General MLB 2011 thread for random game talk, juiced-baseball conspiracies, etc

to prev. question: why would there have to be an interleague game "every day"?

i honestly don't understand why that would be a thing

16 vs. 14 = even
15 vs. 15 = odd

odd = at least one team in each league that would need to play interleague game.

cause you'd have 15 teams in each league, ie 7 play 7 in each league then the 15th teams play each other.

neyer suggested pitting shitty teams (based on the previous season's record) against each other in the final week for the interleague teams. it'll bite you sooner or later, but whatever.

you wouldn't HAVE to have interleague every day but the alternative is staggering the schedule in a goofy way such that teams have weekend days off. right now every team plays every fri/sat/sun which is of course the optimal thing financially.

it wouldn't be literally every day -- probably skip some mondays/thursdays -- but yeah

just create two more franchises, duh

It would probably be better to get rid of two franchises.

Nah, they're too profitable. Even the Pirates are raking in the dough.

Are there any clubs in the red besides the Dodgers?

i think it would be more fun to guess what B-grade cities might qualify for a MLB franchise.

Las Vegas, Portland, Sacramento

Hartford, New Jersey

hamilton, winnipeg, fremont

haha, wrt Fremont... Oakland's AAA affiliate in Sacramento was outdrawing the A's for a while a season or two ago (?)... Sacramento is <60 miles from Oakland.

portland would be a decent choice for the AL, it might be nice for seattle to have a nearby regional rival as opposed to ones that happen to share a time zone. maybe for the NL, give chicago a team? : /

so apparently Colbert has some bet with mlb.com and if he wins he takes over their twitter feed?

ronnie belliard is retiring after tonight's lehigh valley ironpigs game

hbryant42 Howard Bryant
MLB sources tell me the most viable market for relocating a team is also the most contentious: NYC

hbryant42 Howard Bryant
San Antonio, Portland, Las Vegas are all "less attractive than they seem. The best city is San Jose, but it is for now, off limits."

Neyer

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/7/13/2274319/mlb-realignment-for-reals

And just like that, the Clemens trial is over.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/07/11/national/w020115D09.DTL&tsp=1

Nice

http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/trade-partners.cgi

apparently the pirates beat the braves tonight (3-1) without their first baseman ever touching the ball

how is that even

you know, suzyn, you just can't predict baseball

Altanta didn't ground out a single time...how often does that happen?

This made me lol this morning. Grats, Berto!

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/What-the-heck-Roberto-Alomar-takes-fan-8217-s-?urn=mlb-wp13874

tim mccarver just called david freese a brown-eyed handsome man

the fox game i have is **rubs eyes** tampa at seattle ??

Not sure where to put this--I have learned that the starting-pitchers-doing-really-well thread has a very specific purview...AL Cy Young: shaping up as an historic three-way race between Verlander, Weaver, and Sabathia. (You could stretch things to include Haren and Beckett, but realistically, it'll probably come down to those three.) It'd be Verlander or Weaver today, but Sabathia sure is coming on strong.

can't see how it's anyone but Verlander. Sabathia is having probably his best full season but Verlander is just sick good right now.

The oldschool James Cy Predictor has Verlander with a narrow lead over CC and Weaver.

and in the NL, it's got to be Halladay right?

Verlander should just join the Phillies, wouldn't baseball fans just love that

The AL's so relatively close at this point, I think it's completely up for grabs. Each guy still has 10 or 11 starts left.

Honestly I don't think Weaver has a shot, as good as he's been

I feel like the voters REALLY want to give it to CC one of these years so yeah if he goes on a big run he'll probably get it

If Verlander completed his second no-hitter though they could have given it to him right then. Even the new school SABR voters (do they exist?) have to appreciate that.

No-hitters are usually great games, but dumb luck is all that generally separates them from 1- to 4-hitters. So, wrong.

By the Prospectus version of WAR, Weaver has a whisker of a lead over Verlander. And Kershaw leads Halladay! So I like that version.

Right now, for me, it's between Weaver and Verlander. Going on basic stats (but not W-L), I'd probably give the edge to Verlander -- more innings, lower WHIP, higher K rate.

Is this the page where you got the James rankings, Morbius?

http://espn.go.com/mlb/features/cyyoung

By that system, Verlander/Weaver/Sabathia are even closer than I would have guessed. One thing that doesn't really make sense to me is why Wilson is ranked so much higher than Rivera.

I'm not arguing that, but we live in an era where there are still voters who tout pitcher wins like it's a big deal. Obviously no hitters are mostly luck but this isn't Liriano we're talking about. Even if you took away Verlander's (theoretical) no-hitters, he's still a frontrunner for the Cy.

Yeah, Kershaw for the NL.

I feel like the voters REALLY want to give it to CC one of these years

He's already won one, though, so if that ever does factor into the voting, I can't see that it would here. I do agree that, rightly or wrongly, a second no-hitter would have helped him in the voting quite a bit (all else being more or less equal).

"Him" meaning Verlander.

Should the AL Cy race continue to be tight through the end of the year, you can bet some pro-Verlander voter will write an article about the recent Weaver-Verlander duel and cite Weaver's tantrum as the Real Moment the Victor Was Determined.

xxp I mean they want to give him one as a Yankee. I read a bunch of articles where people (dumb people, but voters nonetheless) made a big deal out of how pitching as a Yankee is so much more important, because blah blah blah pitcher wins blah blah blah history of the game blah blah blah Derek Jeter

in terms of who really deserves it though, it's Verlander's to lose

I've been mulling over the his-turn-to-win idea...It's definitely led to a number of Academy Awards, undoubtedly a lot of them pretty silly. I don't know about baseball. Something that has come into play with MVPs on occasion, though, is his-turn-not-to-win: Pendleton over Bonds in '91, Howard over Pujols in '06, and I'm sure there have been other instances of this.

Meant to add: if it's close between Halladay and Kershaw, I could see Kershaw benefiting from that.

I've never understood how MVP voting really works ever since the year Giambi and Kent won one despite A-Rod being the best hitter by a good margin (2000?) I was also susprised to find out that George Brett only won it once. Could be worse - the Golden Glove is probably the most confusing vote of all (AKA, "fuck it, just give it to Jeter")

Actually, Kent over Bonds in 2000 is a good example of his-turn-not-to-win (at a point when Bonds was still sitting on three MVPs). Not that Kent wasn't great that year, but Bonds had the better year.

well, yeah, that's why I'm saying I don't know how MVP voting works. maybe Bonds was such a frontrunner that people were looking for reasons not to vote for him? like I realize how boring it is to give Barry Bonds 7 MVP awards (is that right?) but it sort of devalues it when you're intentionally NOT voting for the best hitter. still, I was more confused about Giambi over ARod

No, I don't get that one either. (Somehow, Rodriguez finished third behind Thomas.) I don't even get it looking at some of the most traditional things voters used to give great weight to: Giambi and Rodriguez were almost even in HR and RBI, and Oakland just edged Seattle by half a game for the divisional title. Giambi's slash stats were better, but not inordinately so. When you put that on one side, and the huge difference between a shortstop and a 1B/DH-type on the other, I don't know what the voters were thinking either.