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Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2017 11:32 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
noddy wrote:Cricket is full of non classic pitchers - their was a period they trained it out of them but they also discovered that this usually removed their capability of doing something interesting with the ball and turned them into stock bowlers.

Knuckleballs are enjoyable to watch, 3 directions of movement also makes for the most memorable deliveries in cricket - with us thats 2 in the air and then one off the ground.

Image
I'll see your knuckleballers and raise you one alrodis chapman:

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Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2017 4:52 pm
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Australia gave Japan a real scare by scoring first and carrying a 1-1 tie into the eighth inning. But they blew it, first by missing an opportunity to score when they had the bases loaded with 1 out. Then the pitching gave in and two hung balls over the plate lead to a 4-1 loss.

The Taiwan-Netherlands game was also good from what I've read.

The Netherlands came back in the bottom of the last inning to pull off a victory, 5-4.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Mon Mar 13, 2017 11:14 pm
by NapLajoieonSteroids
The US ended up going 2-1 and moving on to the second round.

The one loss was particularly painful, as they coughed up a 5-0 lead to the Dominican Republic.

The Marlin's Park in Miami was like 8-1 Dominican. Some Dominican tv news reporter (sports guys?) kept trying to get my party to give them a good quote about how the crowd had no American support and how it felt like a real away game in a foreign country.

2017 World Baseball Classic

Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 7:08 am
by Typhoon
People are becoming rather excited and hopeful about the performance of the team fielded by Japan

J Times | Eighth-inning heroics carry unbeaten Japan past Cuba

From what I understand, Cuba historically fields a strong team.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 7:20 am
by Typhoon
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:The US ended up going 2-1 and moving on to the second round.

The one loss was particularly painful, as they coughed up a 5-0 lead to the Dominican Republic.

The Marlin's Park in Miami was like 8-1 Dominican. Some Dominican tv news reporter (sports guys?) kept trying to get my party to give them a good quote about how the crowd had no American support and how it felt like a real away game in a foreign country.
Don't follow baseball, but still think that it is unfortunate that the international WBC does not have a larger audience in the US as I infer from your comment.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 12:04 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Typhoon wrote:
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:The US ended up going 2-1 and moving on to the second round.

The one loss was particularly painful, as they coughed up a 5-0 lead to the Dominican Republic.

The Marlin's Park in Miami was like 8-1 Dominican. Some Dominican tv news reporter (sports guys?) kept trying to get my party to give them a good quote about how the crowd had no American support and how it felt like a real away game in a foreign country.
Don't follow baseball, but still think that it is unfortunate that the international WBC does not have a larger audience in the US as I infer from your comment.
Agreed.

And this classic has been rather exciting, with plenty of close and memorable games- many decided in the late innings or even extra innings.

Tonight starts the final four semi-final, one game elimination from here on out:

Tonight is the Netherlands vs Puerto Rico

Tomorrow is The United States vs Japan

winners go to the final.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 12:11 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
The United States finally beat the Dominican and all it took was the (what's being called) 'The Catch' :)

pHYxBTW-3Ks

and Giancarlo Stanton's 117+ mph home run [tied for third hardest hit ball since Major League Baseball started tracking everything on the field by radar/computing in 2015]

H8XBz9Q5IVU

Re: Baseball

Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:01 am
by Simple Minded
best catch I've ever seen in baseball:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SqJz0NgnnE

Re: Baseball

Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 1:53 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Simple Minded wrote:best catch I've ever seen in baseball:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SqJz0NgnnE
its a gatorade commerical #fakenews :D

Re: Baseball

Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 2:37 am
by Nonc Hilaire
I rarely watch baseball, but when I do I'm going to start seeking out Spanish language announcers.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 2:58 am
by Simple Minded
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:best catch I've ever seen in baseball:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SqJz0NgnnE
its a gatorade commerical #fakenews :D
It's still the best catch I've ever seen in baseball.... ;)

Re: Baseball

Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 4:37 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Simple Minded wrote:
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:
Simple Minded wrote:best catch I've ever seen in baseball:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SqJz0NgnnE
its a gatorade commerical #fakenews :D
It's still the best catch I've ever seen in baseball.... ;)
touché ;)

---

Quite a game going on now, Netherlands and PR all tied up at 3-3 in the top of the sixth. Puerto Rico is changing pitchers right now.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 4:16 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
US vs Japan:

All tied up 1-1 going into the top of the seventh.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2017 5:37 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
aaaand the US wins!

Quite a pitcher's duel; the US squeaked by 2-1 on the back of a few poor defensive plays by Team Japan.

Tomorrow is the final

The United States vs Puerto Rico; winning is crowned World Champion.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 7:06 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Image

The USA blew out Puerto Rico 8-0 in the final and are officially World Champions

:D

Re: Baseball

Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2017 7:18 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Image

Marcus Stroman was named the tournament MVP-- he was absolutely dominate tonight and took a no-hitter into the 7th inning in this game.

There was a bit of a sub-story going on that seems to have provided him with some extra motivation:

Stroman originally intended to pitch for Team Puerto Rico as his mother is Puerto Rican....and she's been getting death threats over his choice to pitch for the US, so there was a lot of sniping and barking all night long.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 9:23 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Both the Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball have now started their seasons in earnest.

On a completely different note, Four Ways Baseball Has Shaped the English Language

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 9:27 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Will Shohei Otani Change the Game?
He might be the best bat and arm since George Herman Ruth, though the Yankees decided to end Ruth’s pitching career.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 1:22 pm
by noddy
the mythical perfect allrounder huh.

my team has a history of picking not-quite-good-enough's chasing one of those.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 11:45 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
How much of a myth can it be when the Great Bambino was able to do it? ;)

I don't think anyone, no matter how good, determined and gifted they are; is capable of succeeding at both at a high professional level. Yet, Otani is playing in a very high professional league just fine- so what do I know? The NBL is usually described as a quadruple A level league, right below the Major League in talent but higher than all the US Minor League levels.

The difference is the Japan League not only uses a smaller ball [which some pitchers who've played in both suggest cuts down on wear&tear on the arm] but they also use six man rotations and have a generous amount of off days. Starting pitchers will only pitch once a week in Japan, whereas it'll be twice a week in the states, sometimes three times a week in the increasingly rare 4 man rotations.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:29 pm
by NapLajoieonSteroids
What it comes down to is you have bunches of sabermetrics fanatics indulging in gamesmanship to out-clever the next guy armed with a calculator in how to redesign baseball.

Since the analytical revolution took over baseball, it has attracted a lot of smart dolts who cannot always comprehend why something that works in their modeling doesn't necessarily apply to the actual event.

I don't know how Cricket is handling it, but when I was kid, it became a tribal thing: the old school guys and the sabermetric crowd battling for supremacy on how to value/describe/scout/etc the game of baseball. And of course the journalists and reporters stoked the fires because it made good copy- old vs young, feel vs statistics...it didn't matter that the reporters couldn't handle the simple arithmetic or understand what old-timey scouts were looking for....it was a battle to the death where every story was conveniently framed between these two poles.

And while I've always fallen on the stat/analytical side of the issue, there is a lot of urban idiocy going on that never gets ridiculed because the advanced-statistics thing is novel and hip...besides, no one can be more arrogant than a man with his model. :D

So I do feel a little epicaricacy when these little wonders fall flat on their face.

The "old school guys" could be dumb as rocks (and let's be honest, the old way of doing things is that the owner would hire a guy he got along with as GM, and then the GM would hire staffs of people who were friends with him, and so on down the line....whether they were good at scouting/teaching/coaching/etc was a secondary concern) but they got the general gist of the game and didn't pretend like they invented fire.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 1:03 pm
by noddy
in cricket its complicated in that a batter can keep batting until they get out which makes a batter on fire or a bowler on fire massively over powered (relatively)

rich teams do punch above their talent weight using stats and analysis but individual brilliance can leave the other team rendered impotent.

this lets the poor teams like the caribbean, pakistan or even afghanistan play competitively against the rich teams like australia, india or england.. provided they have alteast 1 guy in both batting and bowling who won the genetic lottery.

the crowd prefers to watch raw brilliance over boring statistical play, so modern australian cricket errs on the side of 'natural game' as an unspoken rule to keep it visually exciting.


cricket can get very technical and very boring to the non hardcore fans if its played statistically, england being a recent example of the 'laptop' approach.

i can watch a bowler do 24 subtle technical variations that get a defensive batsman out but average folks dont see the cleverness, they see nothing happening :P

i believe soccer faced this same quandary and also moved away from statistical play to exciting natural play because first and foremost, this stuff is meant to be entertainment.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 7:47 pm
by Typhoon
NapLajoieonSteroids wrote:aaaand the US wins!

Quite a pitcher's duel; the US squeaked by 2-1 on the back of a few poor defensive plays by Team Japan.

Tomorrow is the final

The United States vs Puerto Rico; winning is crowned World Champion.
Congratulations to the US Team on winning the game and the championship.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2017 8:11 am
by NapLajoieonSteroids
Josh Harrison of the Pittsburgh Pirates may have experienced something never before seen in major league baseball: in four consecutive at-bats, he was hit by a pitch.

Records for hit-by-pitches is a bit spotty when sussing out when they occurred in a game (or games as in this case), so it can't be said for certain; but it hasn't happened in the last 40 years and there is only one other recorded occurrence of a batter getting hit four times in the span of two games-- and that was in the mid 1920s and considering the first game was a rather wild extra-inning affair, the player's last at-bat was likely not when he got hit.

Getting hit by a pitching (and being rewarded first base) is a rarer occurrence than hitting a home run. But even so, some players, due to crowding the plate or diving into the strike zone, do get hit at higher clips. Brandon Guyer is the leading "hitman" among active players, he has been hit in 6.15% of his career at bats. That itself is unusual as it exponentially higher than the average which hovers under 1% of all at bats. But Guyer stands on the very border of the batter's box, straddling the line between uncomfortably close to the plate and technically (though seldom enforce) a violation of the rules. Harrison too stands rather close in, but his is more of dive "into&over" the plate that usually leaves him right on the line itself. Even then it has amounted to him getting hit in a little over 1% of his at-bats for his career.

So it was quite bit of random luck to be hit in 4 consecutive at bats; against two different teams, three different pitchers, all in the general spot of his lower left leg and none of it intentional.

Re: Baseball

Posted: Wed Apr 19, 2017 1:12 pm
by Nonc Hilaire
Perhaps Harrison is forgetting to compensate for the rotation of the earth.