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MLB 2020 - SPRING TRAINING FOREVER


Dolfan in NYC

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Yeah - you only face blackout issues if you live in the city of the team you are trying to watch

OR if you live in a secondary market

Or for you - since you live in Iowa - MLB just makes shit up.

This is a story from 2015 - http://www.startribune.com/meet-a-fan-who-cant-watch-one-third-of-all-mlb-games/304301591/ - where the person lived in Cedar Rapids and MLB.TV blocked games from the Twins, Brewers, White Sox, Cubs, Cardinals and Royals.

So I went to MLB's site and put on of the Cedar Rapids zip codes in and... yeah those 6 teams are blocked

https://www.mlb.com/live-stream-games/subscribe - put your own Iowa zip in. But considering 3 of those teams are AL, anytime the Rays played them you wouldn't be able to see them

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6 hours ago, twiztor said:

for the first time in many, many years i will have evenings and nights off work, and i am quite looking forward to following baseball again. can somebody school me on the mlb.tv service?

price, quality, can you just follow one team? how are blackouts determined (i'm a tampa bay fan living in iowa so feel like this shouldn't be a major issue). just looking for info before i decide if i wanna sign up

MLB.TV is easy to use and the quality is great.  Price?  If you're a T-Mobile customer, it's *FREE*.  

You should not problem watching every Rays game while living in Iowa.  

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I used it last year when cutting the cord and being out of YES coverage, so I got every Yankee Game... Unless I was at work (I live in the Philly market, work in the NYC market).  This year I'm on YouTubeTV and get YES, so I won't redo the MLB.tv.  But if the MLB ever wants people to watch games again, then get rid of the fucking arcane Blackout rules.  It's utter horseshit that a person can't watch their team if they play in a certain area close to you.  

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I only used MLB.tv once and that was for either the 2016 or 2017 season. I got to use it for free and it was a special account. The account belonged to someone that worked for Stats.com and their accounts aren't subject to blackout rules. The guy at Stats.com also didn't care if others used his account and he shared the login with my friend who's a scorekeeper for MLB and they shared it with me. I really liked how MLB.tv worked and it always worked flawlessly for me, but there's no way in hell I'd pay for it with MLB's dumbass blackout rules.

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I moved the Astros stuff back over into the other thread because it will never ever go away. Especially after the Red Sox eventually get punished.

Anyway - The Red Sox signed Kevin Pillar because clearly that is a suitable replacement for Mookie Betts

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The Marquee Sports Network hired Mark Grace and it looks like Kelly Krull probably won't be hired, not that it matters anyway since no one is going to carry MSN. Still, Mark Grace is one the last peopleI'd hire for the "Cubs" network.

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13 hours ago, Craig H said:

I only used MLB.tv once and that was for either the 2016 or 2017 season. I got to use it for free and it was a special account. The account belonged to someone that worked for Stats.com and their accounts aren't subject to blackout rules. The guy at Stats.com also didn't care if others used his account and he shared the login with my friend who's a scorekeeper for MLB and they shared it with me. I really liked how MLB.tv worked and it always worked flawlessly for me, but there's no way in hell I'd pay for it with MLB's dumbass blackout rules.

Yeah, they are incredibly stupid.  And the areas are way too large.  I'm 300 miles from Seattle but blacked out of their games.  That doesn't impact me since I don't watch the Mariners anyway but it's still dumb.

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I'm definitely blacked out for Cubs games, which is hilarious because of all the reasons I've mentioned so far, but I want to say I'm also blacked out of White Sox and Tigers games...Maybe not the Tigers.

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I am so happy Maddon is gone and I almost feel bad for the Angels. Maybe they'll luck into a World Series, but this offseason has been eye opening for how bad Maddon was at his job. He's great at getting a young team to the top and he has zero clue what to do from there.

So part of this comes from the revelation that there were philosophical differences between Maddon and Theo. Earlier in season Maddon said those rumors were crap and there was nothing to them and there were no differences. Fast forward to a little bit ago:

Quote

 

"It was plenty," Maddon said. "Philosophically, Theo needed to do what he needed to do separately. At some point, I began to interfere with his train of thought a little bit. And it's not that I'm hardheaded. I'm inclusive. But when I started there -- '15, '16, '17 -- it was pretty much my methods. And then all of a sudden, after '18 going into '19, they wanted to change everything."

The Cubs fired three coaches after the 2018 season, but Maddon said the front office also "wanted to control more of what was occurring in just about everything."

"There was just, you can say, philosophical differences," Maddon continued, referencing his relationship with Epstein.

I mean, they wanted to take more control because in the years after winning the WS you showed you were more and more lackadaisical when it came to bullpen management and team management. You acted like a weirdo hippie where letting the team dress goofy for get away days would fix everything.

And now there's this:

Everyone I know that's a Rays fan said they weren't sad to see Joe go and said that we'd find out why in time. I get it now.

Again, Joe is great at getting a team to the top, but once there he overmanages like crazy and then becomes completely disengaged with the team and the reality of baseball. But maybe this dumb, new 3 batters rule for relievers will reign in Joe's worst tendencies.

Edited by Craig H
Quote box is all fucked up on mobile
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Braves extend Brian Snitker (tack on another year so he isnt a lame duck this year)

They also extended and promoted GM Alex Anthopoulos (he is now President of Baseball Operations)

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My wife and I get MLB TV every year. It's our big splurge. I love it so much. The blackout rules are dumb but that's the same with NBA League Pass. It sucks because I can't watch Phillies games on it, but the radio broadcast of Phillies games are really awesome and locally beloved whereas the TV broadcast sucks. But my wife loves the Red Sox so it's perfect for her. 

The online platform and the like is infinitely better than League Pass. I almost never watch League Pass on my laptop because of how janky it can be.

It's really wild. This has been such an awful off-season for baseball. And I've been down on baseball the past few years for reasons that go beyond the Phillies being crap. I hate how many teams are trying to Trust The Process and tank to load up on prospects. It's an advantage if one team does it (and it's really fucking crappy to toss out a 100-loss season even if it means success down the line) but when half the league tanks it just results in crappy baseball and no one giving a shit in half the league. 

But a lot of my sad face on baseball is because of how stats-heavy so much of the writing and analysis has become. I am not against stats at all. I have to dig into numbers for my job. I love doing it. But I really don't want to put in time/effort to care about the alphabet soup acronyms that rank players or the trigonometry lessons of launch angle and exit velocity. It's especially brutal when a lot of folks who write about baseball use those things and have zero clue as to how to contextualize those or make them readable at all. A lot of it just feels like goofs trying to show off the numbers they have and flex. I'm sure they're out there but I haven't read a good profile on something like "PITCHER X has thrown more strikeouts than he ever has before. Stats show it's because his curveball has more spin to it. Here's what he did to turn this pitch into a weapon." Moneyball the book did that in a great way. (Although I'm guessing the chapter on having one of the best pitching staffs of that decade was cut for word count purposes and not because it didn't fit the narrative of Billy Beane being a genius.)

It's so contrary to my thoughts on basketball writing. The advanced NBA stats are a little easier to quickly understand. But a lot of writers (especially Zach Lowe) know how to take that information and explain why/how it impacts a player and a game. His profile on Bam Adebayo from last week was excellent.

But I'm reading way more Spring Training news than I have in years? Somehow the whole Mookie Betts nonsense and Astros stuff has made me really reading a lot right now.

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PECOTA has released their projections.  To the shock of all, I'm sure, the Trolleydodgers are expected to do quite well.

Here are the projected postseason clubs, broken down by seeding via their projected records:

AMERICAN LEAGUE

1) Yankees: 99-63 (AL East champion)

2) Astros: 98-64 (AL West champion)

3) Twins: 93-69 (AL Central champion)

4) Rays: 87-75 (top AL Wild Card)

5) Angels: 87-75 (second AL Wild Card)

NATIONAL LEAGUE

1) Dodgers: 103-59 (NL West champion)

2) Mets(‼️) 88-74 (NL East champion)

3) Reds: 86-76 (NL Central champion)

4) Nationals: 87-75 (top NL Wild Card)

5) Cubs: 85-77 (second NL Wild Card)

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LOL Cubs in 2nd. Sure. If that's the case, the NL Central is fucking dogshit. I also don't think the Reds wind up being NL Central Champions. I'm guessing that will just be the Brewers or Cardinals.

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