Otto von Ballpark

You're not alone. Outside of the Super Bowl, I either consume games in the background, or I timeshift (i.e. DVR). Which is why I don't gamethread much here, unfortunately. Fortunately for the leagues (and networks), I don't think their business model really requires those higher levels of attention.

It's not a quirk of time zones -- it's a quirk that Trout's the best but he has been invisible in the postseason. Kirk Cousins has arguably been more visible in the postseason than Mike Trout. And I'm not sure there's ever been a world where a non-postseason player has ever had the wide name recognition that Brady or LeBron have today, no matter how good their regular seasons. How do you want MLB to "market their stars nationally" in the case of Trout? Put more Angels regular season games on national TV? That's not going to do anything, because even the best baseball stars aren't likely to have much impact over a few games (see my post above with Trout's per-game averages). Change revenue sharing and salary cap to get Trout in the postseason? The Angels aren't receiving revenue sharing, and have ranked 4th-11th in opening day payroll every year of Trout's career. Blackout rules have nothing to do with it either -- the whole world can already watch Angels games for a pittance (less than $1 a day with MLB.TV), with the exception of central California and southern Nevada. If you want MLB stars to be as recognizable as NFL or NBA stars, where the same teams/stars are in the finals every year, that's an argument for *less* parity, not more. Get Trout on the Yankees somehow and he'll probably get to host SNL like Derek Jeter. Otherwise, go back in time and change the fundamental rules of the game (Trout bats every inning) and structure of the league/schedule (one game a week, Sunday afternoons -- be there!). I'd say the relative recognition of stars has little to do with the actual health/future of the game. It makes baseball different than other sports/leagues, and different than its past, but not necessarily worse.. More parity and relaxed blackout rules could be good things, but those are really personal preferences. Same with robo-umps (which I am warming up to!). Everybody tries to make their personal preferences into MLB imperatives, but it's just not so -- as much as I would like to see a return of the 2:30 average time of game.

On that subject -- it might be a quirk of Trout being on a mediocre team with virtually zero postseason presence in his career. I wonder how many people had heard of, say, David Ortiz or Derek Jeter while they were recently active? Also, Trout's only played for 8 years. Brady's been around for 18, and LeBron 16. More importantly, Brady has played in 9 of the last 18 Super Bowls. Lebron has played in 9 of the last 13 NBA finals (!). Do we really want an MLB team to dominate that much? Again, I think the structure of the sport (superstar dominated, less parity) is contributing more to this phenomenon than differences in each league's national TV strategy.

Here's a Michael Rand piece on this topic from 2017: http://www.startribune.com/the-twins-drafted-george-springer-no-they-didnt-mess-up-by-not-signing-him/455017753/

On the flip side, every other team probably has a comparable "what if" too. Especially pre-2012 (when the draft was shortened to 40 rounds and the bonus limits were put into place). The Twins don't seem to have very many college players, but Gibson was drafted in the 36th round by the Phillies. Larnach was a 40th round pick of the Padres. I suppose I'd trade Gibson and Larnach for Springer.

I'm sure there are always areas where they can improve, but what exactly do you suggest they do to be less "vulnerable"? Most of the common suggestions -- relax MLB.TV blackout rules, make ballparks more family friendly -- while they would be nice, personally, I don't think they'd honestly make much difference in that regard. Would your sons be appreciably more likely to watch/attend Twins games in those case? FWIW, the Twins have contributed to a number of youth baseball fields in the area, and they purchase new hats and gloves for my kid's teams every year. And for the older "younger generations", virtually every major league city has a new ballpark which serves as a very profitable beer garden.

Worth remembering that historically, baseball has never been sport where a lot of young, active people actually watched it closely on a regular basis. It's always been more of a "follow" sport, with occasional check-ins and ballpark experiences. It would be hard to manage otherwise, with 162 games a year! So I don't see these patterns as problematic or anything baseball has to overcome relative to other pro sports. They just have to keep doing what they're doing well.

I don't think watching live is all that important, though. Hence why they're not that concerned with poor national TV ratings. MLB gets billions every year from networks to keep those blackouts in place, more than they could ever hope to get from MLB.TV subscriptions. That money, plus ballpark experience, plus social media highlight sharing -- that appears to be the formula right now. And it's probably not a bad one for their business. I will agree they could stand to clean up a few of the "blackout black holes" like Iowa -- it probably wouldn't impact TV revenue all that much to make a couple teams drop their claim on that territory. Although the flip side is, they probably wouldn't gain that much revenue either -- MLB.TV isn't really set up or priced to be any kind of moneymaker, it's really just a promotional tool, it seems.

Easier said than done. Trout comes up 4.5 times a game. He draws more walks than extra base hits, and only about one XBH every two games. He averages almost 1 strikeout per game. No guarantee he comes up with men on base, and on the other side of the ball, he's not guaranteed any meaningful defensive opportunities either. How do you show that off in national TV games? Compare that to Lebron James, who's basically guaranteed a pile of points, dunks, rebounds, and defensive plays every game. Or Tom Brady, who's guaranteed 30 passes, many of the big/dramatic. Baseball's just a different sport.

Nice discussion, everyone!

The Astros haven't covered themselves in glory here either. Their first statement alleged the SI article was a "fabrication" when it appears the Astros own excuse for Taubman was the actual fabrication: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/10/22/astros-respond-sports-illustrated-report-alleging-executives-clubhouse-blowup/ I suspect Taubman is not alone in his views and judgments in the Houston front office, and that's something I don't want to emulate in Minnesota (even if it's a pro sports reality that we'll occasionally have to deal with players in situations like Osuna's).

FYI, in case it wasn't clear from the thread title, I didn't post this to discuss Osuna himself. I posted this to discuss the Astros assistant GM. We all have different opinions, but I think we can all agree that employing players around these circumstances is a pretty complicated situation. What isn't complicated, though, is no tolerance for front office personnel taunting reporters in this fashion.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/22/sports/baseball/baseball-popularity-world-series.html

Tuesday, Oct. 22 Baseball's back! And on free TV. 7:08 pm CST Nationals at Astros (World Series Game 1) TV: FOX Pitching matchup is Scherzer vs Cole.

Contrary to a recent series of articles here, maybe the Twins shouldn't become the new Astros, at least not like this: https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/10/22/houston-astros-roberto-osuna-suspension Those still looking for a World Series rooting interest may have found one!

I know the Yankee/media expectations are higher, but to be fair, a cherry-picked 39-54 record against postseason competition isn't that bad. The postseason is tough! The Yankees have been competitive in almost every series too, aside from 1 sweep. Even a handful of 3-1 ALDS losses have come at the hands of some pretty good teams (2002 Angels, 2018 Red Sox, etc.) Still no excuse for going 2-16 against them, of course!

Actually, the Samardzija trade worked out pretty well for Oakland. They obviously didn't advance in the 2014 playoffs because, well, they're Oakland, but Samardzija had another year of control. So they flipped him for a great return from the White Sox (Semien, Bassitt, etc.), and after a hot start, Russell has fizzled out for the Cubs. Ideally you'd like a pitcher better than Samardzija and a deeper playoff run to show for it, but this isn't necessarily a bad trade for a team in the Twins position.

The Yankees didn't use a pitcher 3 straight days all season -- the only team in MLB to avoid that. And they didn't do it in the postseason either until game 6 of the ALCS, and that was only due to a rainout which eliminated their off day between games 5 and 6. None of their top 4 relievers threw more than 66 innings during the regular season, and each of them averaged less than 1 inning per appearance. To the extent their bullpen ultimately caused them to lose the ALCS, it was primarily their choice of the rested Chad Green as the opener for game 6 (allowing 3 runs) -- although Kahnle (1) and Chapman (2) both allowed runs on zero days rest (due to the rainout) in that game too. And they only had to rely on their bullpen that much because they unexpectedly lost Domingo German just before the playoffs -- otherwise they could have had 4 traditional (more or less) starters. (There's an argument that they should have just used Happ as a traditional starter at that point, but I'm not sure the results would have been any different.) The Yankees were remarkably conservative with their pen all year. They had some bad luck with their starters. They ran into a very strong opponent, and almost took them to the limit. I'm not sure we can pin any "doom" result upon their pen.

Cole is a pretty rare pitcher. At any given moment, there many not be any with the imminent potential of Cole, available for the price the Astros paid. Maybe you get Cole, or Sonny Gray, or even Odorizzi -- but maybe you wind up with Drew Smyly, Ivan Nova, or Tanner Roark -- or maybe you have to deal with Matt Harvey, or even Martín Pérez (who, after much fanfare in these parts, turned out more rough than diamond, even with magic of Wes Johnson). And while the cost seems low, there's a real risk to pursuing too much of a "diamond in the rough" strategy. With as thin as the Twins rotation looks at the moment, if the new pitcher doesn't immediately excel, you may have just helped punt a season of your core. It's worth remembering the Astros landed Cole when their rotation was already Verlander, Morton, Keuchel, McCullers, and Peacock (plus Musgrove, McHugh, etc. for depth), a group that just won them the World Series. They didn't even need a top FA SP or for Cole to pitch like one to stay near the top of MLB teams.

I'd take such reports with a huge grain of salt, especially coming from players or agents. Puckett signed the second largest contract ever at the time (5 years, $30 mil), just behind Ripken (5 years, $32.5 mil). It's self-serving for players and agents to claim they could have gotten more money. Perhaps Puckett received a larger offer elsewhere, but I doubt it was significantly larger. (And even a larger offer on paper could have effectively been equal or less than the Twins offer, considering related moving / real estate / tax expenses.)

I think we could already claim the record, with an asterisk. The 1970s Chicago Blackhawks were in a league of 17 teams, where 12 made the playoffs! And they had to play some best-of-sevens too, so they racked up their loss streak in only 4 years/series, I think. But yes, it should be a goal next year to claim the record outright.

Happy the Yankees lost, but also sad there's no game 7 today. Now it's two days without baseball! At least we had 3 pretty exciting division series this year, and a good wild card game, so it's been an entertaining postseason around the league -- I'm just greedy. World Series begins Tuesday -- free TV (Fox) for all you cord-cutters. Hopefully it goes 6-7 games!

FWIW, Pressly has already said he will be ready for the World Series: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27882694/astros-reliever-ryan-pressly-knee-says-ready-world-series

Pressly threw only one pitch last night, but with it, he escaped a big jam in the Astros eventual 6-4 win. Of course, the circumstances were so specific, who knows if it could have helped the Twins. Bases loaded, third inning, Didi Gregorius at the plate...

Apparently a bullpen game tonight, for both sides. Chad Green opens for NY, and Brad Peacock for Houston. I'd expect JA Happ and José Urquidy could see extended action too.