22 Philadelphia Phillies (Nola, Aa) @ San Diego Padres (Snell)

Sabin 2022-10-20 11:36:31 UTC #161

I guess I see a couple of problems with this argument. First, an insult is an insult; padding the name-calling of a player as an "innocent insult" smacks of over-rationalization to me. Nola has been a common target for Philsmania. He may have limited his comments here to the Mr. Softee moniker, but he's torn into him repeatedly in the past. He, like many of us, is a passionate fan and I respect that. But letting your emotions do the talking can lead to hyperbole, such as saying Nola is soft in big games despite the fact that prior to yesterday he had three consecutive excellent outings, all of which held playoff implications.

It also seems a bit hypocritical that you find insulting a player in the heat of the moment to be okay, but bkox's pointed retort, directed toward a general line of thinking about said player, was not. Now, I'm not suggesting the proper response to an insult is another insult - it, IMO, is not. My point is the spiral of uncivilized conversation that can be sparked once that kind of inflammatory rhetoric begins, as seen here with the exchange last night.

Sabin 2022-10-20 11:52:13 UTC #162

Nola wasn't sharp, but I also think the turning point was Hand plunking Cronenworth. He was brought in to sit the lefty down and put an end to the inning. Instead he gets ahead in the count 1-2 before a slider gets away from him (technically two) and suddenly he has to face at least two righties with the bases chucked.

Aquapong 2022-10-20 12:54:05 UTC #163

We lost! Oh no, we suck again!

They just had to throw a game to get the fans in Philly all three games.

BostonRoss 2022-10-20 12:57:38 UTC #164

I would have preferred if they had waited until Game 4 to throw a game

BostonRoss 2022-10-20 12:58:25 UTC #165

Where I live it was on FS1.

Sabin 2022-10-20 13:53:54 UTC #166

That's strange. I don't think ESPN localizes coverage for individual areas, and even if they did, I've never given them location access (that I can recall). Maybe just a mistake on their end.

Patchmk88 2022-10-20 14:29:15 UTC #167

Players are professional athletes that get paid millions of dollars to be in the public eye. If someone on a board that they have no idea exists calls them Mr. Softie, they shouldn’t care and I doubt they would. Is it hyperbole? Sure. That’s part of the American fan experience for most people. There’s a ton of hyperbole all over this forum and most forums. I do it. I’m sure you have done it. I’m sure every poster on here has done it. I don’t see any problem with it if it isn’t vile or excessive. I crossed that line once and rightfully got called out for it. There’s a major difference to me to calling Nola, Mr. Softie, then telling a present poster that he shouldn’t be posting on a forum like this if that’s how he feels about Nola. Much easier to defend Nola with his stats from the past month then it is to call someone out (whether directly or indirectly).

If the majority on the board want this to be a place without any hyperbole, in the moment negativity, etc. then that should be the mantra of this forum and explained to users as they join. I love this place because it is a closed knit community. I feel like I’ve gotten a feel for the posters and their personalities because their aren’t a thousand people here like some other Phillies forums. I love bkox. One of my favorite posters and I’m sad to see that he doesn’t want to post here after the postseason. I love PhilsMania too. He’s definitely passionate about the Phillies. In the end I think both guys want the same thing, I just don’t personally like when two fans of the same team try to tell each other how to “fan”.

Patchmk88 2022-10-20 14:33:07 UTC #168

I said the same thing to my brother.

Also think the 1-2 pitch to his brother was a game changer. You can always tell when Nola may be a little off even if the results are initially good. It’s usually when he’s leaving fastballs up in the zone. He did it often in the first couple innings and really paid for it in t that inning. I think he’ll be sharp his next time out (as long as we get there).

In the end the Phillies failed to put padres batter away during that inning. I think there were 4 or 5 counts that were 0-2 or 1-2 that the Padres ended up getting hits and/or on base from.

allentown 2022-10-20 15:55:53 UTC #169

And when he misses badly on pitches. He pitched to the Padres sluggers with extreme caution early in the count, and had to put them down with 3 ball - X strike count too often. Not efficient. Nola has pitched over 220 innings this season. He does not do well when tired. He was obviously done even before facing his brother. I understand the 'give him a chance to go 5 to be eligible for the win', but that isn't good playoff baseball and continuing to pitch after he was too tired to pitch well sets him up poorly for the next start. The one problem I see with Nola, whom I regard as a legit star SP, is that he has poor resilience after pitching too long in a game and it often shows up in the next game. The Phillies recognize this, at least to an extent, and tried to get him extra rest late in the season. That did set him up for a good end of season and start of playoffs.

I strongly object to characterizing Nola as Mr. Softie. Mr. Softie doesn't pitch over 200 innings in a season -- very few starters are able to do this. Nor does Mr. Softie end the season or start the playoffs as well as Nola did. Surprise! Nola is a human being. His energy, arm strength, endurance fades at some point. The Mr. Softie name-caller has a convenient habit of labeling each game in which Nola fades as a very big game in which Nola failed to come through for us -- he never does well in big games. That, of course, would be except for the games he won at the end of the season to enable us to reach the playoffs and his early playoff shutout innings. It only counts as a big game if Nola doesn't come through, apparently. It does get old.

I am a big fan of our new manager, but he really, and IMHO obviously, kept Nola in the game too long.

VoteForKalas 2022-10-20 15:57:27 UTC #170

Good point, that definitely contributed to the bad outcome. I think Patchmk88's point about Nola's pitch to his brother was important too and his tendency to be up in the zone with the fastball when struggling. Nola usually is pretty precise with his location and from the jump yesterday he was a little off that standard from what I saw.

DurhamBull 2022-10-20 17:02:35 UTC #171

My $.02 - I hear what you're saying. IMO, phans shouldn't tell each other how to phan and I also think it's reasonable for individuals to express how we feel about what we read here. In that vein, I can say that personally, I find the hyperbole unappealing regardless of the source. I follow this board for entertainment, and it's not entertaining to me when the team gets behind by a couple of runs in the 4th inning (as a general example, not referring to last night's game) and I see a lot of posts like "this game is over", or if player X strikes out in a key situation and the comments are "X is totally lost at the plate" or "how soon can we get rid of X?" regardless of that player's overall performance.

When I read these comments, I feel like the expectations on the players are sky high. By extension, I feel like the expectations on other posters are sky high, and if I or someone else makes the slightest inaccurate statement, or says something that someone disagrees with, the result might be instant derision. There's plenty of sources of negativity in the world; I come here hoping to get a rest from that. When I read a lot of negativity here, it becomes a place I don't want to visit. And it's certainly very rare that I have anything so important to say that I feel it's worth potentially getting ridiculed. I don't need that. To me, baseball is just very much just a game.

Patchmk88 2022-10-20 17:28:59 UTC #172

Yea I agree with what you have said here. To add to it, I'd say that there really isn't a ton of negativity here and it rarely is over the top. I mean when the Phillies or a player aren't playing well I don't expect a bunch of "phanatics" (I like your use of phan instead of fan) to be overly excited about it. When I see a "this game is over" post, whether I feel like the game might be out of reach or not, I read it more as the person expressing their feeling of the game being out of reach rather than the game being actually over. Hyperbole - of course, but if another fan feels that way more power to them. I rarely see someone being annoying about it and when they are they are rightfully called out. I venture over to The Good Phight sometimes during games and the negativity of a bad play or game doesn't bother me much, but the sticking to those negative thoughts even after a good run does get a bit annoying - you still have people over there talking about the season being a failure despite us being in the NLCS.

I also enjoy the fact that posters disagree with each other on Philly topics here but are respectable about it. The back and forth between Andy and Austin on player development, prospects, and organizational philosophy is some of my favorite discussion. It really opens my eyes to each person's point of view and helps me form my own opinion.

Anyway, I've kind of driven some stuff off topic in here so I apologize. Just don't like to fellow Phillies fans going at each other with vile.

julio 2022-10-20 17:56:59 UTC #173

Yeah. How about we leave it at that. Thanks.

I will figure out what to do about a post that got formally flagged as inappropriate. By the way, my thanks to the poster (not one of the disputants, by the way!) who chose to just flag that post rather than responding to it publicly. That is the way it's supposed to work here. If you see a problem post, flag it. (Click the flag icon. Duh.) Flagged posts get reviewed by the moderators. If a poster accumulates too many flags, the board software reins them in, all on its own, without the moderators having to play the heavy.

The other advantage of just using the board's flagging system, instead of responding publicly, is that you don't trigger responses to your response, and we don't wind up with off-topic tit-for-tat in our threads.

I have no further comments on it. Let's get 'em on Friday!

Sabin 2022-10-21 05:46:42 UTC #174

Yeah, I agree with you. There were a few big moments in that inning that could've helped steer the course of the game back in the Philadelphia's favor, but the Padres came through while the Phillies did not.

Nola was just off his game that night. I noticed early on he seemed to be nibbling, especially with some of the better bats in San Diego's lineup. And as I believe allentown also pointed out, it put him in counts that favored the batter. He got out of some, but it's inefficient long-term, and the Padres were able to capitalize in their half of the fifth.

Thomson likely saw some of this, too, and got Hand warming as a potential foil for Cronenworth after the elder Nola's single on the hit and run.