It’s certainly changed from the days when the ballpark first opened and they had a long string of sellouts.
It doesn’t help that downtown Cleveland kind of sucks. Everything is closed by like, 8pm. Still, the atmosphere last night in the stadium was playoff-esque – especially once Kluber and Gomes headed out for the 9th and the rest of the team hung back, giving Kluber his moment to be recognized.
But hey, we’re glad to see some completely genuine concern about a topic that hasn’t been beaten to death by people looking for things to be miserable about instead of enjoying a streak of historically good baseball :)
Detroit’s catcher, James McCann, just got ejected for arguing a ball 4 call. Usually catchers keep themselves in the game by staying in their crouch and facing the pitcher while they argue. Edit: And on the very next pitch, the replacement catcher fails to even touch the ball – accidently I’m sure – and it hits the ump in the shoulder. Edit Edit: And the Indians run their streak to 21, a new AL record. The Tigers richly deserved this loss after that bush league move.
Looks like the A’s have a spot all picked out for a new ballpark. Let’s see if they can get this one done.
This is sort of emblematic of the Tigers’ season:
I reminded someone today that Wolcott (the home plate umpire) was on the receiving end of one of AJ Pierzynski’s better lines a few years back and in return gave AJ one of his many (mostly well-deserved) ejections; “Give me another ball. One you can see.”
I’ll just mention that the pitch called into question by McCann was close, but clearly a ball. McCann had a couple of called strikes on his previous at bat on that same edge, but they were actually in the strike zone (per the computer). There wasn’t any preferential treatment going on there.
I’ve seen catchers get crossed up many times before, and watched some umps take the brunt of the mistake. The timing was concerning as was the lack of demonstrable care by Hicks. Although to be fair, runners were on and he may have been totally focused on the baseball implications. Still, Hicks heard the impact, heard Wolcott’s dismay, and he didn’t appear to check on him even after collecting the ball and noting that nobody was trying to advance. I mean, they’re both grown men who can deal with pain and make their own decisions, but that struck me as a poor one.
edit - it’s been a long day
Here’s one from HS a decade ago:
All 5 say it was not intentional. I watched the play as well and sorry but you’re wrong. Not intentional. For these guys to accuse players of intentionally trying to injure an ump, now that’s bush league. I was rooting for the Indians to get the record but now, screw em.
Just to be clear, no player nor manager nor front office person claimed it was intentional. There was some banter by the announcers such as “that might raise some eyebrows.”
What’s bush league is the way that site starts playing TWO videos at once. WTF CBS?!
It looks somewhat shady to me. I don’t see why the C didn’t check on the umpire - he turns, sees him lying there, possibly in pain, and just turns away as if he’s not surprised.
The general reason that the five say it wasn’t intentional is that they don’t seem to WANT to say that without really clear direct evidence of it.
Mute tab is my homie.
One announcer says “might raise some eyebrows” and CBS writes 500 words on it? You gotta be pretty desperate for controversy to find it here.
As someone who has umped from little league up through American Legion ball, that’s what struck me too about the replay. Normally, when it’s accidental, the catcher checks on the ump and stays with him until help arrives. Here Hicks barely gave him a glance while he was lying on his back. Not cool.
I guess you could say that Cleveland has become the alpha and omega of professional sports. The Indians have won as many games during this 21- game streak as the Browns have won since Nov. 20, 2011.
That’s pretty amazing.
On the other hand, the factory of sadness is one of the more interesting stories in the NFL now, largely because they hired a moneyball guy as Chief Strategy Officer (former Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta). Personally, I am fascinated to see whether football can undergo the same metrics-based transformation that we have seen in baseball.
Come from behind on their last strike in the bottom of the 9th, and then winning it in the 10th; not a bad way to reach 22 in a row.
The streak has now reached such proportions that it’s even being covered on the local morning news programs in Milwaukee.
Football seems ripe for that sort of thing given all the anti-stats superstition/tradition around PATs, 4th down conversions, onside kicks etc. Not sure a literal moneyball guy is the person to do it, though. Guess we’ll find out.
The biggest challenge I see is the one of small sample sizes. Running a close second is the fact individual performance for many positions would be very hard to capture.
With only 16 games it is hard to separate the noise from the signal, especially if a player is from a particularly strong or weak division. The AFC North is always a tough division, while the south is usually particularly weak. Sure you can somewhat weight it by team quality, but it is a much fuzzier comparison due to outliers weighting more heavily on the data.
And how would you judge an offensive tackle? There is a certain amount of subjective eye testing most of the time. Because it can be hard to properly evaluate the events that don’t happen. And the tackle is more impacted by the performance of the center and guards than a shortstop would be by he third baseman and second baseman.
I could see some macro level adjustments, but I don’t think the numerical applications are nearly as refined or useful as they were for baseball at the time. I’m not sure they ever will be.
But they said the same for hockey, and they have embraced analytics. Mostly. Except Toronto and Don Cherry.
Yeah, I was thinking more at the macro level, where it seems there is a lot of low hanging fruit, though maybe less than 5 years ago. And I suppose some decisions about individual players would follow from those macro changes. There’s also stuff you see the more stats minded commentators talk about, like teams giving up too much to draft RBs, but I don’t know if that’ s actually borne out in the data.