MLB 2018

[Incandenza]

Ohtani is both the Angels' best pitcher and also one of their best hitters so far this season.

It's unreasonable to expect him to maintain this level for the entire season, but he's certainly one of the most exciting players in baseball.

[Ginger Yellow]

Quite a satisfying series for the baby bears in the end.

Highly promising outings from Darvish and Quintana

Yeah. It's weird this went so much better than the Marlins series, but I'll take it. Contreras seems to be going from strength to strength too.

[Incandenza]

Video of how some Cleveland Indians fans responded to Native American protesters in front of the stadium.

[Gerontophile]

I may have mentioned before that Cleveland fans are possibly the biggest bunch of twats in all of sports.

[ursus arctos]

[San Bernardhinault]

So, this happened while I was away.

This looks to be how the year will go.

0-0, bottom of the 10th. 2 outs. Astros have someone on second, and their batter pops the ball up nice and softly into the air. Catcher and pitcher leave it, Hosmer on first base runs underneath it and then a few extra yards, and the ball plops on the floor and the Astros run home to walk off...

[Gerontophile]

When I hear Yankees fans singing about a player's dead mother, I will take your point on board.

*And anyway, he just caught a ball: he's allowed to be a twat.

[ursus arctos]

It’s original. I will give you that.

Here’s the play that SB references. Zero percent chance according to StatCast. The catcher’s abdication of responsibility is striking, but it is one of those train wrecks wher you notice something different every time you watch it.

https://twitter.com/mlb/status/982812614509125634?s=21https

[danielmak]

Ellis is a veteran. He needed to make that play. The first basemen should not have to cover that much ground to get to the ball.

Cubs snowed out for the home opener. Although this is a baseball thread, not a catchall weather thread, let me tell you: in 1997 I had a stupid f***ng idea that involved leaving Los Angeles. It's kind of like that line in Apocalypse Now where Chef says never get out of the boat. Never leave Los Angeles. I did it and in the middle of April there is snow here and elsewhere. And there is weather here that is not fit for baseball and elsewhere. But in Los Angeles, there is always baseball weather.

[Incandenza]

"'Never leave Los Angeles.' Absolutely goddamn right."

[San Bernardhinault]

It's not *always* baseball weather in Southern California. Petco has had 3 rain-outs in its 14 year history...

Fun win at Coors Field yesterday for the Padres. A particularly satisfying inning where the Rockies gave an intentional walk with 2 outs, and the pitcher up next. Only for Clayton Richard to smack a 3 run home run. This is why not having a DH makes the game more interesting.

[ursus arctos]

Great piece from The Athletic on how the White Sox grounds crew got the field in shape to play yesterday

With snow pelting down on a jammed Lake Shore Drive at 9:30 a.m. Monday and creating something that a less initiated person might call “whiteout conditions,” it didn't really feel like a morning that would lead into baseball being played outside in Chicago. But at that point, the forecast was already looking a fair bit rosier than when White Sox groundskeeper Roger Bossard checked into work.

“I was looking for people to help me. I didn't see any of you guys here at 5:20 a.m.,” Bossard said to the scrum of reporters gathered to listen to how the revered “Sodfather” took more than two inches of snow covering Guaranteed Rate Field and reduced it to a mere 21-minute delay before the White Sox series opener against the Tampa Bay Rays.

A mere four hours earlier, when Bossard was meeting with manager Rick Renteria to discuss field conditions, they weighed the prospects of an infield that was frozen solid, for the third day in a row, at that.

“I’m hoping that they’ll be able to put their spikes into the ground,” Renteria said of his players before the game. “Those are things that we talked to them about it. If they feel the ground is too firm or they can’t really get a footing, I want them to be mindful of it. But that being said, I think Roger’s done a great job of getting the field ready. I don’t see him having any problems. I spoke to him this morning. He said, ‘Don’t worry what it looks like right now. We’ll be able to get that game in.'”

Bossard is regularly revered as a genius and the most trusted and knowledgeable groundskeeper in the city and beyond, even consulting with other teams and other parks. Yet his basic strategy to clear a snow-covered Guaranteed Rate Field seems like it was developed by someone who has impatiently thawed their windshield a few times: spray warmer water (48 to 50 degrees he estimates) onto snow to get it to melt. It was still a maddening, possibly five-hour process, because Bossard had to water in 20-minute cycles across the quadrants of the outfield to avoid making any part of the field too heavy, but it's been proven as an effective way to eliminate an inch and a half of snow.

More than an inch of a half of snow hit Guaranteed Rate Field, however.

For a major snowfall, as the White Sox dealt with last year, Bossard would employ snowblowers. But the two and a half inches that blanketed the entire field even as the clubhouse opened to media at 10:00 a.m. fell in a sort of middle ground, so with no grass visible, Bossard turned on his lawnmowers.

“I had to make my mowers into snow plows,” Bossard explained. “It’s not a plow, I literally used the mowers themselves. I didn’t turn the mowers on, but I just pushed it with the mowers and it worked well. Every once in a while I come up with some crazy stuff. This time it worked.”

Grounds crew members used any means necessary to remove snow from the field prior to the White Sox's game against the Tampa Bay Rays Monday. (Jeff Haynes/AP Photo)
Despite snow still tracked across the outfield with less than two hours before the eventual first pitch at 1:31 p.m., and the Cubs postponing their home opener eight miles to the north, the White Sox and Bossard talked as if the game being played Monday was inevitable. There's a charity gala being hosted at the park Tuesday night, and Wednesday is getaway day for both teams, with no matchups in Chicago scheduled for the rest of the year, so there was some extra motivation. At the same time, Bossard was leveraging a method he had never tried before to move what he estimated was “a couple thousand tons of snow,” but as someone who has been in his current job for 35 years, he talks like he enjoys the feeling of the workdays of thousands of people turning on the success of his experimentations.

“This was a heck of a challenge, and I’ve got to be honest with you,” Bossard said of the work of his 23-person crew. “I got ahold of my crew when they came in at 7 o’clock, and I wanted to get this thing done. I love the challenge, and we made it thanks to my crew. You’re only as good as your crew.”

Bossard said the endless chug of freezing temperatures and multiple days of open snowfall is something unprecedented for his career, but when asked about how this ranks among the most difficult projects of his tenure, Bossard immediately blurted out “Disco Demolition,” like a victim of previous trauma.

Between rescheduling an original 7:10 p.m. first pitch to the afternoon, the snow, a 35-degree first pitch, and a showdown between the rebuilding White Sox and a Tampa Bay Rays team that came into the day with a 1-8 record, Bossard's handiwork was seen in person by only several hundred people. Yet in a season with dozens of flights across the country, keeping both the Rays and Sox from having to make one more is still sacrosanct. And after all that rambling about his process and wealth of past experience and work, Bossard did eventually get down to the important matter of the day: are the Cubs chumps for postponing their game when it was possible to clear the field by 1:30 p.m., or not?

“[Cubs groundskeeper] Justin Spillman and I are very close,” Bossard said. “They had more snow, so I get it. He was using the watering procedure, too. He’s a very knowledgeable, talented young groundskeeper. When you’ve got more than two inches of snow, when you’re at that three, three and a half level, they made the right call.

“I’m glad it was them and not me. I’m glad I only had the two inches. But from what I understand, I guess they’ve got an off day tomorrow. They made the right decision.

[Ginger Yellow]

ABC commentators for the Cubs home debut rocking a great look - suit jackets over thermal underwear.

[Incandenza]

https://twitter.com/sportingnews/status/983775642394165248

974 in attendance.

[ursus arctos]

THANKS OBAMA

[Greenlander]

974 in attendance.

Though the box score states 10069 so does baseball record attendance in the same way as many English football clubs and count all season ticket holders whether they attend or not.

Which leads me to ask are season tickets a big thing across the league as 81 games, especially with all those in midweek seem a big ask in time let alone money. The only comparison I can think is membership of a county cricket club over here, but that probably only equates to around 50 days and is reasonably cheap (At my nearest team, Somerset, it costs £299 but given my location 70 miles away it's only £195). It doesn't take many days of play to pay for itself, but those who can get the best value from it are those who can attend midweek county championship fixtures day in day out.

Is it similar for baseball, do people get season tickets and attend every home game or are there deals like weekend/ Saturdays only. And looking at some of the individual ticket prices it can't come cheap. What would they expect to pay for the privilege of their own regular seat.

[danielmak]

At SB: yeah, three rainouts. That's just rubbing it in.

Is it similar for baseball, do people get season tickets and attend every home game or are there deals like weekend/ Saturdays only. And looking at some of the individual ticket prices it can't come cheap. What would they expect to pay for the privilege of their own regular seat.

There are probably way more options than what I describe here but in general these seem to be the options:

1. Partial season ticket plans, which can be a certain number of games (1/2, 1/3, etc.) or certain days (weekend games only, games against traditional rivals only, certain types of promotion days--fireworks, Tshirt night, etc.).

2. A fan buys a season ticket/multiple tickets and they go to most games but maybe sell or give away tickets to games they can't attend, which could include many of these midweek games you mention, Greenlander.

3. A fan buys multiple tickets but is really part of a group and that group shares the costs/divides up the games. One of my friends is in this type of group for Cubs tickets. They have 4 seats and the group is pretty big so he tends to get the 4 seats about 10-12 times a year. When the Cubs won the WS I think he went to 1 playoff game and 1 WS game.

4. Some corporate person buys the tickets and claims a tax deduction for business purposes. Usually she or he has 2-4 tickets and might go to 10-15 games a year but gives them away to other industry people or people in the company when not using the tickets since the tax write off is happening either way. I benefited greatly from this in LA and NYC when I worked in the music business. The best was dugout seats at Dodger Stadium. I don't know what happened to the dirt I took home with me--probably ran through some laundrymat washing machine.

[Gerontophile]

Well... that was a good start for the Yankees in Boston.

[ursus arctos]

Excellent post by danielmak on season tickets. I would only add that the advent of online ticket resale services like StubHub have made it much easier for someone who is not part of a formal group to dispose of unwanted tickets on a game by game basis.

But the key difference with Premier League football is the number of tickets that are bought by firms for corporate/staff entertainment purposes. This will account for a majority of the “field level” seats in cities like NYC, Washington, Chicago, LA or SF, whereas I don’t think things have gotten anywhere that corporate in the UK (even at the Emirates).

The favourable US corporate tax treatment for such purchases is a major reason for the phenomenon. And the fact that my father controlled his firm’s box at Shea Stadium is the reason I got to go to 20+ Mets games every year as a kid.

[Ginger Yellow]

The favourable US corporate tax treatment for such purchases is a major reason for the phenomenon. And the fact that my father controlled his firm’s box at Shea Stadium is the reason I got to go to 20+ Mets games every year as a kid.

Wasn't this one of the things that was supposed to end with the tax reform bill? Or did that not make it through to the final version?

[ursus arctos]

It has gotten more difficult/limited, but my sense is that it hasn't completely gone away.

[Patrick Thistle]

Well the Padres have some fighting spirit judging by what happened today in Denver.

[San Bernardhinault]

I kind of like this year's Padres team. They're not great yet, and they aren't going to win anything. But I'm enjoying watching them. They're young, and a lot of them feel like they're on the edge of actually being very good.

(And they clearly care enough to actually get into a fight, in a meaningless mid-day game in Denver).

[jefe]

I commend Grant Brisbee to your attention.

https://www.sbnation.com/2018/4/11/1...ks-rob-manfred

[danielmak]

In response to that list that appears in Brisbee's article posted by jefe, I'm sure we've discussed this in recent years but it is obvious that the pace of play rules are tied to TV, not ballpark experience. Every interview I see with Manfred includes him stating how happy he is with the ballpark experience and that the surveys done by the league and individual teams affirm this perception. I am in no way a fan of starting innings with runners on base, but it does seem that extra inning games are not very pleasurable for TV viewers but also for fans in the ballpark. If a game goes past 11 innings, the shots of crowds in every stadium show a radically reduced quantity of fans. I really have no idea how to solve this issue. And perhaps everyone (or most folks) who participate in this thread would say it's not an issue; that extra innings past 11 are exciting. I have only attended one game in person that went to 10 innings; every other game finished in 9 so I don't have the experience of deciding to stay or go (with Mick Jones). But except for playoff games, I pretty much jump from an extra inning game because I don't want to get sucked into a 15 or 16 inning affair; it's just too much. With all of that said, I have noted before and will reiterate for context, that I rarely watch televised games all the way through anyway. I tend to dip in for a few innings and then jump to a football match, come back, jump to MLB Network for highlights, etc.