wow, what an ending

10/27/2013 12:05:33 AM

yeah. I'm glad I switched over. I thought it was obstruction before the home plate umpire called him safe, so I was surprised they even let them make a play at the plate, but whatever. Obstruction is the right call

10/27/2013 12:09:10 AM

Man. Tito Ortiz is a helluva hitter.

10/27/2013 9:41:24 PM

What the hell am I thinking? WTF, dumbass. David Ortiz, not Tito Ortiz.

I mean, I guess Tito is a helluva hitter too, haha.

10/27/2013 11:56:38 PM

LOL pretty exciting world series and no one gives a fuck. Exciting and sloppy. Just hoping for a game 7 at this point.

10/28/2013 4:13:45 PM

kinda quiet on TWW, but there are some spirited discussions going on over at my facebook wall

10/28/2013 6:10:11 PM

Tonight is must win for STL. Wainwright and at home. I don't think they win 2 at Fenway.

10/28/2013 7:44:53 PM

I'm not qualified to be a MLB manager, but I think I would have stopped pitching to Ortiz a while ago.

10/28/2013 10:58:55 PM

season over. time to dust off the golf clubs

10/28/2013 11:05:48 PM

stop being such a crybaby tke

10/28/2013 11:11:31 PM

haha interthread smackdown

10/28/2013 11:14:49 PM

10/29/2013 12:34:15 PM

hahaha

10/30/2013 9:43:31 AM

A blog entry from face's deity (don't even need to read, URL is descriptive enough)

http://wagesofwins.com/2013/10/25/the-red-sox-beat-the-tigers-but-are-they-better/

So is this article just trying to save face after their advanced statistical prediction fell to shit? I mean, I thought sites like wagesofwins that look at nothing but numbers had the sole purpose of giving people betting advice to hopefully win more than 60% of the time. Who gives a shit if the Tigers were supposedly better than the Red Sox? They lost the ALCS. Just another reason why solely going off statistics will often fail. Stats can't account for the Red Sox being a TEAM and the Tigers being, at least less than the Red Sox, a collection of players.

10/30/2013 10:15:04 PM

wagesofwin is about as bad of a name as lordofthelines

10/30/2013 10:20:21 PM

now or never

10/30/2013 10:41:03 PM

What is the series at now, like 3-2 or something?

10/30/2013 11:24:05 PM

6 months without baseball, thank goodness

10/30/2013 11:25:33 PM

is Lackey mentally retarded?

10/30/2013 11:26:51 PM

Jonny Gomes calling out Sabermetrics and WARP

that right there almost makes baseball worth watching

10/30/2013 11:28:40 PM

*WAR

10/30/2013 11:33:13 PM

Red Sox win with player who has a fully formed child's leg, including a shoe, growing out of his back!

10/30/2013 11:44:52 PM

The guy to his right is about to murder tens of thousands of people

10/30/2013 11:46:06 PM

Well, that was fun.

10/31/2013 1:34:33 AM

lmao at the uehara gif

10/31/2013 6:13:16 AM

GG to the Red Sox. I was hoping for a Game 7, but oh well. Other than Victorino who can eat a whole bag of dicks, the rest of that Sox team is fairly likeable guys. Ortiz, Pedroia, Gomes, Elsbury, Napoli, etc. Ortiz was simply amazing in the WS.

10/31/2013 10:34:04 AM

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303843104579167812218839786?mod=e2fb

Quote :

"The average World Series viewer this year is 54.4 years old, according to Nielsen, the media research firm"

11/1/2013 12:07:29 PM

SUCK. IT. Dan Le Batard.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/chi-bbwaa--le-batard-vote-20140109,0,1319946.story

Quote :

"BBWAA bans Dan Le Batard from Hall of Fame voting Baseball writers' group revokes membership for year and rules he can't vote again after giving ballot away in protest"

You don't want your vote? Fine. Your bitch ass won't have one.

1/10/2014 8:34:47 AM

Yeah fuck Le Batard, that guy is a real dick.

Also for the some of the other HOF voters, they can eat dicks too. One guy sent in a blank ballot, another only voted for Jack Morris, etc. WTF? Maddux should have been unanimous, but of course no player will ever get unanimously elected due to that bullshit unwritten rule the writers have created.

Also why can the writers only vote for 10 players. If they feel like more than 10 guys are eligible, then they should be able to pick as many guys as they feel deserve recognition.

1/10/2014 9:09:08 AM

not disagreeing with anyone here, but what is the major argument that people seem to think makes Maddux the best player to have ever played the game?

Sorry...not to have ever played, but better than every other players who's been voted into the HOF

[Edited on January 10, 2014 at 10:42 AM. Reason : asdf]

1/10/2014 10:41:55 AM

^ because his maximum velocity was essentially batting practice, yet he was insanely good at getting hitters out by fooling them with off-speed pitches. his accuracy was also incredible. and he was a pretty good hitter.

I fully support le batard. someone needs to make a spectacle over how stupid some of the HOF voters are

1/10/2014 11:03:53 AM

So basically whether he's the best pitcher is subjective as to what you value?

1/10/2014 11:17:45 AM

The HOF voters are stupid. Very very stupid.

And as for the Maddux argument, it's not that he's the greatest player of all time. But he is a sure fire HOFer. How two people (or however many it was) can justify not voting for him is ridiculous. But there's some absurd idea that no player should be a unanimous pick.

[Edited on January 10, 2014 at 11:23 AM. Reason : Jsks]

1/10/2014 11:20:54 AM

At this point the argument about why a few people (I think it was 13 in this case) don't vote for someone takes on a different meaning, because if everyone did vote for him, that now implies that he was better than Seaver and Ryan. I'm not arguing either way here, but that could be why some of those people didn't vote for him, and I don't think that's necessarily a wrong way of thinking. It's subjective, and at this point to argue that he should have received a unanimous vote means you're arguing he is the greatest player to have ever been voted into the HOF

1/10/2014 11:27:46 AM

I see what you're saying. IMO, each voter should look at their ballot without considering the other voters. The voter should simply vote on whether or not each player on the ballot is HOF worthy....Regardless of how many years they've been on the ballot or any other factor. I don't see the value in a voter saying "this player is certainly hof worthy, but I know he's a shoo-in and I don't think he should have a higher voting % than player X so I'm gonna refrain from voting for him". That's silly to me.

And yes, the limit of 10 players per ballot is dumb.

1/10/2014 11:39:25 AM

Well that's clearly what most writers do, but at the end of the day I see it as complaining over spilled milk though. I was pissed for a day when Ryan didn't receive a unanimous vote, but I quickly got over it. Maddux got in the HOF with one of the highest vote totals of all time, end of story.

If you want to be pissed, be pissed off over Biggio...he's the one who's really shafted here

1/10/2014 11:45:40 AM

The whole argument of "oh, he got more votes than [insert player name here], so he must be better than [insert player name here]" is how we get voters leaving players off their ballots.

Maddux should have been a unanimous selection because of his numbers, his sustained dominance and his overall contributions to the game, not because he was the best ever. A unanimous selection should indicate a player is a no-brainer for the HOF, not that he's better than Ruth or Aaron or Seaver or Ryan or whoever else.

As long as fans continue making that baseless assumption, we'll continue having retarded writers leaving guys off their ballots with no real justification beyond an unwritten rule that no one should be unanimous.

Also: Le Batard's ballot ended up being a lot more reasonable than the jackasses who turned in various forms of protest ballots. The BBWAA did what it had to do in his case, I suppose, but there are several other voters out there who should never be allowed to vote again.

[Edited on January 10, 2014 at 11:48 AM. Reason : ^ I agree about Biggio, but he should be a lock for next year.]

[Edited on January 10, 2014 at 11:49 AM. Reason : ^^ Olney had a lot to say about the Rule of 10 yesterday. I agreed with all of it.]

1/10/2014 11:47:49 AM

I agree with ^

And yeah biggio got shafted. So did Piazza. As a Mets fan I'm certainly biased but Piazza is a HOFer.

1/10/2014 11:54:33 AM

I agree that that he should be a unanimous choice, I guess I just like to point out that if you think that, and are arguing that, it should be noted that you also think Seaver and Ryan and whoever else should have been unanimous choices. But that fact is they weren't, which means we're now in a perpetual state of comparison, whether we like it or not. Whoever the few assholes were that didn't vote Seaver created a shitty system, but we're now stuck with it unless the committee one day decides, "Everyone who received 96.5% of the vote or higher is now a unanimous entry, and going forward if someone receives more than 95% of the vote and not yours, you need to have an essay ready explaining why you didn't vote for him"

1/10/2014 11:57:48 AM

Piazza's name is linked to the PED witch hunt, which is going to complicate his candidacy for a while, but that's a whole other debate.

1/10/2014 11:58:29 AM

I'm probably in the minority here, but is Craig Biggio really that easily a HOF player? .280 hitter with some pop who got hit a lot and stole a few bases early in his career.

But then again I think it's a little too easy to get in.

1/10/2014 12:17:34 PM

I think you can make the argument he is among the top 10 second basemen of all time..combine that with 3000 hits and I think that merits at least a very strong consideration...I would have voted for him

1/10/2014 12:24:08 PM

Unless there is a glaring -- and I mean egregious -- deficiency somewhere else (I can't even imagine what that would be), 3,000 hits should be automatic. I can't think of anything that would warrant Biggio's omission.

1/10/2014 12:29:03 PM

Quote :

"Piazza's name is linked to the PED witch hunt, which is going to complicate his candidacy for a while, but that's a whole other debate."

But I was under the impression (and granted, I don't follow PED accusations that closely) that Piazza being linked in the PED witch hunt was more speculation than anything. I mean, he never failed any drug tests, wasn't named in the Mitchell Report or anything like that. I always assumed he was linked to PEDs simply for being a power hitter in the 90s. There may be more to that than I'm aware of, though. He's certainly not under the same level scrutiny as Sosa, McGwire, Bonds, and those guys.

I thought this was a very interesting read from Jayson Stark. Explaining how he voted and how he dealt with the 10 player per ballot limitation. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10253089/jayson-stark-2014-mlb-hall-fame-ballot

And here's another Stark piece (linked within the above article) from 2013 that I also thought was interesting. http://espn.go.com/mlb/hof13/story/_/id/8826383/what-mlb-hall-fame-be

[Edited on January 10, 2014 at 1:46 PM. Reason : vv]

1/10/2014 1:43:25 PM

Granted, I haven't followed the narrative that closely, but that was my impression, as well -- that it was merely speculation. Unfortunately, that seems to be enough for some of the voters to refrain from putting him on their ballots. That's also another reason I really can't be upset with the whole Deadspin/Le Batard stunt. Anything that calls attention to the need for reform in the voting process can't be entirely bad.

1/10/2014 1:53:56 PM

The BBWAA website has the voting results up with a some ballots (those that have been made public) listed. One guy, Lawrence Rocca, voted for Jack Morris, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, and Hideo Nomo.

And I know it's stupid to quibble over this...but how in the absolute hell do Jacque Jones, Armando Benitez, and JT Snow get voted for?

1/10/2014 2:14:31 PM

Piazza was the heart and soul of New York City and deserves to be a HoF for more than just his homers (which by the way were more than catchers Carlton Fisk, Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra, Gary Carter, and Roy Campanella, who are ALL hall of famers).

1/10/2014 2:35:44 PM

He was also the worst defensively of that group, at a position where defense is very important. And he was a very low pick, not a good minor league player, and *somehow* became the best power hitting catcher of all time. I'd leave him off for a while I think

Edit: actually looks like he was about the same in the minors, I was just repeating what buster said yesterday

[Edited on January 10, 2014 at 2:47 PM. Reason : Milb]

1/10/2014 2:39:10 PM

Regarding Piazza's bad defense...this is worth a read:

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/1/21/3900126/mike-piazza-hall-fame-defense-glove-throwing-hitting-stats

Quote :

"In his career behind the plate, pitchers had a 3.80 ERA when Piazza was catching. If you look at all the other catchers who caught the same pitchers in the same year that Piazza did, they allowed a 4.34 ERA."

Quote :

"Craig Wright wrote an excellent article in The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2009 called "Piazza, Hall of Fame Catcher". He did a detailed sabermetric study that showed that hitters had a .723 OPS with Piazza behind the plate and a .748 OPS with other catchers. This 25-point differential is highly significant. In further studies that we did in The Fielding Bible—Volume II, we found that Piazza saved at least 20 to 70 runs more than an average catcher defensively, depending on the technique that we used. "

Yeah I'm a biased mets fan. But he's a HOFer without question. Which is why I'll never understand this logic

Quote :

"I'd leave him off for a while I think"

So you admit he's deserving of the HOF...so why should be punished by having to wait a few more years. At which point the ballot, at this rate, will be even more crowded with deserving players...leading to even more snubs.

[Edited on January 10, 2014 at 2:53 PM. Reason : Bb]

1/10/2014 2:51:03 PM

1/10/2014 4:14:52 PM