For MLB fans

[Hulky]

So series tied at 2-2 means we will see the stud pitching match ups again right

[Serge]

Yep. Gonna be Cole/Scherzer tonight, Verlander/Strasburg on Tuesday, and then Greinke/Sanchez&Corbin in game 7 if needed.

I think we need to win the next two to win the series. No way we win game 7 in Houston.

[Serge]

So Scherzer couldn't start game 5 because of muscle spasms but the fans still got their money's worth because we all know they spent $1000s of dollars to watch Lance Barksdale compensate for his shriveled mummified cock.

Multiple key moments he called ball or strike based on whether he felt he was being properly respected by the hitters and catchers.

1. Astros catcher starts to run off the field thinking it's strike 3 to end the inning. Called a ball. (Zimmerman actually started to walk ton1st luckily the ump missed this.)

2. The catcher Gomes starts to throw the ball around the horn after an obvious strike 3 (at least an inch between the ball and the edge of the plate) and the ump calls it a ball and outright tells Gomes "Don't run off on me like that."

3. A pitch in the exact same place as the one called a ball in the Zimmerman example. Well off the plate. The Astros catcher has learned his lesson and stays still. Victor Robles runs to first on what is clearly ball 4. Ump calls it strike 3 and kills the Nats best chance at a rally.

Fuck this bullshit. If that ump ever calls another game it's a travesty.

[Hugh]

I hope they get rid of home plate umpires completely. They are worthless turds.
It’s like having fat assholes perched above intersections with red, green and yellow flags instead of traffic lights. All they can do is fuck it up. The machine does everything perfect as long as it has juice. Why the fuck are we still relying on someone’s OPINION to determine balls and strikes? The machine gets it right every time.

[Achilles]

They will never in a million years do that. I agree with you, but there's no way it will ever happen. Baseball fans are obsessed with the old timey aesthetic of baseball. People would flip the fuck out if they got rid of home plate umpires. That's a huge part of the reason baseball is losing so many viewers, they refuse to modernize it because of that aesthetic, you know like BBWA types who don't wan to change the game. In my opinion they need to come close to cutting the season in half, add a pitch clock, take off three innings, etc. The average length of a baseball game is over three hours, and you get them 5-6 games a week. Nobody has time for that. I might not like football personally but the one thing about it I totally dig is it's an event. It's once a week and it's a huge deal when it comes around. Baseball, which is my favorite sport to watch, is so frequent it's not really a big deal if I miss games. I'd personally like it a lot more if they cut the season down, made games more meaningful as a result, and they were less frequent.

So in that vein I definitely agree with you. They should do away with plate umps. They just won't because they're so obsessed with how it will affect baseball stats, because you technically can no longer really compare stats between an era where you had an ump's subjective call and a computerized call. Which, I'm with you, I don't give a fuck it makes more sense to use the machine. But all the math purists in baseball would never in a million years allow that, along with the old timey american past time folks.

[Hugh]

You’re right about old baseball fans, Ach, but the young generation takes over for the old one every time. To use a baseball term, they’re batting 1.000. Eventually all the old fuckers that like watching incompetent turds fuck up balls and strikes and ruin games will be dead and baseball will either change or die with them.
As far as stats go, steroids effected stats for an entire era more than just calling a pure strike zone will in my opinion. Sure they don’t let steroid users into the HOF ( yet ) but they aren’t throwing out their stats. Barry Bonds is still the all time HR leader.
They’re already using the machine to show tv viewers the strike zone, so we can see every time the ump fucks up. They don’t have to do that. If they were worried about keeping the game pure, they wouldn’t. They’re using instant replay and manager challenges. All these things are new. I’ve read they’re experimenting with robot umpires in minor leagues already.
I think it’s coming. People can beat their chests about the purity of the game and that dumb shit all they want but when it comes down to the nut cutting ( and it already has ) cash is king. Baseball isn’t going to die on principle.
I think we’ll see it happen in the next 5 years.

[Achilles]

I hope you're right and I'm wrong. I hate seeing them so slow to modernize it because it's such an awesome sport.

There's a really awesome BBWA journalist here in Boston, Tony Massarotti. He's a pretty big deal in sports journalism and has wrote several REALLY good books about baseball. He wrote an awesome book with Tim Wakefield about what it was like being a knuckle ball pitcher that's absolutely worth reading (https://www.amazon.com/Knuckler-Life.../dp/054775034X).

Anyways, he's been a heavily vocal advocate for basically what you said, that the old timey folks have to go because like it or not baseball is hemorrhaging viewers objectively. There's just too much of it, the games are just too long, and there's a bunch of common sense stuff they could do to speed up the game that would objectively be more palatable to younger viewers. It's not like pre-WW2 1930s where we can all sit around a radio for hours listening to baseball all day. Which, I get the old timey aesthetic of it, but it's just a a different world now. He was talking about it on the radio the other day and their largest demograph is people over sixty, so young people simply aren't watching it. I personally love it but realistically I don't have time to watch five or six three hour games a week.

So he had this brilliant idea that he's been very vocal about on the radio. Cut the season down by about a third, and make all games six innings. Instead of basing your record off of purely wins and losses, add a point system. You play one four game series every week. So for each game you win in the series, you get a quarter of a point. If you take 3 out of 4 games you get an additional quarter of a point for winning the majority of the series. If you sweep you get a half point additionally. So that way you get four game series that are much more meaningful. So like if you win two of the four games, you get .5 points. If you win three out of five games you get .75 points plus an addition quarter point for the majority win of the series and walk away with 1 point. If you sweep you get 1 point for all four games then .5 and walk away with 1.5 points.

I personally think it's a brilliant idea. The games would mean way more and it'd be like football, where everything you do all seasons counts much more so you're likely to be more invested.

[Serge]

Stephen. Fucking. Strasburg.

This is our fucking franchise guy. All the hype. The 14K rookie debut. All the nonsense about the shutdown. All the stories about him being a head case who can only perform when it's 75 and sunny.

And here he is 5-0 in the post season this year with two absolutely dominant performances in the World Series. With his teams backs against the wall he went out there determined to do whatever it took to force a game seven. 8.1 IP, 5 H, 2 BB, 2 R, 7 K

In an interview after we swept the NLCS he said, and I'll paraphrase here, that he felt every year the Nats made the playoffs they had truly great teams playing great but they just ran into a buzzsaw. He then added, "Maybe this year we're the buzzsaw."

Strasburg is absolutely that fucking buzzsaw.

[KBHoleN1]

For real, I don't want you to win the World Series. But I'm happy to see Strasburg pitch well. After all the bullshit he's been through, it's nice that he's got his moment now.

[Greendaybum5]

For real, I don't want you to win the World Series. But I'm happy to see Strasburg pitch well. After all the bullshit he's been through, it's nice that he's got his moment now.

i second this....let's go astros lol