SAD, the new Orioles closer, gives up game winning HR vs the Mets last night. Welcome to the jungle.
It is good that MLB does not do the European Style relegation. The White Sox are 31-97 (they won yesterday), that is .242 Winning rate. They are already eliminated mathematically from the extended playoffs with 34 games to go. They could easily get to 120 losses, which I believe is the modern record.
Do they realize that tanking does not work in baseball? Draft picks don’t help for a few years and even #1 overall picks are not sure things.
Does anyone show up at the games or is it just Chicago based fans of the other team?
The White Sox are drawing surprisingly well given their incompetence on the field. They were fortunate that their last home stand was the Cubs (38K per game) and Yankees (22K). Their previous home stand (six against Seattle and KC) drew between 12K and 21K per game.
The Sox are doing much better than the Oakland Lame Ducks, who managed to exceed 10K for last nights game against the Rays, which was more than the previous two games combined. But they averaged over 35K per game against the Giants before that. Before that, they averaged less than 6K per game against those White Sox, but did much better against the Los Angeles Ohtanis in the previous series. I guess the opposing team has a substantial impact on attendance for bad teams.
I'm afraid Chicago wasn't actually trying to tank. They have just been that bad at everything (ownership, front office, manager) pretty much since they replaced Renteria with LaRussa. They were still expected to win the Central in 2022 and I'm sure they thought they would bounce back last year. Now they will presumably go full tank by trading Crochet and Robert in the off-season. Even with the new system it still doesn't hurt - better than the middle ground at least.
Yea, I was being facetious, like I said tanking really doesn’t work in baseball unless someone like Ken Griffey Jr is going to be drafted (once every 30 years).
To be this bad is actually amazing. .242. 1 win out of 4 (actually a little worse). That is rarified air. Honestly, they might actually get worse.
The best team right now is 110 runs in the positive. They are 250 runs negative, which means they AVERAGE losing by 2. That is really hard to do.
Tanking does still work though, whether on purpose or not. It just takes a lot to still get it right. In the old system, the Astros and Cubs did. The Phillies didn't. But even with the lottery you still want all those shots at the top pick, as well as the pool implications. The Nats will be formidable again at some point. Remains to be seen how the Phillies figure out staying competitive though the middle of this Harper/Turner/Nola/Wheeler era, or if they'll get their chance to draft higher again without planning on it.
The bigger part of the tanking benefits are trades for prospects, not draft picks. A prospect in AA has much less risk than a drafted. Tanking has some value in baseball but with a draft lottery and no pick in the top 10 and no trading of most draft picks the draft benefits are really limited. And they played with the slot values too to lessen that advantage.
Why baseball pays so much attention to the draft and so little attention to teams tanking by trading their best players for prospects really shows they don't care if teams tank that much.
File this for the weekend in Kansas City, but Bobby Witt Jr. is trying to become the first player in a long time to hit .400 at home for the season. Currently hitting .405 and in general on pace for an 11.6 fWAR season which would be second only to Honus Wagner at shortstop (though guessing fielding WAR stats were pretty limited back in the day.....).
I still think it is important that the Phillies get the #1 seed and bye.
It was evident to me that the team ran out of gas in the latter rounds the last two seasons.
The reality is we have an older roster than other teams.
2022
Average Batter Age MLB Ranking: 16th (28.2)
Average Pitcher Age MLB Ranking: 19th (29.2)
2023
Average Batter Age MLB Ranking: 19th (28.4)
Average Pitcher Age MLB Ranking: 23rd (29.8)
2024
Average Batter Age MLB Ranking: 27th (29.1)
Average Pitcher Age MLB Ranking: 21st (29.5)
Notice the overall trend year to year? Yup, we got older with one exception: pitching age in 2024 which went from 23rd to 21st.
If we can avoid having to play that first round, that would help our pitching certainly, but could also help our older position players too.
Home field advantage is not a savior, but for the Phillies it matters. Having to grind it out on the road can be done to a extent as we've seen the last two seasons, but playing in front of our rabid fanbase in CBP has served us very well. It could make a difference to have home field throughout the playoffs. I know we failed with it in the NLCS last season, but that team ran out of gas at the end (see argument above).
I’m a little surprised that the 2024 Phillies hitters are on average less than a year older than in 2022. It’s mostly the same group, with seven of nine regulars being the same and therefore two years older. Rojas essentially replacing Hoskins is the main gain in age. Of course, they got younger by releasing Merrifield.
Is there evidence though that older players run out of gas in the postseason? There is clearly a bias towards playing them in the postseason over younger players, but that may just be managerial error playing older players over more talented younger players.
We just lost a few games we should have won in Arizona last year. It could have happened for a dozen different reasons. The older age of the core does make it more important to try to compete each year we have a chance. I just think we see as many instances of older rosters overachieving in the playoffs relative to talent as younger rosters (compared to their regular season record).
It's pretty astonishing that the younger Braves have had much worse luck with injuries than the Phillies, both on the mound and at the plate. Perhaps the market inefficiency with older players is that they're durable, if still subject to short-term injuries and being banged up.
Or it's all luck. All of it. MLB is March Madness now (including the part the best team probably will win most years in the end
The 31-year-old starter’s performance this season could also hurt his chances of scoring a bigger payday if he decides to opt-out. Montgomery has a 6.44 ERA and 1.67 WHIP for Arizona with the lowest strikeout rate of his career. After two successful starts in late April to start his Diamondbacks tenure — four earned runs allowed over 13 innings — Montgomery’s ERA has been higher than six in each of the past four months.
Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said Friday that Montgomery would begin pitching out of the bullpen, as starter Ryne Nelson had earned the final spot in Arizona’s rotation.
The White Sox are looking Historic. 31 games left, they must win 12 to avoid history. That would actually be a hot streak for them.
They will not pass the Cleveland Spider 134 loss season in the 1890s, but “modern” record is 120.
Players on waivers for the cost of the contract season has started. Taylor Rogers is the interesting name here. $2 million this year plus $12 million next, but he is an above average left-handed reliever having a good year. The question for the Phillies is whether Alvarado is expected back this season. And the cash of course.
Looking on Twitter it seems the Mets are one of the favorites to get Rogers while also blocking him getting down to the Phillies on the waiver wire.
The continuing saga of …. Can the White Sox actually be the worst modern team, an 8 game losing streak (commonly known as the likely outcome of 8 games) to get to 31-105. 26 games to go, they have to win 11 to avoid setting the record. 11-15. Not a chance.
It’s a shame to see the Mets lose this record, they so deserve it (every year)
Technically they would need to go 10-12 to not break the record if we are talking win percentage. Mets were 40-120. A 41-121 record would be slightly better. Now the chances of that team winning even 10 games are not great of course.
Guessing Alec Bohm's agent is taking notes here:
Chapman is the better player, but this is for age 32-37 and they are pretty close offensively.
Well, it's the same agent! But Chapman was going to opt-out, so somewhat different timeline/leverage. I'm still not especially for extending Bohm and Boras probably isn't either, but five years $100 million would probably be fair.
That minor league catcher story is wild. He was just drafted this year and had a $300K bonus. This seems like grounds to void a contract but there's really nothing to void (i.e the bonus was for signing and can't be touched and there was no guaranteed future pay anyway).
Think anyone will sign him?
Back in the 2008 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, it was said early in the broadcast that Tim Lincecum was unavailable due to a hospitalization for "flu-like symptoms". A friend of mine who knew someone who used work for the Phillies with close access to the clubhouse told me that "flu-like symptoms" was baseball jargon/public coverup for too hungover to play.
Haha for sure though I would hope that it was actually real in that case if it required hospitalization!
NYC, the City that Never Sleeps with nightlife that never sleeps, Lincecum was a young guy at the time and had something of a bonehead streak. Alcohol poisoning not beyond the realm of possibility. 
Not a chance. If he was showing something, naturally, but he wasn’t hitting at all. A guy who throws a game because he wants the season to end and doesn’t want to go to the playoffs isn’t going to get ANY support from teammates.
I wonder how much the owners can get for tattooing ads on players? Maybe they can engrave ads on the field or put company name targets in the stands and give away things if the ball hits the targets.
Bill Veeck would be so proud that his ideas live.
He was only 19 games into his major league career though. If someone already thought enough of him to draft him in the 6th round for $300K less than two months ago a few teams will at least consider giving him a second chance. But maybe he doesn't want one.
Sure, you might think a clubhouse would find this a lot less forgiveable than domestic abuse, PED usage or just being a racist or a jerk, but I bet it's not actually that cut and dried. Maybe the team was complete mess, or they all hated the manager, or their living conditions were especially awful. Some of the other players probably felt the same way he did or at least think it was funny, even a huge line was crossed.