Fall Baseball Thoughts

It’s been a long time since I blogged and I have a lot of thoughts.  I’ll divide this post with headings so read whatever you’re interested in.

Dodgers-Mets

I went to a bunch of baseball games this summer, but I didn’t get to my first Major League game of the year until the last day of August.  The Dodgers were in town for a three game series with the Mets.  I had tickets for my dad and me for the second game.  As it turned out, Clayton Kershaw was coming back from the injured list in the third game so we decided to go to that one also.

After the Dodgers won the first game of the series, it was Tyler Anderson against Jacob deGrom.  Both starters went seven innings.  Unfortunately Anderson gave up a two-run home run in the third to Starling Marte.  Mookie Betts hit a solo home run off of deGrom in the sixth.  And that was all the scoring.  Justin Turner hit a ball that would have tied it in the seventh, but Brandon Nimmo made a great catch.  The Mets had Timmy Trumpet there to play Edwin Diaz’s song live.  It would have been awesome if Diaz had blown the save after that, but he did not.  With the good pitching, the game only took two hours and 19 minutes.  Attendance was 41,799.

It was a big crowd on a Wednesday night for a possible playoff preview (but hopefully not, given the result).

His name is Timmy Trumpet and he plays the trumpet.  What are the odds?

In the final game of the series, it was Clayton Kershaw against Chris Bassett.  Kershaw had a rough first inning.  The Mets scored a run on a single and three walks.  The Dodgers responded in the second with a two-run single by Chris Taylor.  After the bad first inning, Kershaw was excellent.  He didn’t allow a baserunner the next four innings.  Since it was his first game back, he was done for the day at 74 pitches.  He pitched really well and left in position to win.  As he walked off the mound after five, I figured he was done.  I also thought about the possibility that this could be the last time I ever see him pitch and I was sad.  I hope not, but there’s at least a chance.  If the Dodgers win the World Series this year and he decides to retire, the only better way for him to go out would be to retire after winning his third or fourth World Series a few years down the road.  There’s also the possibility that he’ll sign with the Rangers (the only team I could imagine him leaving the Dodgers for).  If he does that, I will still root for him and I would still try to go see him pitch when he’s in town to play the Yankees or Mets, but I hope he won’t pitch for another team.  And then there’s always the possibility that Clayton Kershaw keeps pitching for the Dodgers and things just don’t work out for me to see him in person.  This game was the first time I had seen him since September 2019.  I’ve been to 12 games at Dodger Stadium (all during Kershaw’s career) and Kershaw has only pitched in one of them.  So I hope I get to see him again, but we’ll see what happens.

I didn’t want to miss a chance to see the greatest Dodger since Sandy Koufax.

Unfortunately, the bullpen could not hold the lead.  The Mets scored two in the sixth and two in the seventh.  The Dodgers got a run in the eighth, but it was not enough and the Mets won 5-3.  Attendance was 36,908.  Pete texted me saying he was sorry that the Dodgers lost the two games I went to.  They were pretty much the least disappointing losses I could imagine going to.  They were 90-40 after losing those two games.  They hadn’t lost a series since July.  Kershaw was really good after a bad first inning.  And as I said to Pete, “Oh no, the Dodgers are only going to win 108 regular season games instead of 109.”  As I write this a month later, the Dodgers have 110 wins with four games to go. The last time I didn’t get to see the Dodgers win a game in person, they won the World Series. So hopefully this year will be a repeat of that.  It was the first time I was in attendance to see the Dodgers lose a game started by Kershaw.  Here are his numbers with me in attendance:

11 starts, two pinch hit appearances (0-1 with a sacrifice bunt)

Dodgers:  11-2 (the other loss was when he unsuccessfully pinch hit)

Kershaw’s Win-Loss:  5-0

70 innings

1.29 ERA

74 strikeouts

39 hits

17 walks

0.80 WHIP

2 complete game shutouts

Some other notes on the two games at Citi Field before I move on:  Late summer sounds like a great time to go see some baseball.  It’s usually not too hot and it’s a great way to pass some time while you’re waiting for football to start.  The second game we went to was a 4:00 start, which is nice because it’s day baseball and the sun is going down so it’s not too much of a factor.  Also it was the same day as the first Thursday of college football so we could go to the game and be home to watch some football at night.  The problem with all of that was it was also when the US Open was going on in Flushing.  Traffic was bad.  We made it to our seats just in time for the first pitch on Wednesday night.  It wasn’t as bad getting there on Thursday, but getting home after both games was rough.  Food and beverage could be improved at Citi Field.  I had buffalo chicken mac and cheese on Wednesday night, which was pretty good, but also expensive.  The craft beer selection could definitely be improved.  There was one little stand on the upper level with craft beer cans.  The good news was that it didn’t take too long to get a beer.  But I would definitely like to see a better selection of craft beer on tap.  I had a Montauk Summer Ale on Wednesday night.  I had a Brooklyn Lager on Thursday afternoon.  It’s not my favorite beer, but it’s pretty good.  If the Dodgers win the World Series, that will be one of the beers I drink to celebrate since I don’t know of any Los Angeles beer that I could get around here (I could find Northern California beer or San Diego beer pretty easily and maybe some Orange County beer, but I don’t know about any Los Angeles beer that’s available on Long Island).  I wanted to do Brooklyn Lager and a hot dog with Kershaw pitching.  I’ve had some really good hot dogs at Citi Field and some not so good ones.  Unfortunately this was a not so good one.  Citi Field also brought back the edible cookie dough.  They used to have a couple of stands where they would scoop it and it was nice and fresh and delicious.  Now they have it pre-scooped in a refrigerator at a lot of the stands.  I get why they did that because it’s much easier, but it wasn’t as good.  It was really hard and I broke the plastic spoon.  My dad and I also shared a pretzel.  I got it at the same stand I got the hot dog.  It was like an artisanal pretzel.  There were regular pretzels available at other stands, but I got the one that was available where I was getting a hot dog.  The regular pretzels probably would have been better.  So overall, the food and beverage experience left something to be desired.

Vin Scully

Today is six years since Vin Scully’s last game.  It's been two months since he died.  I did a running diary of a random August game in 2016 and got a great Vin Scully story about Pearl Harbor. I hope that the Dodgers win the World Series this year and that Vin Scully is doing the play-by-play in heaven.  I watched a whole bunch of Vin Scully games on YouTube in August.  Here are my top 11:

11. 1989 All Star Game- “Bo Jackson says hello!”  Bo Jackson led off the bottom of the first with a home run as Vin calls the game with an uncomfortable Ronald Reagan.  Reagan was in the booth for the first inning and it wasn’t like he was a guest being interviewed.  He was calling the game with Vin for an inning.  He admits to being uncomfortable.  Tom Seaver called the rest of the game with Vin.

9. (Tie) 1965 World Series Games 5 and 7- They’re both Sandy Koufax pitching a complete game shutout (four hits, one walk, and 10 strikeouts in Game 5 and three hits, three walks, and 10 strikeouts in Game 7).  So why don’t these rank higher?  It’s baseball from another century and it feels like it.  Vin splits the games with Ray Scott, the Twins’ play by play guy.  Vin had the second half of both of these games.  That means that you only got four innings of Vin calling Koufax pitching in Game 5.  He took over in the bottom of the fifth with the Dodgers hitting.  Vin also took over in the bottom of the fifth with the Twins hitting in Game 7 so you would have gotten five innings of him calling Koufax in Game 7, except they went back to Ray Scott for the bottom of the ninth because Vin was sent down to the Dodgers’ clubhouse to interview people once the game ended.  And the quality of the broadcast is obviously not great since it was 1965.  They say several times how they’re in color, but I guess only black and white versions were preserved because that’s what’s on YouTube.

8. The Catch (Montana to Clark)- The 49ers beat the Cowboys to advance to the Super Bowl.  Vin will always be remembered for baseball, but it’s cool that he was on the call for one of the great moments in Joe Montana’s career.

7. 2013 Opening Day- The only bad part of being at this game was not being able to listen to Vin call Kershaw’s shutout and go ahead home run against the Giants.

6. Vin’s last game at Dodger Stadium- This was one of those late season games where Vin would be calling two games at once.  The Dodgers could clinch the division with a win or a Giants’ loss.  The Dodgers were losing with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, but Corey Seager tied it with a home run.  Then it was a race to see if the Dodgers could win before the Giants lost.  Charlie Culberson hit a home run in the tenth to win it before the Giants lost.

5. 1986 World Series Game 6- This is the greatest win in the history of the Mets and probably the second best call ever for Vin.  We’ll get to number one.  Other contenders for his second best call would be Sandy Koufax’s perfect game and Hank Aaron’s 715th home run.

4. 1988 World Series Game 2- It’s Vin calling Orel Hershiser at his best.  He pitched a complete game shutout (three hits and two walks).  And Hershiser was 3-3 with two doubles and an RBI.  As always, the DH is stupid.

3. 1988 World Series Game 5- Along with Game 7 from 1965, it’s the other game when the Dodgers won the World Series with Vin on the call on TV that was preserved.  Game 7 in 1965 is better than this one, but this has Vin doing play-by-play for the whole game and the quality of the broadcast is much better.  And it’s Orel Hershiser on the mound again.

2. Clayton Kershaw’s no-hitter- Vin was on to the possibility of a no-hitter early in this one.  Seeing Kershaw pitch a no-hitter was going to be great no matter what, but having Vin call it made it even better.

1. 1988 World Series Game 1- Kirk Gibson’s home run.  It’s an amazing game and Vin’s greatest call.

I limited this to full games that are available on YouTube.  You can find his radio call of the last inning of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game, but not the whole game.  You can easily find his call of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run, but I don’t think the whole game is available.  The one game that I wish I could hear Vin call is Game 7 of the 1955 World Series.  He did the game on TV.  The radio call of that game was preserved, but the TV call was not.  I limited this to games that I watched in August.  Hideo Nomo’s no-hitter at Coors Field should probably be on the list.  And there are a bunch of other great Clayton Kershaw games that Vin called that you can find, but I didn’t watch those in August (I think I watched Nomo’s no-hitter and I definitely watched a bunch of other Kershaw games in 2020 when there were no sports).  I probably missed some other great Vin games.  He was the best.  I miss him.

Maris, Judge, and Ruth

I have some thoughts on Aaron Judge and Babe Ruth.  I’ve been trying to watch all of Judge’s at bats since he got to 59 home runs.  I wish he would hit 62 so that I can get some more sleep before the playoffs start.  I think I’ve only missed two at bats since he got to 59.  He’s tied Roger Maris and that is the real record.  I’m a teacher.  I wouldn’t give a student credit for cheating and I don’t give Barroid, McGwire, and Sosa credit for cheating.  They ruined the greatest record in American sports.  Hopefully somebody will break Bonds’s career “record,” but nobody is hitting 74 in a season without cheating.  I’ve really enjoyed watching Judge chase the real record, but it would have been so much cooler if the cheaters hadn’t “broken” the record first.

Judge has been awesome, but we don’t need to exaggerate how awesome he’s been.  I saw Buster Olney refer to Judge’s season as “the greatest single-season performance by any hitter in the history of baseball.”  In the words of Mr. Burns, whoa, whoa, slow down there, maestro.  In 1920, Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs (the all time record at the time) with 135 RBIs and his slash line was .376/.532/.847.  The second highest home run total was 19. The second highest slugging percentage was .632.  The Phillies hit 64 home runs.  The rest of the Yankees hit 61 home runs.  The other 14 teams hit 50 home runs or less.  Much like I had to unslander Bill Russell (another legend who died this summer), I have to unslander Babe Ruth.  I get so annoyed any time I hear that anybody was better than Babe Ruth.  Even if Barry Bonds wasn’t cheating, he’s still not better than Babe Ruth.  Mike Trout is not better than Babe Ruth.  This Judge season is not better than several Babe Ruth seasons.  The one player that we can compare is Shohei Ohtani.  I hear people saying that Ohtani is doing something that’s never been done before.  Yes and no on that.  No in that Ruth was both a great pitcher and a great hitter.  But yes in that he didn’t really do it at the same time.  Ruth was a great pitcher from 1915-1917.  He hit a total of nine home runs in those years.  In 1918, he was kind of half pitcher and half hitter.  He was 13-7 with a 2.22 ERA.  He hit 11 home runs in 382 plate appearances (but that was enough to lead the league).  In 1919, he was 9-5 with a 2.97 ERA.  He hit 29 home runs in 543 plate appearances (again he led the league).  And then he was traded to the Yankees in 1920 and he only pitched 31 more innings for the rest of his career (he was 5-0 with the Yankees with a 5.52 ERA).

People who put anybody ahead of Ruth use the same logic as the “plumbers and firemen” logic of people who don’t give Russell enough credit.  Yes, there were no black players in the Majors when Ruth was playing.  And great Negro League players deserve a lot of credit for what they did (Josh Gibson might be the most underrated player of all time).  But it wasn’t Babe Ruth’s fault that he didn’t play with them.  And if it was so easy for the white players back then, why didn’t anybody else do what Ruth did?  The only Ruth contemporary who was anywhere close to him as a player were Lou Gehrig.  He was the only other player with more than 302 home runs when Ruth retired (he had 378 at that point and ended up with 493).  If we want to stretch the definition of Ruth contemporaries, we can include Jimmie Foxx and Mel Ott.  I’ll listen to a case for Ted Williams being close to Ruth.  He had a slightly higher batting average and on base percentage, but Ruth has him beat by a pretty good margin in slugging.  He probably would have hit around 675 home runs if not for World War II and the Korean War.  But besides being the greatest hitter of all time, Ruth was also 94-46 with a 2.28 ERA and 1.16 WHIP as a pitcher.  So get out of here telling me that anybody was as good as Babe Ruth.

Updated Sports Villain Power Rankings

I’ll finish this off with my updated Sports Villain Power Rankings.  I have some changes because it’s seasonal (Kyrie Irving had to be number 1 at the start of the NBA Playoffs, but not in October), one new person earned a spot, and because I just forgot some people the first time.  Here we go:

30.  Max Scherzer- I had 29 people and I wanted to get to 30.  He’s on here in anticipation of a possible matchup with the Mets in the playoffs.  If that happens, he would probably move up several spots.  He’s easy to dislike if he’s not on your team.  Also, he couldn’t pitch for the Dodgers against the Braves in the NLCS because of “body fatigue” (or because he was a free agent once the season was over).

29. David Shaw

28. James Harden

27. Anthony Davis- He would have been on the original rankings if not for how bad the Lakers were last year.

26. Sidney Crosby

25. Gabe Kapler- I had Brandon Crawford and Logan Webb on my original list.  But Gabe Kapler is much more dislikeable than either of them.  If the Giants were good this year, he’d be higher on the list.

24. Lane Kiffin

23. John Calipari

22. Geno Auriema

21. Dabo Swinney

20. Madison Bumgarner- He was a glaring omission on my original rankings.

19. Lincoln Riley- He’s moved ahead of a few people, but he could move up a lot more in the next couple of months.

18. Jim Boeheim

17. Manny Machado- He was another glaring omission.

16. Carlos Correa- He’ll be much higher once next baseball season starts, but he’s not going to the playoffs this year.

15. Bill Belichick

14. Jim Harbaugh

13. Trevor Bauer- He deserves a spot on this list, but you could make the case that he shouldn’t be on the list since I’m limiting it to active players/managers/coaches and his career is hopefully over.

12. LeBron James

11. Kevin Durant

10. Kyrie Irving

9. Fernando Tatis Jr.- It took another cheater to keep Manny Machado from being the highest baseball player that isn’t Trevor Bauer/wasn’t part of the 2017 Astros on this list.

8. Tom Brady

7. Rob Manfred

6. Brian Kelly- Watching him lose to Florida State to start the season was awesome.  Every time Notre Dame’s wide receivers finish a game with a total of 4 catches for 26 yards, I’m reminded of his lazy recruiting and bad decisions in hiring assistant coaches.  I need some SEC teams to start beating him by multiple touchdowns.

1. (Tie) Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel, George Springer, Marwin Gonzalez- They’re the 2017 Astros who will be in the playoffs this year.

Slipping in the Later Seasons?

Since I’m not going to make it out to Los Angeles this year, it was fitting that my first baseball game after the death of Vin Scully was in Brooklyn.  Adam and I went to the Brooklyn Cyclones’ Seinfeld Night back in 2016 and we did it again this year.  We had been making a yearly minor league game a tradition, but the pandemic got in the way of that.  It canceled the 2020 minor league season and it canceled our plans to go to Dodgers-Phillies in Philadelphia and then some Office stuff and a minor league game in Scranton last year (the Dodger game we had planned to go to was an afternoon game with temperatures in the 90s and the Dodgers lost so I guess I didn’t miss much with that half of the trip).  I’m pretty sure the last time I had seen Adam was for a Long Island Ducks game back in 2019.  The last time I was in Brooklyn was for Celtics-Nets in 2019 when Kyrie Irving was murdering the Celtics’ season.

I got to Coney Island before Adam so I stopped at Nathan’s for a hot dog (it’s right there when you get off of the subway).  It was delicious.  After that, I was just walking by the stadium and ran into Adam.  We walked around for a little bit and then went into the stadium.  We wanted to make sure we got there early because we wanted to make sure we were among the first 2000 so that we could get our marble rye figurine.  There were supposed to be appearances by the actors who played the Wiz and Dolores.  Neither one was there.  Instead they had Donna Chang.  Back in 2016, it was J. Peterman.  I think they’ve had Jackie Chiles and Kenny Bania before.  So it seems like they’re digging deeper for Seinfeld people to show up. I was thinking about other characters who I’d want to see at Seinfeld Night. David Puddy would probably be at the top of the list. Mickey Abbott, Bob Cobb, Jake Jardel, Jiffy Park/Jiffy Dump Guy, Lloyd Braun (either one or both), Yev Kassem would all be good options (some of those people might have done it already). Tim Whatley would be another good one, but he’s way too famous now for the Cyclones to be able to get him.

So was Seinfeld Night slipping?  Much like the show in the later seasons, saying that it was slipping would be an overstatement.  There were a lot of Seinfeld themed games before the game, between innings, and after the game (more than I remember from six years ago).  There was a George ice cream eating contest, a candy bar lineup (but for some reason, it was four different candy bars when it should have been all Twix), a Seinfeld movie reference game, and an Elaine dancing contest.  There were definitely a few other ones that I’m not remembering.  So it was a good job with the Seinfeld themed stuff, but it would have been nice to have somebody more exciting than Donna Chang.  As for the show, a lot of people would say that it slipped after Larry David left after the seventh season.  I would disagree.  I think the show was at its best when George was working for the Yankees, which was the very end of season 5 through season 8 (Larry David was still the voice of Steinbrenner in season 8, but he wasn’t in charge of the show anymore).  Season 8 has the Bizarro Jerry, the Van Buren Boys, the Nap, the Muffin Tops, and the Summer of George.  I would agree that season 9 isn’t as good, but it has the Merv Griffin Show, the Strike (Festivus), and the Frogger.  A couple of years ago I looked at the IMDB user ratings of each episode and figured out the average rating for each season.  Here is the rank of each season based on that:  8, 7, 4, 5, 9, 6, 3, 2, 1.  I would have to go through each season and look at the episodes to rank them, but I would agree that the first two seasons are the worst.

There are plenty of examples of shows slipping in later seasons, but Seinfeld is not one of them.  The Simpsons might have been the greatest show in the history of TV and then they decided in season 9 that Principal Skinner wasn’t Principal Skinner (just the first of many problems starting in season 9 and continuing until I finally gave up on the show a few years later).  The Office is probably the best show of this century, but it definitely slipped after Steve Carrell left.  Season 8 is mostly unwatchable.  It has way too much of the three worst characters:  Robert California, Gabe, and season 8 Nellie.  The only good parts are Nate and the Jim/Dwight stuff.  Season 9 is mostly bad, but it finishes strong.  South Park held on for a long time, but it had been declining and I gave up on it with the season that was all about trolls from Denmark or something (I don’t remember exactly, but it was bad and I had no interest in watching it again).

As for the game, it was the Winston-Salem Dash (a horrendous name for a team) against the Cyclones.  Both teams scored in the first inning.  Gregory Guerrero hit a two-run homer for the Cyclones in the bottom of the second and that was all the scoring in the game.  With the low scoring game and the pitch clock being enforced this year (14 seconds with nobody on and 18 seconds with runners on), it was a quick game (two hours and nine minutes).  And that caused a couple of problems.  Adam and I tried to get food after the top of the third.  I figured we would watch a little bit and hopefully let the lines die down.  That didn’t work.  The lines were really long so we decided we would try again later in the game.  We tried again after the sixth and the lines were still really long.  I got a Brooklyn Summer Ale, but I was not able to get food.  And then after the game, they had the Elaine dancing contest and they had to wait for it to get dark enough for the fireworks (besides being a quick game, it was a 6:00 start).  I missed out on food at the game, but it didn’t seem like there was anything all that exciting anyway.  I found an article from last year saying that a Thanksgiving dinner turkey burger was a new item.  If they had that anywhere, I didn’t see it.  I like Maimonides Park (it used to be MCU Park), but the slow moving lines and lack of interesting food options are things that they could improve on.  Also they should have grass because baseball should be played on grass.  Anyway, after the fireworks we stopped at Nathan’s and I had my second hot dog of the day since I didn’t eat anything at the game.  So it was a fun night.  Hopefully it won’t be three years until I get to see Adam again.

This was our view for the game.  You can see a guy in front of us wearing a Koko the Monkey shirt.  Lots of fans had good Seinfeld shirts.  Adam wore his #1 Dad shirt.  I don’t have any Seinfeld shirts so I wore my Brooklyn Dodgers 1955 World Series Champions shirt.

I like Sam Adams Summer Ale better of course, but Brooklyn Summer Ale is appropriate for a game in Brooklyn.

Fireworks after a baseball game are always good.

Joey Chestnut has won many Mustard Belts.  They don’t give out Ketchup Belts for winning the hot dog eating contest because ketchup has no business being put on hot dogs.  You can check my post on Seinfeld Night in 2016 for my ideas about how to fix the hot dog eating contest.

Since the pitch clock is most likely coming to the Majors next year, I’ll give some quick thoughts on it. I’m fine with it as long as it’s enforced. It’s been in the minors for several years and it always seemed like it wasn’t enforced whenever I went to a game before this year. Apparently this year it is being enforced and it has shortened games. I wouldn’t be surprised if they give the pitchers more time when they bring it to the Majors next year. Like maybe it will start at 18 seconds with nobody on base and 22 seconds with runners on or something. And then maybe they’ll take a second off each year until it gets down to what it is in the minors now. But the bigger issues that are not being addressed at all are starters not going deep into games and the number of pitching changes. Every team has 13 pitchers and they use them. That’s an absurd amount of pitchers. This also goes along with another problem in baseball these days: not having enough balls in play. Every pitcher goes all out to strike guys out because they know they aren’t going to be in the game very long. If starters were expected to go deep into games and relief pitchers might have to go more than three batters, they wouldn’t be trying to strike everybody out all the time. I’m definitely in favor of abolishing the DH forever, but if you’re going to have it, you could at least use it to help the game in one way. If you implement the double hook rule correctly, there would be an incentive to have starters go deeper into games. If you did that, you wouldn’t need eight relief pitchers and the game would be much better.

I always enjoy minor league baseball.  I wish I could go to more AA or AAA games where I would know a lot more of the players.  You’d have guys with experience in the Majors and bigger name prospects.  I was curious to see if we saw anybody noteworthy at Seinfeld Night back in 2016.  I found the box score, but it was not easy.  It was much easier to find the Dodgers’ box score from the day my father was born (they beat the Pirates 4-3) than it was to find a minor league box score from six years ago.  Pete Alonso’s first professional team was the 2016 Brooklyn Cyclones, but he didn’t play in that game.  He had just been drafted so he might not have even signed with the Mets yet.  Nobody really stands out from this game.  But maybe Seinfeld Night in 2022 had a future Mets star.

Anyway, I’m probably only going to get to one more baseball game this year.  I tried to get to as many as I could this year without traveling (including college and summer collegiate league games).  Hopefully I’ll get to go to more games next year in various places.

Everybody Wins When the Astros Lose

Unfortunately, I’m not talking about the Houston Astros in this case.  I went to my second collegiate summer league game last week.  I went to a game in the Hamptons league earlier this summer.  Long Island also has the Blue Chip Collegiate Baseball League and that’s the league I saw last week.  There’s also the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League, which has games stretching from Pennsylvania to Long Island.  Based on where the players go to college, it seems like the Hamptons league is the best of the three.  I wanted to get to a game in each league, but it looks like I’m not going to get to the Atlantic league since their regular season is coming to an end this week.  I had planned on going earlier in the summer, but weather and other stuff got in the way.  I could have gone to a game in the Atlantic league this week, but it would have been played at the same field as the Blue Chip league game that I went to so I didn’t feel like doing that again.

Anyway, the Blue Chip League has a team called Long Island Dodger Nation.  I had planned on seeing them play for obvious reasons, but weather and stuff prevented that.  Also, they play at various fields and many of them are turf.  I didn’t want to watch a game played on turf if I didn’t have to.  I was never able to have the weather, my schedule, and a Long Island Dodger Nation game on grass line up so it didn’t happen.  So I did the next best thing.  I went to a Long Island Astros game and rooted against them because they’re the Astros.  They were taking on the Long Island Noreasters.  The Noreasters had blue in their uniforms and their starting pitcher was wearing number 22 (he was right-handed, but whatever) so I had no problem rooting for them against the Astros.  It was 89°, but the feels like temperature was 98° for a game that started at 11:00 in the morning.  And that was cooler than it had been for a few days.  The game was at Eisenhower Park.  There were two games in the same league happening on fields right next to each other.  I watched for a little while from the stands near first base.  But it was pretty rough in the sun so I watched the rest of the game from the shade beyond the fence in left field.  The other field with a game going on had no shade anywhere around it.

It was a really hot day for baseball.

Anyway, I enjoyed the game as the Noreasters pounded the Astros.  The Noreasters hit a ball off the fence for a double.  I was surprised to see a ball hit that far.  There were no distance markers on the fence, but they use wooden bats in the league and these players are used to using metal bats in college.  But then they hit a home run later in the inning (I looked up their stats and they have 11 home runs in 24 games as a team).  It was a good inning as they scored six runs to go up 7-0.  It was after that inning that I moved to left field.  They also tried my favorite video game play:  the double steal where the runner takes off from first and then the runner from third goes home on the throw.  It didn’t work as the runner was thrown out at home.  But it was total domination.  I wasn’t really keeping track of the score, but I knew that the Noreasters had scored a lot of runs and the Astros hadn’t scored.  At home point, the Noreasters scored a run and the Astros just walked off the field and the game was over.  Being way out in the outfield, I didn’t hear anybody say anything, but I assumed there was a mercy rule and the website confirmed that there is a 10-run mercy rule after five innings.  This was supposed to be the first game of a doubleheader.  With the heat, I wasn’t planning on staying for both games and that was it for me.  It was also it for the two teams as strong thunderstorms came through Long Island that afternoon.

I didn’t last in this spot very long.

You can’t really tell from this picture since I put my phone right up to the fence, but I was standing in shade on the other side of the chain-link fence.

So the two collegiate summer league games I got to were fun, but they don’t really compare to the ones I went to in Alaska three years ago.  The Alaska games were much closer to going to a minor league game.  These games were probably more like high school games.  I could have gone for a hot dog and a beer, but they definitely didn’t have anything like that (there was a solid food/beer selection in Alaska).  There actually was an ice cream truck parked by the field for a little while, but I didn’t check it out.

Anyway, hopefully the real Astros will lose in the playoffs.  Right now they trail the Yankees by two games for the top seed in the American League.  The Mets are 4.5 games behind the Dodgers for the top seed in the National League.  And the Astros and Mets might want to stay right where they are.  The Dodgers and Yankees might have very little to play for at the end of the season.  The magic number for the Dodgers to clinch a bye is 55.  For the Yankees, it’s 54.  Something would have to go very wrong for either of those teams to not get one of the two byes.  But either team could finish as the 2 seed instead of the 1 seed.  And the 2 seed might be more desirable.

The likely 4/5 matchup in the National League is the second place team in the NL East against the Padres.  The winner of that would play the 1 seed.  The 2 seed would get to play the winner of the NL Central or the third wild card.  I guess the Padres don’t have the second wild card spot locked up, but let’s assume that they’re the fourth best team in the NL.  The three best teams in the NL are the Dodgers, Mets, and Braves.  We’ll see if the Padres are one of the top four teams, but there’s a pretty good chance that the best team in the NL will have to play the third or fourth best team in the NL in the second round and the 2 seed would likely get to play the fifth or sixth best team in the NL.

In the AL, the Yankees and Astros are pretty far ahead of everybody else.  The wild card contenders are not separated by that much, but the 1 seed will play the winner of the top two wild card teams and the 2 seed will play either the AL Central winner or the third wild card.  Obviously the 1 seed gets home field advantage until at least the World Series, but the 1 seed is likely to get the tougher opponent for their first playoff matchup than the 2 seed in both leagues.

We had the same issue last year with a different playoff format.  The Giants had the best record in baseball and their reward for that was playing the team that was one game behind them for best record in the first round.  It all worked out for me since the Dodgers beat the Giants, but that was pretty silly.  The Mets and Braves could be the two best teams in the NL (I hope not, but it’s a possibility) and if they are, they shouldn’t play each other before the NLCS, but that’s exactly what would happen unless one of those teams got upset by the second wild card.  Although the Giants got a bad matchup last year, they did have one advantage for being the 1 seed.  They got to play a team that had to do whatever they had to do to win a Wild Card Game whereas the 2 seed had to play that didn’t have to survive a game like that.  That advantage is gone this year as both of the top two seeds will play a team that has to get through the Wild Card round.

So this format doesn’t reward the 1 seed enough.  We could easily fix this problem.  The first thing is that they should reseed after the Wild Card round.  If the 6 seed pulls off the upset over the 3 seed, why does the 2 seed get to play the team with the worst record to make the playoffs?  The second thing I would do is give the 1 seed four possible home games.  They would play their first game on the road and then the next four at home.  Those two things combined would make it really difficult for the 6 seed.  And if you’re the sixth best team in the league, you don’t really belong in the playoffs anyway so why not make it as difficult as possible?  The 6 seed in the NL last year would have been the Reds, who were 83-79.  They would have to win a best of three series on the road and then they would have to come home for one game to start a best of five series and then play the rest of the series at the 1 seed’s home stadium.  And the last thing I would do is seed 3-6 just based on record.  In many years, you’re going to have at least one wild card that’s better than the third best division winner.  Last year, the Dodgers won 18 more games than the 3 seed, but the Dodgers were the 4 seed.  Even though the Dodgers won 11 more games than the 2 seed, I would not give them the 2 seed since they didn’t win their division.  So you’d have to be a division winner to get a bye, but the third best division winner would not be guaranteed the advantage of the 3 seed (being a division winner would be a tie-breaker over a wild card).  So here’s how the seeds would look as of right now under my system:

1. Dodgers (64-32)

2. Mets (60-37)

3. Braves (59-41)

4. Padres (55-44)

5. Brewers (54-44)

6. Phillies/Cardinals (51-47)

1. Yankees (66-32)

2. Astros (64-34)

3. Blue Jays (54-43)

4. Mariners (53-45)

5. Twins (52-45)

6. Rays (52-45)

Under my system, the worst case scenario for the 1 seed would be to face the fourth best team in the league and have four possible games at home.  Under the current system, we saw the worst case scenario last year for the 1 seed when the Giants had to play the second best team in the NL and only get three home games.  I’m definitely not going to root for the Dodgers to lose and fall to the 2 seed.  It is nice to have Game 1 (and possibly Game 7) of the NLCS and hopefully the World Series at home, but I’m not going to be happy if the Dodgers are the 1 seed and they have to play the Mets or the Braves before the NLCS.

Before I wrap this up, I have a basketball thought.  Under no circumstances should the Celtics trade Jaylen Brown for Kevin Durant.  I have many reasons for being opposed to this idea:

• Kevin Durant is getting old.  He’ll be 34 in September.  Jaylen Brown turns 26 in October.  For comparison, the Celtics traded for Kevin Garnett two months after his 31st birthday.

• Durant already had a major injury.  Since recovering from his injury, he’s played 90 total regular season games in two seasons.  Garnett had played at least 76 games in every season before coming to the Celtics, except for the lockout season when he played 47 out of 50 games.  And we saw what happened to Garnett after he got hurt in 2009.  He was still good, but he wasn’t the same.  Durant is going to be declining (we already started to see it in the playoffs against the Celtics when he had pretty bad shooting and rebounding numbers).  Brown is still getting better.

• They would have to trade more than just Brown.  One of the reasons they lost to the Warriors was the lack of depth.  They’ve made a big upgrade in depth with Brogdon and Gallinari.  They don’t need to give up some of that depth.

• With Tatum, Brown, Smart, Williams, Brodgon, Williams, White, and Pritchard, they have a window of many years to compete for championships.  That window gets much narrower if you trade Brown and another young guy/draft picks for Durant.

• Kevin Garnett was loyal and hungry for a championship.  Kevin Durant is neither of those things.  He’ll ask to be traded if at some point.

• Obviously he wouldn’t be bringing Kyrie Irving with him, but why would anybody trust a player who decided that he wanted to play with Kyrie Irving?

There are probably more reasons to be against the trade, but I think that’s a pretty good list.  Just sign the best veteran big guy you can (not Dwight Howard) and call it an offseason and then go win the championship in 2023.

Anyway, I’m in the second half of my summer.  I’ve only been to one professional baseball game this summer (a Ducks game), but I’ll get to at least one more before summer is over.  Hopefully I’ll be able to enjoy the Dodgers playing some really good baseball for the rest of the summer.

It’s less than 40 days until college football so I’m definitely starting to long for that.  Marcus Freeman is exactly who I want to be representing Notre Dame so I really hope he’s successful.  Everybody is expecting Notre Dame to lose against Ohio State to start the season.  I can’t really say that I’m expecting to win that game, but it would be awesome if we ever did win that one.  Hopefully we’ll get on a good run after that game either way.  But I still have plenty of summer to enjoy until then.

Fine-Tuning the Experiment

I went to my second ever Long Island Ducks game last week.  It was a Thursday afternoon game. I’m definitely a fan of day baseball as long as it’s not too hot.  The forecast was good and we were sitting in the shade the whole game anyway.  My dad and I got there right before the national anthem so that was well timed.  It was the Ducks against the Staten Island FerryHawks.  The FerryHawks are in their first year and they play where the Staten Island Yankees played when they existed.

A lot of the 2,503 fans listed in attendance came dressed as empty seats.

With the Atlantic League, you’ll get some familiar names.  The Ducks are managed by Wally Backman and the FerryHawks are managed by Edgardo Alfonzo.  I am aware of who Wally Backman is, but I don’t have any memory of him as a player.  He played for the Mets from 1980-1988 and then for five more years after that on four different teams.  I definitely remember Edgardo Alfonzo.  He played for the Mets from 1995-2002 and then for four more years after that on three different teams.  He hit .292 with 120 home runs in almost 4,000 at bats for the Mets.  He was really good in 1999 and 2000.

As for players, there were a few names I knew.  The Ducks have eight players on their roster who reached the Major Leagues.  The only ones that I had much memory of were Lew Ford and Alejandro de Aza.  Lew Ford had a pretty good year for the Twins in 2004 and didn’t do much other than that.  He’s 45 years old now.  He’s listed as a coach and a player on their roster so I was wondering if he’s actually playing games.  I checked the stats and he’s only played in five games, but he’s 7 for 19 with a home run.  He’s played for a bunch of different teams since his last year in the Majors in 2007, but he’s played games for the Ducks in every year since 2009 except for 2010 (he was playing in Venezuela and Mexico) and 2020 (pandemic).  Since playing some winter ball in 2016-2017 in the Dominican Republic and Mexico, he’s only played for the Ducks.  He’s hit 79 home runs as a Long Island Duck.  Alejandro de Aza played in the Majors in ten seasons from 2007-2017 (he didn’t play in the Majors in 2008).  He wasn’t all that noteworthy as a Major League player, but he had six seasons with more than 100 games played.  The Ducks list the highest level of baseball for each player on the roster on their website.  The FerryHawks don’t do that, so I’m not sure how many of their players had been in the Majors, but the one name that I recognized was Dilson Herrera, who played for the Mets in 2014 and 2015.  As I’m writing this on Wednesday night, he’s not listed on their roster anymore, but he was listed in their starting lineup on Twitter five hours ago.  So I’m guessing that’s just a mistake on their website.

Anyway, the game was a pitchers’ duel.  The FerryHawks started the second inning with three straight hits to take a 1-0 lead, but that’s all they got in the second inning.  And that’s all anybody got.  It was a 1-0 victory for the FerryHawks.  The Ducks came close to winning in the bottom of the ninth.  They got a runner on with a one-out walk.  The next batter hit a long fly ball to right field.  I thought it was gone.  It was caught at the wall and was probably a couple of feet from going out (go to 3:08:20 in the video below).  The next batter flied out to center to end the game.  The teams combined to use just five pitchers with Ducks’ starter going eight and the FerryHawks’ starter going six.  Fourteen combined innings from the two starters is a good thing, but it is very rare these days.  It’s one of the reasons that the game was only two hours and 42 minutes.  I’ll have some thoughts about how we can make starters going deep into games less rare at the end of this post.

The box score says that attendance was 2,503.  Considering that the capacity of Fairfield Properties Ballpark (the new name of the stadium) is 6,002, I would say the actual attendance was nowhere close to that.  I’m saying maybe there were 1,000 people at most.  It was a weekday afternoon three days after the Fourth of July so people might have been returning to work or still away on vacation so it’s not surprising it wasn’t a big crowd.  The Ducks are actually leading the Atlantic League in attendance at over 4,400 per game (second place is just over 3,000 per game).  The FerryHawks are last in attendance at fewer than 1,200 per game.  I hope the FerryHawks can survive because that stadium has such a cool location.

I had a hot dog and a Brooklyn Lager at the game.  There wasn’t a huge food selection, but a hot dog is all I wanted at my first professional baseball game of the year.  The problem was that they only had yellow mustard.  As Cosmo Kramer knows, that's bush league.  This is New York, not the Midwest, you need some real mustard.  I would have preferred a Sam Adams Summer Ale, but since my ancestry as a baseball fan goes back to Brooklyn, Brooklyn Lager would be my second choice for a baseball game in New York.  But the beer was not well poured.  So I could have had a better food and beverage experience, but I was just happy to be having a hot dog and a beer at a baseball game again.

The Atlantic League has partnered with Major League Baseball on experimental rules for the last few years.  My favorite one is that you have to have two infielders on both sides of second base.  Let’s get this in the Majors already.  I was watching the Dodgers and Cubs the other day and I saw the Cubs’ shortstop nearly record an unassisted force out at first base.  The third baseman should play third base and the shortstop should play shortstop.  Batters would be rewarded with more hits for putting the ball in play so it would give them an incentive to not strike out as much.  Another rule is that the batter can try to take first base on any ball that gets away from a catcher, not just a third strike that isn’t caught.  This one is just silly.  We saw it in the game we went to.  And it gets scored as a single if you make it.  How do you get credit for a hit without hitting the ball?  Scoring it as a walk would make more sense, but it would still be stupid because the pitcher doesn’t deserve credit for a walk if he didn’t throw four balls.  The rule is so stupid that Rob Manfred must love it.  But the most interesting experimental rule is the double hook rule.  The rule is that the DH is tied to the starting pitcher.  If you take out the starting pitcher, the DH’s spot in the lineup becomes that pitcher’s spot.  That was the rule last year, but this year they modified it so that you don’t lose the DH if the starter goes at least five innings.  So let’s look at the good and bad parts of this rule.

Good:

• This would immediately kill the opener.  I’m pretty sure the Rays started the nonsense of having relievers start games. Third basemen should play third base, not short right field, and your starting pitcher should be a starting pitcher, not a reliever.

• We would have the possibility of pitchers hitting again.

• It increases strategy.  Do you put your DH at the top of your lineup to get as many at bats as possible before you lose the DH?  Or do you put the DH at the bottom of the lineup so that you minimize possible at bats for the pitcher’s spot (the number 3 spot in the order comes up a lot more over the course of a season than the 8 or 9 spot)?  Managers would also possibly have to deal with the pitcher’s spot and pinch hitting and double switches late in the game.  This is much more interesting than just setting a lineup at the beginning of the game and not thinking about it at all except for maybe sending up a righty to pinch hit for a lefty against a tough lefty reliever.

Bad:

• It uses the DH.

• Pitchers would almost never hit.  We would never get the Clayton Kershaw home run in the bottom of the 8th to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead again.  Even when the DH’s spot becomes the pitcher’s spot, it’s almost always going to be a pinch hitter in that spot.  But there would still be the possibility of the Daniel Camarena grand slam off of Max Scherzer.

• It gives the visiting team an advantage.  Your DH could hit in the top of the fifth and then you could take out your starting pitcher in the bottom of the fifth.  But the home team would need their pitcher to go five innings for their DH to hit in the bottom of the fifth.  This problem could be fixed by requiring the starting pitcher to face at least three batters in an inning for the DH to be eligible to hit in that inning.  So if the visiting team had their DH hit in the top of the fifth, the starter would need to face at least three batters in the bottom of the fifth.  On the other hand, if the home team took out their starter after loading the bases in the top of the fifth, their DH would still be eligible to hit in the bottom of the fifth.

• There is no incentive to have a starter go beyond five innings.  If the DH was tied to the starter for the whole game, there would be an incentive to have starters go as many innings as possible, not just five.  Sure, having a starting pitcher go five is better than having an opener go one inning or having a starter go four and a third, but it’s not as good as having a starting pitcher go seven, eight, or all nine.  One of baseball’s problems is too many pitching changes.  If you get the starter to go deeper into games, you get fewer pitching changes.

So there are problems with the rule, but it’s definitely better than what we have now.  I just don’t get how people think having the DH is more interesting.  Yes, pitchers are generally bad hitters.  But there’s no rule that they have to be.  Shohei Otani is definitely my favorite non-Dodger these days because he can pitch and hit.  If your logic for liking the DH is that pitchers are bad hitters, then why not make baseball like football and have nine guys play the field and nine guys hit?  Then you don’t have to watch bad fielders or bad hitters anymore.  I mean, did anybody enjoy watching Hanley Ramirez play the field?  I certainly didn’t when Clayton Kershaw had his perfect game turned into a no-hitter.  But nine designated fielders and nine designated hitters would make baseball much less interesting.  There’s so much less strategy involved with the DH and there’s nothing interesting about a DH hitting.  When you get the rare Clayton Kershaw home run or the Daniel Camarena grand slam, it’s an unforgettable moment.  I fear that abolishing the DH is like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.  But if implemented correctly, having the DH with the double hook rule will actually fix one of baseball’s biggest problems.