Frayed Knot

This Japanese player named Kondoh, is he the same guy who'll help organize your closets?

Or a four pitch walk, either way.

They should designate one of the pricey 1st base side box seats as the Joan Payson Memorial box and the only requirement to sit there (in addition to being able to afford it) is that you have to wear pearls for the entire game ... men included.

Schwarber as your DH vs LHP [200 OPS pts lower for career] with Pete on the roster is a tough choice to defend.

A Boy Named Seo wrote: Bottom 8 was so tense for Mexico. Japan loaded em up and they were trying to somehow escape without facing Ohtani. And they did! Then he just leads off the 9th with a double anyway. And just think, if that was the 9th inning where they successfully avoided him, he'd have been on 2nd to start the 10th ... only instead of needing a double he simply would have materialized there automatically via the retard rules. Much more exciting than a leadoff double!

Terrific game. Sets up what could be an exciting final.

Safe to say that Randy Arozarena us enjoying himself tonight.

"Did we do this right?" If your intention was for it to look like a child's video game, then 'Yes'!

So it seems that one of Cuba's catchers didn't make it onto the flight back to Havana this morning. Wasn't sure that defecting from Cuba was still a thing.

I'm watching, although less intently now the the U.S. has a multi-touchdown lead.

Frayed Knot wrote: Daniel Bard obviously hates America. Get him out of there. Also, it looks like he may have broken Jose Altuve's hand. Yup. Broken thumb, prolly out two months.

btw, Pete's PH Single currently sits as the go-ahead run. 9 - 7 USA heading to bottom 8

Three hours plus and they're only in top 8th !!! OTOH, grand slams [Trea Turner] that bring you from down two to up two are kinda cool.

If nothing else, just based on what I've seen last night and tonight, this tourney might set a record for most mound visits per inning.

Doesn't seem like my cuppa either. I've made no attempt to see it despite it being all over cable and winning a boat-full of awards.

Frayed Knot wrote: Daniel Bard obviously hates America. Get him out of there. Bard has been suggested as a trade possibility for the Mets. He's had a nice comeback in his ML career but clearly didn't have it tonight [bB, BB HBP, WPx2, etc] and DeRosa wasn't quick enough to pull him.

Daniel Bard obviously hates America. Get him out of there. Also, it looks like he may have broken Jose Altuve's hand.

Baseball is a deeply flawed game that, dynamically, isn't really set up for tournaments. That goes for MLB's own playoffs. At least in MLB, we have a 162 game season. What is this WBC shit? Single elimination championships? Good grief. Of course it's not single elimination until several short rounds have already been played to shave it down to a final four, but that's kind of besides the point. No one, at least no one with any sense, thinks this tournament identifies the very single best team in the world. The only time I did hear such claims was after Cuba won the initial WBC and then trotted out the predictable propaganda about how they won because of their system, and its "non-professionals" who play for the love of the game, which makes their brand of baseball superior to that of all those capitalists pig-dogs who play merely for money (or words to that effect). To me it's just a taste of higher-level and more spirited baseball in March with fewer guys wearing offensive lineman numbers. And, to Darling's point, it does mean something to those players from smaller countries especially when going up against financial and population giants like Japan and the U.S. So I'll be watching, but ymmv.

There's a difference between 'hurt' and 'injured', and it's important to distinguish between the two.

Edgy MD wrote: Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: what the WBC needs is more baseball playing nations. Let's get India and Denmark and Germany in there, a few African nations would be cool. I think a big part of the idea of the WBC is to drive interest in nations on the outside looking in. So definitely. And they do have other countries participating, just ones that wind up getting eliminated in earlier rounds a la regional World Cup tourneys.

For a guy who's a good athlete, he can look more than a bit ungraceful at times. Not Hunter Pence level ungraceful, but not exactly Barishnikov either.

The problem is that no time-of-year switcheroo is going to solve the issue that most upsets fans: that when one of their players is injured during the WBC it's seen as an injury that wouldn't have occurred if not for the WBC. It's a vastly over-played assumption of course even if Olbermann claims otherwise ("first Freddie Freeman, now Diaz"). OMG! a strained hamstring for FFF, that's never happened in ST before. I mean, sure, top draft pick/top prospect Chipper Jones broke his ankle on a slide in the final ST game and missed the entire season of what would have been his rookie year, but why not just cherry pick only the data which you feel buttresses you pre-determined conclusion. In the season after that first WBC injuries to a WBC participant that were occurring in August were being treated as a no doubt cause-and-effect so maybe we can look forward to more tweets following Lindor's stubbed toe injury this coming July. Now was Diaz's snapped tendon caused by a celebration unlikely to happen in a regular Wednesday night ST game? Sure. But it was also a fluke occurrence unlikely to happen anywhere. But back to the whole timing thing. I think November is going to be a non-starter for players (not to mention TV networks during the heart of NFL/college football season). Players need and want a break at the end of the regular season. By November the playoff team players are just shutting things down and are the non-post season guys going to want to ramp it up for a short tourney (with a lot of travel) after a month off as we get toward holiday/vacation time only to shut it down again before ramping it back up once more just after the holidays? Not a chance in my mind. And, even if we ignore all that, the games that would be played in a November tourney are, unlike the current set-up, ones that wouldn't be played otherwise. Every pitch thrown, every slide made would add to the yearly total. As it is now, these games are just a different version of what the players are doing anyway. Mid-season? I don't see how that works. The season lasting from mid-April to early October is already stretched to late-March/early November. How many more bad weather games do we want to create? And this Still doesn't get rid of the issue if and when a player gets hurt during the WBC, in fact it only means that his down time is more likely to occur during a more crucial time of the season. The only argument for it is the assumption that injuries will be less likely in July than in March, something I'm not sure is true and is unlikely to be backed by hard data. The current set-up has pitch counts which increase towards the end in the same way that more informal team ones do as ST moves along. And the players on these teams know ahead of time that maybe they need to get ready a bit earlier. Other than that, we're talking about a tournament which involves somewhere between four and seven games played for a couple dozen ML players two or three times a decade. That's not exactly a lot of added risk if you ask me. Don't like the whole idea of a WBC in the first place? That's fine. I could either take it or leave it but prefer to keep it in just as an added perk to the usual irrelevance of March baseball once every few years and as an attempt to grow interest in the game in some marginal baseball countries. But, if keeping it, I'd strongly argue that it's currently in the best spot on the calendar possible.

Edgy MD wrote: I tentatively agree. But I bet we don't see any steal attempts from the guy for a while. Although he did indicate during a dugout interview last week that he may look to be more aggressive with SB attempts this season (although I confess I forget how strongly he worded it as I was busy gazing at whats-her-name's boobies at the time).

That's pretty cool. It's an exhibition game but one in front of the hometown fans where he gets to compete one last time. Certainly beats the totally ceremonial and utterly meaningless 'one day contract so you can retire as ...' nonsense that the NFL seems to have invented and MLB occasionally copies.

I have "muy triste" also ... or at least I think I do.