2014 MLB Postseason Thread: WHERE THE HELL IS MY BIG BANG THEORY

[Xajii]

Yes, the disparity of payrolls is astronomical and a significant issue, but given that you made an off hand comment about parity and didn't connect it to anything else in your post, I took your word to be referencing the most common use of the word in sports, which is the diversity of competitive teams.

Anyway, disparity in payroll really has quite little to do with the argument, because there isn't necessarily a huge correlation between pitcher contract and their overall strength - hell, Bumgarner has a smaller contract than Shields overall (with a slight nod to Bum for the AAV).

With the Royals' bullpen it absolutely makes sense to trust your back end starters simply because if they begin struggling it's easier ot pull them. When facing back-end starters of other teams you need to just rely on your ability to hit them a bit then get tot he bullpen if you're the Royals, so why waste your best pitcher then? You have to give yourself the best chance to win every game.

[Plow]

Yes, the disparity of payrolls is astronomical and a significant issue, but given that you made an off hand comment about parity and didn't connect it to anything else in your post, I took your word to be referencing the most common use of the word in sports, which is the diversity of competitive teams.

Anyway, disparity in payroll really has quite little to do with the argument, because there isn't necessarily a huge correlation between pitcher contract and their overall strength - hell, Bumgarner has a smaller contract than Shields overall (with a slight nod to Bum for the AAV).

With the Royals' bullpen it absolutely makes sense to trust your back end starters simply because if they begin struggling it's easier ot pull them. When facing back-end starters of other teams you need to just rely on your ability to hit them a bit then get tot he bullpen if you're the Royals, so why waste your best pitcher then? You have to give yourself the best chance to win every game.

"diversity of competitive teams" is not parity, you're straight up pulling that out of your ass and saying it's the definition because it gave you a chance to insult someone

parity is relative equality, and when teams have to dramatically outmanage (as in front office), outcoach, outscout, and outdevelop other teams in order to have any chance in the world at competing, that's not parity-- that's rich teams with shitty management

How it fits in here is that logically, when you have way less money to spend, things should drop off for you a lot faster. Your ace might be very good, but your third or fourth guy shouldn't be able to compete with theirs. When your second and third pitchers combined make about as much as your opponent's second and third pitchers make individually, it seems completely reasonable to consider trying to match up your best with one of them instead.

And sure, hindsight is 20-20, but so far their ace went 0-2 and they lost another game where they had 12 hits and scored 4 runs.


Also, just for reference, college football also has 10 different champs since 2000. PARITY!

[Xajii]

How it fits in here is that logically, when you have way less money to spend, things should drop off for you a lot faster. Your ace might be very good, but your third or fourth guy shouldn't be able to compete with theirs. When your second and third pitchers combined make about as much as your opponent's second and third pitchers make individually, it seems completely reasonable to consider trying to match up your best with one of them instead.

Well that's not really how that works though. It depends entirely on where you spend your money and how good the contracts you signed actually are.

Let's look at some teams and their pitching depth.

The LA Dodgers with the highest payroll have a strong 1-2-3 with Kershaw, Greinke, and Ryu - the top 2 of which are easily the game's best 1-2 punch. However, their bottom 2 are of dreadful quality, and I can't even tell you for sure who's in there because they've been switching them around constantly.
The LA Angels have the 6th highest payroll and all of their pitchers are fucking terrible except Richards.
Phillies? 3rd highest payroll, everyone sucks even Cliff Lee now.

The Rays have the 28th ranked payroll going into the season where their rotation included Price, Archer, Cobb, Hellickson, and Odorizzi.
The A's at 25th began the season strong with Gray, Kazmir, AJ Griffin, and Jarrod Parker - they ended up running Lester, Gray, Kazmir, Samardzija, Hammel.

The only correlation is in theory, but payroll doesn't work like that - if it did, we'd be seeing a Dodgers - Tigers series right now, and lol.

Don't get me wrong, the lack of a salary cap is a pretty big issue in the league, but it doesn't really affect things like this. Spending your money smart can make your rotation consistent just as well as having a lot of money to begin with does.

Can't really just equate money to talent like that, especially not when contracts like Ryan Howard's exist.

The Royals are in the Series right now because they've found a ton of production from some very small or even rookie contracts. The benefit of having more payroll is you don't have to wait around 29 years for things to click like that - youc an buy the production. That being said, just because the guys that are producing make less money than the opponents' guys, it doesn't mean they aren't just as capable of players.

[NynJa]

Plow, fact of the matter is, you never play games expecting to lose (exceptions: resting players before playoffs in meaningless games). No world series games are meaningless.

[Plow]

Yeah I get that, I was actually a Royals fan when I played baseball as a kid, and have spent plenty of time in Tampa, so I hear about what a great job people can do on great management and rookie contracts.

Anyway I dunno, I guess I was just thinking maybe there was some deeper reason for always going 1 vs 1 even when their 1 is clearly superior.

Plow, fact of the matter is, you never play games expecting to lose (exceptions: resting players before playoffs in meaningless games). No world series games are meaningless.

I don't really see it as playing to lose, though. I see it as trying to get the most wins possible out of your ace, as opposed to praying you get lucky and he manages to get you 1.

[Melena]

And every dog has it's day. Do you really roll your dice with your #1 against the other teams #3 and have that opposing pitcher pitch like he's Sandy Koufax? Too many variables. This is why you always throw your best against the best and why the wildcard now has a disadvantage in that they have to throw their #1 into a 1 game playoff.

[Boyiee]

The amount of teams winning the championships for each sport was an interesting statistic, but I believe baseball has the most diversity/different teams entering the playoffs each year over the other major sports. Could be wrong, but I remember hearing that on the Radio at some point.

[Moss]

Ok another question...

So, Bumgarner is god, and everybody knows this.

Given that, why do the Royals put their best pitcher up against him? Wouldn't it be better for them to basically "let it go" and use Guthrie or something, so that Shields can give them a really good chance to beat Peavy or Hudson?

I understand the logic, but you go into the game hoping Shields can give you at least 6 scoreless or allow a run or two, and you can scrape a few across against Bumgarner. Kershaw was the most dominant starter all season and he got smacked around in the playoffs. As good as he has been, there is still no guarantee Bumgarner is going to dominate on a given day. Even if he's on, if you can get two singles against him in one inning, factoring in bunts/steals as per the Royals strategy, you can score.

Then you factor in that you are a sending a terrible message for your team of "we can't beat him," embarrassing your #1 SP and your hitters. Not really the best way to kick-off a series by conceding the first game, both from a literal and psychological standpoint.

Regarding the use of "parity," it's most common use is to describe the separation between good and bad teams in a league and therefore how often you will find teams reverse their fortunes in a short time span. The NFL has a ton of parity as most teams are not consistent year to year and you can find bad teams improve very quickly. The NBA has very little parity, as team success is driven by superstars, making everyone either a have or a have-not. MLB is in the middle somewhere. One year turnarounds (i.e. worst to first) are rare but there is usually an upstart like the Royals or Pirates each year.

[Bregor]

he and his girlfriend died in a car accident in the dominican republic

Ran off the road by Mike Matheny?

[Moss]

TOO SOON BREGGY

[Viq]

"diversity of competitive teams" is not parity, you're straight up pulling that out of your ass and saying it's the definition because it gave you a chance to insult someone

Just because I take great pleasure in blowing up nonsensical semantic arguments, I ran a search using COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) for the word "parity" in magazine and newspaper articles. There were 437 hits, but for time purposes I only looked at the first 200 samples returned at random. Of those 200 uses of the word parity, there were 62 instances where it appeared in an article about one sport or another. In every single one of those cases, parity was used to mean "diversity of competitive teams" as Xajii put it. There were even articles from USA Today in both 2008 and 2009 that took the time to specifically define it that way. Your statement that his definition of parity is being pulled out of his ass is, frankly, you pulling stuff out of your ass.

[NynJa]

Your statement that his definition of parity is being pulled out of his ass is, frankly, you pulling stuff out of your ass.

Does this surprise you? I mean, cmon, he actually just suggested going into world series games with the intention to lose because of who the opposing pitcher is.

[pohibaba]

About an hour before game time; so pumped! Hopefully in a few hours I can stop using #evenyear and start using #dynasty.

#evenyear

[Boyiee]

#evenyearproblems

[Akiyama]

Peavy looked solid.

[Bregor]

Peavy looked solid.

lol

[Akiyama]

lol

Petit's trying to one up him.

[Bregor]

Petit's trying to one up him.

It seemed like a lot of good BABIP until the Country Breakfast double.

Game 7 gon be gewd

[pohibaba]

This comeback will make for the best #evenyear trolling ever.

#evenyear

[Cail]

Jose Canseco accidentally shot himself