WBC 2023--We'll Be Seeing You Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

And a week after the Super Bowl, the NFL champs could play the NCAA champs. Think how elated the college kids would be to beat the NFL champs. They could call it the Super Duper Bowl.

batmags 2 ' Darling 1.

[Edgy MD]

Ron Darling's thesis is YOU CAN BE A FAN OF THE WBC, BUT NOT A FAN OF THE TIMING OF THE WBC.

No, you can't justify "anything" with that.

[metsmarathon]

I keep waffling on whether or not mid november after the world series would be a good time for the WBC. you might certainly start running into trouble perhaps with the various international leagues that play at lower latitudes, but i don't really know those schedules in the least.

getting free agent major leaguers would be a challenge, as they may not be willing to risk having a minor injury be the last thing anyone sees of them, which takes money off their table (as opposed to taking their availability to their employers with a spring injury, of course! but at least the players like diaz are insured this way.) that would pose a risk for pre-free-agency players as well, i think. yeah, there would be a lot of player-assumed risk doing it after the season....

but anyways... players not on playoff teams could join their respective international teams, and probably start having more of an exhibition schedule through october, and adding in playoff participants as their schedules free up, with the world series winners being the last ones in.

but then the players really are playing a lot more baseball than they would otherwise, instead of adding a few more higher intensity games when they otherwise would be playing games anyway. and you're shortening the time players have to recover between seasons, and reducing the time they have with their families.

I still feel like, regardless of the increased risk of having players, who are already coming into camp in nearly game shape, ramping up just a little early to play a few more higher intensity games before the season kicks off, holding the WBC before the season instead of after is probably the best time.

maybe in the future we start the season one week later for the next WBC go-around, and hold the WBC later in March, to make sure the participants have had enough ramp-up time, to cut down on some of the injuries. not that that kind of thing would have prevented sugar's injury...

[batmagadanleadoff]

Ron Darling's thesis is YOU CAN BE A FAN OF THE WBC, BUT NOT A FAN OF THE TIMING OF THE WBC.

No, you can't justify "anything" with that.

He said a lot of other stuff. But you're leaving it out because it undermines your last post.

I wasnt addressing the root for this but not that. But if I did, that point of Darling makes no sense either since the tournament and the timing are INEXTRICABLY LINKED. What's next? You can hate red meat but be a fan of the filet mignon?

batmags 3 - Darling negative two.

[bmfc1]

maybe in the future we start the season one week later for the next WBC go-around, and hold the WBC later in March, to make sure the participants have had enough ramp-up time, to cut down on some of the injuries. not that that kind of thing would have prevented sugar's injury...

Start ST a week earlier, have a full ST, do the thing after a full ST, compress the schedule, and extend the season by a week. Everyone has had a full ST so they aren't playing "real games" instead of exhibition games before they are ready. (What happens to the players who aren't in the WBC during the 2 to 3 weeks when you are having the thing post-ST, pre-regular season? More ST?)

[A Boy Named Seo]

Yeah, it's sticky. No perfect time, but November seems too soon after a 162 game season plus playoffs for some. The WBC would lose more guys like Scherzer who try to time everything to have just enough left in the tank at the end of the MLB run.

I think now-ish is probably the best time. The Caribbean winter leagues can continue to do their thing without losing half their players or shutting down for the WBC. Most players now are staying in shape year round, so just picking between Major League camp or WBC camp makes the most sense to me. If you want players who are already "ramped up", they could take a very extended all-star break and hold the WBC in July or something. I don't like that idea for a few reasons (pausing the league, non-WBC dudes sitting around), but it would make the people who think these guys aren't ready to ball 100% in March find something else to gripe about.

[Edgy MD]

Ron Darling's thesis is YOU CAN BE A FAN OF THE WBC, BUT NOT A FAN OF THE TIMING OF THE WBC.

No, you can't justify "anything" with that.

He said a lot of other stuff. But you're leaving it out because it undermines your last post.

No, I'm not.

[bmfc1]

As for any legitimacy of this tournament, Team USA was supposed to play tonight per their seed in the original schedule but F*X bitched as they are showing a game tomorrow night (not FS1 or FS2) so the order of the games was switched to accommodate F*X and it meant that Mexico had to play two days in a row. Not the worst thing but that's not how a tournament is supposed to be run.

[Edgy MD]

Last-minute stuff in a tournament over-beholden to the moneylenders happened to my school back in the day. We were soaring through the NIT and got to the semi-final round. We were supporting the hell out of them, and that was our mistake. In the opposite side of the bracket were Notre Dame. And somebody realized that the two best draws at Madison Square Garden were Manhattan (the home team, more or less) and Notre Dame (who is the home team almost anywhere they play. So they switched the bracket and matched us up against ND in the semis. On the verge of glory, we got knocked out a round early.

Uncool, but it happened even though the NIT executive director was a Manhattan College HoF alum.

[Frayed Knot]

The problem is that no time-of-year switcheroo is going to solve the issue that most upsets fans: that when one of their players is injured during the WBC it's seen as an injury that wouldn't have
occurred if not for the WBC. It's a vastly over-played assumption of course even if Olbermann claims otherwise ("first Freddie Freeman, now Diaz"). OMG! a strained hamstring for FFF, that's never
happened in ST before. I mean, sure, top draft pick/top prospect Chipper Jones broke his ankle on a slide in the final ST game and missed the entire season of what would have been his rookie year,
but why not just cherry pick only the data which you feel buttresses you pre-determined conclusion. In the season after that first WBC injuries to a WBC participant that were occurring in August
were being treated as a no doubt cause-and-effect so maybe we can look forward to more tweets following Lindor's stubbed toe injury this coming July. Now was Diaz's snapped tendon caused by
a celebration unlikely to happen in a regular Wednesday night ST game? Sure. But it was also a fluke occurrence unlikely to happen anywhere.

But back to the whole timing thing.
I think November is going to be a non-starter for players (not to mention TV networks during the heart of NFL/college football season). Players need and want a break at the end of the regular season.
By November the playoff team players are just shutting things down and are the non-post season guys going to want to ramp it up for a short tourney (with a lot of travel) after a month off as we
get toward holiday/vacation time only to shut it down again before ramping it back up once more just after the holidays? Not a chance in my mind. And, even if we ignore all that, the games that
would be played in a November tourney are, unlike the current set-up, ones that wouldn't be played otherwise. Every pitch thrown, every slide made would add to the yearly total. As it is now,
these games are just a different version of what the players are doing anyway.

Mid-season? I don't see how that works. The season lasting from mid-April to early October is already stretched to late-March/early November. How many more bad weather games do we want to
create? And this Still doesn't get rid of the issue if and when a player gets hurt during the WBC, in fact it only means that his down time is more likely to occur during a more crucial time of the
season. The only argument for it is the assumption that injuries will be less likely in July than in March, something I'm not sure is true and is unlikely to be backed by hard data.

The current set-up has pitch counts which increase towards the end in the same way that more informal team ones do as ST moves along. And the players on these teams know ahead of time that
maybe they need to get ready a bit earlier. Other than that, we're talking about a tournament which involves somewhere between four and seven games played for a couple dozen ML players two
or three times a decade. That's not exactly a lot of added risk if you ask me.
Don't like the whole idea of a WBC in the first place? That's fine. I could either take it or leave it but prefer to keep it in just as an added perk to the usual irrelevance of March baseball once every
few years and as an attempt to grow interest in the game in some marginal baseball countries. But, if keeping it, I'd strongly argue that it's currently in the best spot on the calendar possible.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

what the WBC needs is more baseball playing nations. Let's get India and Denmark and Germany in there, a few African nations would be cool.

[bmfc1]

Mexico beat Puerto Rico last night so Lindor will soon be returning to PSL. Tonight is Venezuela and the USA so either Escobar and Narváez will be back soon after the game or Pete, Jeff and Adam will be back. Stay safe, fellas.

[Edgy MD]

what the WBC needs is more baseball playing nations. Let's get India and Denmark and Germany in there, a few African nations would be cool.

I think a big part of the idea of the WBC is to drive interest in nations on the outside looking in. So definitely.

I'm sticking with November. For most players, their season ends at the finish of September and if they're invited to join their national teams, they can spend October recovering from the season but still keeping it loose. As teams are eliminated from the playoffs, new players can join the training already in progress.

I'm also behind the idea of a single host nation. For nations in or near the tropics, hopefully November would mean temperate conditions. For northern baseball-playing nations — like Japan, Canada, and The United States — that would likely mean mostly using domed facilities.

[Frayed Knot]

what the WBC needs is more baseball playing nations. Let's get India and Denmark and Germany in there, a few African nations would be cool.

I think a big part of the idea of the WBC is to drive interest in nations on the outside looking in. So definitely.

And they do have other countries participating, just ones that wind up getting eliminated in earlier rounds a la regional World Cup tourneys.

[Lefty Specialist]

My feeling is that if we can survive without the WBC three years out of four, we can survive without it four years out of four. Just my opinion.

[Edgy MD]

Sure, if it were a case of survival. But it's a case of culture and commerce expanding. Those players are there by choice, people are rooting for them, and guys in ties are making money.

If there wasn't a WBC, there'd be something like it. It really isn't a question of WBC vs. no WBC. It's a question of WBC on which terms.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Well, I have no position on whether they should or shouldn't hold this tournament. If fans and players enjoy it, then that's fine by me. I wouldn't advocate to terminate this tourney just because I'm not interested in it. That's a Republican mindset thing. (You can't have an abortion because I wouldn't. Nevermind that I can't even get pregnant because I'm a male). But me personally, I have zero interest in the thing. Maybe less than zero. And Darling's points aren't persuasive at all. You can't separate the tournament from when they play it because when they play it is the fucking tournament and nobody's gonna move it to after the MLB season. And Darling's glory stuff is bs too because you can use that nebulous argument to justify anything. Anything. What is Darling saying? That they should hold the tournament because some people like it a lot? Wow.

Baseball is a deeply flawed game that, dynamically, isn't really set up for tournaments. That goes for MLB's own playoffs. At least in MLB, we have a 162 game season. What is this WBC shit? Single elimination championships? Good grief.

If the Mets flew out to Japan next November to play a slate of a dozen or so games against the Japanese teams, that'd be something. But that's a relic from the past. Nobody does that anymore. The Mets don't even play Tidewater in the Summer anymore.


batmags-11. Darling-bleccchhh. Keith Olbermann-cool.

[kcmets]

I'm watching tonight at 7 pm.

Baseball > Streams of Magical Urine

[bmfc1]

Pete, Jeff, Eduardo, and Narvaez are not in the lineups for tonight's game. They might as well be in WPB with the Mets.

[Frayed Knot]

Baseball is a deeply flawed game that, dynamically, isn't really set up for tournaments. That goes for MLB's own playoffs. At least in MLB, we have a 162 game season. What is this WBC shit? Single elimination championships? Good grief.

Of course it's not single elimination until several short rounds have already been played to shave it down to a final four, but that's kind of besides the point.
No one, at least no one with any sense, thinks this tournament identifies the very single best team in the world. The only time I did hear such claims was
after Cuba won the initial WBC and then trotted out the predictable propaganda about how they won because of their system, and its "non-professionals"
who play for the love of the game, which makes their brand of baseball superior to that of all those capitalists pig-dogs who play merely for money (or
words to that effect).

To me it's just a taste of higher-level and more spirited baseball in March with fewer guys wearing offensive lineman numbers. And, to Darling's point,
it does mean something to those players from smaller countries especially when going up against financial and population giants like Japan and the U.S.
So I'll be watching, but ymmv.

[Frayed Knot]

Daniel Bard obviously hates America.
Get him out of there.

Also, it looks like he may have broken Jose Altuve's hand.

[bmfc1]

Daniel Bard obviously hates America.
Get him out of there.

Bard has been suggested as a trade possibility for the Mets.

[Frayed Knot]

Daniel Bard obviously hates America.
Get him out of there.

Bard has been suggested as a trade possibility for the Mets.

He's had a nice comeback in his ML career but clearly didn't have it tonight [BB, BB HBP, WPx2, etc] and DeRosa wasn't quick enough to pull him.

[Frayed Knot]

If nothing else, just based on what I've seen last night and tonight, this tourney might set a record for most mound visits per inning.

[bmfc1]

If nothing else, just based on what I've seen last night and tonight, this tourney might set a record for most mound visits per inning.

A 3-hour game... yeesh.