MLB 2023-24 Off season thread

[Cobra Mgr]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

Well, Angel was completely correct.

(Now there's a sentence you don't see every day!)

Once a player is ejected from the game, they must leave the field AND adjacent areas. Lynn can't get some extra throwing in the bullpen, any more than Bobby Valentine can sit on the bench wearing a fake nose and glasses.

That said, I have no idea why Angel is ejecting players from spring training games. It's an exhibition, doofus. You're within your rights to say "Shut it, Lance. If this was the regular season, I'd run your ass out of here", since the reason for ejecting mouthy pitchers (they might intimidate umpires and gain a competitive advantage) do not apply to a non-competitive exhibition. It's the same reason you let teams agree to a tie after 9 innings, whereas in the regular season, you play to a decision.

(Or decide the winner based on a game of ping-pong, or whatever monstrosity Manfred has turned extra innings into by now.)

Angel never did anything that wasn't w/in his discretion. It's just he has the discretion of an donkey aperture.

[Syd Thrift]

I wish the electronic balls and strikes callerifier worked better than it does. Weren't we on track to seeing it implemented in spring traning this year? You add that into the majors and boom, 99% of both the reason everyone hates people like Angel Hernandez (also that one dude with no chin whose name escapes me right now) as well as their influence on the game are gone.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I wish the electronic balls and strikes callerifier worked better than it does. Weren't we on track to seeing it implemented in spring traning this year? You add that into the majors and boom, 99% of both the reason everyone hates people like Angel Hernandez (also that one dude with no chin whose name escapes me right now) as well as their influence on the game are gone.

Oh, please. Angel's inability to call balls and strikes isn't even 9% of why people hate him, much less 99%.

Have you forgotten his blowing that HR call in Oakland? His throwing Steve McMichael out of the booth in Wrigley, because he didn't like Mongo grousing about the umpiring before he guest-sang "Take me out to the ballgame"? The part where he's never with the same crew twice in a row, because the other umps hate him, too? Which is probably because he sued MLB claiming that he wasn't working the post-season because of "racism", rather than because he sucks.

Hey, let's go back to 2021, where Brandon Nimmo led off the game with a triple. Except that Angel sent Nimmo back to 2nd base, saying that the ball had lodged below the outfield padding and had become unplayable.

3 small flaws:

• The padding doesn't come down far enough for a ball to lodge beneath it. Nimmo's ball was merely resting against the base of the wall, nothing more.

• JJ Bleday played the ball, rather refuting the "unplayable" hypothesis.

• It wasn't Angel's call to make! He was working the plate, the farthest away from the ball! That call belongs to the 2B or 3B ump, because they can go out to the OF to get a better angle.

And of course, even that is a PIMPLE compared to the reason why Mets fans hate Angel.

July 5, 1998. On the final Sunday before the All-Star break, Angel completely blows a call and screws the Mets out of a game, because he has a flight to catch. (I'm not even kidding.)

And hey, that one game cost the Mets a tie for WC. Yeah, yeah, they choked the entire final week of the season, yeah, yeah, there's no guarantee we win the pre-playoffs playoff, but come on. We hadn't been to the post-season for ten years, and we had enough trouble with the Braves without Angel gifting them games.

It's been 26 years (nearly half my life), and I've even given up MLB due to Manfred's manglings. But I'm not even close to letting go of Angel. And balls and strikes don't enter into it at all. (Even if he is, in fact, literally the worst at those, too.)

BTW, as I remain a Mets fan, that's a largely Mets-centric list. That doesn't mean that Angel hasn't screwed over other teams equally as badly. His "best of" vids are all over YouTube. Enjoy.

ETA: I see the umpiring "expert" who made the video about Nimmo's "lodged" ball actually backs his call, but she's nuts. Actual game footage (which she, oddly enough, included in another vid) shows that the padding does NOT come down far enough to come in contact with the ball, much less "lodge" it, and Bleday played the ball without any trouble. Sheesh.