{"id":47298,"date":"2020-09-11T09:31:50","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T13:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=47298"},"modified":"2020-09-11T09:31:50","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T13:31:50","slug":"the-entertaining-absurdity-of-baseball-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=47298","title":{"rendered":"The entertaining absurdity of baseball rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

When mythical wife showed me a picture of the score of this game, my jaw kind of dropped.\u00a0 It turns out that 29 runs is some sort of National League record, that I don\u2019t really have the motivation to look up the finer details of.\u00a0 All I know it\u2019s not better than the 30-3 thrashing that the Texas Rangers dropped on the Baltimore Orioles some time ago, and doesn\u2019t quite erase the stink of the 20-2 drubbing the Yankees dropped on the Braves in Turner Field\u2019s final season.<\/span><\/p>\n

But anyway, of course I\u2019m entertained generally pleased by any Braves win, but it\u2019s not the 29 runs scored that amused me the most, or the seven home runs they clubbed en route to their scoring barrage.\u00a0 No, a nerd like me finds amusement in other parts of the box score, like the fact that the starting pitcher for the Braves, Tommy Milone, didn\u2019t get the win for a game in which his offense dropped 29 runs on the opposition.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, as satisfied as I am any time I see a W for the Braves, it\u2019s actually very much a bad and concerning thing that Tommy Milone allowed eight runs to the Marlins.\u00a0 It\u2019s not every day that the Braves are going to score 29 runs, much less ten runs, much less five.\u00a0 But lost in the pandemonium of the Braves blowing up on the Marlins is the fact that their own starter was pretty abysmal in his own right, and he absolutely did not deserve to get the win in this game, and I think the Braves did the usual Barves thing during the trade deadline, and went after a jobber like Milone to fill in their pitching rotation, instead of going after a starting pitcher that could really fortify their chances to capitalize on the short season.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, the win goes to Grant Dayton, a reliever that I\u2019ve never heard of which isn\u2019t difficult considering how far off the baseball radar I\u2019ve dropped off, but anyway, he gets the win, solely based on the rules of Major League Baseball which states that the pitcher on the mound while the team has the lead and finishes out the 5th<\/sup> inning, is the guy eligible for the win.<\/span><\/p>\n

Basically, this is the equivalent of going into arcade, walking up to the six-player X-Men arcade<\/a> game, where five other players are at Magneto, he\u2019s already blinking red and close to death, and jumping in as Dazzler because nobody ever played Dazzler, hitting him once with your mutant power blast, and taking credit for beating Magneto.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s basically what Grant Dayton did.\u00a0 By no fault of his own, of course though.\u00a0 Tommy Milone sunk $7 worth of quarters into X-Men and stunk up the joint getting past the Blob, Juggernaut, Wendigo and White Queen, and needed a bunch of people to come carry him through the rest of the game, with Dayton getting the credit for beating the game.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But I think my favorite anomaly of the game was the fact that reliever Bryse Wilson was credited with a save, in a game where the winning team won by 20 runs.\u00a0 The save rule is one of those things that really chaps the asses of the Keith Laws (aka snarky internet baseball stat geeks) of the internet, that undoubtedly was created in order to help negotiate leverage for relief pitchers in salary negotiations, and this is a prime example of when it\u2019s at its most absurd.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pitchers earn saves by two ways: either pitching the final out(s) of a game where the difference of score is three or less, or like in the case of Wilson, pitching the final three or more innings of a game while protecting the lead, whether it\u2019s one run, or like the Braves, 20 runs.\u00a0 By virtue of pitching the last four innings of a 29-8 game, Wilson is credited with a save, because he totally saved that 21 run lead, and only gave up one run.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the day is over, this is still just one win.\u00a0 And considering I let a day lapse before writing about it, I\u2019m fortunate that the Braves beat the Nationals last night, to keep the winning streak alive, because fewer things tarnish a good night like against the Marlins, than losing the very next game.<\/span><\/p>\n

As entertaining as a 29-9 win can look, it doesn\u2019t change any optimism or raise any hopes that THIS IS THE YEAR for the Braves, even in spite of the wonky short season we\u2019re still being subject to, with cardboard fans and artificial crowd noise.\u00a0 The Braves basically have no starting pitching, and despite their optimal playoff positioning right now, the playoffs are when there\u2019s a good starting pitcher every game, and it\u2019ll only exploit the Braves\u2019 usual cheapskate ways all over again.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know this is the year where I can personally put the baby luck to the test, but this household has fans of two teams now, and the Yankees of all teams, are that other one.\u00a0 But I\u2019d still set both our teams aside for some goofy looking World Series pairing, and the way it stands now, the San Diego Padres look like they\u2019re trying really hard to be one of them, and fewer pairings would seem more odd than a Padres vs. Rays World Series.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When mythical wife showed me a picture of the score of this game, my jaw kind of dropped.\u00a0 It turns out that 29 runs is some sort of National League record, that I don\u2019t really have the motivation to look up the finer details of.\u00a0 All I know it\u2019s not better than the 30-3 thrashing … Continue reading The entertaining absurdity of baseball rules<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,66,100,76,83,19],"class_list":["post-47298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-baseball","tag-braves","tag-comparison","tag-geeks","tag-observations","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47300,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47298\/revisions\/47300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}