MLB 2022 Baseball Season

[+ Lucky]

I am planning on the season happening. I have tickets for two Angels games versus the Yankees in August, and tickets for a Padres v. Diamondbacks game in July on Gay Pride Weekend. Great seats for both games. The Padres seats were less than half of the cost of the Angels seats!

[BuffaloKyle]

I had tentative plans to go see some games this season but if opening day gets delayed they are going to have to redo the schedule so I'm just in a wait and see mode. 

[+ Lucky]

They sure don't seem to be in any hurry to open the season. They already have too much money.

[samhexum]

On 2/17/2022 at 1:20 PM, BuffaloKyle said:

I'm just in a wait and see mode. 

I'm in a don't give a damn mode, and getting more so with each passing day.

3 hours ago, Lucky said:

They sure don't seem to be in any hurry to open the season. They already have too much money.

And I'm in no hurry for spring training (which bores me to tears) or to see what penny-pinching Hal will allow Cashman to do when (if?) the lockout ever ends.  

I can think of few things stupider than baseball doing this and risking alienating fans who have little patience or concern to spare after 2 years of covid.

[+ purplekow]

Juan Soto turns down a $350 million dollar 13 year extension while he has 3 years until free agency.  Imagine what one step in a gopher hall could do to his bottom line.  27 million per year turned down to try for 40 per year in 3 years but if injured, that would turn into a lot less.  So is this just a young man taking a risk or an agent getting greedy for his client?

 

[+ Lucky]

11 hours ago, purplekow said:

Juan Soto turns down a $350 million dollar 13 year extension while he has 3 years until free agency.  Imagine what one step in a gopher hall could do to his bottom line.  27 million per year turned down to try for 40 per year in 3 years but if injured, that would turn into a lot less.  So is this just a young man taking a risk or an agent getting greedy for his client?

 

Another sign that baseball already has too much money.

[BuffaloKyle]

20 hours ago, purplekow said:

Juan Soto turns down a $350 million dollar 13 year extension while he has 3 years until free agency.  Imagine what one step in a gopher hall could do to his bottom line.  27 million per year turned down to try for 40 per year in 3 years but if injured, that would turn into a lot less.  So is this just a young man taking a risk or an agent getting greedy for his client?

 

Apparently he wants to be the first baseball player to get a $500 million contract is the reasoning. 

[samhexum]

23 hours ago, purplekow said:

Juan Soto turns down a $350 million dollar 13 year extension while he has 3 years until free agency.  Imagine what one step in a gopher hall could do to his bottom line.  27 million per year turned down to try for 40 per year in 3 years but if injured, that would turn into a lot less.  So is this just a young man taking a risk or an agent getting greedy for his client?

 

Let's see, his agent is Scott Boras, so let me take a guess...

12 hours ago, Lucky said:

Another sign that baseball already has too much money.

Not until they've sucked every last penny out of fans' pockets, apparently

3 hours ago, BuffaloKyle said:

Apparently he wants to be the first baseball player to get a $500 million contract is the reasoning. 

When ARod was a free agent the first time, Boras asked for $252 million.  The reason?  Kevin Garnett had signed the most lucrative sports contract for $126 million and Boras wanted to double it.  It's all about his ego.

[+ WilliamM]

I have absolutely no issues with my team, St. Louis Cardinals. In addition to many good glove winners, the team is unlikely to sign Albert  Pujols as a Designated Hitter.

[samhexum]

And now, a lockout special event... reliving a great moment in baseball history:

‘Homer at the Bat’ at 30: The landmark ‘Simpsons’ episode that pushed the show’s boundaries

Wade Boggs did it all on the baseball diamond across nearly two decades in the bigs. Five-time batting champ. Twelve-time All-Star. A couple of Gold Gloves for the same hands that can flash a World Series ring. Yet when the Hall of Famer is in public, what often gets remembered is his mere 20 minutes one day in a Hollywood recording studio.

“When I do an autograph show for baseball, I feel like I’m at a Comic-Con,” Boggs says last week by phone from Tampa, while recounting his guest appearance on a beloved episode of “The Simpsons,” titled “Homer at the Bat,” that first aired 30 years ago this month. He voiced a cartoon character named “Wade Boggs” who comes to barroom blows over the question: Who’s the best prime minister in British history? (Today, without pause, the real Boggs replies with winking conviction: “Pitt the Elder!”)

While some autograph-seeking fans bring nostalgic photos of Boggs in a Red Sox, Yankees or Devil Rays uniform, many others ask him to sign images of his animated avatar wearing the jersey of the Springfield power plant’s company softball team — sometimes situated between befuddled teammate Homer Simpson and scheming manager C. Montgomery Burns.

lf the pictures are of me being getting punched in a bar or a picture of us with Homer,” Boggs says of the autograph requests. “It’s all good — it’s one of those episodes for the ages, and one of the ones that sticks out in people’s minds.”

As major league baseball endures a lockout and faces a possible delay to this season, it’s an apt occasion to remember another time when ballplayers and management didn’t see eye to eye. Enter Homer, Mr. Burns and the mighty lineup of imported pro ringers.

“Homer at the Bat,” which featured the voices of nine active major leaguers and made its debut Feb. 20, 1992, was more than a quirky one-off in celebrity stunt casting. The 17th episode of Season 3 emboldened the minds behind “The Simpsons” to push the boundaries of what an animated half-hour series could do and show.

And from a ratings standpoint, it was a bellwether for the surging show: “Homer at the Bat” marked the first time that a new “Simpsons” episode beat an original episode of “The Cosby Show,” long an NBC juggernaut; on that prime-time Thursday night, “Simpsons” softball also topped CBS’s Winter Olympic coverage from Albertville.

“It was a huge deal” for the then-upstart Fox network, says “Simpsons” executive producer and showrunner Al Jean. “That was a changing of the guard in television.”

Soon the show was asking itself “What can’t we do?” recalls David Silverman, who had recently been named the show’s supervising director. Celebrities wanted to guest on “our little cartoon show.”

The idea to get real ballplayers for “Homer at the Bat” sprang from the mind of the late Sam Simon, who co-created the show with Matt Groening and James L. Brooks. “The Simpsons” had previously landed such guest voices as Dustin Hoffman and Michael Jackson, but they didn’t voice cartoon versions of themselves. Early on, the show focused on fleshing out its core characters.

“Homer at the Bat” would center on how Burns backs his nuclear power plant’s company softball team. In a nod to the 1984 baseball film “The Natural,” the once-hapless squad begins winning thanks to surprise slugger Homer and his homemade Wonderbat. Once the team has a shot at a championship, though, Burns decides to bring in professional ringers — after handshaking on a $1 million bet with the owner of the rival power plant.

Simon was convinced that the show could attract major league talent. Jean recalls telling him, “We’ll never get them all.”

But Simon had a plan: Bring in the players one or two at a time, as they swung through town to play the region’s Dodgers and Angels. Acknowledges Jean: “He was pretty much right.”

Barry Bonds passed on being in the episode. So did Ryne Sandberg and Nolan Ryan, Jean says. But almost everyone else said yes. “Everybody loved ‘The Simpsons,’ “ a then-rare adult animated show in prime time, Boggs says. He nabbed the chance to play third for this Springfield of Dreams.

The show’s creatives draft-casted an entire starting nine: Mike Scioscia at catcher; Roger Clemens on the mound; Don Mattingly, Ozzie Smith and Steve Sax joining Boggs in the infield; plus Ken Griffey Jr., Jose Canseco and Darryl Strawberry roaming the outfield. (Strawberry replaced Homer in right field — a rivalry that became fertile turf for one-liners, tears and Simpson family heckling.)

The “Simpsons” offices had their share of sports geeks, some of whom were in fantasy leagues. One was the episode’s director, Jim Reardon, a die-hard Red Sox fan who played APBA baseball board games while young. Co-creator Brooks has fond memories of attending Dodgers games at Ebbetts Field, and the episode’s writer, John Swartzwelder, lovingly tucked in references to such stars of yestercentury as Cap Anson and Jim Creighton. When Burns asks whether he can get such players as Creighton as ringers, he’s told the sport’s first true star has been dead since 1862. Says Silverman: “It was a breakout episode for Burns,” who “sometimes has one foot in the Dickensian universe.”

A crucial unknown, though, was how the guest athletes would deliver as voice actors. This with a script that had “a checkered history,” says Jean, noting that the first table read — without any ballplayers around — elicited little laughter. “It was a bomb — you could hear a pin drop.”

Jean can smile now about how he and Mike Reiss, his co-showrunner at the time, reacted: “We thought we were going to get fired.”

Yet somehow, bringing in the athletes helped the episode find its energy. “You sense the fun of the ballplayers in it,” Brooks says. “That above everything makes the show special — because it was a risk for them, and it somehow translated.”

Many recording sessions crackled with mutual admiration. Jean remembers Ozzie Smith being accompanied by a son who did an impression of Bart; and Reardon recalls Ken Griffey Sr., still an active player at the time, wanting to meet Homer. Dan Castellaneta, a Chicago Cubs fan, broke into his Homer voice upon meeting the veteran, as if calling a Griffey home run at Wrigley Field in the ‘70s.

The “Simpsons” creatives vocally coached the players, such as when clearing up Griffey Jr.’s seeming confusion over his line while guzzling brain-and-nerve tonic: “Wow! It’s like there’s a party in my mouth and everyone’s invited.”

“Their readings were fantastic — they’re all funny and they all got the jokes,” Silverman says. “And the natural, non-actorly flatness enhanced it.”

“Homer at the Bat” presented another fresh challenge: how to caricature so many real people within the show’s visual aesthetic. This episode, Silverman says, confirmed that the show “could Simpson-ize celebrities" after an earlier guest appearance by Magic Johnson.

In a similar vein, Reardon says his “biggest job was trying to pull off the baseball scenes as accurately as we could,” including the angle of a swing and the mechanics of a double play. “We did it fairly representatively,” the director says, to “make it as real as we could in a world of jawless yellow people."

Sax, the former Dodgers and Yankees infielder, says he could envision how the caricatures would look, given the house style. “And they buffed me up a little bit,” Sax says of his Simpsons physique, “which I was thankful for.”

The show also had fun with the design of Ozzie Smith’s character, who dresses like the ultimate tourist. “He’s known for being very stylish and fashionable,” Reardon says, “so basically Mike and Al said: ‘Put him in the tackiest Hawaiian shirts, black socks and sandals.’ ”

Boggs found his character’s design to be amusing, but he scores one aspect as an error. “I guess they thought I was left-handed, because in the picture with all of us, I’m holding a glove in my right hand,” says the former third baseman. “That’s the blooper of the cartoon.”

As the episode’s championship game approaches, Burns tempts the wrath of the softball gods by declaring there’s no way misfortune could simultaneously befall all his ringers. Cut to a series of ill events for eight of them, including Scioscia (radiation poisoning from working at the power plant), Smith (a tumble into another dimension), Griffey Jr. (cranial gigantism) and Sax (a police traffic stop gone wrong).

“That’s the way it goes in cartoon land, right?” a laughing Sax says by phone from the Sacramento area — noting how his character, as a Yankee, is “held responsible for every unsolved murder in New York” and winds up behind bars. “I just thought it was hilarious.” (Sax liked the experience so much that he recently had Jean on his podcast, “Sax in the Morning.”)

Boggs’s character doesn’t make the big game because of political fisticuffs at Moe’s Tavern; town drunk Barney Gumble throws blows while insisting that Boggs’s pick for best Brit prime minister, Pitt the Elder, could never govern as well as his man Lord Palmerston. “I kind of questioned getting punched out in a bar — it wasn’t one of those typecast kind of things,” Boggs says now.

Boggs was more baffled, though, because his real-life nickname was “Chicken Man” — given his superstitious game-day routine of eating poultry — yet it was the hypnotized Clemens character who is sidelined when he starts behaving like livestock. “If anyone was going to cluck around like a chicken, that would have been me — that was another way they dropped the ball,” says an amused Boggs, adding: “But it worked out great.”

The “Simpsons” creatives point out that only one player demanded a script change. The Canseco character was originally written as a Lothario — inspired by the 1988 film “Bull Durham” — before word came from the Canseco camp: “He called and said, ‘I’m not going to do it unless you change it.’ ” recounts Jean. They scrambled at the 11th hour to turn Canseco into a good Samaritan who performs an exhausting fire rescue. (Canseco did not respond to a request for comment.)

Perhaps the oddest twist, though, was the fate of Mattingly. Burns kicks his character off the team because of Mattingly’s supposed long sideburns. Jean says that the bit was inspired by his own grandfather’s insistence that his young store workers “get a haircut.” The Mattingly character shaves off much of his hair but is still booted from the squad. Burns may not know quite what sideburns are, yet Mattingly’s character nails his exit line: “I still like him better than Steinbrenner.”

Not long after Mattingly recorded his “Simpsons” session in 1991, Jean says, the ballplayer was fined and benched by Yankee management for refusing to cut his mullet, per team policy. By the time the episode aired, the showrunner says, many viewers presumed the Mattingly character’s arc was parodying the headlines, rather than foreseeing the fluffy kerfuffle.

Says Jean now: “It was ‘The Simpsons’ ’ first prediction.”

Capping the episode was a parody of the 1981 Terry Cashman hit, “Talkin’ Baseball (Willie, Mickey & the Duke)” — titled “Talkin’ Softball” with new lyrics by the show’s Jeff Martin and sung by Cashman — that summoned a sepia-toned “nostalgia for this ridiculous episode,” Jean says.

Fan affection for the episode increased over the years, till upon its 25th anniversary, “Homer at the Bat” spawned a Fox Sports mockumentary, as well as a day of tribute at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Jean and Reardon were among the “Simpsons” contingent in Cooperstown, N.Y., that day — along with Boggs, Smith and Sax — as Homer was “inducted,” and the episode was featured in a “Simpsons” exhibit. “I know Wade Boggs is in the Hall of Fame,” Sax says wryly, “but now I can say I’m in the Hall of Fame, too.”

So would a reunion episode ever be in the offing from “The Simpsons,” now in its record-breaking 33rd season? “I think it would be a novelty to have us all get back together and do one last episode,” Boggs says. “Homer’s getting up in age now — I don’t know if he can do the great things that he’s done — but we can carry Homer.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/02/19/homer-at-the-bat-simpsons-baseball/

[samhexum]

So... no mention of this cheerful story yet?

Eric Kay was found guilty Thursday on charges he provided the drugs that killed pitcher Tyler Skaggs.

The Texas jury also found Kay guilty on one count of drug distribution resulting in death and one count of drug conspiracy. He faces up to life in prison.

Skaggs was 27 when he was found dead on July 1, 2019, having choked to death on his own vomit, before the start of what was supposed to be a four-game series against the Texas Rangers.

A coroner’s report found a toxic mix of alcohol, fentanyl, and oxycodone in his system.

Kay, a public relations director for the Angels, was accused of providing the pitcher with counterfeit oxycodone pills that contained fentanyl. At the time, Kay had just rejoined the team on the road after a stint in rehab.

The guilty verdict came down after less than three hours of deliberation.

Skaggs’ widow and mother hugged after the verdict was announced.  The trial included testimony from five major league baseball pitchers who all said they’d received oxycodone from Kay while they were part of the Angels’ bullpen.

Among them, Matt Harvey, former Mets pitcher and All-Star, acknowledged receiving oxycodone pills from Kay. During the testimony, he also admitted to cocaine use while with the Mets.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/17/ex-angels-employee-found-guilty-in-overdose-death-of-pitcher-tyler-skaggs/

With all the money and down time in sports, I'm surprised we haven't seen cases like this more often.

[samhexum]

Another cheerful story from the spring without baseball:

The Red Sox released minor leaguer and 2017 third-round pick Brett Netzer following a series of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic tweets. The Red Sox confirmed the posts were Netzer’s.

Netzer, 25, targeted Red Sox executive Chaim Bloom, the LGBTQ community and black Americans, saying in one tweet: “i am a racist. i do sometimes make assumptions based on another persons [sic] race/ethnicity/culture. glad that is out of the way.”

After The Athletic’s Chad Jennings reported that Netzer was being released, Netzer quote-tweeted him, agreeing that he was racist and homophobic but taking issue with the characterization of him as anti-Semitic.

“[Chaim] bloom is a hypocrite and an embarrassment to any torah-following jew,” Netzer wrote.

Netzer attacked Bloom for supporting Black Lives Matter and LGBT initiatives in another tweet. He also wrote that black people should “go back to their roots and start to re-establish their true black culture,” and in another tweet, called closeted transgender people rapists.

Netzer, who hadn’t played a game since prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, had a career .263/.327/.355 slash line in the minor leagues. He was on the restricted list in 2021.

 

[+ Lucky]

The 2022 Season will likely not start as scheduled on March 31st. This dismays me.

[samhexum]

MLB Reportedly Indicates Willingness To Miss A Month Of Regular Season Games

Samhexum indicates indifference to missing a month of regular season games.

Edited March 6, 2022 by samhexum
just for the hell of it

[+ purplekow]

Well the first six games of the season have been cancelled.  Right at this time, I would usually start peeking in on Spring Training and watching for new developments.  But after I read that Max Scherzer stands to have a deduction of more than 242000 per game for the six games or about 1.4 million dollars for missing six games on which he was likely to pitch in only one, I feel little empathy for the players nor the owners.   

I for one am hoping that the whole season goes down the drain.  Failing that, if more than 12 games per team are missed, I will probably just bag the entire season and another diehard baseball fam will be lost.   The greed on both sides is amazing.  There will never be enough for any of them and ultimately we fans look upon it as entertainment and a game we love while the players look at it as a paycheck and the owners as a cash cow.  

Fuck them.  What if they had a baseball game and no one came.  Oh wait that already happens in Tampa and Miami.  

Edited March 2, 2022 by purplekow

[+ WilliamM]

There's absolutely no reason right now to "hope" the entire baseball season will be cancelled.

Jeez!

[BuffaloKyle]

Another week of regular season games will be cancelled if no deal reached by the end of today.

[samhexum]

2 hours ago, BuffaloKyle said:

Another week of regular season games will be cancelled if no deal reached by the end of today.

Wouldn't it be great if, now that Covid restrictions are being lifted everywhere, they play in front of empty stadiums again this year?

[+ Lucky]

2 hours ago, BuffaloKyle said:

Another week of regular season games will be cancelled if no deal reached by the end of today.

Hopefully they will reach agreement today or tomorrow. The war in Ukraine should give them perspective.

[BuffaloKyle]

On 3/8/2022 at 10:37 AM, BuffaloKyle said:

Another week of regular season games will be cancelled if no deal reached by the end of today.

The talks were very productive yesterday so they extended the deadline to today before they would cancel more games.

Also when the regular season does begin Apple TV will be carrying a doubleheader every Friday.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33454721/apple-mlb-announce-friday-night-baseball-package

The games will be exclusive so they won't be on the local team channel. This is getting so annoying all these online streaming exclusive contracts. With all the sports. Can't even watch all my local market games.

[+ Lucky]

Opening Day has now been delayed for another week, now set for April 14th. All of the talking the last two days have not found a final agreement, despite the players making concessions.

[+ purplekow]

Disregard for the fans is amazing.   I had already stopped watching most games, just following them on line and through highlights.  This may be the push that has me virtually disregarding baseball altogether.  Both players and owners expect the fans to just come back as though this is just a family squabble and everyone can have a good time.  Baseball fans trend older and so those fans will likely come back out of loyalty or boredom.  New fans?  I don't think so.  

[samhexum]

MLB, MLBPA Reach New Collective Bargaining Agreement

The new CBA will cover the 2022-26 seasons, and the transaction freeze associated with the lockout is expected to be lifted as soon as the agreement is formally ratified (let the feeding frenzy begin!), which ESPN’s Jeff Passan characterizes as a mere formality at this point. The Score’s Travis Sawchik tweets that the proposal passed by a vote of 26 to 12 among the MLBPA’s 30 team representatives and eight executive subcommittee members.

What to know and what's next?

• Opening Day moves to April 7 and a full 162-game schedule will be played

• Spring training camps open with a March 11 voluntary report date and March 13 mandatory date

• Spring training games start March 17

• Free agency to begin immediately once CBA is ratified

• Playoffs expand to 12 teams, beginning this season

• The National League adopts the designated hitter starting this season

• CBT expected to begin at $230 million and grow to $244 million

• Which side made out better? Do both sides have reason to be happy?

  Bradford Doolittle: The owners got an expanded postseason format, preserved the basic economic structures that loomed over the last couple of CBAs and have more leeway change on-the-field rules. In other words, the owners won. Sure, the players received a couple of mechanisms to get more money to younger players. The tweaking of CBT levels and penalties might loosen up some of the top-end spending. If the deal on the international draft comes together, and thus qualifying offers are removed, that's good for high-end free agents. And maybe the new draft lottery will help boost mid-level free agency if it results in fewer teams entering full-scale rebuilds. Probably not. Still, the gains for the MLBPA seem modest and anything resembling the status quo is good for the owners. If the MLBPA's bottom-line goal was to increase the players' aggregate share of a revenue pie that is likely to keep growing, then it's not clear this agreement furthers that goal. -- Bradford Doolittle

  What does this CBA mean for CBA negotiations going forward?

  Buster Olney: The new CBA is in place, but just like after the previous agreement was forged in 2016, you can already see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon. Lingering player anger is inevitable among the middle class within the union, because there is almost nothing in this deal in place to prop up that group - and they are going to get crushed in the next few weeks, in the next few years. The middle class takes the biggest hit from the practice of tanking, because teams pocket money rather than spending, and little was done to deter teams from tanking, beyond the misdemeanor costs tied to a draft lottery.

  As it stands, the current system will reward the elite players -- the best of the young players will get more money from the bonus pool and the best of the older players will continue to get the biggest deals. But none of that ensures that small-market and mid-market teams will spend, and with the best of the youngest players now becoming more expensive, teams will be more aggressive in non-tendering arbitration-eligible players. This will only further increase the free-agent pool, fueling the supply-and-demand problem that has gutted spending on the middle class.

  Historically, it's the owners who have had a Haves Vs. Have Nots problem. Moving forward, factions within the union will have a similar fight -- including discussions about whether the best interests of all of the players are served by having so many members of the leadership group represented by one agent. In this round of negotiations, Scott Boras's clients made up the majority of the players making the big decisions. Players and agents will look to change that dynamic in the years ahead, to push for the high volume of union members who comprise the rank-and-file.

Edited March 10, 2022 by samhexum
just for the hell of it

[+ Lucky]

@samhexumCongratulations on pulling this deal together! Play ball!

[samhexum]

2 hours ago, Lucky said:

@samhexumCongratulations on pulling this deal together! Play ball!

I hope you like this provision I negotiated:

beginning in 2023, the schedule will be adjusted such that every team plays all 29 opponents in each season. The exact format is to be determined, but those games will come attached to a decrease in the number of intra-divisional games teams will play. Previously, teams played 19 games per season against all four of their divisional opponents.