TheLeviathan
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Everything posted by TheLeviathan
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I wish hockey would do away with fighting, it's unnecessary. Again, however, fighting is a penalty. Bunting in the seventh inning is legal as far as I know. Unless you know something I don't. Very simple question, do baseball players frequently use unwritten rules to start brawls or throw pitches at other players? Except that's open to interpretation. The other 24 guys on his club backed him up. This is what happens when your rules are arbitrary and built around being offended by nonsense. Just about anything can be nonsense you get offended by. All of this, mind you, is completely irrelevant to the flawed analogy you keep defending. The guy in the supermarket can "feel" however he wants. In baseball they have systemetized, via the unwritten rules, a means of justifying acting aggressively towards another human based on those feelings. There is certainly more physicality in football and hockey...they're physical sports. But could you please count up all the times a hockey player celebrated a goal and had a puck thrown at him? Or an NFL player celebrated a TD and had the ball thrown at him? Or perhaps how many times you've watched a disgruntled supermarket shopper hurl a coconut at someone for being bumped into and people thought it was acceptable. This year in baseball alone I think we're up to 5 instances of this behavior. And those are just the heavily reported ones. Let's keep this apples to apples please, you've had a lot of trouble with that.
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Great post Sam! Here's my caution for where this unravels for me: Unwritten rules basically excuse stupid people to do stupid things. That's kind of my point. The only level at which unwritten rules works at all is at the very loose tie to being respectful to other humans. These aren't unwritten, they're just social norms and people confuse them to be the same thing. The unwritten rules justify absurd behavior in response to perceived slights but with no consistency and completely arbitrary enforcement and interpretation.
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Stupid regression to the mean..... -
He's a baseball player desperately reaching for some kind of parallel or analogy. What he doesn't realize is that none exists, so that's why his examples are so preposterous.
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Moneyball II: Oakland Strikes Back
TheLeviathan replied to Brock Beauchamp's topic in Other Baseball
There were two points: the team has a lot of dreck on it's 25 man roster. (This has been a consistent problem. Hell, Ryan used to dumpster dive for it and really poorly allocate what money he did have) And the other point was that in addition to these guys being bad players they have often been in the way of younger players. I gave examples, you're also welcome to go back through the team's rosters over the last decade. I could've listed Sidney Ponson, Mike Lamb, Brian Bass, and more if you'd like. It wasn't clear what you said nor is it clear how any of this paragraph has anything to do with what I'm saying. -
Hughes has been great and Gibson has been much improved. My issues with the pitching staff have been Correia, Pelfrey, and the idea that Nolasco > Garza. Pretty much 3 for 3 on those guys.
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Except the analogy doesn't work. In the supermarket analogy that guy gets arrested and prosecuted. In baseball it's acceptable to start a brawl or throw a pitch at someone. It's certainly not prosecuted in any court of law I've heard of. Here's another way to look at it: the difference is that baseball's unwritten rules JUSTIFY getting upset and doing something about it. In the rest of society we look at the person getting upset and tell them to lighten up and grow up. The analogy listed talks about how someone feels. In baseball we're talking about justifying actions, which in no way, shape, or form is allowed anywhere else in society without legal ramifications. So I'm just doing what the rest of society does - looks at the guy in the supermarket and tells him to grow up. Precisely what I'm telling baseball to do.
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I'm a huge fan of calling up May and Meyer, but let's not count on them to be improvements. Given how bad some of our current options are they may not be any worse, but we shouldn't count on improvements either. Still absolutely the right move for now and the future though.
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Why would anyone be positive about this starting staff at this point? They've been bad and aren't going to get any better with this group as is.
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Good news for sure.
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From that article: I'm sorry, did I miss the memo that said it's ok to turn, at the supermarket, pick up a coconut, and hurl it at someone's ribcage? Because unless we've all agreed to that and I missed it, this analogy falls apart. As does the whole argument.
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I've often found myself in situations in which unwritten rules involve someone hurling something at me as hard as they can for any slight perception of disrespect. Boy do staplers hurt! And don't get me started about how it's ok for people to ram their car into things for getting cut off!
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This is pivotal that the Twins do at some point soon. Gibson (despite some funky home/road splits) has been good this year. We need to give Meyer a taste this year as an investment for next year.
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And this is spot on.
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Straight from the mouth of McCarthy: He could not have made a better argument AGAINST his own position. When you have to reach to depths like that to make a parallel, it shows just how absurd the notion that these things exist elsewhere. The unwritten rules are not just common decency and respect, they go WAY beyond that. All he could come up with was extreme examples that better illustrate how absurd baseball is.
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"X doesn't cause fight, people cause fights" is a convenient excuse for the unwritten rules. They encourage this sort of behavior because they allow people to think there are "rules" not codified that they can retaliate against. Most of which are petty and childish.
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If nothing else the Morales signing should be exciting because it's atypical of this team.
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Only baseball has this systemic nonsense. It is uniquely a professional baseball thing in scope and severity of stupidity.
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It's a good summary, the problem with putting all of this on Machado (and a great deal of it belongs there to be sure) is that it ignores that the unwritten rules culture breeds this sort of petulance. Machado might be a whiny, over-sensitive person in general but because baseball indulges that sort of behaviors these sorts of things happen more often. It's sort of like arguing "unwritten rules don't cause fights, people cause fights" - I don't buy that line of argument any time it's paraded out.
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Moneyball II: Oakland Strikes Back
TheLeviathan replied to Brock Beauchamp's topic in Other Baseball
I never said Batista did, you conflated two points. I said they often populate their roster with dreck. Sometimes that dreck blocks better players, not always, but they are still awful ballplayers. Your first paragraph appeared to lack a thesis. It was just a bunch of random statements organized together. If your point is that the Rays didn't achieve much I'm not sure where to begin. -
Drama Queens.
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How about neither? At this point we need to see how Morales and Target Field get along, but I can say with 100% certainty that Willingham needs to move on. Get a younger version of him next year. Or a Cuddyer reunion tour. But investing another year in Willingham is a mistake.
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Article: Minor League's Salary Structure Unfair?
TheLeviathan replied to John Bonnes's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Except the player's union is exclusively interested in major league players, not the minor leaguers. There is no representation of that faction and they are subject to a clause that is only allowed because of the anti-trust exemption. The very same clause was negotiated out for major league players in collective bargaining and the exemption no longer applies. Until there is actual representation and negotiation on behalf of minor leaguers, they are working as indentured servants because of a perfect storm of legal protections, union inadequacy, public indifference, and ownership greed. Splitting the players union to minors/majors would probably set off some alarm bells in a good way. These kinds of court cases might be rallying points to do that as well. Lawsuits like this may or may not prevail ultimately - but they will expose all of these unfair/illegal practices coming together to create this situation. That can only lead to better things for minor league players. -
Moneyball II: Oakland Strikes Back
TheLeviathan replied to Brock Beauchamp's topic in Other Baseball
A team like Tampa is always recycling young talent and with many young talents there is a required investment of opportunity that may not always yield great results initially. The Twins, much to their credit (and something I was banging the gavel for quite frequently), let Gibson come up last year and struggle. They're seeing the payoff for that now with Gibson's improvement. The Rays maximize their roster with platoons, defensive flexibility, and a wide range of other assets that Maddon is very good at utilizing. The A's do this as well. The Twins not only populate their roster with players you roll your eyes at (Tony Batista, Juan Castro, Jason Bartlett 2014, Rondell White, Brian Buscher, I could go on) but they also often play them over young players or flat out better players. The Rays and the As get full use out of their 25 spots and design it to maximize their win potential. The Twins are much more ham-handed. -
It's official: Kubel Designated for Assignment
TheLeviathan replied to Seth Stohs's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
I always dug Kubes, was sad to see him go the first time. This time it was the right move and overdue, but unfortunate the fairy tale ending didn't come together.
