MLB 2019

[danielmak]

Another tight pitching match up. Both starters had problems early but then settled down. Houston currently rallying.

Strasbourg's first season was incredible and then it's been a collection of injury-shortened seasons. He said when he signed the deal that he wanted to stay in DC but I think Boras knew a pitcher that has been on the IL every year wasn't going to earn as much on the market. But he's had a spectacular year, which means he will opt out. If the Dodgers feel pressure to beef up their staff they will sign him because next year he will be perfect for the Dodger's free agent moves: he will be hurt a lot. He'll fit right in with Hill, Anderson, McCarthy, Kershaw (in the past few years).

[ursus arctos]

Your jinxing skills are impressive

[Hot Pepsi]

That escalated quickly

[danielmak]

Yeah, in the time it took me to navel gaze re: bad Dodgers signings the Astros decided to implode. I posted above that the gap in points between the Yankees and Astros in terms of points was minimal but on the field the Astros were truly superior. They've decided to follow the Yankees' lead with horrific defense in one or two bad pitches that change a game. I stuck around to see if Rodney would give the lead back.

[Ginger Yellow]

I hope it's not only the MLB that are looking into it.

[ursus arctos]

He will be getting a call from the GOP to gauge his interest in running for local office.

[Ginger Yellow]

Ross picked for the manager role apparently.

[ursus arctos]

Formal introduction on Monday. Epstein and Hoyer have been grooming him for this for years, so it isn't terribly surprising.

Girardi going to the Phillies is a bit more so.

[danielmak]

I like Girardi a lot as a manager. My major concern about him is probably something beyond his control, keeping Larry Rothchild as a pitching coach. I'm not a Rothchild fan. I can't remember any pitchers that he has helped get better in a serious fashion (i.e., what has happened with the White Sox, Pirates, or Astros---which are three different types success stories). Severino is the only starter that seemed to improve but he was sent down and worked with Pedro Martinez. I'm not saying a single pitching coach works magic, but I don't think Rothchild has done much of anything. With all of that said, I can't remember if Girardi brought Rothchild with him from Miami to New York or if Rothchild was already there.

I don't think the Cubs are making the right move here. Maddon's schtick ran thin I assume, but this is now a veteran team and I can't see a rookie manager being the best move--esp. for a veteran team that has not lived up to their dynastic hype and with whom Ross played. He's a likeable guy so I hope he does well (just not well enough to beat the Dodgers).

Realistically, the Cubs and Mets are the best jobs in terms of the potential to win now.

[ursus arctos]

Girardi and Cashman hired Rothschild away from the Cubs

[Incandenza]

Astros have fired Taubman and have put out an actual apology.

[ursus arctos]

Better late than never

[Incandenza]

Ahahahaha, what a trash organization

[URL]https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1187504272478560256[/URL]

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/thehazelmae/status/1187505844591697920

[danielmak]

Girardi and Cashman hired Rothschild away from the Cubs

Forgot about his time with the Cubs. Cashman is obviously a fan. I think Rothschild was the only holdover from Girardi's staff.

[Incandenza]

David Roth is predictably brilliant on describing the mindset of the Astros FO.

That zero-sum perspective is, in that sense, a way into why the Astros are where they are right now—in the World Series after another dominant season, but also at the center of an entirely avoidable conflagration ignited by a senior front office staffer who made a point of gloating about the team’s most cynical player acquisition to someone in a way he intended to be hurtful, exacerbated by the team’s decision to baselessly tab the initial reports about the incident as fake news and some unsatisfying non-apologies, and not nearly ended by the decision, on Thursday afternoon, to fire the staffer in question. This is all the same story, really, and so it fits that Luhnow pitches his team’s rise and reign as a sort of business-school case study about not just innovation and efficiency, but the business of dominance.

Luhnow’s point, and the excuse embedded within it, is that to be as brilliant and agile and efficient as the Astros have been the front office must also be harsh in all the ways that it is. Since taking over in 2011, Luhnow has faced down the challenge of building a sustainably great baseball organization out of an unsustainable and mediocre one and conquered it. He built the organization he set out to build as ruthlessly and quickly as he could, and he did it. The idea was to understand more than any other team by reducing the game down to its smallest component parts. Other reductions followed from this—the game into a series of binaries, the broader world into a series of opponents to defeat. From all that rigorously rational reduction, a hierarchy of value emerges that orders what matters and what matters less. No team has ever done this work with more focus or cold acuity than Luhnow’s Astros. And here we all are.

[WOM]

https://twitter.com/thehazelmae/status/1187505844591697920

Yeah...that's like Matthew Broderick not having the 'chance' to meet with the family of the two Irish women he killed. Hard to align a couple of busy schedules over...you know....25 years.

[ursus arctos]

And they called the Yankees the Evil Empire

https://twitter.com/benjstrauss/status/1187863337935278080

[ursus arctos]

The pace of play in this series has been excruciating

[URL="https://twitter.com/sean_forman/status/1187931836145684480?s=21"]https://twitter.com/sean_forman/status/1187931836145684480[/URL]

[Hot Pepsi]

And they called the Yankees the Evil Empire

https://twitter.com/benjstrauss/status/1187863337935278080

Not to defend the Astros, but they said “we were wrong” and that their initial statement was based on witness accounts that did not give the whole story. They sacked the primary offender. They’re not a newspaper or an academic journal. How much more of a “retraction” can they offer?

Manfred said the League is still looking into it.

[ursus arctos]

They put out a press release with reckless disregard for the truth that slandered a very well respected reporter and her publication.

If she asks for them to retract it, there is not a question in mind what the correct course of action is.

[Hot Pepsi]

They put out a press release with reckless disregard for the truth that slandered a very well respected reporter and her publication.

If she asks for them to retract it, there is not a question in mind what the correct course of action is.

I get that, but what I’m suggesting is that they’ve already retracted it for all intents and purposes. They said “what we said before was not true.” How is that different than a “retraction?”

If she wants them to officially say “we retract it,” there’s no reason why they shouldn’t, but I don’t see what difference that would make.

[ursus arctos]

It makes a difference to her.

That's the only difference one needs.

They don't even need to draft anything new. They can take language from the press conference, add a line that they are formally retracting the statement and then distribute it in exactly the same way as the original.

Not doing it just strikes me as gratuitous violence.

[Hot Pepsi]

If she asks for that, I don’t see why they wouldn’t do that. It’s not hard to do. But it won’t make a difference. Firing more people might help, though. For example, maybe look at whoever thought it was a good idea to respond so aggressively before they had all the information.*

I’ve never heard of a company “retracting” a press statement. That’s just not the language that is usually used. They will sometimes issue a “correction” or an “update,” take the original off the website and email their media email list. Sometimes they apologize for the previous error, but usually not.

But I’ve never dealt with a company that screwed up a PR situation this badly this quickly. I can’t even think of another example like this. Maybe the NFL and the Ray Rice thing is comparable.


*If they had just said from the beginning “we believe this was just a misunderstanding and we apologize for any offense, but we’d like to talk to the reporter and anyone else who was there,” then they wouldn’t have be climbing down so hard. Instead they got cocky and now look like dicks.

[danielmak]

I'm stating the obvious, but she is rightly concerned that her reputation as a reporter was challenged by the Astros' original statement. Her request for the retraction is a move made to put on paper (literally and metaphorically) a statement that takes back that challenge. But, like HP, I think they already did that. She's asking for a specific phrasing because she's a journalist and that's what a newspaper or magazine would do; she's asking for a journalistic move when the Astros aren't a newspaper or a magazine. I don't think most companies use the phrase "retraction" when they send out incorrect information. Of course, as UA notes, she asked for it, they did challenge her reputation, and it's in their best interest from a PR standpoint, from the standpoint of working with reporters, from the standpoint of doing the right thing more generally to put out a press release that adds that phrasing. I assume at this point that press release would simply be one of five that will go out with the others having to do with game 3 and game 4 of the WS.

The thing that makes no sense to me (and to kind of repeat HP's post above) is the Astros' first release. I have no idea why they wouldn't investigate first.