He's definitely substantially to blame but I don't think it was intentional on his part. He definitely understands the nuances of the game.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

@keithlaw

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Read the comments, he gets in an interesting discussion with Jeff Frye

For 2019, im going with....

Scherzer
Sale
Buehler
Bauer
Cole

Frye has been reincarnated as Nick Madrigal but a lot of idiots prefer guys who strikeout 149 times and get on base at a .281 clip.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

How can he not have a very big finger pointed at him. He dropped a weapon in a room full of children and then is surprised someone got hurt.

The Len Kaspers of the world get to call themselves a sabermatrician with no particular competency in math or statistics.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Nothing wrong with BA or those other traditional stats. They measure stuff just fine. One only has to understand how they are calculated to know the limitations of each. And baseball should be embarrassed at all the strikeouts.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I wouldn't say "embarrassed" is the right word, but there is a problem when the methods used to win are making the game less entertaining to watch. The entire point of the game is to be entertaining.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Sabermetrics is a gold mine for Joe Maddon. His moves are predetermined, never considered wrong by him, or need to be explained to the unsophisticated.

Yea embarrassing is the wrong word. It would be like saying the NFL should be embarrassed by the low rushing totals. Its not ineptitude, it's a strategic decision.

To me it would be like the NFL discounting sacks allowed in a game because it was determined that every play should be a long pass play requiring the QB to take seven step drops. No more rushes, screens or quick drop back passes. It’s a “home run” throw or bust.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Is the entire point to be entertaining? So if the Sox win the WS but are not "entertaining" then they have failed?

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

Right. You Mr. NFL Coach will have only 15 plays and all of them will be bombs. You will however complete 50% of them and win 28-24.

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Elections have consequences.

But there is no rule change like that in baseball. It's been determined that (homeruns and strikeouts vs making contact and less homeruns) is the best strategy to win.

It might be entertaining to see runs manufactured but that was never the best way to score runs.

For me it seems people seem to be okay with their own team regardless. I think the entertainment for MLB as a whole suffers. I don'y care to watch any other teams win in some ugly manner without a personal necessity.

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Elections have consequences.

Obviously they were successful on a certain level. But if the game is being watched by less and less people I would say it's failing.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I think there have been times and places where it has been. But in the era of PEDs and small ballparks and shifts, you're clearly correct.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

The two most universally fascinating and timeless components of baseball are the distance a person can hit a ball and the speed at which a person can throw a ball.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Yes, but those things occur at an extraordinary level on an infrequent basis. I was there for Borchard's homer and I was not particularly entertained by the 9-8 loss.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

No Degrom?

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That was the Mike Martz offense...we lived through that like 8 years ago...

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The high homerun/strikeout strategy is similar to the NBA eliminating the post game and letting everyone shoot 3s.

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Joe Maddon doesn't do anything strategy-wize that Earl Weaver wasn't doing 50 years ago:

- heavy lineup manipulation
- emphasis on the three run homer
- preferring to have three catchers
- a quick hook compared to his peers for starting pitchers not named Jon Lester or Jim Palmer

Joe just does it with a patina of new age hipster from a hardscrabble background, while Weaver had no problem coming off as a loveable asshole.

Earl was the guy who started putting Steve Stone as the DH batting 6th so he could wait until the game unfolded to see who would take the first AB.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

I agree that the point of the game as a whole is to be entertaining, but the point of a game, or a homestand, or a season, or a postseason is to win. Right now, whiffing a bunch of times isn't that punitive in the larger goal of winning. The players get paid to execute skills that win, because GMs and managers get rewarded for wins.

Its the people that man the helm on the larger state of the game that need to act to produce a more entertaining product, because I agree, the current methods of winning produce an incredibly boring product a lot of the time.

Just guessing he gets hurt or has some regression (how could he not?)

Bill James has been a net positive for the game, and anyone who is ranting raving anytime they hear another person cite to wins or RBI to attempt to prove a point has emotional problems that transcend baseball. I also think he's brought along a new generation of fans, although those fans seem to be more interested in what the general manager is doing than actually watching the games.

That could be a global goal, but I don't think you can expect anyone from the GM down to care about being entertaining. They are there to win, and their continued employment depends on it.

Also think you might be overestimating how much less enjoyable walks and strikeouts make it. Watching a guy dribble out to SS isn't much more entertaining than striking out, IMO. Plus if Javy Baez swings three feet above his head while striking out, it's actually kind of amusing to watch. Overall, I think the person who loves baseball is going to love it regardless of the number of walks or strikeouts, and the person who doesn't like baseball isn't going to be swayed into liking it because a team makes more contact.

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I agree with first half of the bolded sentence. The second part I don't about. The biggest complaint one hears about baseball is that it's "slow", "long", or "boring". There's no doubt that the long counts that are resulting in strikeouts are a major factor in slowing down the game. MLB seems obsessed with shortening the games, but every change they make does nothing but lengthen them.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don