbers that work against it, and we'll throw those out there too. However, first we will consider what most longtime fans watching on national television -- most of whom do not necessarily watch the game with analytics at the back of their minds -- were seeing.
They were seeing an outstanding pitcher dominating the best lineup in the game, doing so while barely breaking a sweat. He was stepping up in the way fans always hope their aces will be able to step up when the stakes are high. There was no reason, to the eye of the median baseball fan, to take Blake Snell out of the game. The principle of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" leaps to mind.
"I wanted to keep going," Snell said. "I felt confident with the way I adjusted, seeing them for the second time [through the lineup]. I believe in myself and what I did. Third time through, fourth time, if needed -- I wanted to go the whole game."
That Cash did remove Snell will surely result in a spate of "computers are running the game" rants. Doing so removes agency from Cash, who as Snell's manager has a reading of the numbers but also the feedback he gets from his pitching coach and his own eyes, from watching Snell time and again. The decision to go to the bullpen was not that much different than L.A. manager Dave Roberts pulling future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw in the sixth inning of the Series' Game 5 despite a pitch count of just 85.
But there is one chief difference: When Roberts went to his bullpen Sunday, his bullpen did its job. When Cash went to his Tuesday, his bullpen faltered.
So why did Cash do it?
The first thing to consider is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Snell had a 3.24 ERA this season, tops among the Rays' regular starting pitchers, with an ERA+ (131) that would have ranked in the top 25 in baseball if he qualified for the leaderboard. But Snell didn't qualify because he averaged just 4.5 innings per start. He didn't complete six innings in any of his 17 starts, including the playoffs, entering Game 6.
And of course, Snell didn't get through six innings Tuesday, either. It's not unheard of for a Rays starter to do it. It happened nine times during the regular season but only twice during the playoffs. It's not because of pitch counts or inefficiency, though Snell has been inefficient at times. This is just what the Rays do, and whatever Snell showed in Game 6, it wasn't enough to convince Cash to depart from the practice he has followed all season long.
Rays veteran Kevin Kiermaier admitted that the move was deflating, given the degree to which Snell was dominating.
"Even though it was a 1-0 lead right there, the way Blake was throwing, we thought he could get through two or three more innings, potentially, given what his pitch count was," Kiermaier said. "Baseball works in mysterious ways. It was unfortunate to see, but we had a certain formula all year and we won a lot of ball games with that. We went with our gut, and it just didn't work out for us."
Betts would have represented the start of Snell's third trip through the order. Including the playoffs, Snell faced the same hitter a third time in a game only 34 times this season. Against lefties -- there were 10 of those -- he allowed a .700 OPS. Betts isn't a lefty, though. Against righties for a third time, Snell allowed a 1.072 OPS.
That sample is small, to be sure. So let's look at Snell overall for his career. Third time through against lefties: .472 OPS. Against righties: .800. It also should be noted that Betts isn't just any righty. He is Mookie Betts, whom some consider to be the best player in baseball right now.
"I get it, the third time through the lineup," Snell said. "But I think I'm going to make the adjustments I need to make as I see them that third time. I just believe in me, in myself. I didn't walk nobody. For most of that game, I was dominating every outcome possible. And that lineup is so talented."
There was some chatter about Betts struggling against lefties this season, which is true. His OPS this campaign, including the playoffs, was .601, easily his worst single-season mark. However, does anyone really think Betts has suddenly developed an inability to hit lefties? Or is it a small-sample fluke? Before this season, his lowest OPS off southpaws was .835, and his career mark, even with the 2020 numbers included, is .885.
Then again, there was the way Snell was hammering the top of the Dodgers' lineup. He had faced Betts, Corey Seager and Justin Turner a total of six times through the first five innings of Game 6. He struck them out all six times. According to ESPN Stats & Information data, it was only the second time a pitcher had done that against an opponent's 1-2-3 in a World Series game. The other guy to complete the feat was the Dodgers' Sandy Koufax, who did it against the New York Yankees in 1963.
The problem is that while we knew Snell was throwing the ball well, it's harder to make a case that Cash could have expected the same from Anderson. Through Oct. 6, which was Anderson's first appearance against the Yankees during the AL Division Series, he had a 0.86 ERA for the season with 30 strikeouts and three walks in 21 innings with only one homer allowed.
However, this year's playoffs were the longest in history, with 16 teams trying to navigate four rounds to get the 13 wins that would mean a championship. It was a grind, especially for the relievers. Anderson made seven more appearances after that outing against the Yankees. He gave up at least one run in all of them. He blew two saves, took two losses and posted a 7.20 ERA with five strikeouts, four walks and three homers allowed in 10 innings.
But since we keep bringing up sample sizes, we have to point out that those 10 innings are a minuscule sample. Also, if the Rays saw something in the way Anderson was throwing -- something off or diminished -- then Cash wouldn't have been using him as the relief ace in the most important moment in the most important game of the season.
Nevertheless, we leave it to you to decide the key question: Was Cash choosing a pitcher performing at his nadir over a pitcher performing at his peak? For his part, Cash insisted that it wasn't a predetermined, automatic decision. It wasn't an easy one, either.
In any event, all that is left is the box score. That box score indicates that Betts doubled off Anderson, pushing Barnes to third. Anderson then threw a wild pitch, scoring Barnes and sending Betts to third. Betts scored on Seager's grounder to put the Dodgers ahead. When asked if he regretted the decision, Cash could only laugh.
"Well, yeah," Cash said. "I regret it because it didn't work out. I feel like the thought process was right. Every decision that is made, that end result has a pretty weighing factor in how you feel about it. If we had to do it over again, I would have the utmost confidence in Nick Anderson to get through that inning."
The Rays entered the inning leading 1-0 with their ace rolling. They exited it down 2-1 with their frustrated ace watching from the dugout -- and many of their fans wondering why, how and for what reason.
The reason is that the Rays are the Rays, and Cash is Cash. If those things weren't true, they would have never been in position to be second-guessed over one of the most crucial moments in franchise history. Hopefully, after the sting wears off, that can be the solace.
Cody Bellinger says he was shocked after the Rays decided to pull Snell in the sixth inning. He also describes how happy he is for Clayton Kershaw to become a champion.
As for the Dodgers, Seager, Roberts and Betts were all asked about the Rays' decision to pull Snell when they did. All admitted they were happy when he departed. Betts put it best and -- fair warning, Rays fans -- his response will not be a source of the solace you are looking for.
"Man, it was kind of like a sigh of relief," Betts said. "Had he stayed in the game, he might have pitched a complete game. I don't know what would have happened, but he was rolling. He was pitching really, really well. That was the Cy Young that came tonight. Once he came out of the game, it was like a breath of fresh air."
tl;dr Cash went with what worked for them all season, and analytics doesn't give a damn about your feelings
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I'm so glad that my hometown teams, Lakers & Dodgers, have now made L.A. legitimately the City Of Champions again after 32 years. 
And those soon-to-be Inglewood Clippers need to get the F out of L.A. city soon because they're perennial losers. And the Angels need to take "Los Angeles" out of their namesake since they have been in Anaheim playing in an outdated dump down the street from Disneyland since the '60s.
🗑
And those soon-to-be Inglewood Clippers need to get the F out of L.A. city soon because they're perennial losers. And the Angels need to take "Los Angeles" out of their namesake since they have been in Anaheim playing in an outdated dump down the street from Disneyland since the '60s.
🗑
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Don’t forget the Nats beat them while they cheatedI don't care that it was 3 years ago, it's still F the Houston A%$holes, I mean Astros, with their cheating a%$es.
They really proved they can't win a
I can't believe bootleg looking Luchador ****** Jose Altuve won 2017 AL MVP cheating his a#$ off. He hasn't been
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Feels great to be on the right side of an analytic decision. For years it was always Roberts making those dumb decisions.
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Congrats BAYBEE
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Feels great to finally see the Dodgers win one. I've seen all my other teams win except for them.
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Last night was something I've been waiting to see happen again since I was 8. Good to see them win another during my lifetime, during a year that we thought no good would come out of. Lakers and Dodgers; it can't get any better for a LA sports fan.
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Crying at equating putting lives at risk and stealing signs. That’s wild to me but carry on. Not surprised but please stop with the false moral high ground. Enjoy, they deserved to win either way
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And that’s your number one team
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Crying at equating putting lives at risk and stealing signs. That’s wild to me but carry on. Not surprised but please stop with the false moral high ground. Enjoy, they deserved to win either way
Turned a WS win into a super spreader event, couldn’t have happened to a better team and fanbase
