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Woof Bronzer

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Everything posted by Woof Bronzer

  1. Woof Bronzer
    Yeah trying not to overreact to the Astros series, but it's not like we've never seen the lineup dry up like that before - that's who they were for half the season or more. And I just can't see Wallner and Jeffers ever being elite. I'd argue it's really difficult to be an "elite" hitter as an HR or bust guy. Not impossible, but difficult. I'd argue that we do have an elite hitter in Lewis though. And Julien has earned the opportunity to see if can become one too. I'd love to see him get some at bats against lefties next year.
  2. Woof Bronzer
    I agree, and probably closer to 3 or 4 if we really want to be serious about October. That said, do you emphasize this or a #2 starter? I know the answer is "both" but I'm curious where fans are at on the priorities. As someone who has been screeching for years about starting pitching I tend to lean that way but man, that Astros series was eye-opening on the hitting side.
  3. Woof Bronzer
    Lol. Game Day is as official as me drawing a rectangle on a tv screen. If you think the problem is a close call, and not the fact that a man paid millions of dollars to hit a baseball watched the season end with the bat on his shoulder, again, don't know what to tell you. Robo umps are not going to solve your problems; you'll just blame the robots instead of the umps when your team loses.
  4. Woof Bronzer
    The Cuzzi foul ball ended up costing the Twins 1 base. The missed foul tip in this years Game 3 gave the Twins a free baserunner. I'm sure plenty of other calls have gone the Twins way, but you like those, so it's not a problem. If you think umpiring had the slightest thing to do with why Twins lost this series, man, I don't know what to tell you.
  5. Woof Bronzer
    Small sample size, no? Over the course of the season the cumulative ump scorecard (not official) for the Twins was...drumroll...-0.03 runs. Within the margin of error, i.e. statistically insignificant. The Twins are not "so often the victim of bad calls"; you just remember them more than you remember the ones that help the Twins. Which is normal! It's called being a fan. Umpiring all evens out in the long run.
  6. Woof Bronzer
    According to MLB the current system is accurate to 1/10th of an inch. Relative to the diameter of a baseball this is 96.5% accuracy. This doesn't take into account the tech issues that the system (like any software/tech system) encounters. If a system is down for a couple seconds that's a 0% accuracy. There was an Athletic article earlier in the year about some of these issues happening at AAA this year. This is part of what some of us have been saying. The rule book definition of the strike zone does not allow for a precise upper and lower boundary of the zone. Here's what MLB says: The official strike zone is the area over home plate from the midpoint between a batter's shoulders and the top of the uniform pants -- when the batter is in his stance and prepared to swing at a pitched ball -- and a point just below the kneecap. So the zone varies by player and even by pitch, if the player changes stances. How thick is the line? Shoulders aren't totally flat, which point of the shoulder do you use? What does "just below the kneecap" mean to the 1/10th of an inch? The reason it's hard to find the data is because it's hard to measure the data.
  7. Woof Bronzer
    Life safety is different than sports/entertainment.
  8. Woof Bronzer
    My point is that fans do not actually care about fairness, and that fans are totally ok with bad calls that help the team. Look at the poster above who wants robo umps because he thinks they'll somehow turn the last pitch of the season into a ball. As your poll helpfully confirms, fans care only about winning.
  9. Woof Bronzer
    I'm not a tennis fan, you're correct. Every sport that has gone down the replay rabbit hole has said something like "nobody is talking about doing X". They always end up doing X. Every sport that has gone down the replay rabbit hole has said it won't add game time. It always does.
  10. Woof Bronzer
    I was a bit skeptical at the beginning of the year that he was another #3 guy we seem to stockpile, but his 2nd half was strong and more importantly he was outstanding in the playoffs. Twins have not had an ace for a long time (despite what many would like to believe) but Lopez fits the bill. Probably the most promising thing to emerge from the disappointing playoffs.
  11. Woof Bronzer
    Agreed. I'm arguing that robo umps won't make things better, and will lead to further implementation of technology/replay that will make the sport - which already has issues with pace and action and interest and overall entertainment value - an even less entertaining product, which has happened in every single sport that has gone down the replay rabbit hole. I'll grant you the possible exception of tennis, but google "tennis bad umpiring" and you'll be bombarded with articles complaining about the umpires, so it would appear replay did not solve the problem of bad umps in tennis either.
  12. Woof Bronzer
    We should take a poll. Would fans prefer a) the Twins win a playoff game due to a bad call or b) the Twins lose that game but it is umpired perfectly and "fairly"? My guess is 95% will vote for A and 5% will lie. Fans don't tune in to watch a crisply officiated game. They tune in to watch their team win.
  13. Woof Bronzer
    It evens out over the long run. Umpire scorecards are by no means official and need to be taken with a grain of salt, but look up cumulative umpire scorecards per team per season if you don't believe me. This is simply false, and proves what I've been saying: fans don't want "fairness", and in fact they love bad calls if it helps their team. If robo umps would have made the same call you'd be complaining about the terrible robo umps.
  14. Woof Bronzer
    We made the playoffs, and in those playoffs we had ourselves a moment or two. That's something. Thanks everyone for the spirited discussions this year, what a solid community.
  15. Woof Bronzer
    If this was the case TD would have at least 1 article complaining about calls that went the Twins way and calling for "fairness". If you can find one please pass it along. And over time it evens out. Ask any NFL fan if the refs get everything right even with replay. I'm guessing not a single one will say yes. It's actually the opposite. When replay first came up the league said "subjective calls like pass interference will never be reviewed." One bad call in a playoff game and now suddenly it's reviewable. Review has so complicated football that fans can't even tell you what a catch is, and it has slowed down games dramatically. And it has yet to accomplish the one and only thing is was intended to accomplish: "getting all the calls right".
  16. Woof Bronzer
    I disagree. Where a ball hits relative to a clearly marked line is simply a manner of camera resolution. The strike zone is not a clearly marked line. It is invisible, and dependent on the size of each hitter and the hitter's stance. Apples and oranges.
  17. Woof Bronzer
    I get your point and in this instance it was not apples to apples - you're 100% right. On the last sentence - is it actually a problem? Fans like talking about sports, and arguing about strategy, lineups, calls, etc - it's all part of it. Sports are messy and unpredictable and that's why they're fun. If everything always goes according to plan and the human element gets diminished I think the entertainment value suffers. And believe me, implementing robo umps won't give fans hours of their time back - they'll have no problem finding things to argue about. Get ready for complaining about robo strike zones, software issues, conspiracy theories about hardware that failed at an inconvenient time... it'll never end...
  18. Woof Bronzer
    I took that walk :) Looks like pitch 2 to Dozier in the 1st was a strike but called a ball, and he also went on to hit a HR. But you don't remember that one of course....:) We can do this all day, and I guarantee you we'll continue do this with robo umps. "The strike zone the system gave Hitter X was a quarter inch too high" etc. And then we'll hear calls for, I don't know, lasers to scan players before every single pitch to assign them a "fair" strike zone. "We have the technology, why wouldn't we do it?" And on and on. It will never end, because arguing about officiating is part of sports and fans/teams will never stop looking for scapegoats.
  19. Woof Bronzer
    4th inning I think? It resulted in a walk to load the bases. It's almost like the "umpire scorecards" are not an official thing, and there's more to grading umps than whether the 0-2 pitch that the Twins hitter stared at is a millimeter in or out of the zone. :)
  20. Woof Bronzer
    Fans don't want fair umpiring. They want the bad calls that hurt them to go away, and they want the bad calls that help them to stay. Show us these studies that show how umpiring in the long run has benefitted certain teams at the expense of others. If you think 95-99% accuracy is "bad" please don't look into robo ump technology because it's NOT 100% accurate by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe it'll get there in time, but it's not there yet. The same pattern plays out in every sport: implement replay "to get the calls right". When it becomes obvious that replay doesn't actually do this, they open up replay to more and more things. The problem is never solved, and the game becomes less human - and less interesting - as a result.
  21. Woof Bronzer
    The most egregious missed call in Game 3 was the foul tip strikeout that was missed and gave the Twins a free out. Could have changed the entire game/series. I don't think I saw a single poster in the game forum complain about it and screech about robot umps though. Wonder why. Whining about the umpires is such a loser's errand.
  22. Woof Bronzer
    I agree that there are larger organizational issues at play here and starting pitching isn't at the top of the list. I also think the Twins would be foolish to roll into '23 with Joe Ryan as their #2 starter.
  23. Woof Bronzer
    I think the problem we're seeing is the status quo isn't quite good enough for the playoffs. Two solid starters is great for a wild card round, but if you want to go further you need more depth. For how good the staff was this year we still had Bailey Ober starting Game 1 of the ALDS and Joe Ryan starting a do-or-die. So the challenge is how to not only maintain the status quo but improve upon it.
  24. Woof Bronzer
    Altitude affects about 40% of the population as a whole. And the effects of altitude at 5000 feet are negligible - it's 8000+ where it starts to affect that 40% of the population (most of whom are not professional athletes). Altitude effects are acute, not long lasting, so anyone affected by the altitude would not have lingering symptoms. Professional athletes are the best conditioned people on the planet. There is a ton of research on high altitude athletic performance - mountaineering in the Himalayas, skiing in the Alps, etc. This is just silly.
  25. Woof Bronzer
    This is absolutely not a thing.
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