La Russa still thinks this is mainly about whether a batter should swing at a 3-0 pitch in a blowout. Regardless of the answer to that question, La Russa should not be sanctioning another team throwing at one of his own players.

I feel like Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson is going to open their shows tonight defending LaRussa. That's how bad of a take you have KJS.

if you graphed SLG by MPH what would the order of these be, highest to lowest? 85, 70, 48.

Cheers; I know my takes are LOLOLDS at this point but I am holding out that sportsmanship still has a place somewhere; people seem to think it does in the timed games. I am not sure why baseball can't find a way to be included. Everything people are saying about Mercedes owing himself a good AB, playing for a contract, etc.. could be said of an NBA or NFL player stat padding in a blowout. But those sports usually avoid running plays to do that.

Players and coaches should act differently in games with very very high win probability locked up. If that is a bad take I'll own it.

Yeah those first three takes were real entertaining. What would have been entertaining is him putting the first pitch in play and showing that he can hit whatever 48 mph junk this guy is throwing, even something outside. He may have even gotten a hit (entertaining!) or someone makes a great defensive play (entertaining!). But no, he just watched them go by (boring!)

Dribbling out the clock, or just running instead of passing, is much much much less to ask than some guy tojust go up there and purposefully not have a good PA. TLR should 100% have been saying the opposing coach and pitcher were making a mockery of the game.

It's just absurd that of all the takes that could come out of that inning, there's a take where the one guy who actually played baseball did something wrong.

LaRussa getting fired over this incident would be beautiful. And deserving. Team should all stand by Mercedes and demand a new manager.

Are they allowed to make great defensive plays in a 16-4 game? I'm not sure, I'll have to go check the unwritten book.

LaRussa might not make it to the end of the week without saying something out of touch with 2021 anyways and get fired for that.

Sportsmanship runs in both directions though. It's not just the responsibility of the winning team to bend over backwards to not offend the losers. The losers have a responsibility to take the loss graciously and even laugh about it when it reaches the point that your backup catcher is pitching. If the winning team still trying to get a hit is causing anyone to get upset and making them want to throw at people later, I'd say it's not the winning team that has the sportsmanship problem. All these unwritten rules really are is a cover for sore losers to gripe about something.

Good point

Have you ever watched a slow pitch softball game? The slugging percentage is very high.

Major leaguers probably would have the highest slugging percentage against the 48 MPH pitches over the long haul. But it's quite a novelty, so maybe slugging percentage would be higher for the 70 mph pitches in this scenario. I honestly don't know.

I'm pretty damn sure that OPS would be highest on the 48 mph pitches. As I said, it's not that easy to throw strikes at 50% effort.

In any event, who cares from your perspective? The only goal is to end the game as quickly as possible, right? And it's everyone's responsibility, including the hitters, to achieve that goal. That's why you want the hitters to swing at a bunch of bad pitches. So maybe all the right handed hitters should hit left handed and vice versa? Or maybe all the batters should hold the barrel of the bat and try to hit the ball with the handle. Or maybe all the batters should bunt and then refuse to leave the batters box.

Or maybe all the hitters should try this.



There are a lot of entertaining things that hitters could do to end a game very quickly in a blowout.

Perfect.

https://slate.com/culture/2021/05/to...white-sox.html

This is the absolutely ridiculous part in this big sea of lunacy from LR. I would be pissed if I was one of his players.

ryan yarbrough is lawn-fresh, steam your carpet with an oily load dogsh*t

Yes.........How else are they going to learn how to compete?

Davey Martinez with the classic argument-winning technique of pulling up and tossing a base.

Another no-hitter tonight. Crazy.

Why the **** did we not run the random nono thread pool this year?

Rhetorical obviously.

Maybe someone Will get 2 this year.

So, they've gotten to the point where there is a no hitter every week. I don't know what baseball can do to fix their problem, but they definitely struggle to find plays of the week.

my calculations were 1 or 2 more after the 4th one - might be wrong by the weekend

Pujols slugging .143 for Dodgers but 2 RBIs in 2 games ... same old same old. Ribbie Machine.

These stats sum up what is wrong with the game today.

k's per game 8.97
League BA .236


When Clemens struck out 20 guys k's per game was roughly 5.5 per game, and the league avg was .250.

I'd consider myself a baseball purist, but I do wonder if moving the mound and the fences would add more action to the game. I mean I love watching a no-hitter happen for sure, but I prefer it to be a challenge.

Ban the shift. And I don't have a problem with shifts. But banning shifts instantly increases the number of base hits, right?