The REAL Official 2015 MLB Bitch & Moan Thread

[Snaggletiger]

BOOM!

You don't say much, but when you don't, you don't say much.

[djsimp]

You don't say much, but when you don't, you don't say much.

Very excited the Cubs went into PNC Park to blank the Pirates while winning the NL Wild Card game.

[djsimp]

[Buzz Killington]

#usetheschwarber

[AUJarhead]

Predictions?  I really don't like this matchup for the Cards.  We don't have the bats to go toe to toe with the Cubs.  Going with Cubs in 4.

[Snaggletiger]

Predictions?  I really don't like this matchup for the Cards.  We don't have the bats to go toe to toe with the Cubs.  Going with Cubs in 4.

I felt a movement in the baseball karma universe.

[GH2001]

Marty McFly may have been right. Just sayin...

[djsimp]

Marty McFly may have been right. Just sayin...

Against Miami!?

[GH2001]

Against Miami!?

Not about everything. Just the Cubs. That in itself is noteworthy.

[Snaggletiger]

Since this is the bitch and moan thread, I'ma bitch and moan a little.  I understand how a lot of people just can't get into the sport, given that it really does move at such a slow pace.  I love it because I guess it was the one sport I half way excelled at.  I love the strategy, the little nuances of how players position themselves or how a pitcher sets up a batter. Although the games are too long, I enjoy the pace of play in general.

But, I heard a rant on ESPN radio today by Dan Lebotard (sp?) and his co-hosts on how nobody other than Houston and Cubbie fans gave a shit about the two games because they were so boring with the domination of the pitchers.  I couldn't agree more.  A masterful pitching performance is great to watch....but not every damn game.  No-hitters seemingly have become a dime a dozen.  Pitching has taken over MLB and they need to do something to even the playing field and get some fireworks going again. 

Years ago, I recall watching an All Star game when Fernando Valenzuela was tearing it up for the Dodgers.  I remember commenting that the first 3-4 pitchers in that game all broke 90 m.ph.  Amazing.  Now, your starters are all consistently bringing it up there at 95-97.  If you don't have several relievers in your pen that can bust 97-98, you're in trouble.  I've been following Toronto a little more closely this year first, because of Josh Donaldson, but more because they're one of the few that can wall-bang and light up the scoreboard.

Lebotard said half joking but 56% serious, that they should legalize steroids for baseball.  One solution would be lowering the mound a good bit.  But IMO, they need to do something to bring some serious run production back into the game.   

[AUJarhead]

See, I love watching good pitchers do their thing.  Even though we have to face that bastard in the next round, I really enjoy watching someone dominate a game like that.

[Snaggletiger]

See, I love watching good pitchers do their thing.  Even though we have to face that bastard in the next round, I really enjoy watching someone dominate a game like that.

Oh. I do too.  That's what I did from age 7 to 21.  Pitch.  Love to see a masterful performance. But overall, you're playing 162 games.  No one wants to see 140 3-1 games.  The last great age of baseball, when people were really excited as a nation, was when Sosa and McGuire were dueling it out to see who could hit 483 home runs in a season.  Steroids!  I get it. But fans didn't know or care then.  They wanted to see the ball flying out of the park.  Chicks dig the long ball.  Now, what you see is some bearded no-name, come in and throw 2 innings of 98 m.p.h. heat.  Everything's a specialty. Stop the game for the 7th time to bring in a side armed lefty to face two batters.  Good job.  Stop the game to bring in righty on righty.  Five 98 m.p.h. fast balls and a 92 m.p.h. slider later.....it's still 3-1.  I get it.  I understand and appreciate it.  The average fan says I'd rather watch soccer.  More action.

[AUJarhead]

Marty McFly may have been right. Just sayin...

Screenwriter who put that into the script is a Cards fan.  What are the odds.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/goold-st-louisan-sees-his-back-to-future-ii-cubs/article_cdd9634d-abc8-5cbd-a322-26f979b203be.html

Goold: St. Louisan sees his 'Back to Future II' Cubs joke arrive as reality

CHICAGO • It took a St. Louisan to send the Chicago Cubs to the 2015 World Series.

While writing the script nearly three decades ago for the sequel to the beloved time-traveling vehicle, “Back to the Future,” University City native Bob Gale and co-creator Robert Zemeckis imagined a future that nearly is here. They needed a spark, something to send the plot hurtling forward — at 88 mph, of course — and Gale thought of a sign from above. Literally.

His hero, Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly, had just arrived on Oct. 21, 2015, and the script called for a narrative epiphany, something to inspire McFly’s sports-betting scheme. McFly looked up to see a hologram sportscast announcing the result of the World Series. Chaos could ensue once McFly realized the most unexpected team had won, that “100 to 1 shot,” as another character says. Gale had already put an American League team in Miami, so the winner had to resonate.

Most of all, it had to be funny.

“It’s just more ridiculous that it’s the Cubs,” he said.

As the postseason Gale predicted approaches, there isn’t an American League team in Miami, but there is a contender in Chicago. A year after losing 89 games, the Cubs won their 87th game Saturday. With a 5-4 victory against the first-place Cardinals at Wrigley Field, the third-place Cubs moved five back in the division title race and maintained a healthy lead for one of the National League’s two wild-card berths. This year, as “Back to the Future” celebrates its 30th anniversary and fans ready for the arrival of the day McFly spent in 2015, the Cubs are far from a joke. They might be the future.

On Oct. 21, 2015 — the day Doc Brown’s DeLorean time-machine arrived in “Back to the Future II” — Game 4 of the National League championship series is scheduled. Coincidentally, that is the earliest that the Cubs can win their first pennant since 1945. Great Scott.

“Having the Cubs as the rival I grew up with, I was much more tuned into the Cubs than I would have been if I had grown up in Baltimore or something,” Gale said during an interview that was a bit of a prediction itself. It was conducted at the beginning of this season, in part to be prepared for a weekend series like this one between the Cardinals-Cubs that had postseason implications.

“I’ve always been a Cardinals fan. You can’t grow up in St. Louis without it. There’s something wrong with you if you say you’re from St. Louis and you’re not a Cardinals fan. Even the immigrants become Cardinals fans. The first Cardinal game I went to — I guess I was 7 or 8 — and it was against the Cubs. I got to see Ernie Banks play.”

As the Cubs reached the All-Star break in the conversation for contention and then asserted themselves, there surfaced this notion that they were one season ahead of schedule. Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein and general manager Jed Hoyer had stripped the organization for parts and rebuilt it through several years of last-place finishes. The goal for 2015 was to welcome new manager Joe Maddon and start integrating the talent gathered from trades, international spending, and several years of high draft picks. The message the Cubs wanted to send was that this year was the last year of “Wait ’Til Next Year.”

Actions said differently.

The Cubs spent $25 million to land Maddon as manager, $155 million to lure free-agent starter Jon Lester, and several millions more to outfit the roster with catcher Miguel Montero and starter Jason Hammel.

The talk of being a year early “might just have been a cover in case it didn’t work,” Cardinals reliever Carlos Villanueva said. He spent the last two years with the rebuilding Cubs. “The two years of rebuilding and people were on Theo. ‘We’re tired of waiting.’ They say, ‘Trust us, trust us. We’re sticking to a plan. Trust the plan.’ Well, now you see the results. Definitely they’re standing around this offseason and they’re like, ‘We made this investment, we’re going for it.’”

With the infusion of young talent and the gelling of free agents, the Cubs have been one of the few teams that has improved internally throughout the course of the season.

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny remarked this weekend how the Cubs, even a year ago, “were a radically different team than what we saw in the first third of the season.” That, Cubs officials will explain, is part of a radical shift in culture as well. The Cubs have spent five months electrifying the North Side — at 1.21 gigawatts, no doubt — but only because of four years of planning. The Cubs invested in player development, homogenizing the lessons and expectations throughout the levels and also individualizing player reviews and goals. Including the planned renovations at Wrigley, the Cubs also improved travel conditions and other amenities for big-league players.

They invited a different attitude, too. Maddon has talked often this season about needing to believe they can win at Busch Stadium. Even the comments this weekend about the Cardinals hitting batters hint of Maddon sending messages to his players to consider their team an equal. One former player said several years ago the sense in the clubhouse was “we were just pushovers.”

A subtle change happened within the system, where they felt it was important to reclaim the meaning of their numb.

“People would use the term Cubs in a derogatory way. That’s ‘just Cubs.’ They’ll screw it up,” Epstein told the Post-Dispatch at the start of this season. “That’s the Cubs. The lovable losers. That’s the Cubs. They never win. In our system, the word ‘Cub’ was being used as a compliment. If someone backed up a play or was in the right spot — that’s ‘Cub.’”

He added that a contending team was like “letting our little secret out.”

A secret that had been on the silver screen in 1989.

“I loved the first one,” Epstein said of 1985’s “Back to the Future.”

Gale was born in University City, and his father still lives there, near where both of them went to high school. As a student, when he wasn’t writing comic books or running a comic book club, he took advantage of the Cardinals’ A-student ticket program and caught games. His dad taught him, “If it’s good baseball, you applaud, even if it cost your team.” The “Back to the Future” trilogy has moments that expose those St. Louis roots. The lion statues seen in the movie are a nod to University City. Posters in the first movie announcing an upcoming football game feature mascots from U. City schools when Gale was a kid. One of the movie’s sterner characters offers “a nickel’s worth of free advice.” That’s a line taken from a vice principal Gale had.

And in the early scenes of the first movie, Christopher Lloyd’s Doc Brown explains his motivation for inventing the flux capacitor and time travel: “I’ve always dreamed of seeing the future … seeing the progress of mankind. I’ll also be able to see who wins the next 25 World Series.”

The Cubs’ winning a World Series was a punchline back then.

This year, the line around the Cubs’ office referred to their 107 years without a World Series as “the greatest journey in sports.” It’s a line made for a movie poster, or a marketing campaign. Either way, it strikes at how the World Series is more than a destination. Whether they do the uncanny and fulfill the McFly Prophecy this season, the Cubs see this as the end of revisiting the past. They seek what the film that saw this coming (with a wink) already has.

Longevity.

“I don’t think anybody in St. Louis is going to treat me like Bartman,” Gale said. “All the bookies in Las Vegas may call me up and ask if I’ve got any predictions for next year. It’s the dream of every filmmaker to make something everybody sees, everybody loves. There is all this buzz about the Academy Awards. The real award is if your movie lasts.”

[djsimp]

Screenwriter who put that into the script is a Cards fan.  What are the odds.

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/goold-st-louisan-sees-his-back-to-future-ii-cubs/article_cdd9634d-abc8-5cbd-a322-26f979b203be.html

Thats pretty damn funny.

[djsimp]

Listening to the Blue Jays/Rangers game on the MLB app. This game is pretty exciting. The Blue Jays fanbase is very loud. Donaldson hits a solo HR and crowd goes bananas.

[Snaggletiger]

Listening to the Blue Jays/Rangers game on the MLB app. This game is pretty exciting. The Blue Jays fanbase is very loud. Donaldson hits a solo HR and crowd goes bananas.

Didn't Toronto have a crafty left-hander with an ugly brother?

[djsimp]

Didn't Toronto have a crafty left-hander with an ugly brother?

I will take my negative points.

[ssgaufan]

Didn't Toronto have a crafty left-hander with an ugly brother?

Yep, and he's a master at twatting.

[Snaggletiger]

Yep, and he's a master at twatting.

TWATTER BATTLE

[djsimp]

Aight AUJ, its game three on shortly. You think the Cards will even it up or will the Cubbies take it?

Its a Lackey vs Hammel dual at the mound.