Does it start to fall if you lose 3 games in a row?
Yeah, we're definitely ****ed now. I mean, the Sox are a whole 1.5 games out of first place!
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2008 MLB Season
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Yeah, we're definitely ****ed now. I mean, the Sox are a whole 1.5 games out of first place!
The Yankees and Red Sox were both involved in sweeps this weekend. We were just on the better end of the broom.Yeah, we're definitely ****ed now. I mean, the Sox are a whole 1.5 games out of first place!
If you can't win a game on the road it doesn't look good. 21-32 is not a good record. You forgot to mention that part about Manny being Manny when he rolled over the ball.
big series between the brew crew and cards coming up, all the while the scrubs start their inevitable fold down the home stretch so this series could determine the outlook for the division the rest of the way. go crew!
Ditto for the NL East. Last night both the Mets and the Phillies went extras with the Mets winning and the Phils losing to create a tie for first in the division. We both have today off and then the Phils come to Shea for three games.
Dodgers here, sorry about that ninth inning yesterday.
Good luck getting this group to talk about anything but New York and Boston.
I hadn't realized the D'backs' bullpen was in such a bad state right now. Saturday the Dodgers almost came back to win and Sunday they scored five runs in the ninth to win. If it comes down to bullpens, then I like our chances in the NL West.
Dodgers here, sorry about that ninth inning yesterday.
That was an awesome game.
Hey I would love to talk about other teams, but nobody ever says anything so I talk about what I know, I don't get any west coast games here.Dodgers here, sorry about that ninth inning yesterday.
Good luck getting this group to talk about anything but New York and Boston.
Arizona has to win on starting pitching. They seem to be pretty thin everywhere else. I wonder if Mattingly had anything to do with the recent reappearance of Dodger bats. The newspapers are suggesting as much, but I have my doubts.
We go through this every year, don't we? Not only are baseball topics outside ALE rarely picked up by the Boston and New York fans who dominate here, but we often get these long strings of virtual play-by-play posts of Boston and New York games, which bores the rest of us silly. Okay, speaking for myself -- I get bored silly, which is why I don't bother reading this thread for days on end.
Wait... you have baseball and newspapers over there!?
That's one of the benefits of having MLB.TV for baseball: getting to watch games from everywhere all the time. The Mosaic program makes it so easy to watch your game but switch back and forth during commercials or checking out a tense situation elsewhere.
The downside is having to listen to some of the horrid home field announcers around the league, most notably the Nationals and the Reds. /shudder
I have never understood the idea of a batting coach. You either know how to swing a bat or you don't. Mattingly is more like a adviser. He will listen to a player and give them encouragement more than coach them. I think that is what makes him a good coach. But he can't make a person swing better. Players will listen to him though.
I don't like the play by play either. Comment on the game after it is played.
The way I feel is talk about your team. I am not going to bring up topics on a team I don't follow. I will talk about other teams but it is not my responsibility to bring it up.
I don't like the play by play either. Comment on the game after it is played.
The way I feel is talk about your team. I am not going to bring up topics on a team I don't follow. I will talk about other teams but it is not my responsibility to bring it up.
I'm guilty of that from time to time, but I agree. I resolve to get better... and reserve the right to start doing it again for the World Series.
Wait... you have baseball and newspapers over there!?
Nobody likes a smarta**.
Based on what I've seen of the game, I can't agree. You see a lot of guys with talent wash out because they can't make the physical and mental adjustments required to play at the major league level. A good coach can make the difference between getting over that hump or not, for some players at least. You also tend to see a lot of impatience with young hitters, if only because free-swinging tends to work when hitting minor league pitching. Patience and selectivity is a learned trait. Again, I think this can be taught by coaches and veteran players.
That might be true with some players but a lot of them just need encouragement. What makes Mattingly a good coach is that he listens to the players and answers their questions about hitting. He won't change their swing but focus on what they are doing wrong. A coach can not make a good hitter, they have to do that on their own.Nobody likes a smarta**.
Based on what I've seen of the game, I can't agree. You see a lot of guys with talent wash out because they can't make the physical and mental adjustments required to play at the major league level. A good coach can make the difference between getting over that hump or not, for some players at least. You also tend to see a lot of impatience with young hitters, if only because free-swinging tends to work when hitting minor league pitching. Patience and selectivity is a learned trait. Again, I think this can be taught by coaches and veteran players.
What is more important a hitting or pitching coach. I don't see how pitch counts are helping the game. Pitchers now are just babied and pulled after 6 or 7 no matter how they are throwing. You never see a pitcher have more than 100 pitches.
One thing I don't understand is firing coaches mid season. If hitters or pitchers are bad it isn't the coaches fault. maybe you should pick better players.
True, but I think we forget sometimes how young many of these players are when they break into the major leagues. Few of them come up fully-formed, either as athletes or as people. Remember Raul Mondesi? I mention him as an example since he came up with the Dodgers and also played for the Yankees. All kinds of talent, but he never could learn to lay off the breaking pitch out of the strike zone. His problem was all discipline, which can be taught and learned by a good teacher and a willing student.
If they aren't successfully guided early, then they probably won't around long enough to become veterans. Still, even the veterans get into slumps and it can help to have a trained eye looking for where the problems may be cropping up. I suppose I am holding out hope that Mattingly will figure out what's wrong with Andruw Jones. He clearly needs to make some adjustments, and just as clearly he doesn't know which ones, or he'd have done it already.
Why do we see hitting coaches get fired if the players are just not any good. Is it the coaches fault that the players suck or give up on trying.
Lets look at the Mets, they fired all the coaches and the team got better. Well was that bad coaches or the players giving up. You can't tell me that new coaches just turned the team around over night.
Nobody likes a smarta**.
Most people don't like me already, I may as well have fun being a smarta**.
But I do follow the Dodgers... not all too closely, but a good friend of mine is a huge fan and I like talking ball with him, so I watch them a bit. I was just remembering your comment a few pages back about people not knowing you had baseball out on the west coast when we were talking about Piazza going into the Hall as a Met or Dodger.There are way too many small and significant mechanics to hitting that keep me from shrugging off the role of the batting coach. As for the change in coaches for the Mets ... well, both our pitching and offense have improved significantly. While we only won it by two yesterday the Reds scored 5 and left two on, we scored 7 and left 14 on. Our bullpen has improved significantly, our starters are going deeper, and Pelfrey - yes, Michael Pelfrey who last year was booed back to the minors - has won 6 of his last 7 starts.
Oh, and I'll bite:
Depends on who is in it, but still holding out hope that I'll be cheering on the Mets.
I would never say overnight, and of course some players aren't going to be helped no matter who is coaching, or managing, for that matter.
In the case of the Dodgers, they've had four batting coaches in the last two seasons, which is in part a measure of desperation -- though in fairness, they didn't fire Easler. He was an interim measure until Mattingly got his life straightened out.
The same reason managers get fired when the players aren't any good: it's easier to fire one guy than to fire the players.
There is something to be said for signaling to the players that a change is needed and that the front office recognizes that the old way wasn't working. I think that often explains when a team has a surge following a coaching change. But as we all agree, it doesn't actually help anyone hit or pitch better.
I think that a lot of baseball coaching at the major-league level is managing people instead of skills. Yeah, the players know how to swing a bat and throw a ball by this time. But confidence counts for a lot in sports. And so does conditioning. And work ethic. All of these are things that coaches can influence. Whether very many of them have a strong enough effect to make the team better or worse is not that clear.
I could talk about the Mariners but there is not much to say about them.
Mariners lose.
Mariners over pay players.
Mariners sucks.
Mariners pick up players and they go to ****, trade them and they become All-Stars.
Mariners lose.
Mariners over pay players.
Mariners sucks.
Mariners pick up players and they go to ****, trade them and they become All-Stars.