Re: 2018 MLB Week 1
Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2018 8:45 pm
And I'm not convinced you're right saying there is no way the fan caused the glove to close early.
It's the sixth version of The Swamp. What could possibly go wrong?
http://www.sportsfrog.net/phpbb/
And I'm not convinced you're right saying there is no way the fan caused the glove to close early.
The initial ruling is what matters, cuz you know, they can't position cameras as such that they capture any "at the wall" moments.
Right?
Gonna give this one a stunningly hard disagree. I know it's your team, but that's pretty wrong.
In a set up like Houston, I’m not sure how fans can avoid “interfering” though. This is a play that came to mind for me from last year’s ALCS:
So a coach was removed in the previous series and then a Houston coach was caught focusing on the Red Sox dugout but wasn't disciplined. Hard to connect these dots.
It’s ridiculous. They need to embrace the streaming technology they’ve pioneered with BAM and just start these games concurrently, and have a split screen view of both games. Give it to Hulu (or Netflix) to give the viewer the ability to commandeer the action they’re watching.
DO I LOOK LIKE THE TYPE OF GUY WHO HAS $2.50 TO SPARE?!?!?!?!?EnochRoot wrote: ↑Thu Oct 18, 2018 10:45 am Jayson Stark says what I was saying (and then some) last night.
A_B wrote: ↑Thu Oct 18, 2018 10:55 amDO I LOOK LIKE THE TYPE OF GUY WHO HAS $2.50 TO SPARE?!?!?!?!?EnochRoot wrote: ↑Thu Oct 18, 2018 10:45 am Jayson Stark says what I was saying (and then some) last night.
HOUSTON – We shouldn’t be talking about Joe West right now. We don’t want to write about him. You don’t want to read about him. Baseball doesn’t want to hear about him.
But America’s most world-famous umpire made a bizarre call Wednesday night in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, and that call changed a game. But not just any game. He changed a game that could turn October upside-down.
And don’t forget, when October turns upside-down, the dominoes start tumbling. Seasons are judged by what happens in October. Careers are altered by what happens in October. Legacies are defined by what happens in October.
So now let’s think about what happened in the first inning Wednesday at Minute Maid Park, when José Altuve hit a baseball over the fence – in a game that had a series, a season and the legacies of dozens of players hanging on the outcome.
José Altuve hit a baseball over the right-field fence. Nobody caught it. But it wasn’t a home run? Instead, it was an out? Really? Was this the most Joe West moment of all time, or what?
See, here’s the thing about Cowboy Joe. He’s a way better umpire than people give him credit for. He had a sensational game behind the plate in Game 3. He has done this a long time. He still enjoys being an umpire. He thoroughly loves baseball. He even works in a little country crooning in his spare time. So he could easily be a borderline umpiring cult hero if he’d just let himself.
But the reason he’s more notorious than he is beloved is because of nights like this, because of calls like this. It’s because everyone in baseball knows that somewhere along the trail in every season, there is going to be a Joe West Moment.
There is going to be a game in which all we seem to remember is that Cowboy Joe West was umpiring that night because Cowboy Joe just has that way about him.
It might be because of a quick-trigger ejection. It might be because of a convoluted balk call. It might be because he mysteriously sees a need to confiscate the little notes sheet in a relief pitcher’s pocket. It might be because he grabs a player’s jersey for a gesture he isn’t real fond of.
Whatever. The possibilities are endless. But what all of them have in common is that we wind up doing what we’re doing right now — talking about Joe West.
So here we are again. One the best, most entertaining games of the entire 2018 postseason — Red Sox 8, Astros 6, in 4 hours and 33 minutes of riveting action — just unfolded before our eyes. But it’s time to talk about the man umpiring along the right-field line. Sorry!
We don’t ask much of officials in any sport. We respect and admire them. We thank them for taking on a truly thankless gig. And we don’t expect them to get every single call right because that can’t be done.
However … there is one golden rule of officiating that should be recited by all of them before they ever take the field, the floor or the ice:
Never, ever inject yourself into the game … Never look to make a call to show how smart you are … Never do anything, say anything or call anything that might prevent the players themselves from deciding who wins and who loses.
That’s all we ask, all we should ever ask. Doesn’t seem like too outrageous a request, right?
But that brings us back to the first inning of this crazy game. If you’re Joe West and you’re going to make a call that turns a game-tying two-run home run into an out, you had better be sure. Not just 100 percent sure. A billion percent sure.
Was the great Mookie Betts going to catch this baseball that José Altuve swatted over the right-field fence? He undoubtedly was. Did a fan named Troy Caldwell inadvertently prevent that from happening by attempting to catch that ball himself? He did.
But that, in and of itself, was not enough to allow West to invoke Rule 3.16 and turn a home run into an out — because that rule specifically states that unless the fan has extended his arms to “the playing-field side” of the fence, “no interference shall be allowed.”
So we repeat: Cowboy Joe had to be a billion percent sure that Troy Caldwell had reached over the fence to keep Betts from catching this ball. Otherwise, the rule of thumb every umpire should be swearing by is: Let the players decide the game!
But wait. It’s Joe West. So of course, he was a billion percent sure.
When questioned about this call by a pool reporter who probably won’t regard this exchange as the highlight of his career, West insisted that when Betts “jumped up to reach for the ball, the spectator reached out of the stands and hit him over the playing field and closed his glove.”
As he snapped off mostly terse answers to six follow-up questions, West did not waver. He insisted Betts’ glove had not reached into the stands. He repeated that the fan collided with the glove “over the playing field.” He even tried to claim that “the replay official said I was right,” even though the replay official said no such thing.
That was his story. He was sticking to it. Of course he was.
But we invite you to watch the replay of that call 50 or 60 times. Now tell us that’s what you saw. We’ve watched it over and over and over. We’ve watched it with no rooting interest whatsoever. That’s not what we see. Not surprisingly, it’s not what the Astros see, either.
“I don’t understand the call, to be honest with you,” said reliever Ryan Pressly. “The guy hits the ball out of the stadium, and then you’re going to call him out? That’s kind of a head-scratcher to me. At least you give him a ground-rule double or something.”
“They got it wrong,” said Astros right fielder Josh Reddick. “That’s a home run. A hundred percent. He didn’t catch it. And he didn’t get touched till it hit his glove. So wrong call.”
“I looked at the replay,” said Altuve himself, choosing his words carefully. “It’s tough. That’s the only thing I can say. It’s really hard….I’ve got zero control [over the call], so it’s hard for me to say something when it doesn’t matter what I say. They’re not going to change it. Normally, I don’t get mad about an umpire’s call. That one, I was a little upset.”
Most of his teammates were in no mood to take on West, the replay center or the baseball gods. So they did a little shrugging and philosophizing, then headed off into the night. Of course, it was close to 1 in the morning by the time the clubhouse doors finally opened. So maybe it was tough to summon the energy to raise a stink.
But over in his corner of the clubhouse, Josh Reddick wasn’t looking at this moment as the opportunity to audition to be the future ambassador to Belgium. He was “pissed off,” he said. And he thought he — and his teammates — had reason to be.
“We talked about it over the whole course of the game,” Reddick said. “You look back at it, and we lost by two runs. Those are two runs that we needed, that we could have used. We could still be playing a ball game right now. They have to get the call right. That’s the bottom line.”
Reddick had clearly watched the replay many times before he ambled out to his locker to speak. So he was asked if he’d seen an angle that proved the fan never reached over the fence.
“You can look at it and you can’t definitely tell he didn’t reach over the line,” Reddick replied. “But you can look at the way people’s body mannerisms play out. If a guy would have reached over the line, he would have fully extended his elbow, not been right here [arms close to his body] trying to catch the baseball.”
And that analysis brings us to the second half of this mess. Next up, to review what had just happened here, was the replay crew back in New York. But as it turned out, the one camera that could have given them a clear view of the action along the fence was blocked by a security guard. Perfect.
So after 3 minutes and 16 seconds of watching this play from every angle they had available to them, the replay officials decided they didn’t have a definitive angle that would have justified overturning West’s dramatic ruling. Which meant they had to let the call stand. Ok then.
But this brings up another issue. Why was there only one camera in the whole frigging ballpark that could have shed the proper light on this call? One? It’s October, right?
Now maybe if this were a Wednesday night game in May, we could all say, “Oh, well. It’s hard to have a camera that covers every angle. Too bad.” But this wasn’t May. This was Game 4 of the ALCS. So in a game of this magnitude, can baseball really allow itself to get a call like this wrong because it didn’t have enough cameras in the house to provide a definitive angle?
“No, it can’t,” Reddick fumed. “It cannot. We have enough cameras around this ballpark and around every ballpark. We’ve got to get the right one. We’ve got to make sure it’s right….
“It’s very hard to believe that the angle wasn’t the right one or somebody wasn’t in the right spot,” Reddick would say again a few minutes later. “I mean, you look at all the different angles of us hitting and there’s like seven different angles of us hitting. So you can’t tell me that there’s not enough angles to make the right call right there.”
Josh, hate to break it to you, man. But there weren’t enough angles to make the right call there. Sorry. That’s the deal.
Now just because we’ve spent all this time dissecting this call, don’t take that to mean we’re saying that call was the only reason the Astros lost this game or that the Red Sox won it. We’re not that deranged.
This tilt would rumble along for four more hours afterward. The Astros would have 28 more plate appearances with at least one runner on base. Any swing of the bat in any of those situations could have changed the outcome — and saved us all from another trip to Westworld. You should know there wasn’t anyone in the Houston clubhouse who didn’t acknowledge that.
“I’m not going to sit here and focus on that call,” said catcher Brian McCann. “We had a chance to win the game. A call was made. We had eight [more] innings to get it done.”
But as true as all that is, one fact was never going to change. José Altuve hit a baseball into the seats…which nobody caught…and somehow, America’s favorite umpire decided it wasn’t a home run.
So if you had “bottom of the first, Game 4,” in the pool for the first Joe West Moment of this ALCS, congratulations, you win. All thanks to the two-run homer that somehow became an out — on a game-changing, series-changing, legacy-defining day in October.
I love this idea.mister d wrote: ↑Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:11 pm Speaking of nothing, I have a pace of game idea that benefits "the game" and also the players without really harming anyone (and probably helping future Scott Proctors). Pitchers cannot pitch back to back games. Use that gross ass Brazier tonight, he's simply not eligible next game. Not nuance, no pitcher limits in a game (which will lead to injury), none of that. All decisions are larger in context than the next batter. Fuck LaRussa.
Not sure about the AAA shuffle. There are only so many option allowed per player.mister d wrote: ↑Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:23 pm It also kinda adapts to the possibly-changing landscape with "openers" where you'd have maybe three starting groups and two reliever groups and then a long man who exists for the games that get weird. And it benefits players as a whole because the AAA shuttle would be even more utilized after every game that didn't follow the script.