PopRiveter

You won't miss Angel Hernandez turning an MLB game into a joke even a little?

The teams winning in October are often the teams benefitting from the bad calls going in their favor, not teams overcoming bad calls going against them. Should we also allow Astro's to steal signs and teams to field a roster full of PED guys because "The best teams can overcome" unfair competition? Of course not. It's why I stopped watching the NBA years ago. The star players and big market teams were constantly the beneficiaries of phantom calls. You knew in advance who would win each series just by looking at the names on the paper. The refs steered the games accordingly. I hear it is supposedly better lately, but I haven't returned to find out if that is true. The more we can remove that unfairness from the game, the more even the playing field becomes, therefore, the better the sport becomes. One man's opinion.

Thanks Jerr. We needed you in the stands, but we probably could have used you in the bullpen too.

Wish I could click "Like" 100 times

I appreciate the point even if it doesn't sway me to switch sides. It is insightful and needs to be weighed. I expect I'd be all for human umps influencing the game for drama and excitement if I were a fan of one of mlb's elite big market teams.

I can't imagine the technology will disappoint me more than the skewed crews and a slanted playing fields we've faced in recent playoff series. I want fair baseball. Feels like electronic strike zones will be an important step closer.

I'm really liking the game a lot better this year, but maybe my perception is skewed by watching primarily Twins games. Hope it keeps trending toward more action and more contact.

It's been a rough go for hitters for sure, but I think the 2022 version of baseball makes for a much better game to watch. There's been balls in play, defense, rallies of strung-together hits. The last few years, games have been 4+ hours of strikeout-strikeout-walk-home run-strikeout. Baseball feels like baseball again this year. Gah, baseball is so resurrected right now. You are, of course, entitled to your own opinions.

I don't like the thought of Cleveland leaving town in first place. Recent developments have me on edge

There we go Correa. Let's get him in so I can start to breathe.

Perhaps your best headline yet. Had me laughing even before I started reading the article. Well done!!

mikelink45 for the win!

I remember guys making that kind of argument a some years back. Saying Ichiro's batting titles meant little because he was just a hollow batting average and so on. However, it feels like we've arrived at a more balanced, mature understanding and appreciation of stats today. Discussions have become more respectful and nuanced and you'd be hard-pressed today to find any baseball lover who would claim a .350 batting average could be hollow.

The first thing I learned to admire in a hitter was a .300 batting average, but even as little kid reading the backs of baseball cards, no one used batting average all by itself. In my experience, it never was a standalone stat, even before analytics we knew that Tom Brunansky was a more impactful hitter at .245 than Greg Gagne was at .254 Batting average never was a stat indicative of true performance in and of itself -but it is a useful measure. The arguments from analytics enthusiasts seem to be based on a perception that users of old school stats don't understand this. Not true. We do. I like to use classic and modern, advanced stats. Somehow though, there is a romantic nostalgia for describing a player's performance with the measures I learned as a young fan and I still admire a batting champion. I want Luis to stay strong and productive so we're still having this conversation at the end of the year.

I think the author seemed awfully careful to point that out repeatedly throughout the article. Makes a fella want to stand up and cheer Rod Carew again when you watch a player performing this way for part of a season, then consider that Carew averaged that over 18 years. What a player!