Marlins 4, Twins 1: Woof

[Aggies7]

54 minutes ago, jkcarew said:

IMO, there’s a rational argument to be made for those that DON’T want the Twins to make the post season at this point. And it has nothing to do with getting clobbered in the first round…as likely as that is.

It has to do with the incentive for change. If they stumble in, is it an excuse for validation of the organization’s leadership? A cause for celebration…”look what we did despite the injuries!” ?? Something that can be sold to a largely casual and gullible fan base?

If they fail, does it force the org to come clean on a significant sliver of reality?

I don’t know, but it’s a legit question, IMO.

You make a good point, but for me it’s about cheapening the playoffs. Does MLB want to be like the NHL and NBA, who have reduced their regular seasons to basically meaningless games by allowing every team around .500 to qualify? MLB plays more games than any other league by far. If you can’t get yourself 10 or so games above .500 after SIX MONTHS of playing, I’m sorry but you aren’t good enough.

It’s never going to change because it makes money for the league. And sure, it adds the Cinderella NCAAB vibe to see a team like Arizona go all the way to the World Series. But the MLB playoffs are and have always been a crapshoot. Arizona was not a better team than the dodgers last year. I hate that a team is rewarded for having a good couple weeks when a team ran the league for 6 months and gets bounced so quickly.

I was excited to see if the twins could win a couple postseason games or take a series back when they were like 15 over .500. Right now, I’d rather watch the Thursday night NFL game tomorrow than see a bunch of guys who have quit.

[BillyBallLives]

18 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

I down vote comments that have a certain tone....

You never answered the man's question. 

[jkcarew]

59 minutes ago, Aggies7 said:

Right now, I’d rather watch the Thursday night NFL game tomorrow than see a bunch of guys who have quit.

I don’t know if they’ve quit…maybe a few have. Hard for me to distinguish between folding under the pressure/stress, just plain failing, and giving up. The sheer completeness and all-encompassing scale of the collapse suggests almost everyone is experiencing at least one of the above…but impossible for me to tell who falls where.

I get the frustration, that’s for sure.

[Riverbrian]

3 hours ago, Aggies7 said:

To be fair, I changed my comment to be less smarmy.
 

I’d like us to be a good team. We do have a horrible record against good teams. 7-21 against NYY, Baltimore and Cleveland. 
 

That’s bad. Having the tiebreaker over two other teams that also don’t deserve to keep playing is pretty meaningless.

Don't deserve to keep playing? 

The rules state that 6 teams will qualify from each league. 9 from each league will not. 3 division winners and 3 best records of the non-division winners. Currently the best record in the American League is 92 wins. The Twins have 81.

11 wins over the course of 157 games is one win over 14.27 games. There is currently a 4 game difference with Houston. Our opponent if we can somehow grab that 6th seed. So Houston has one more win every 39.25 games. We also would have the tiebreaker against them after taking 4 of 6 from them. 

One extra win every 39.25 games. That's like looking at a crack in the sidewalk while you and others stand at the edge of it claiming it's the Grand Canyon. 

Don't deserve to keep playing. Everybody is playing 162 games. The Win Loss Records are ****ING Close. 

I reject whatever logic you and others are using to subjectively define deserving. 

 

[NYCTK]

23 hours ago, Aggies7 said:

You make a good point, but for me it’s about cheapening the playoffs. Does MLB want to be like the NHL and NBA, who have reduced their regular seasons to basically meaningless games by allowing every team around .500 to qualify? MLB plays more games than any other league by far. If you can’t get yourself 10 or so games above .500 after SIX MONTHS of playing, I’m sorry but you aren’t good enough.

It’s never going to change because it makes money for the league. And sure, it adds the Cinderella NCAAB vibe to see a team like Arizona go all the way to the World Series. But the MLB playoffs are and have always been a crapshoot. Arizona was not a better team than the dodgers last year. I hate that a team is rewarded for having a good couple weeks when a team ran the league for 6 months and gets bounced so quickly.

I was excited to see if the twins could win a couple postseason games or take a series back when they were like 15 over .500. Right now, I’d rather watch the Thursday night NFL game tomorrow than see a bunch of guys who have quit.

Way more people agree with you than they care to admit. No one watched the Rangers vs the Diamondbacks. But at least the Rangers won 90. 

[nicksaviking]

On 9/25/2024 at 5:35 PM, Aggies7 said:

You make a good point, but for me it’s about cheapening the playoffs. Does MLB want to be like the NHL and NBA, who have reduced their regular seasons to basically meaningless games by allowing every team around .500 to qualify? MLB plays more games than any other league by far. If you can’t get yourself 10 or so games above .500 after SIX MONTHS of playing, I’m sorry but you aren’t good enough.

It’s never going to change because it makes money for the league. And sure, it adds the Cinderella NCAAB vibe to see a team like Arizona go all the way to the World Series. But the MLB playoffs are and have always been a crapshoot. Arizona was not a better team than the dodgers last year. I hate that a team is rewarded for having a good couple weeks when a team ran the league for 6 months and gets bounced so quickly.

I was excited to see if the twins could win a couple postseason games or take a series back when they were like 15 over .500. Right now, I’d rather watch the Thursday night NFL game tomorrow than see a bunch of guys who have quit.

I'm not sure about the NHL, but if MLB wants to survive, they need to do everything they can to emulate the NBA and NFL. Old school fans may not like it, but once enough of the old school fans are gone, there aren't currently enough 'new school' fans to keep the game afloat.

And that's 100% on the owners who most want to maximize short term profits.

[Aggies7]

2 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

I'm not sure about the NHL, but if MLB wants to survive, they need to do everything they can to emulate the NBA and NFL. Old school fans may not like it, but once enough of the old school fans are gone, there aren't currently enough 'new school' fans to keep the game afloat.

And that's 100% on the owners who most want to maximize short term profits.

So the product gets watered down to keep its existence? Yay.

[nicksaviking]

6 minutes ago, Aggies7 said:

So the product gets watered down to keep its existence? Yay.

You just said you tuned out MLB to watch NFL. Why are you watching that one if it's watered down?

[Aggies7]

11 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

You just said you tuned out MLB to watch NFL. Why are you watching that one if it's watered down?

How is the NFL watered down? If anything, it’s the only sport where expanded playoffs make sense (not that I think they should have expanded) since they don’t play even half the league. 32 teams and each team plays what, 14 other teams? The NBA and NHL are watered down. And they play half the games MLB does.
 

The dodgers finished 16 games ahead of Arizona last season and the dbacks knocked them out. No way you could realistically make an argument that Arizona was better, as a whole. That would get a big “SSS” in any other argument on here.

[Aggies7]

On 9/25/2024 at 9:32 PM, Riverbrian said:

Don't deserve to keep playing? 

The rules state that 6 teams will qualify from each league. 9 from each league will not. 3 division winners and 3 best records of the non-division winners. Currently the best record in the American League is 92 wins. The Twins have 81.

11 wins over the course of 157 games is one win over 14.27 games. There is currently a 4 game difference with Houston. Our opponent if we can somehow grab that 6th seed. So Houston has one more win every 39.25 games. We also would have the tiebreaker against them after taking 4 of 6 from them. 

One extra win every 39.25 games. That's like looking at a crack in the sidewalk while you and others stand at the edge of it claiming it's the Grand Canyon. 

Don't deserve to keep playing. Everybody is playing 162 games. The Win Loss Records are ****ING Close. 

I reject whatever logic you and others are using to subjectively define deserving. 

 

 

On 9/25/2024 at 9:32 PM, Riverbrian said:

Don't deserve to keep playing? 

The rules state that 6 teams will qualify from each league. 9 from each league will not. 3 division winners and 3 best records of the non-division winners. Currently the best record in the American League is 92 wins. The Twins have 81.

11 wins over the course of 157 games is one win over 14.27 games. There is currently a 4 game difference with Houston. Our opponent if we can somehow grab that 6th seed. So Houston has one more win every 39.25 games. We also would have the tiebreaker against them after taking 4 of 6 from them. 

One extra win every 39.25 games. That's like looking at a crack in the sidewalk while you and others stand at the edge of it claiming it's the Grand Canyon. 

Don't deserve to keep playing. Everybody is playing 162 games. The Win Loss Records are ****ING Close. 

I reject whatever logic you and others are using to subjectively define deserving. 

 

They would have no shot to beat at least half the AL teams who qualified in a 5-7 game series. No shot.  3-19 against the Yankees, guardians and orioles. 

[nicksaviking]

3 minutes ago, Aggies7 said:

How is the NFL watered down? If anything, it’s the only sport where expanded playoffs make sense (not that I think they should have expanded) since they don’t play even half the league. 32 teams and each team plays what, 14 other teams? The NBA and NHL are watered down. And they play half the games MLB does.
 

The dodgers finished 16 games ahead of Arizona last season and the dbacks knocked them out. No way you could realistically make an argument that Arizona was better, as a whole. That would get a big “SSS” in any other argument on here.

Why is the NFL continually expanding the playoffs not the same as the MLB? I don't track how it matters how many teams they play in the regular season when your gist is about letting the lesser talent into the post season.

The NCAA screamed bloody murder about doing so for the last 40 years (and they were totally wrong).

[Aggies7]

34 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Why is the NFL continually expanding the playoffs not the same as the MLB? I don't track how it matters how many teams they play in the regular season when your gist is about letting the lesser talent into the post season.

The NCAA screamed bloody murder about doing so for the last 40 years (and they were totally wrong).

They haven’t continually expanded. There were 6 qualifying teams from 1990-2020 and the league added 4 expansion teams in that time. MLB went from 2 to 4 teams in ‘95, 4 to 5 teams in 2012 and then 6.
 

The number of teams you play matters because the schedule is so unbalanced in the NFL. Different divisions play different divisions both inside and outside the conference. You don’t even play all the teams in your own league. While I don’t like seeing a team .500 or less get in, it’s easier to accept in a league where there are comparatively so few games against less than half the teams. I’ve seen the twins play 22 games against the top half of the AL qualifiers and they won 3. They had an opportunity to show they deserved a shot and they couldn’t do it. 

[nicksaviking]

Sorry, but every argument seems to stem from MLB having to be a slave to tradition while the NFL gets to embrace innovation. Tradition is going to kill MLB because there aren't enough people who care about such things anymore, and fewer and fewer every year. There's never been an industry that survived that didn't embrace new ideas, even if some of them didn't pan out.

[Aggies7]

14 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Sorry, but every argument seems to stem from MLB having to be a slave to tradition while the NFL gets to embrace innovation. Tradition is going to kill MLB because there aren't enough people who care about such things anymore, and fewer and fewer every year. There's never been an industry that survived that didn't embrace new ideas, even if some of them didn't pan out.

It’s got nothing to do with tradition. It’s the idea that a team could play mediocre to slightly above mediocre baseball for SIX MONTHS and just have a hot couple weeks and get to the World Series because that’s how baseball is. That’s why the 100 loss marlins might take a series from the twins. The teams with the best records in MLB win the World Series less often than the top seeds win the Super Bowl.

Now, with both leagues playing each other and fewer divisional games, you could make an argument that the MLB playoffs make no sense. We try to decide in one month what’s already been shown in 6 months.