I agree. Technology has changed the public's approach to a process (HOF voting) that for many years did not hold the voters accountable. Now there are ways for tech-savvy "detectives" to weed out the illogical voters and call them out publicly. Like Terry, I'd like to know why they didn't vote for Junior.
guy posted this on Inside Texas.. The REAL beef is that there are 6-8 no sh*t Hall of Famers on the list. However, there are a large percentage of the voters that left off Bagwell (just for instance) for some reason. It can't be that 440 guys voted and 440 guys voted for 10 and he didn't get elected. So he was left off a 28+% of the ballot why? Part of a career in MinuteMaid? Suspicion of steroids? Astros? Because he wasn't a catcher, but instead was a 1B (because his raw numbers are better than Piazza)? Only 7.94 votes per ballot were cast. Of course, there were guys like W.W. McClyde who voted for only 9. But with a number like 7.94 per ballot, and judging from the Piazza (83%), Bags (71.6%), Rains (69.8%) and Hoffman (67.3%), I think it is clear that around 15% of the voters think there is only one Hall of Famer on the list. That is a problem. See the full voting and statistics. http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_2016.shtml
While watching the Astros continue to struggle to get to .500, and you might describe yesterday's loss a kick in the nuts...but it's not like what happened to Juan Uribe! My question is, it appears that play was stopped due to this injury. I thought the game played on and it was up to Uribes teammates to get the ball and force the runners to stop. Is that not right? It appears the ump stepped in and grabbed the ball while leaning over him. Now not seeing the whole play I don't know what the runner did, did he advance to 2nd or just stop at 1st? What's the rule? <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VCvSQP7qqxo" frameborder="0"></iframe>
I don't know, but I'm guessing the umpire knew what he was doing and knew the rule. That's not always the case (umpire knowing the rule), but I haven't read about any contradictions to how the ump called it. I'm assuming the official scorekeeper gave the batter a hit. :wink:
My guess is that the runner anticipated a play at first and overran it.At that point the ump probably could have called time.
Astro's finally make it back to .500 They have been playing some good baseball since April's disaster, hopefully they can continue to get some timely hitting and Kuechle will continue to make his way back to last years form. Not sure what happened to him but his last couple of outings were encouraging.
It shows how far the Cubs have come, that a Cardinal sweep would be big news. In the recent past, it was just business as usual.
Sid makes a great point....all the Cards did was send a message to the Cubbies that it's "Our Division", you're just renting space... Sept 23rd I'll be in the home of Old Style beer!!.....blleeecccchhhhhh!!!
AJ, I can assure you that the sweep caused Cubs nation to utter in unison, "Oh sh*t! They're back." This race is far from over. There's a long way to go, and the Cardinals aren't going away.
True Story: On one of our family trips to South Bend for an ND game we stopped over in Chicago for a day game ( duh) at Wrigley. I wanted to have an Old Style, it was the local beer and a legendary one to boot. My nephew pointed out that 1) he thought it was closer to horse piss and 2) that the beer vendors working around us were about 10-1 Bud vs Old Style. I ignored the youngster, what did he know. I got my Old Style, I finished 1/2 my Old Style before I switched to Bud! Sometimes the kids know what they are talking about!
For some reason I looked up Jeff Samardzja tonight. He signed a 90M dollar deal with the Giants in the off season and I was curious how he was doing. Well not bad, he's 8-4 with a 3.59 era. But looking at his lifetime stats he's a classic case of why you should have your kid play baseball. He's a lifetime under .500 pitcher who has never even sniffed being a 20 game winner and in fact has won more than 10 games 1 time in his career when he won 11 and lost 13 for the White Sox last year. Yet while I don't know for sure I'll be he'll have made 200 million dollars before he hangs'em up. I think he's had one other big contract as well so he could very easily be over 150 million right now. Good thing he had the smarts to not go to the NFL and play WR.
:cry: Frisco is running away with Wild West on the strength of their starting rotation: Bumgarner Cueto Peavy Samardzija The lowest paid is Peavy at $7 million per year...
Some interesting stuff I stole from Tim Prister. The game has obviously changed, I wonder if the modern pitcher could be trained to throw as many complete games as even Don Drysdale did in his prime.
re: Cy Young He was also the only 300 game loser in baseball history... The modern game is to toss 5-7 innings, then bring in 3 guys who throw 100mph in the 7th, 8th and 9th. The Orioles close with a guy named Britton who used to average 93 mph when he was a starting pitcher. Now he's their closer throwing 99mph for one inning, with a 97-98 mph SINKER. This was according to Vin Scully when the O's were here earlier in the week. Every team does it now and the only way to stop it is to limit the total number of pitchers used in a game. When the Dodgers played against Frisco this year, Bruce Bochy used five pitchers in one INNING!
If the playoffs started after the All-Star break, the participants would be as follows: AL division champs Orioles, Indians, Rangers. Wildcards Red Sox, Blue Jays. NL division champs Nationals, Cubs, Giants. Wildcards Dodgers and a 1-game playoff for the second spot between Marlins and Mets. Let's see how it looks at the end of the regular season compared to above.
Astros coming on strong, I'd say we could catch the Rangers as it's down to 5 1/2 games right now. But I'm more worried about catching the Blue Jays or Red Sox for the wild card.