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2024 MLB Season Thread - Catch All

tx 3 putt

By tx 3 putt
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cmontexas
cmontexas

It truly amazes me how some people act like they know everything yet are consistently wrong and stupid

Derka
Derka
UTexasFight
UTexasFight

No it’s not 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9427

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, gofuckyourself said:

I usually use pop-up blockers but will deactivate to hopefully get this.

On field mic'ed players is the stupidest shit. Followed closely by dugout interviews. 

Dugout interviews would be much more entertaining if they turned the interviews in to bar talk:

”Thoughts on the knockers in the third row?”

or “what’s the first part of the first game spread to get devoured? And what’s the most popular beverage to wash it down with?”

 

no one wants the stupid cliche Q&A that is white noise 100 out of 100 times. 

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Helobious

Helobious 9456

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1 hour ago, InkaUtexas said:
 

Tyler O'Neill charged in to make the catch. Rafael Devers drifted back and did grab the popup for the final out of the top of the seventh inning in Boston’s eventual 6-0 loss to the Guardians.

The back of Devers’ head rammed into O’Neill’s forehead, and both players stayed on the ground for a bit to gather themselves.

O’Neill, who was bloodied, got the worst of it, exiting the game and getting eight stitches. He was in concussion protocol when the game ended, leaving his status in the upcoming days up in the air.

 

https://www.mlb.com/redsox/news/rafael-devers-tyler-o-neill-collision

Oh damn. 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54203

Posted
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JoePos on Whitey:

Quote

In a nine-day span in June of 1949, the New York Yankees signed two 17-year-old prospects from the Midwest; one a shortstop out of a town called Commerce and the other an outfielder from a place called Belleville. The Yankees gave each of them a $1,500 signing bonus and something to dream about.

The shortstop was a kid named Mickey Mantle.

The outfielder was Rellie Herzog. Well, Rellie was a nickname. His full name was Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog. A few months later, while playing in an Oklahoma town called McAlester, a local sportscaster noticed his light hair and gave him a new nickname.

And that’s how he became Whitey Herzog.


Funny thing: Whitey Herzog, who died on Monday at age 92, was not a particularly fast player, nor was he especially known for his defense. He did have a little bit of speed before he served in the Army Corps of Engineers for two years during the Korean War, but shortly after he got to the major leagues in ’56, he suffered some leg injuries and, after that, couldn’t run much. In his big-league career, which lasted for parts of eight seasons, Whitey Herzog tried to steal 31 times. He was caught 58% of the time.

This matters only because it tells you that Whiteyball, the breakneck style of play that Herzog created as manager of the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals, was not a natural outgrowth of his own game. No. Herzog very deliberately saw the hand he was dealt—sprawling stadiums covered in artificial turf—and came up with the great-defense, base-stealing, big-bench, triple-centric, pitch-to-contact, never-let-their-best-guy-beat-you approach that he felt sure was the best way to win.

As Bill James has written, if Herzog had been hired to manage the Detroit Tigers or New York Mets, he surely would have come up with something else.

He expected to manage the Mets. He was the club’s farm director in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Mets’ system was flush in those years—Nolan Ryan, Jerry Koosman, Amos Otis, Ken Singleton and Jon Matlack, among others—and when Cleveland and Oakland approached him to become their manager, the Mets assured him that he was next in line after Gil Hodges.

But when Hodges died in April 1972, the Mets went with Yogi Berra instead, and Herzog bitterly took the first managing job offered to him, which was—unfortunately—the 1973 Texas Rangers mess. Herzog knew all about messes; he had spent three years as a player with the late 1950s, early 1960s Kansas City A’s. Those A’s lost a lot of games and inspired countless punchlines, but it has to be said that the teams had a shocking number of players who would shape the game for the next quarter-century. In addition to Herzog, those teams had:

Future Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa

Future Hall of Fame manager Dick Williams

World Series champion manager Hank Bauer

World Series champion manager Dick Howser

Future manager Joe Morgan

Future manager Doc Edwards

Future star pitching coach Dave Duncan

Future star hitting coach Charley Lau

It’s almost as if those players saw all the nonsense happening around them and vowed to make sure that stuff never happened on their watch. But there was just so much nonsense for Herzog in Texas under owner Bob Short. Herzog was manager when Short demanded that the team start high school pitcher David Clyde immediately after he was taken with the first pick in the draft. It was almost a relief when Short fired Herzog after only 138 games to bring in Billy Martin. Short had once said that he would fire his own grandmother to hire Martin, which led Herzog to offer the legendary quote: “I guess I’m the grandmother.”

Two years later, Kansas City Royals general manager Joe Burke—who had also been fired by Short in Texas—brought Herzog in to manage an up-and-coming Royals team. Whitey immediately made defensive wiz Frank White his every-day second baseman (at a time when most thought White would never hit enough), made Hal McRae his every-day designated hitter, gave young Al Cowens the rightfield job and told every player that he expected them to play aggressively, all the time, to always go for the extra base, even if it meant running into a bunch of outs, to always be ready, because he would use every one of them, to player harder than anyone else on defense, because a lack of defensive hustle was the surest way to get into his doghouse.


Herzog was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010. (James Drake/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
The Royals won the American League West in each of the next three years—and lost to the Yankees in the League Championship Series in each of the next three years. Along the way, Herzog feuded with just about everybody, from the owner’s wife, Muriel Kauffman*, to his old teammate, legendary batting coach Charley Lau**, to Pete Lacock***, to John Mayberry****.

*Kauffman was once asked by Angels owner Gene Autry how Herzog was doing. She responded: “Who gives a @#!$?”

**Herzog had Lau fired. He always said it was because Lau coached every player to hit the same way, so that while he had his famous successes, like George Brett and Lou Piniella and Hal McRae, he stunted the growth of other hitters, particularly power hitters. Lau (and others) countered that Herzog just didn’t like how much credit Lau was getting.

***Lacock wanted to play every day. Herzog replied, “If I thought he could hit left-handers, I’d play him every day. I couldn’t hit left-handers and I was an every-day player… in the minor leagues.”

****In Game 4 of the 1977 playoffs, Herzog pulled Mayberry after five innings. Big John had a nightmare of a game, dropping two pop-ups and striking out twice, the second time with runners on first and third. After the game, the newspapers reported that Mayberry had had a bad reaction to a pain medication because of a toothache. “John’s not one to complain, but I should have known something was wrong,” Herzog told reporters. He then benched Mayberry the next day, even though Mayberry said he felt fine. “I just want to play John Wathan,” Herzog grumped at reporters who questioned the move.

None of this made sense at the time, and, as it turns out, none of it did make sense: As Herzog would later write in his book, White Rat, Mayberry had partied with his brothers before Game 4 and was so out of it that “the man couldn’t even talk.” “It must have been one hell of a party,” Herzog added. Mayberry never played for Herzog again.

When the Royals finished a disappointing second in the division in 1979, Herzog found that he had not built up nearly enough goodwill to survive. Building goodwill was just not Whitey’s style. He was fired shortly after the season ended. Less than a year later, he was named the third of four managers for the 1980 Cardinals, then was named the Cardinals’ general manager, then named himself both general manager and manager after the 1980 season.

He was the first person in MLB to be both the manager and the manager’s boss at the same time since Connie Mack.

And he promptly did in St. Louis what he had done in Kansas City—he shook up everything to build the kind of team he believed could win. He ran Cardinals icon Ted Simmons out of town when he balked at moving to first base. He couldn't tolerate what he considered to be Garry Templeton’s lackadaisical attitude and dealt him for Ozzie Smith. He thought Keith Hernandez was more trouble than he was worth because of his off-the-field drug issues and traded him to the Mets.

All the while, he built around speed-speed-speed, trading for a fading Yankees prospect named Willie McGee, dealing for Lonnie Smith when few saw him as an every-day player, and, later, promoting and starting a blazing-fast 23-year-old Class AA player named Vince Coleman. The 1982 Cardinals hit 67 home runs as a team, but they led the league in triples and stolen bases and on-base percentage and won the World Series.

The 1985 Cardinals stole 314 bases, second-most for any team since Deadball*, and obviously led the league in triples**, won 101 games and lost the World Series in seven games, though St. Louis fans will never believe that.

*The team with the most steals in a season since Deadball was—and I NEVER would have gotten this one—the 1976 A’s, managed by Chuck Tanner. This was pre-Rickey Henderson, so how in the WORLD did they steal so many bases?

Well, they had SIX players who stole 30-plus bases that year. It’s worth looking at those six:

Bill North stole a career-high 75 bases.

Bert Campaneris stole 54, not a career-high, but his most in seven years.

Don Baylor stole a career-high 52. Yeah, Don Baylor.

Claudell Washington stole 37.

Scrap Iron Phil Garner stole a career-high 35.

Pinch-runner Larry Lintz, who got four plate appearances all year, stole 31.

**Herzog’s teams led the league in triples in: 1975, ’76, ’77, ’78, ’79, ’81, ’82, ’83 and ’85.

“Whitey,” Bill James wrote in his Guide to Baseball Managers, “was the boldest man in baseball. He looked for an attitude, a willingness to get it done. When a player lost that edge, that fearlessness, that love of risk, he lost his value, and then his manager had a problem.”

Whitey Herzog solved problems. That was his whole thing as a manager. He didn’t mind bruised feelings. He didn’t feel the need to be loved or even liked by his players (“If they need a buddy, get a dog,” he said), and he didn’t trust anyone’s opinion nearly as much as his own, and he couldn’t stand still, and if you look over the breadth of his career, you see that he lost more big games than he won.

But all along, Whitey Herzog kept going, kept pushing, kept risking, kept looking to take the extra base. He simply didn’t know any other way.

 

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InkaUtexas

InkaUtexas 25855

Posted
Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, beer said:

Phoenix and Vegas probably need teams, but shit nothing in Tenn or the Carolinas? 

I think Tenn gets one. 

I would love to see more games played in San Juan. Rotate teams for a head to head.

Edited by InkaUtexas
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gsoda3

gsoda3 3245

Posted
Posted
Phoenix and Vegas probably need teams, but shit nothing in Tenn or the Carolinas? 
I could see one in the triangle in Carolina. I dunno what other part of SEC country has a pop density high enough to sustain a team.
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Helobious

Helobious 9456

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Posted
15 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

The hat is terrible.  I don't hate the jersey, though I would have gone with something other than NYC on it (Queens?).

I still think Boston, Seattle, Atlanta, and Miami have the best CC uniforms.

 

 

Trolling? You literally listed the worst city connect unis in order. No one can touch the White Sox. 
 

It’s funny to see the pathetic Mets try to claim all of NYC though.

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