Yank's sweep the Astros to open the season. That's it, we're likely to lose a 100 games. I'm done, waiting for football season now!
Ronel Blanco? Truthfully I didn't know who the heck he was when he was listed as the starter for last nights game. I watched women's elite 8 and didn't even know he threw a no hitter till this morning when I checked to see if we won last night.
Minor League Baseball a big thing from an investment prospective? According to this article on The Athletic it is at this time. No longer the bus rides to Cedar Rapids or other small cities, a group called Diamond Baseball Holdings thinks there is gold in those bus rides! WAPPINGERS FALLS, N.Y. — The artificial turf at Heritage Financial Park is new. So is the right-field wall that opens wide enough for an 18-wheeler to haul concert equipment onto the field. The party deck is sponsored by a brewery that’s 10 miles away, giant windows have been installed around the corporate event space overlooking left field, and the renovated home clubhouse, where the Hudson Valley Renegades dress before games, has two indoor batting cages flanked by state-of-the-art data and motion-capture technology. This is Class-A baseball in 2024. Quirky and local, but also big business that’s booming. Minor-league attendance is up and approaching pre-pandemic levels, new ballparks are being built, and existing franchises are selling at what are believed to be record prices. These are not the wooden bleachers and potholed infields of old. At the center of this transformation is Diamond Baseball Holdings, a three-year-old company that owns more than a quarter of all minor league clubs. From a ground-up franchise in Spartanburg, S.C., to long-established clubs in Louisville, Ky., and Lansing, Mich., to their most recent purchase of the Harrisburg Senators in Pennsylvania, Diamond Baseball Holdings (DBH) now owns 32 of 120 affiliates, and its founders said they are still “aggressively in acquisition mode.” “We are agnostic to geography. We are agnostic to club affiliation,” executive chairman Pat Battle said. “If you’re one of the 120, we are interested.”
I wonder if NIL in college is driving them to improve things at the lower level clubs? there are quite a few players who've bypassed Single A and even Double A contracts to play college ball now thanks to NIL making it more like full rides with added benefits...
Tough business...I made a run at our local franchise a while back. They were in financial distress and we were just moving to town and I thought I needed something to do in my spare time (ha,ha) As it turned out it wasn't a viable enterprise without a new stadium so we tried to go that route. Got the city on our side, got a nice piece of land downtown on the water, the Braves agreed to move an SAL league franchise to town and we were good to go.....just had to put it to the voters......and got our a$$es kicked at the ballot box. I'm done, no more politics, no more baseball stadiums. Woulda been fun tho
Well after missing most of Spring Training with a "minor" shoulder issue and getting bombed in his 2 rehab starts in the minors we'll finally see the 41 y/o Justin Verlander on the mound tonight for the Astros who a to say the least struggling badly. I fear that Verlander is finally out of the stuff that made him a HOF pitcher, but we'll see. Astros pitching, esp the bullpen has been a disaster so far.
Interesting Stat. Just 9.5% of plate appearances this season have been taken by switch hitters. If that holds, it would be the first time that number has fallen below 10% since 1976, nearly a half-century ago. “Switch hitting,” retired MLB first baseman J.T. Snow said, “is the hardest thing to do in any sport.” https://www.wsj.com/sports/baseball...5q6iq2shkx2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Tidbit on Pete Rose... Rose racked up his 4,256 knocks while playing more than 500 games apiece at first base, second base, third base, and both corner outfield spots. Amazingly, Rose would crack the hallowed 3,000-hit mark even if you counted only his left-handed at-bats.
So far it looks like Ohtani is worth his contract. Lead NL in batting, hr's and in the top 10 in RBI's. Was 4 or 4 today and hit 2 homeruns one of them 464 ft.