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Metallikid wrote:When did we fire Jackie Redmond and when did MLB Network pick her up? lol

vaff87 wrote:

Metallikid wrote:When did we fire Jackie Redmond and when did MLB Network pick her up? lol

Couple years ago she got reassigned there or something. There were rumours she was sleeping with members of the Jays and their spouses weren’t happy about it.

wazabifuzz wrote:That’s a good way to start playing for your new team. Finish an at bat for a teammate.

Myth11111 wrote:One of the things I like about Smoak is his ability to dig balls out for our young infielders. I hate when we DH him.

BigLeagueChew wrote:

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Schad wrote:It's hard bordering on impossible to throw 50+ pitches as hard as you can without losing your mechanics or having your elbow fly off to Slovenia. That's the primary difference between relievers today and relievers 30 years ago: then, they were mostly just guys who weren't good enough to be starters that basically pitched like starters, today, they're pitchers that throw with max effort for a finite period.

The result is that relievers are now better than starters on an inning-per-inning basis. It was once the case where you had a real incentive to have the starter go as deep as possible, because the guy behind him was some banjo-picker named Tex with a vague concept of how to throw baseballs, and often an insufficient number of fingers. Now, all of your relievers throw 97 with a 60 breaker, so as much as anything, the starter's job is to prevent the relievers from being overworked, whereas once it was ideally to keep them telling off-colour jokes in the bullpen indefinitely.

The opener is a wrinkle born out of a couple statistical quirks. Namely: because relievers throw fire and have pitches that swerve three counties over, you want good relievers pitching in 'high leverage' situations more than you do at the very end of games. Thus, we now get the Andrew Millers of the world who aren't closers, but actually pitch in higher-leverage situations than the actual closer, because one-on, none-out in a one-run game in the 7th is a much bigger spot than none-on, none-out in a three-run game in the 9th. But a further realization is that the most important bits of the game are the ones where the opposition's best hitters are hitting, and there's one time when you are absolutely guaranteed to face the opposition's best hitters: the first inning. So it makes quite a bit of sense to have a reliever, whose results are better than most starters, dealing with the top of the order at max effort, followed by a 'starter' giving you some innings in between, and then turning it over to people with questionable facial hair who throw 99 and grab their groins every time they strike someone out.

gundysmullet wrote:
You created a false narrative and then argued against it. No one said anything about "throwing as hard as you can for 50 pitches". Do "openers" not posses a changeup? If not, why are they in the big leagues? I guess, I'm asking for critical thinking and not knee jerk canned responses. Font was pitching well, correct? Would the moon have turned blood red if he actually went another 1 or 2 innings? Why not try and see what happens? Then you would have actual empirical evidence.