2025 MLB Season Thread

I just can't get behind losing the game with Little on the mound.

Should've been ride or die Lauer.

Blue Jays apparently are committed to walking Ohtani in every non-absurd situation for the rest of the series. As great as Ohtani is, it's a mathematically indefensible strategy, especially against a team that has three good hitters hitting immediately behind Ohtani. I'm sure John Smoltz thinks it's a great idea, but John Smoltz has never been able to do math.

I don't know what the IBB analytics say, but don't expect any MLB managers to follow them when they're still calling for sac bunts.

Definitely not defensible for the first inning with no outs. If they are committed to doing that, they might want to run out an opener specifically for the first inning.

Also, Freeman should bat 2nd if that's the strategy.

I found a matrix of the chance of 1+ run scoring in an inning with all base/out states, 1950-2015 data. Kind of old but the trends are probably similar now, and should be useful for looking at these IBB since they were all tied & bottom of the inning, so all that mattered was getting at least 1 run.

Spoiler

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Bottom of 9th, nobody on, 1 out, IBB Ohtani. Increases chance of a run scoring from 16% to 27%.
Bottom of 11th, nobody on, 2 outs, IBB Ohtani. Increases chance of a run scoring from 7% to 13%
Bottom of 13th, runner on 3rd, 2 outs, IBB both Ohtani and Betts. Increase from 27% to 32%.
Bottom of 15th, nobody on, 1 out, IBB Ohtani. 16 -> 27% again like B9
Bottom of 17th, runner on 1st, 2 outs, walked Ohtani (not intentional but pitcher put 3 in dirt). Run frequency increases from 13% to 23%.

Quite a punt of equity for sure.

I'm walking Ohtani every at bat.

Hey, people are alive ITT!😃

I mean they even basically intentionally walked him with a man on first to put the wining run on second which is insane.

Roberts should be fired for even saying he'd use a position player next.

Yamamoto is awesome.

Snell is an even bigger coward than I thought.

I passed out in the 15th inning.

Woke up. Saw game was over and just knew Doyers were victorious.

Checked in the morning and found out. So lame.

Taco Bell steaming shits for every Doyerz fan.

I also can't even imagine how good Klein must feel.

He wasn't even on the roster the first 3 rounds and was never getting in a game that wasn't a blowout besides some crazy game like this. His legs were gone the last inning too. Really cool to see.

If the series goes to a 7th game, Blue Jays should start Eric Lauer. 4.2 scoreless yesterday vs Scherzer who was much less effective.

As I've said before, it's a flawed rule in baseball that this could happen to a player. Bonds was the warning and it was ignored

If a an extremely talented hitter ever comes along, we'll never get to.see him hit after he establishes that he's too good to pitch to.

What's the fix? The only thing I can see is that intentional walks are eliminated, and to prevent pitchers from not competing, you'd have to allow the option where the batter gets to still hit after getting walked, but can take the result of the walk as the worst case. You'd still probably have to make it where it is like an auto run if the pitcher throws 10 balls or something.

My solution is that when a batter draws a walk, he doesn't have to be the runner. A bench player can run and he can start a new plate appearance. And this can apply to any type of walk, as well as HBP's so pitchers can't just pitch around or hit the best hitters.

And then perhaps some limit per game of this being used could be a thing. Like you can use a free pinch runner sub for a walked batter once per inning or something. So every inning you have one player ready to sub in for a potential walk spot, use this strategy as you see fit.

It's just a flaw in the initial rules of baseball that you can walk a guy and not pitch to him. It's not that hard to imagine a hitter where his average hitting result is better than that and therefore he never gets to hit at all. Peak Bonds and peak Ruth/Williams were close.

If that happened they'd tweak the rules same as they did with the DH rule to let Ohtani stay in the game when he was done pitching.

Despite last night (and most of those walks were stupid) this hasn't been a problem since Bonds.

Up and at em Mclovin and everyone, moar sports happening and about to start soon

It was stupid not to have him on the roster with what they have. He looked great when they used him at the end of the season.

Ohtani stole 59 bases a year ago. Putting him on base is a much bigger problem for the defense than putting an older, slower Bonds on base. They were fortunate to throw him out trying to steal yesterday.

ow my ears lol,

Actually, I propose every team has a speedster on the roster for this position. And the position is called 'pinch walker'

Where's Steve Bartman when you need him?

oh boy, not that good of a start

lol ump