dinosaur jesus

And screw it. I'll tune in later.

YouTube is trash. There's no volume control on streaming broadcasts, so I've got the volume off on my tablet and I'm listening to the radio feed on my computer, out of synch. And on full screen there's no way to stop those idiot comments from popping up.

I subscribed to YouTube, just to get rid of the ads every forty seconds. But I'm still not happy about ballgames being on it. It's one thing to put them on mlb.com, which gives you access to every game not on national TV or blacked out locally, or on a network available on any TV package. It's another to put them on a source you have to pay for directly. And the announcers probably suck.

They probably do. But how often do they argue about it when they're clearly wrong?

Name one sport where players don't argue close calls. It's human nature to believe you beat that throw. Or that maybe you were out if you want to get technical about it, but the other team is getting all the breaks so you should too. You going to make a rule against human nature? That's not cheating. Cheating is the stuff you get away with.

The Mets didn't get caught with their pants down when Utley broke Tejada's leg. The new rules came about because MLB was embarrassed that its old rules, under which Utley should have been ejected, weren't being enforced. That wasn't the Mets' fault, any more than MLB overthinking how to keep catchers from getting run over was Buster Posey and the Giants' fault. MFS62 mentioned Bill Klem. I bet Klem made a ton of bad calls, and I'm glad there are probably a lot fewer umpiring mistakes than there used to be. But I'm sympathetic to the idea of someone like Klem who makes the decision, it's done (though you can bitch about it if it makes you feel better), and let's get on with it. But we'll never be there again.

This is starting to get fun.

This is a very silly argument, amounting to "Runners have cheated since time immemorial, so now that we have the technology to tell definitively when they've cheated, we should make cheating legal." The solution is obvious: instruct runners to maintain better contact with the bases when the ball is anywhere near them. If this means a slower jump on tag-up plays, or more runners called out trying to steal, then that's what it means. End of discussion, no? I didn't say they were cheating. Villar wasn't cheating on that slide. I'm saying that if you slide straight into a base and right over it, and only a close examination with a high-speed camera can show that his upper body came off the ground a millisecond before his lower body reached the bag, then maybe it's not worth making that examination. Maybe if the umpire had been lying flat on the ground with a good view of Villar's belly he might have caught it. But he was in perfect position and he didn't. A tag-up play is a completely different situation. It's hard to call, because you have to assess two things happening hundreds of feet apart. But it's not impossible. And umpires almost always get them right. We've gotten into the territory of trying to judge whether a horse's feet are all on the ground at the same time, or whether urine flows in a continuous stream or a collection of droplets. Interesting questions, but nothing to do with how the game is played.

I've got Cron's disease and he's got mine.

Every win with this lineup feels like they've gotten away with something. Stroman deserved it, though. Do the Mets deserve him?

Edgy MD wrote: =Fman99 post_id=65677 time=1622122542 user_id=86]Once I'm two beers in and the lineup changes start happening I lose interest. This is me exactly. But with orgies.

It can get complicated, I'll give you that. Ultimately I'd just hope we're not not stuck with the kind of arbitrary legalistic pulled from someone's ass nonsense the NFL seems to prefer. I guess I'd just rather they kept it simple and didn't re-examine every little thing. I'm willing to live with letting the really close calls go if the really clear mistakes can be rectified.

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=65631 time=1622071431 user_id=68] This is not a replay issue because that kind of out call can be made, just the same, in real-time, live, without the benefit of replay review. And it makes no sense to claim that replay is flawed because it presents the play under review with greater clarity.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: I'd consider making momentary loss of contact with the bag--after arriving safely--a non-reviewable call, unless in cases where in the umpire's judgment, a slide goes beyond the bag or into the baselines. It'd be a grey area for sure but they already use interpretations in rule at plays at the bases wrt contact and obstruction I agree with this. I'm fine with replay being used to correct things that the umpires should be able to see, even if they miss them sometimes. I'm not comfortable with it being used to correct things no human being could possibly see. For 150 years a player who slid into third like Villar did would have been safe, no question, no controversy. And now suddenly we find out we were wrong all that time. For 150 years we also had runners called out who reached the base before the throw, balls called foul that landed fair, trapped balls called catches. But those were controversial, and I'm glad we can finally get them right. So let's make certain kinds of calls unreviewable. Sliding past the base and getting tagged has always been an out, if the umpire saw it. So review it. Momentarily losing contact with the base while sliding over it has never been an out. So don't review it.

Thirty overall. So it's possible no one has ever had this many at once.

Fargas likely to go https://twitter.com/AnthonyDiComo/status/1397217680151699457?s=20to the IL. Same with Yamamoto (whose spot Jake will take when activated later today). 17 total ILed. What's the record? The record is 30 by the Yankees in 2019. Seems reachable.

Edgy MD wrote: I didn't get Foli. His Pirate teammates swore that he was a steal and a key cog of that 1979 championship, but with a gun to my head, I'd say that Taveras brought more to the table. Foli chose that one year to be a decent major league player. It was kind of infuriating to see it happen. But they were generally pretty comparable in value—Taveras a slightly better hitter, Foli a better fielder. I think the perception that Taveras was better was an illusion based on his stealing all those bases, and from his mostly being on better teams. The Pirates might have seen through that, or they might simply have decided that on a team with plenty of hitting, they wanted the glove man. And then he went and hit .291 for them.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Seems like the 70s were a Dodger-Reds decade and less a Pirate decade, to me. Anyway, tremendous talent. Often, when I think of the powerhouse NL 70s teams, I try and imagine what Tom Seaver would have looked like in those We are Family Japanese mix 'n match Pirate uniforms of the late 70s. Seaver's '77 list of the teams he'd accept a trade to were comprised of the four perennial 70s NL contenders -- Pitt., Phila., Cin. and LA. And if Zvon were around, he'd have a pic of Seaver in those Mizunos within an hour of this post posting. He would have looked like a clown. And by 1982 he would have grown a Rick Rhoden mustache, as all the Pirates did in those days. At least we were spared that.

Glasnow retired his first fourteen, Peterson has retired his last fourteen. That's a perfect game.

Yes, but it sounds like they actually had a policy not to honor lifetime passes. That would have to come from a bit higher up. It's not just someone on the phone having to make something up. It's someone on the computer who has the time to check and ask someone about it. Evil or just dysfunctional, it's not a good look.

That's a great story. It's sad that the detail that jumps out is the Mets having to be shamed into honoring his pass. Why in the world would they do that? How many lifetime passes are there out there?

The Mets' NY was better than the Yankees' when Christy Mathewson wore it, and it's better now.

You guys are good.

I like this. “Worst” means in terms of impact on the game, not how badly the ump was off. Often those “worst” calls aren't really that bad. That 3-0 strike to Walker, for instance, was a ball, but a lot of umpires would have called it a strike, especially on that count. The really outrageous thing is that consistency score. Nelson couldn't even get his own strike zone right.

Lindor with a case of the yips. Survived that one, though.