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2022 MLB thread


shadow_operative2.0

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10 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

It’s just the way stat geeks manipulate various factors so their finding works. The only distinction that might be relevant is when MLB changes the number of games in a season (1962) or in the playoffs

Well, there are some other major changes that matter.  The DH is an obvious one.

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Legend:

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The Athletic has written (at least) three oral histories on Zack Greinke, a likely Hall of Fame pitcher and one of baseball’s great characters. 

This might seem like overkill to some. Not to Royals pitcher Brady Singer.

“I’ve read The Athletic ones a hundred times,” Singer said. “Freaking so good. I love it. I wish they were longer. I mean, they’re already long as s—, but I wish there were even more because it’s so much fun.”

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Well, Brady, here you go: The best stories from Greinke’s reunion with the Royals this season.

Michael Massey, second baseman: There are so many good ones.

Nicky Lopez, infielder: He’s the best.

Collin Snider, pitcher: We’re in Texas and a couple of guys were playing cards before the game. They were talking about guys collecting stuff. (Dylan) Coleman asked if Greinke collects anything cool. And he was just like: “Got a bunch of houses.”

Jake Brentz, pitcher: He’s hilarious and he doesn’t even try.

Lopez: I was on the bench with him and we were facing someone who really liked cats. I was like: “You can’t trust anyone who likes cats.” He goes: “Yeah, man, you really can’t.” I go: “I like dogs. You got any, Zack?” He goes: “Nah, I would never get dogs. I’ve got a cat, though.”

Bobby Witt, infielder: Just Zack being Zack. He’s awesome.

J.J. Picollo, general manager: When I first came here, he was in Double A. I’d never met him before. We were in the old Tulsa stadium and I was standing in the dugout. He walked up and introduced himself and he started asking me about my background. A trash truck drove by on the road beyond the outfield. He goes: “That’s an admirable job and they should get paid a lot more money.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. He goes: “The guys who collect trash. What would we do if we didn’t have people to collect the trash?” And then he just walked away. 

Merrifield: In Houston, they have this golf simulator in the hotel lobby. There were like 10 of us down there, messing around. Zack was down there, then his family showed up and he abruptly got up and said, “I gotta go. Family is here.” Forty-five minutes later, he comes strolling back down…We’re like, “Zack! Didn’t expect to see you back.” He’s like, “Yeah. I saw the kids, figured I’d rather come hit golf balls.” Just barefoot. Walking through the lobby of the Four Seasons. Like it’s his kitchen.

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Vinnie Pasquantino, first baseman: He beats to his own drum, but in a good way.

Massey: He’s an unbelievable teammate. 

Brentz: I don’t think there’s one guy in the clubhouse that doesn’t love him.

Scott Barlow, pitcher: He’s the man. I love that guy.

Jonathan Heasley, pitcher: The first time we all felt comfortable was in spring training. He invited all the starters to his house one night, and we all grabbed dinner and hung out over there. That was when we kinda broke the ice. 

Brady Singer, pitcher: That was unbelievable. 

Heasley: When we first got there, at his house, we were hitting some chip shots. He’s got a little green in his backyard. We’re hitting some balls back there.

Merrifield: When we fly, he has three irons and a putter that he brings with him. I guess in his room he’ll put a mattress up against the wall and just hit golf balls into the mattress. 

Singer: He goes: “Do any of you guys golf?” We’d just met him, haven’t really talked to him. We’re like: “Yeah, yeah, we all golf.” He’s like, “What are you?” I’m like, “Oh, a 12 (handicap), somewhere around there.” He goes, “Yeah, you’ll never play with me.”

Lynch: Basically, like, “You guys can’t play with me because you’re not good enough.” 

Singer: We were sitting there at his house and he walks out with a brown paper bag. He’s sitting there and just starts eating out of it. He was just eating a whole entire bag of fried chicken.

Heasley: He asked us if we were hungry. We’re like, “Yeah, a little.” It was pretty early. He’s like, “Well, I just ordered some chicken, but that’s for me. So if you guys want to order something later, we can figure something out.” We’re all just looking around like, “Alright! Sounds good!”

Singer: I said I’d Uber Eats something. He goes, “No, no, no. I’ve got a guy.” So he texted the guy and here comes all this food. I think he said he had received an order from Uber Eats and he liked the guy and he said: “Hey, can I hire you to just be my Uber Eats driver?” So he has his own Uber Eats driver. He has his own food guy.

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Heasley: And it was awesome. Hung out. Sat around and talked baseball, life.


Now in his 19th MLB season, Greinke has a 4.21 ERA for the Royals this season in 24 starts. (David Berding / Getty Images)
Singer: The cool thing is how addicted he is to the game. He watches, studies all day long. 

Mike Matheny, manager: And he loves it.

Lynch: Sometimes he’ll be like, “I looked at your metrics. Remember how you thought you were being unlucky? No, they’re actually crushing you on that pitch.” Or, “Keep throwing that because you’re getting unlucky.”

Brad Keller, pitcher: I was like, “I’m not getting righties out as well as I want to. I feel like I’ve been getting lefties out more.” That night, he went home and I get a text message at like 2 a.m. He’s sending me all the data points. He’s like, “This is what I saw. These are the things I gather.” Out of the blue. 

Salvador Perez, catcher: One of the smartest pitchers I’ve ever met in my life.

Barlow: When I’m done pitching, he’ll come up to me and be like: “You threw a fastball with two strikes. That was interesting. You never do that.” 

Perez: Even if he’s not pitching, he always pays attention and comes up to me like: “Hey, that was a good pitch right there.” Or: “That guy hits changeups; why did you call a changeup?” 

Kyle Isbel, outfielder: He has a unique outlook on stuff.

Lynch: I was basically like, “I sucked today.” And he’s like, “You sucked, yeah. But they didn’t hit you at all and you only gave up three runs in almost five innings and we won the game. So, if that’s you sucking then that’s a good thing.”

Isbel: In spring training, he went up to O’Hearn and Ryan introduced himself. Zack was like: “Oh, you’re Ryan O’Hearn. Left-handed. Plays first base.” He goes: “You got a hit off me 3-0 count, fastball, you beat the shift the other way.”

Ryan O’Hearn, first baseman: He was spot on. 

Perez: He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen at preparing himself to pitch. 

Massey: When I was younger, I would watch him on TV. I’m like, “This guy is incredible, future Hall of Famer, I wonder what he does to get ready before a start.” Flash forward. Now I’m his teammate and I’m warming up in the weight room. He comes in with his big, baggy shirt on. He sits down on the ground, pretzel style. Literally crisscross applesauce. He’s just sitting there for a minute. He pulls a banana out of his pocket and starts eating a banana crisscross applesauce on the weight room floor. He drops the banana peel, stands up with a baseball, walks over to the wall and starts slowly throwing a ball off the wall and catching it. I walked out and was like: “So that’s what a Hall of Fame pitcher does before he starts, huh?”

Picollo: He’s just repeating his delivery pitch after pitch after pitch. And you wonder why this guy has been able to pitch 18 years? That’s why. 

Lynch: He loves the game. It’s been his thing forever. And it will remain his thing. 

Lopez: They’re doing the fantasy football draft. He ends up drafting two or three quarterbacks.

Witt: He had (Justin) Herbert and (Josh) Allen back to back.

Lopez: I’m like: “Zack, you know you can only play one at a time and you just wasted picks in the fourth and sixth rounds.” He’s like: “Yeah, I really like Josh Allen, but looking back it probably wasn’t my best move.”

Witt: He drafted two of the top quarterbacks back to back just to try to make some trades. 

O’Hearn: He doesn’t offer fair trades on fantasy football. That’s a fact. 

Cam Gallagher, catcher: I’ve got Russell Wilson at quarterback, but he offered me a quarterback, his fourth-best receiver and fifth-best running back for my first or second receiver. I go: “What are you doing?” He goes: “What? The quarterback will score more points.” I’m like: “Yeah, but you can only start one a week.”

Witt: I think I’ve gotten about 10 trades from Zack. 

Gallagher: I’ve gotten three today alone.

Witt: He’ll text me and be like: “Hey, I just sent you a trade.” About 10 minutes later, he’ll go: “Actually, I’m going to reject the trade, I don’t like it.” 

Gallagher: He sends out so many trades a day, and I don’t think he’s made a single trade yet. 

Lopez: Someone texted him about the trade that he had sent and they sent him back another trade proposal. All he texted back was: “Wow, I’ve never thought about that. Give me some time to reflect on this.”

Gallagher: It’s just constant entertainment. 

Jose Cuas, pitcher: I don’t really know about fantasy football; this is the first time I’ve done it. The first thing he told me when I walked in was: “Hey, your team sucks.”

Gallagher: He always wears this three- or four-XL Travis Mathew t-shirt that’s waaaay too big for him. The sleeves come down to his elbows. 

Merrifield: I asked him about it. He said, “I don’t know, it used to not be this big.”

Gallagher: He tried to propose a trade to me, and I gave him a smart remark. The next day he said, “Good luck to everyone, except for Cam.” As a joke in the group chat, I said, “When we face off against each other, if I beat you, you’ve got to sign that four XL t-shirt and send it to me.” He goes: “Deal. But if I win, you’ve got to sign a used jockstrap and send it to me.” 

Singer: He’s just so freaking honest.

Witt: Sometimes when I make a good play, I’ll talk to him in the dugout and he’ll be like: “I really didn’t think you were going to make that play.” 

Barlow: We were playing catch. I threw him a couple curveballs, a couple sliders, and he was like: “Were those sliders towards the end?” I was like, “Yeah.” And he goes, “Yeah, they weren’t very good.”

Merrifield: I was sitting behind him and Salvy. They were talking about the lineup in St. Louis and how to pitch guys and who was aggressive early in the count. It was early in the year still. He turned around and goes: “You like to swing at the first pitch, right?” I said, “Yeah, sometimes. If it’s there. I’m not interested in letting a good pitch go by.” And he said, “Yeah, the staff in Houston told me you like to swing at the first pitch, but then I thought, you know, I’d just throw a fastball away. What’s the worst that could happen? You’d hit a flare to right?”

Cal Eldred, pitching coach: Yeah, he’s pretty blunt.

Matheny: I played catch with him today. I said, “I can say I caught Zack Greinke.” He goes, “You caught me in between innings, don’t you remember?” I’m like, “Oh yeah. But then you went and got somebody else.” He goes, “Yeah, because I gave up runs. You were bad luck.” I was like, “That’s such crap.” Then he said something (about me), like, “Get somebody else because these guys need to be able to come in and throw their good stuff.”… Like, “You’re not good to catch everybody’s good stuff.” He said that out loud! 

Witt: That’s who Greinke is. He just tells you everything straight up. 

Merrifield: Talking to Brad (Keller) around the trade deadline. I was like, “Brad, if I get traded or you get traded and I face you, any time I get to a 3-2 pitch, I’m going to sit slider.” Zack said, “And then what are you going to do with it? Flip it to right?” That day, I hit a homer off a (Michael) Kopech slider and came in the dugout and started yelling at Zack. He liked that. He cracks this little side-mouth smirk. 

Lopez: We were all sitting around and it was a bunch of young guys who just got called up and Zack. I go: “I’ll give $100 to whoever guesses where Zack was committed to.”

Massey: We’re all guessing, and he’s like: “No, no.” 

Lopez: Someone said Creighton or another university and he looked at them and goes: “I was the four-time Gatorade player of the year. Do you think I would ever go there?”

Massey: I was on the ground.

Eldred: The first time he waved me out (out of the dugout), I was like: “This guy is waving me out to the mound?” 

Picollo: Nobody really knew what to do.

Eldred: He waves me out and goes: “I don’t really need anything. I just need a break.” 

Picollo: All the sudden you see the entire infield start laughing.

Merrifield: He’s just different. 

Daniel Lynch, pitcher: My wife homeschools his kids for right now. My wife and his are friends now. And he came up to me in the dugout and was like, “Oh, just the guy I wanted to see.” I was like, “Oh goodness, what’s this?” He had his phone out and said, “Do you think Millie would want to teach at my baseball school in Hawaii?” I was like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah, I want to buy 3,000 acres in Hawaii and build a baseball school there.” … He was being 100 percent serious. He sent me the land and everything.

Massey: It was the Toronto series when we all got called up with the Covid stuff going on. We get on a plane and had no idea what we were doing on a big league charter, had no idea how any of it works. Everyone gets on with a suit and tie, looking really nice. Zack gets on in a suit and tie. He’s sitting a couple of rows in front of me, and I see him stand up just as everyone is getting seated. He starts unbuttoning his shirt and I’m like: “Alright, what’s he doing?” He unbuttons his pants, pulls everything off and he’s in like a Royals jumpsuit, grabs the pillows, lays down and takes a nap. He literally had a Royals jumpsuit on underneath his suit and tie.

Gallagher: He’s one of a kind. 

Lynch: From the stuff he says, I can tell he keeps up with certain guys. I hope I’ll be one of them. I still think it’s cool any time he texts me. It’s like, Zack Greinke pops up on my phone.

Merrifield: I really loved being his teammate.  

Lopez: To be honest, it’s an honor to share a clubhouse with him.

Heasley: It’s just a privilege to share a locker room with him.

Keller: He’s the man.

 

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20 hours ago, Helobious said:

Judge can’t homer to save his life right now. Badly needs a day off. 

he got on base three times yesterday. and he doesn't need a day off, he needs to hit a homer. this issue isn't going to go away until he does. every time he comes to the plate they bring in special baseballs, the entire stadium stands up, and football games go to split screen to see if he's going to do it. a day off won't change that, it will only give him one less game with which to hit a HR. 

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holy shit, i just heard Judge's stats since his last HR: 5-19 with 9 walks. jesus christ helo, you've been acting like he's 3 for 30 with 17 k's. it's been six whole games without a homer, and he's reached base 14 times in 28 plate appearances. even for you this is some wildly bombastic "THE SKY IS FALLING!!!" bullshit. 

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1 minute ago, shadow_operative said:

holy shit, i just heard Judge's stats since his last HR: 5-19 with 9 walks. jesus christ helo, you've been acting like he's 3 for 30 with 17 k's. it's been six whole games without a homer, and he's reached base 14 times in 28 plate appearances. even for you this is some wildly bombastic "THE SKY IS FALLING!!!" bullshit. 

Well his bar for "worst player in MLB history" is Joey Gallo, so... 

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5 hours ago, TonyTexas said:

In his brief time with the Astros, Greinke was must-watch TV whenever he pitched. You’d almost always see something you hadn’t seen before. 

like a 47mph curve ball that even made the opponent go, "WTF was that?"

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3 minutes ago, shadow_operative said:

judge is 0-1 with 3bb tonight, i can't believe boone is leaving him in the game with his life in shambles like this, it's just inhumane at this point. 

This is hilarious. You haven’t watched him nearly as much as I have this year or in his career. I used to watch highlights of him as he was coming up in the minors. I can tell he’s pressing and his power in his swing is completely zapped. What’s never failed him is his eye/patience, and his ability to not panic at the plate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone run so many counts from 0-2 to 3-2. Right now he knows these pitchers are afraid to end up the historical footnote so he sits back and let’s them miss the zone 4 times eventually. If they actually challenged him his numbers would be a lot worse. It doesn’t mean his career is over or that he sucks he’s just in a bad slump at a rough time.

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3 hours ago, Helobious said:

This is hilarious. You haven’t watched him nearly as much as I have this year or in his career. I used to watch highlights of him as he was coming up in the minors. I can tell he’s pressing and his power in his swing is completely zapped. What’s never failed him is his eye/patience, and his ability to not panic at the plate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone run so many counts from 0-2 to 3-2. Right now he knows these pitchers are afraid to end up the historical footnote so he sits back and let’s them miss the zone 4 times eventually. If they actually challenged him his numbers would be a lot worse. It doesn’t mean his career is over or that he sucks he’s just in a bad slump at a rough time.

LOL

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14 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Full transparency, I knew that name = something NFL. Had to look him up to fill in the rest. I’m sure I watched plenty of Monday night games with him commentating as a kid, still don’t get the joke though. Is it because he broke down replays? Pretty weak connection there but bravo I guess.

Jaws would constantly fellate himself for watching insane amounts of film. he'd be asked a question and he'd start his answer off with, "I watched every single snap from every single NFL game this weekend- twice", and he wasn't being cheeky or anything, he sincerely wanted everyone to know that he apparently watched more film than anyone else, and therefore was the leading expert on all things NFL. 

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Well, honestly, who doesn’t love a good underdog story? On Tuesday night, the humble and lowly New York Yankees, who have endured every disadvantage in their hapless history as a franchise, finally conquered all the skeptics, all the doubters, all their financial limitations and all of those prophets of doom who predicted yet another lost season in a century of struggles. They won the American League East! Impossible!

It is a sportswriter cliché, yes, but this was, I dare say, a miracle.

“A lot of other people were picking a lot of other teams,” said one of the designers of this Yankees miracle, manager Aaron Boone, who despite being saddled with a limited roster and an ignominious team history somehow managed to bring home this title. It was a triumph of the heart. The Yankees are going to the playoffs!

Who would have thought this possible?

     

Nobody believed in them. Nobody. Absolutely nobody. And why would they? One has to go back pretty far in the annals of history — all the way back to 2021 — to find the last time the Yankees made the playoffs (and even further — back to 2019 — to find the last time they won the division).

These are the Yankees we are talking about. America’s doormat. There are so few things you can count on in this world, but year after year, decade after decade, one sure thing has been that the Yankees will flounder and fall.

Lovable? Sure, they’re lovable. America’s sweethearts, the Yankees, everybody knows that. But America’s love can only carry a team and a fanbase so far when they never win, and it looks for all the world like they never will win.

I mean, come on, there was a whole Broadway musical called “Damn Yankees!”

And who can forget its haunting spotlight song:

Damn, Yankees, will you ever win?
We have waited for so long
Our heart’s with you, as it’s always been
And hearts, I’ve heard, cannot be wrong

No, nobody thought this Yankees title possible, not in a division with the mighty Blue Jays and their $75 million payroll deficit plus the fearsome Tampa Bay Rays, with a payroll roughly one-third the size of the feeble Yankees.

How do you combat against those sorts of limitations? You don’t, obviously. You accept the unfairness of life. There will always be taxes. Airport flight attendants will always wake you from unsteady sleep with credit card offers. Your phone will keep stupidly autocorrecting words no matter how many times you turn off the feature.

And the Yankees, try as they might, will always have to fight the uphill battle.

Such is the burden of being a Yankees fan. You must live, daily, with the knowledge that the odds are stacked so heavily against you and the hopes and dreams that other baseball fans might feel are always just a shadow’s length beyond your grasp.

But sometimes in sports, the most unlikely things happen. And this particular Yankees team, like Baby, refused to be put into a corner. Let the doubters doubt, this was their mantra. We have each other.

 

Even now, looking back, it’s not entirely clear how they did it. Relative unknowns like Gerrit Cole, Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo led the charge. Obscure veterans like Giancarlo Stanton, Josh Donaldson and DJ LeMahieu contributed.

And put it all together, somehow this $245.9 million team of misfits, castoffs and overachievers came together to lead the American League in runs and home runs while also being second in the league in runs allowed and strikeouts. Nobody could have possibly predicted that kind of success.* No system ever invented could have possibly predicted them to win, say, 99 games.**

*I totally predicted that kind of success.

**The PECOTA system totally predicted them to win 99 games.

Yes, of course, there had to be moments throughout the season when Boone and his compatriots looked out at the ragtag lack of talent on the field and then looked around at all those teams in the American League with larger payrolls (zero) and then heard the mockery of all those non-believers who picked them to finish second in the division and settle for the wildcard and thought to themselves: “What chance do we have?”

But then they shook their heads. No! They would not let the doubters define them. They would not let the odds defeat them. They would push through it all, defeat their shabby history, and find a way. This is how the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team did it. This is how Appalachian State did it. This is how Valvano’s Wolfpack did it.

“Together,” the Yankees thought. “We can do this together.”

And now, together, the New York Yankees are division champions. It’s strange to see those words, right? But it’s real. The Yankees are division champions. The doubters, all those doubters, cannot take it away from them. Disney, undoubtedly, has already started casting the movie.

 

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What a crock of shit. The Yankees were not the odds on favorite to win the division at the beginning of the year. And yeah, a team starting IKF, Gallo, Hicks, and Trevino for most of the year sounds way more like an underdog than a juggernaut. Not to mention the mountain of injuries they’ve had and their crash and burn mid season where everyone thought they’d miss the playoffs. I’m not saying they’re James Braddock or anything but they’re a decently inspiring story this year.

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7 minutes ago, Scraps said:


 

 


So now you are "everyone"

Only dumbasses thought they would miss the playoffs

 

They were polling at around 50% to make the playoffs on the weekly pinstripe alley fan poll in the midst of their slide. “Everyone” was an exaggeration but a very large number thought they wouldn’t make it.

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6 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

He even has links in the column that show preseason predictions. 

I see a link where he himself picks them to win it but not seeing anything else.

Seeing graph now. A lot of other things pre-season were saying Toronto or Tampa so they were definitely favored by many. 

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Stephen A’a rant on the Jays staff was pretty good and he was right. Verlander would challenge him. Nolan Ryan would go after him and so would the others he listed like Randy Johnson. It’s cool though that the team is benefitting from cowardly pitchers putting Judge on base this often right now. I want to see the record, but whatever. The wins are what matter the most.

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3 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

The pitcher walked Oswaldo Cabrera immediately after walking Judge to start the game, so I don't think this guy is pitching around Judge.

You pitch to Waldo at your own risk, that guy became a fan favorite quick. Jays pitcher is just a pussy and he got worked that 1st inning.

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