Adding More Playoff Teams
Anyone got an opinion about this? Selig says his “panel” has no objections. We all know Selig does whatever the Hell he wants anyway. I’ll cut the guy a little slack when it comes to the playoffs. When he created the Wild Card he caught a ton of crap for it and that turned out to be one of his best contributions. If they added one more team and just had a one-game Wild Card playoff I think that would be completely interesting. Sudden death games are great. But if they are going to have it be a 3 or 5 game series, while the other teams sit and wait for a week, I don’t like the idea.
I do like the idea of shaving 8 games off the regular season but I know that will never happen………
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Why not give the team with the best record a bye? The other two division winners play the two wild cards in 5 game series…
Trade Rumor site says that more and more teams are looking to Uribe, not surprising. Also lists the Giants among teams interested in tradng for Bartlett. A young reliever is said to be the Ray price…
Twin– I like that idea, too.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you add a WC to each league, and they would have to play eachother in a one game playoff, doesn’t that also reward the division winners? The winner of the WC game would have likely burned their best pitcher to win the game and too me that is a just handicap that the WC team would have to take into the first gm of the NLDS. Come on, the division winner deserves SOMETHING don’t they?
One game just seems a pretty brutal way to decide it after playing 162. But hell, it would be exciting.. getting the fucking season ended before the snow flies would be kinda nice. ST is too fucking long- start the season first day of Spring, end it last day of Summer. Is that doable? Should be, that’s 6 months… and mandate regional telecasts on Saturday.
I’m cool with expansion but if the PS becomes like the NBA and goes on for 3 months fuck that.
No. No. A hundred times no! Original W.C. idea is fine. But too much is too much. Do basically like Twin’s idea of earlier start to the season as well as earlier terminus. Scheduling would have to avoid Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Boston and possibly two or three more northerly venues in the first 3 weeks or so of the season. That could be made up in mid-Summer when places like St. Louis, Houston, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Washington are all sticky hot and better suited for croquet than baseball.
Expanding the Wild Card is basically just another revenue enhancement scheme. It does not enhance enjoyment of the game.
It’s just money, crass and simple.
I was a bit surprised to see Wildass Joaquin on release waivers. I believe that means they just cut him loose, FA. I’d hoped he would develop some control with movement on that fastball he throws.
agreed. Why not throw Waldis and Hinshaw at Tampa Bay and see if they’d give up Bartlett. Throw in Guzman too, they need a DH. Supposedly Baltimore is offering David Hernandez (who borders on below average and sucking). If that’s all it takes to get Bartlett, go get him, bring the man home……
I think Waldis had an arm injury, can’t find anything on it though. Otherwise, hard to thnk they’d giive up so quickly on a 97+ arm….
Thanksgiving plans? Lisa, Bea, Pilar will be here, we’re crabbing it, no bird this year. Bea says she’ll make one for sammiches, though… must have that…Best guess I’ll be on my second one some time around midnight…
found it: lower back surgery for Waldis, about a week ago. I do now recall him coming out of a game after tweaking (or worse) something in his back. I guess the Giants don’t need to worry about other teams contacting him for a few months.
I think I’m gonna try one of those Butterball turkey breast roasts. All breast and all NO Whitey meat.
It’s only 3 lbs., but that’ll be enough for me and the cat.
Guzman was picked up by SD.
Yeah, a minor league deal. Good for him, but you’d think an AL team would be his place…
Agree on that. Maybe everyone just views him as AAAA.
Guzman to backup AGonzalez? Yikes. It’ll take some serious alchemy to turn that lead glove to gold. The Pads have a final-year club option on AG for 2011 (at $5.5MM). Think they’ll exercise it?
Fuck adding other playoff teams. Sellout wants to turn this into the NBA. 16 playoff teams . . . Play games into decenberrr. Might as well make it a 180 game season.
Why? $$$$$$ . . . Owners want more. Players be damned.
since when are teams allowed to release players who just had surgery? I thought they were on the hook for rehab and shit?
Joaquin, 23, appeared in four games with the Giants this season, allowing six runs (five earned) in 4 2/3 innings. He spent most of the year with Triple-A Fresno and posted a 1-2 mark with a 4.93 ERA in 23 games, including five starts. He underwent lower back surgery on Nov. 10.
You should at least put quotes in quotation marks, WSW..
Yeah, finally found the injury- lower back surgery less than 2 weeks ago. This is what I could find on rules for that:
” Injured players may not be traded without permission of the Commissioner nor may they be optioned to the minors, though they may be assigned to a minor league club for rehabilitation for a limited amount of time (30 days for pitchers, 20 for non-pitchers).” I guess he’s just free to pursue a job elsewhere. I’d have to think they’re on the hook for his rehab etc…
More:
“•Unconditional release waivers. These are self-explanatory. A player on release waivers can be claimed for $1, and the claiming team assumes the player’s contract. The player does have the right to refuse this claim and become a free agent. “
The Giants added 3 pitchers to their 40 man roster,while dumping Waldis and outrighted Brett Pill to Triple A.Added to their roster is Steve Edlefsen,Jose Casilla (brother of Santiago) and Clayton Tanner.That gives them 37 players on the 40 man roster.
Old fucking news, Kat.
Adding another playoff team is just Selig’s desperate attempt to deal with the ongoing loss of popularity of baseball that is probably irreversable anyway. Lots of folks don’t “get” baseball, sad to say. They don’t understand the drama of the game. They just think it’s a slow-moving sport. Short attention-span America in our modern era.
But lots of people are bandwagon-jumpers, too. So….adding more wildcard teams helps adds lots more bandwagon jumpers.
Also, it helps guarantee that the Yankees and Red Sox will always be in the playoffs, which makes Selig cream his shorts.
I should say it’s not just Selig. I’m sure lots of the owners want more playoff spots available.
Right, Selig is not doing squat without the approval of the owners AND the players association.
Not crazy about expanded playoffs, but it’s gonna get shoved through, so whatever. It’ll just be another avenue for the Giants to reach the playoffs, and all of baseball saw what happened when they made it. Also keep the sked at 162. A few real doubleheaders would help.
Would probably rather see a best-of-3, the idea being to make it as hard as possible for a WC team. Even then, the Giants as a WC would be tough to beat: Timmy and Matty would win it in 2, then MadBum and Dirrrrty would start off the next round. Man, it’s great to be able to state such things so confidently because, of course, we are the World Series Champs!
Singletary must have plans for next weekend that don’t include coaching a football game. He’s certainly not coaching one today. Worst I’ve seen…
It’s unreal. How do you evaluate any of these players when they are playing in this system? Absolutely no sense of urgency. Everyone loves Troy smith but how many PTs does he put on the board each week?
Singletary burns more time outs due to nit be ready for the play or the decision than any coach I can remember…
Yeah make it a best of three for the Wild Card. Give teams motivated to win their divisions.
Too bad for the people at the Stick. Niners just are not worth the tickets it costs.
I know that this will find little agreement but the Niners ONLY chance to get 8 wins and the division is Alex Smith. They need to play out this season with him, he is the only decent QB on the team. Keep in mind he was playing well- about 90 rating over the 2 1/2 games before he was hurt, 6-2 TD/INT ratio. As I posted last week, the clock struck midnight for Troy today… if they don’t want to go there, might as well go with Nate, the only other guy with upside…
Again with the Alex Smith to the rescue bullshit. You are droll, my friend. Unmotherfuckingbelievably droll.
That 6-2 TD/INT ratio included that ghastly fumble vs the Eagles that sealed his fate.
Bottom line: 1-6 as the stater this year. Coach said,”I want winners!” Next.
And don’t think for a minute I’m advocating Troy Smith. He blows Mario and Luigi as well. I’d trade the entire team for the first overall and draft Andrew Luck. I’m sick and goddamn tired of not having a franchise QB. I want a quarterback.
And I’m right. Don’t forget that part, DenWad.
Smith will probably be somewhere else next year and, like Hiil, will put up big numbers. It’s this org, not the QB. If they’d drafted Rodgers they would have fucked him up, as well. If they get Luck, he’s fucked…
Regarding more postseason games, I really had no opinion until I read this SJ Mercury writer’s (Peterson) column this morning . . .
http://www.mercurynews.com/the-playground/ci_16669280
He said in part, “The suggestion (additional WC teams) is in part a reaction to this year’s AL East non-race between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays. With both teams guaranteed playoff spots — one as a wild card — there was little incentive for either to tax itself in the season’s final weekend in pursuit of a division title. A second wild card would have created a battle between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago White Sox for the second wild-card spot, and perhaps even created clenched-cheeks urgency for the Rays and the Yankees, given that one proposal calls for the two wild cards to stage a one-game playoff to see which advances to the division series.”
Conversely, his argument against it is in part, “. . . an extra wild-card team might have spiced up the American League playoff race this season, it would have killed the delicious final weekend in the National League. That came down to the final day with three teams — the Giants, the San Diego Padres and the Atlanta Braves — vying for two spots. It wouldn’t have been half the fun if all had been guaranteed playoff berths.”
If you get a chance, read the entire column.
and our need to compete sharpened us, as Sabean and Bochy have both said….and the lack of meaningful battle made Tampa Bay and NYY slack and flat
Now for the true masochist: Warriors vs Lakers.
Going for the haiku bait I just found on yesterday’s thread:
leaves showering down
winter solstice approaching
— yet we golden BASK
I gotta say, I have not seen the Warriors look this overmatched in years. I didn’t realize that David Lee was the entire fucking team…..
Pawlie— HOTD……
Wise astronomers predict a particularly beautiful uprising of aurora borealis in the northern latitudes after the unusual energy emitted from the earth on Nov. 1, 2010, finally reaches the corona of the sun. Conservative astronomers point out that sound cannot travel through space. The wise ones laugh and say, don’t bother dividing 92,955,807 by 768; you’ll never understand it.
Here is Part 5; it may be the finale. Probably. Anything else in my odyssey was just a winding down. (And thanks for all the great support and positive comments on the earlier segments.)
http://thelaughorist.blogspot.com/2010/11/into-bright-night-loudly-part-5.html