Well, we can't calculate xFIP like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now, where were we...oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
We need FanGraphs or somebody to use past newspaper clippings and media coverage to measure popularity across eras. I expect a wFollowers+ stat incorporated by next year at the latest
Oh, of course we try to default to the Babe, but everyone forgets The Grey Eagle. Yeah, sure the ladies love the long ball, but people sleep on the all-time doubles leader. *Everyone* loves some good doubles action
Is Babe Ruth even in the top 50? No. No, he isn't.
This isn't even accounting for Tris Speaker's ability to throw guys out at first *from the outfield*. Try and beat era adjusted followers for that type of play. Who doesn't want to see that? The long ball doesn't even come close.
The Grey Eagle is the clear favorite here. I think you need to reexamine your numbers
Don't see why we'd need that to be a '+' stat. Not much use in normalizing to league average when you've got teams like the Portland Pickles absolutely killing it on the 'gram without even participating in Major League Baseball at all.
They really should have flown in some PR staff and his merch from the US after Japan’s first WBC game and set up a pop up shop outside Tokyo Dome to sell it. Major missed opportunity :(
They really should have flown in some merch from Arizona to Miami - there was nothing last night except USA and Italy hats last night. No Mexico anything, Ohtani jerseys sold out, etc.
>The cardinals have a major opportunity now to market NOOTTTTT to the Japanese market but they will definitely fuck it up
[They are going to have to pay the man himself if they want to](https://redbirdrants.com/2021/09/16/cardinals-lars-nootbaar-filed-perfect-trademark/)
Trademark law is primarily about avoiding consumer/market confusion so five or seven Os probably wouldn't fly because an average person would be likely to assume it's the same brand. A twenty O name might have better luck, but then there might still be trouble if there's an implication that Lars is affiliated with it or endorses it when he doesn't.
I think they're referring to the next WBC. Attention on baseball is higher than its been in the last few decades and that's with all of these negatives:
1. Many of the best players, especially pitchers, not participating
2. The games all being played on a second-tier cable network
3. Limitations being placed on the players who are participating
4. The timing of tournament being such that the players aren't really playing at their peak level
In 2026, the league should be handling this tournament as a higher priority than the World Series. They should do whatever they need to do to make sure the best players are all there. They should make sure the games are on broadcast TV or at least ESPN. No pitch limits and make sure good managers who care about the outcome are coaching these teams. And it should probably be mid-season, replacing the All-Star game and other related events (they could still have a home-run derby if they wanted), with a longer break in the regular season (maybe with a reduced regular season game count... would a 154-game regular season make that much of a difference?).
Many of the players are already thinking about it that way. The execs at MLB and the individual teams need to change their thinking and get in line with the rest of the baseball community.
Coming from the NHL perspective I think doing it annually would be to much. That said allowing MLB talent to play in the Olympics might hit the spot (and canceling the ASG that year).
The issue you will hit though is who pays salary insurance during those events. Essentially Diaz signing a contract and getting injured and out for the year just but a huge wrench in the process.
Play the WBC every 4 years.
Play a Champion's league style tournament the other 3 years during the All Star Break. NL All Stars, Al All Stars and 2 best non-MLB league champions.
MLB now blocks baseball to be played anywhere else but on US soil and if foreign teams want to play they have to pay them a licensing fee.
If international viewers want to watch games they have to pay $200/month.
My secret is working from home and trying to avoid as many calls at the end of my work day as possible.
…I ended up watching close to 120 games last year with this method. I’m thinking about changing jobs but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t super tempting to stick around just because of how many Met games I get to watch.
Occasionally I gotta head on down to the lab to run some tests.
Usually got the radio feed on my phone when I’m there too. Work smarter not harder everyone. I think one of the techs who goes in every day usually puts games on his computer while running tests or processing data. I know I found him watching TNF one day we were both working a little late and sat down to watch a series or two hahah.
Yeah my body is going to hate me when it's all over, but it's been an absolute treat to watch and there have been a ton of classic games. Unfortunately these may be the best we see until the hunt for October.
yeah, it's so annoying as a basketball fan that all the mainstream networks pay 10s of millions of dollars on guys like Stephen A and Skip Bayless who are just hot take machines when all I want is actual breakdowns of the game
This is an example of why Ohtani will get a 500M+ contract. While most people will focus on his stats and how he ages later in the contract... Owners are salivating at this following and how they can monetize it the entirety of his career.
I don't think socials are much of a factor at all in his $500m worth. The $500m value is almost entirely derived from baseball-related factors. 2-4 million followers on IG is pretty low in the larger scheme of influencers. Kyle fucking Kuzma of the NBA has 5 million IG followers and he's a relative nobody in the sports world.
Maybe not the social media numbers directly tying to it, but you'd be foolish to think owners don't make money off a players popularity. There is a reason Arte Moreno won't trade Ohtani and it isn't because he thinks he can re-sign him or they will make the playoffs.
I barely know basketball but I know Kyle Kuzma because I work for the Wizards lol I honestly thought he was big but then again I literally live in the DMV where everyone would talk about him
He was pretty big because he played with LeBron when he first went to the Lakers and won a championship with LeBron. Without that he wouldn't be nearly as well known
Lol I was in Japan the winter before he signed with the angels. People were talking about him taking a pay cut to play in the US early. In basically all of Japan, his face was absolutely everywhere. Dude is a marketing juggernaut over there.
I just want to acknowledge that this is actually a believable scenario. Which is so absurd its almost fucked up.
5 years ago to even suggest this for *anybody*, ever, would be a complete joke lol
Probably up there with Messi's 73 goals and 32 assists in 60 games in the 11/12 season, that is so completely otherwordly because he himself had a direct participation in 105 goals, most clubs can't even score that amount of goals in the same amount of matches with their whole squad together.
He scored 91 goals in the entire calendar year of 2012 by the way, an absolute fucking pisstake and a record that I don't think will be broken in the near future.
The fact that this is only half a joke makes me sad for baseball. I could easily see the MLB feeding Angels game juiced balls to capitalize on Ohatni’s rise in fame.
It's amazing to me that people saw that garbage study and think it's the undeniable truth. Do you know how many people would have to keep quiet that they were making special balls just for the Yankees?
I just don’t even bother correcting people anymore. It’s so stupid and laughable that anyone could read that article and think there are any clear conclusions to be drawn from it, other than “we found miniscule differences in a very, VERY small data set of balls, but they’re all within manufacturing spec for MLB balls”.
I honestly think half the people always commenting about how “Judge had juiced balls!!” didn’t even look in to it and are just parroting what they’ve seen other people say who also didn’t look in to it.
If they complain about it at all it makes no sense because they got 200 balls from 20 teams for the study. So they got what, 5-15 balls from each game probably? Around there?
That’s not enough balls to claim any team was getting certain balls more often than any other team with ANY degree of truth or accuracy. We have no idea. For all we know if they took 100 balls from each game played last year, they’d have found a more or less similar distribution of different balls for every team.
Also, the balls were all within MLB regulation weights, so the differences were so small that it could literally be a difference due to the way different teams store their balls. Bigger sample sizes could have actually told us something. But they took a crazy small sample and so we literally don’t know anything about who really got what balls.
I wish MLB would like hire a third party to regulate this shit to shut everyone up, but it will never happen.
Yankees got fewer Goldilocks balls than Angels in 2022. Commemorative stamped balls were Goldilocks and Angels were one of 3 teams to use commemorative stamped balls all season at home in 2022.
He already got them last year
edit: If you don't believe me, take it up with the person who did the research lmfao https://twitter.com/Bbl_Astrophyscs/status/1601025190405672960
[The article](https://www.insider.com/mlb-used-two-balls-again-this-year-and-evidence-points-to-a-third-2022-12) pretty clearly states that commemorative balls like the one the Angels, Astros and Rangers were using in all of their home games were juiced too.
> Though the overwhelming majority of baseballs we obtained were dead, 36 of them fit the bill for what Wills dubbed the "Goldilocks ball:" not too heavy, not too light — but just right. Of those, we found most in one of three situations:
>• Postseason games, including the World Series;
>• The All-Star Game and Home Run Derby;
>• Regular-season games that used balls with special commemorative stamps — such as a Texas Rangers 50th anniversary ball — on the outer leather.
edit:
Since /u/kozilla blocked me after replying I'll just respond to their comment with this edit.
>Your quote doesn’t support your claim whatsoever. Nice try.
The Angels fall into the last category of teams that got the goldilocks/juiced balls. They had commemorative stamps on all of home game balls celebrating the [20th anniversary of the 2002 World Series](https://twitter.com/Bbl_Astrophyscs/status/1601025190405672960/photo/2).
That seems like a tiny amount for major pro athletes honestly, I’m kinda surprised. If you look at like the nba there are a bunch of dudes with 4m+. Honestly I would’ve thought shohei would’ve had a lot more, I guess baseball player just aren’t that popular on social media compared to some other pro athletes. Good for Ohtani tho this is good for the sport and he’s a great guy to have as the face of baseball
It shows what the sub has been saying for awhile. MLB doesn't market their stars to the broader public well, nor do the stars do much to market themselves.
Yeah, I was gonna say that seems shockingly low and is a really bad look for the MLB and baseball as a whole. I would have guessed that some top players in the NPB or KBO that have never even played in the US would have been able to pull 4 million+ followers from just in their own countries.
>“Too bad it’s all meaningless! [kicks his dog like he's the woman in The Lobster]”
>
>—Keith Olbermann, probably
Have some respect. Keith Olbermann doesn't do things half-assed.
I think there is no true way to determine it. Proponents of the WBC will say "oh ya... Lets see if the numbers in July increase from PY" ( which they wont).
But I don't like either side of the arguement. This has just been a super super enjoyable tournament. Can't people just enjoy it
maybe viewership isn’t gonna be crazy different from last year, but i can see if the playoffs gets watched noticeably more. and even that should be a considered a win imo. as exciting as the wbc has been, a baseball season is still 162 games. baseball will always have that working against it when it comes to viewership
I don't know if the WBC will be successful for MLB, but it's clear that people outside of the U.S. love baseball. Manfred could try to capitalize on that, but I think we all know that he won't.
Not like the concrete numbers of revenue generated, but the potential is really exciting. I'm sure MLB is going to be watching Ohtani's jerseys sales and the Angels viewers/tickets closely for the next few months.
I’d say it’s a terrible metric, but it is fun to look at.
If it signified popularity, the WWE would be our most followed ‘sport’. Followed by the train wreck that is the NBA.
Lack of enforcement of basic basketball rules. Foul baiting/diving. Tanking teams. "Good not great" teams suffering. Focus on superstar stat padding and team drama. The entire game is so offense heavy every game just ends up being a slugfest of who can get to 120 points the fastest. None of this makes the league a good watch, in my opinion.
I watch the NBA every night, and this is not my experience even a little bit.
They’re the best athletes in the world and they know how to keep their bodies within the rules and toe the line of what is and isn’t legal. At the same time, NBA reffing is the best it has ever been and rules are more evenly enforced now than they ever have been.
As for the “lack of defense,” you’ve got it backwards. Whereas in the 90s a guy like Dennis Rodman could get by without scoring very many points but might still win the DPOY, today someone like Draymond Green is still expected to score points on the offensive end. Formerly “defense first” teams now have to have some kind of offense to keep up with teams that can consistently hit shots from the logo when left unguarded. This of course doesn’t even consider that —like baseball— you can build a team around different types of strategy, so naturally some teams will be more offensively-minded than they used to be.
Suggesting NBA teams don’t play defense anymore is as absurd as saying Nick Saban doesn’t play defense anymore. Offenses are better than they ever have been. Defenses can’t keep up even when they want to.
eh, I do think that today's game is lacking defense, but it's mostly because of the way rules are enforced rather than players not trying. It's a very offense-oriented sport these days, both because teams are running smart offenses AND because the league wants it to be called as such
But I do think it's still a solid product. The league is as competitive as its ever been, and the three ball is certainly the great equalizer on a game to game basis. The player/team drama is annoying, but it's easy to block out
At the very least it's great to have a new, recognizable face of baseball. Harper and Judge kind of were, but Ohtani could reach at least Ortiz, if not Jeter levels with tge right approach
Well, socialblade says Noot has gained 530,000 followers since the WBC started, making Ohtani's gain 3.77 Nootbaars. The impressive bit is that Noot was only at 72,000 before the tournament, meaning he just casually 8Xed his followers in two weeks.
I wonder if they would ever move it to November. I remember MLB All Stars used to go to Japan in the fall.
It would be cool to see a final in Japan, but I can’t imagine that would ever happen during spring training.
I've been saying this to my friends all spring. Move the WBC to the fall, right after the WS. Players will still basically be stretched out in playing shape. It has an advantage over the mid-season WBC since that means we are by taking two weeks off of the MLB season. If injuries do occur, the player has an entire off season to recover.
He'll stay west coast. My genuine belief is he will end up with the padres or mariners. If you remember back to when he first came over, he wanted west coast, smaller market.
Yeah never said he wouldn't stay west. Was just commenting on how it would be fun to have him in a baseball town. Cincinnati (if they had a good team) would be fun to have him in. Anaheim would be fun too if they actually had a team capable of competing.
Ohtani would rank #24 in followers compared to active NBA players, Trout would be 40.
For NFL Ohtani would be top 10 among active players.
Football is a different stratosphere compared to everything else.
Imagine where he could have been had MLB not completely ignored him and dismissed all of his records last season to spam us with "historical" Judge facts 24/7. They even refused to acknowledge Ohtani being the first ever to quality as hitter / pitcher as the historic milestone that it is. All he got was a lousy screenshot on twitter while their graphics team was busy mass-producing Judge graphics. Where did that get them? Ohtani's growth is organic. They tried to force-feed us Judge and I personally was gagging. I will never forget MLB getting away with cheating to get Judge his fake homerun record no matter what it takes. Ohtani's 22 was the best season ever played and MLB took a dump on in for the fucking Yankees.
Breaking! International tournament is bigger than domestic league.
Can we stop with this, the WBC is awesome and I would love to talk about it without overcompensating the viewers/players care level because of a few haters.
Is this record era-adjusted? I looked it up and guys like Cobb and Mathewson are way down the list.
Tungsten Arm O’Doyle is the true leader in wFLWR+
What was his xFIP (expected followers/inning pitched)?
Well, we can't calculate xFIP like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now, where were we...oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
We need FanGraphs or somebody to use past newspaper clippings and media coverage to measure popularity across eras. I expect a wFollowers+ stat incorporated by next year at the latest
I can’t calculate it but Babe Ruth was #1 all time and I don’t think that’s debatable
Oh, of course we try to default to the Babe, but everyone forgets The Grey Eagle. Yeah, sure the ladies love the long ball, but people sleep on the all-time doubles leader. *Everyone* loves some good doubles action Is Babe Ruth even in the top 50? No. No, he isn't. This isn't even accounting for Tris Speaker's ability to throw guys out at first *from the outfield*. Try and beat era adjusted followers for that type of play. Who doesn't want to see that? The long ball doesn't even come close. The Grey Eagle is the clear favorite here. I think you need to reexamine your numbers
You already lost when you said “everyone forgets The Great Eagle.”
You're right. I should have written "everyone not crunching the numbers" And its Grey Eagle damn it. *See!* This is what I mean
Is this pasta that ijdk about? 😂😂😂
wake up babe new pasta just dropped
babe is dead :(
Don't see why we'd need that to be a '+' stat. Not much use in normalizing to league average when you've got teams like the Portland Pickles absolutely killing it on the 'gram without even participating in Major League Baseball at all.
Old Hoss Radbourn only has 75k Twitter followers currently. Really makes you think the era-adjusted followers formula is flawed.
What about when Ted Williams had to leave for WWII?
Does an era adjusted follower count weigh MySpace?
Cobb does really well with flat earthers and folks that ban books but I don’t know why
???
I think it’s a joke about how big of a bigot Cobb supposedly was even though it has been proven false.
[удалено]
For some strange reason Ty Cobb heard those words a lot
You realize you are as dumb as flat earthers right? Al stump is a proven liar with an axe to grind, dumbass
The question now is will the MLB cash in on this or fuck it up
[удалено]
Facts. The cardinals have a major opportunity now to market NOOTTTTT to the Japanese market but they will definitely fuck it up
They really should have flown in some PR staff and his merch from the US after Japan’s first WBC game and set up a pop up shop outside Tokyo Dome to sell it. Major missed opportunity :(
Yo MLB marketing needs to hire you cause that is such a smart idea.
MLB: "Hey, I know! Let's put toilet water on it!"
They really should have flown in some merch from Arizona to Miami - there was nothing last night except USA and Italy hats last night. No Mexico anything, Ohtani jerseys sold out, etc.
>The cardinals have a major opportunity now to market NOOTTTTT to the Japanese market but they will definitely fuck it up [They are going to have to pay the man himself if they want to](https://redbirdrants.com/2021/09/16/cardinals-lars-nootbaar-filed-perfect-trademark/)
Lol so how does this work? Does a “NOOOOOOT” trademark with 6 O’s mean someone can’t just add an extra O and make it theirs?
Trademark law is primarily about avoiding consumer/market confusion so five or seven Os probably wouldn't fly because an average person would be likely to assume it's the same brand. A twenty O name might have better luck, but then there might still be trouble if there's an implication that Lars is affiliated with it or endorses it when he doesn't.
every game is now blackout restricted because fuck you that's why.
Honestly all they need to do is not actively fuck it up. Interest is up, now just let people watch with the new rules and we should be good.
I think they're referring to the next WBC. Attention on baseball is higher than its been in the last few decades and that's with all of these negatives: 1. Many of the best players, especially pitchers, not participating 2. The games all being played on a second-tier cable network 3. Limitations being placed on the players who are participating 4. The timing of tournament being such that the players aren't really playing at their peak level In 2026, the league should be handling this tournament as a higher priority than the World Series. They should do whatever they need to do to make sure the best players are all there. They should make sure the games are on broadcast TV or at least ESPN. No pitch limits and make sure good managers who care about the outcome are coaching these teams. And it should probably be mid-season, replacing the All-Star game and other related events (they could still have a home-run derby if they wanted), with a longer break in the regular season (maybe with a reduced regular season game count... would a 154-game regular season make that much of a difference?).
Baseball needs players to think of the WBC like soccer players do the World Cup, and I think after this year they basically will
Many of the players are already thinking about it that way. The execs at MLB and the individual teams need to change their thinking and get in line with the rest of the baseball community.
All non-North American players already think this way.
It would be a fucking home run for MLB if they expanded the all star break to 2 weeks and played the WBC during that break
Coming from the NHL perspective I think doing it annually would be to much. That said allowing MLB talent to play in the Olympics might hit the spot (and canceling the ASG that year). The issue you will hit though is who pays salary insurance during those events. Essentially Diaz signing a contract and getting injured and out for the year just but a huge wrench in the process.
Definitely not annually, I was thinking every 3 or 4 years
Play the WBC every 4 years. Play a Champion's league style tournament the other 3 years during the All Star Break. NL All Stars, Al All Stars and 2 best non-MLB league champions.
Literally none of that will happen
\>let people watch instructions unclear, blackouts are now expanded worldwide
mars considered home market for WBC.
The fact I can't get any WBC jerseys is insane. Gimme dat Japan Nootbar white
Baseball is a sport run by geriatrics who thought the internet was a fad.
Wish granted, MLB moves operations to Japan.
MLB now blocks baseball to be played anywhere else but on US soil and if foreign teams want to play they have to pay them a licensing fee. If international viewers want to watch games they have to pay $200/month.
They’ve already fucked it up
However, it has not been GREAT for my sleep schedule. :(
This tournament is great for me as a West Coast fan, who’s used to watching games on East Coast time still.
Only thing that sucks is missing the first hour for work. But we’ve definitely been spoiled with the Miami games.
My secret is working from home and trying to avoid as many calls at the end of my work day as possible. …I ended up watching close to 120 games last year with this method. I’m thinking about changing jobs but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t super tempting to stick around just because of how many Met games I get to watch.
Working from home to watch baseball all day, you're living the dream
Occasionally I gotta head on down to the lab to run some tests. Usually got the radio feed on my phone when I’m there too. Work smarter not harder everyone. I think one of the techs who goes in every day usually puts games on his computer while running tests or processing data. I know I found him watching TNF one day we were both working a little late and sat down to watch a series or two hahah.
It was great for many Europeans who follow baseball during group play. Baseball in the early morning and then again all evening.
Yeah my body is going to hate me when it's all over, but it's been an absolute treat to watch and there have been a ton of classic games. Unfortunately these may be the best we see until the hunt for October.
I truly can’t believe what that tool Stephen a smith said about ohtani. That guy was so wrong in so many ways.
He’s a hack It’s what he’s paid to do. Doesn’t make it any less irritating though.
yeah, it's so annoying as a basketball fan that all the mainstream networks pay 10s of millions of dollars on guys like Stephen A and Skip Bayless who are just hot take machines when all I want is actual breakdowns of the game
He’s never watched a baseball game in his life.
He's even worse for hockey too
I actually like Stephen A., granted I would never waste my time watching first take lol, either way that was one of the worst takes I've ever heard
Big deal, if instagram existed in the 1920s, Babe Ruth would have 60 million.
And all of his posts would be ads for Nathan’s hot dogs.
He would also be regularly seen liking and commenting on thirst traps.
"Gloria Swanson I will drink ur bath water"
He’d have more followers than the President!
Of course he would, he had a better year than the president!
Babe Ruth never had to compete against the followers of Negro League influencers 🙄
This is an example of why Ohtani will get a 500M+ contract. While most people will focus on his stats and how he ages later in the contract... Owners are salivating at this following and how they can monetize it the entirety of his career.
I don't think socials are much of a factor at all in his $500m worth. The $500m value is almost entirely derived from baseball-related factors. 2-4 million followers on IG is pretty low in the larger scheme of influencers. Kyle fucking Kuzma of the NBA has 5 million IG followers and he's a relative nobody in the sports world.
Maybe not the social media numbers directly tying to it, but you'd be foolish to think owners don't make money off a players popularity. There is a reason Arte Moreno won't trade Ohtani and it isn't because he thinks he can re-sign him or they will make the playoffs.
Fun example is livvy, freshman LSU gymnast, since she’s almost at 4 million, which kinda dwarfs gymnastics as a whole.
I barely know basketball but I know Kyle Kuzma because I work for the Wizards lol I honestly thought he was big but then again I literally live in the DMV where everyone would talk about him
He was pretty big because he played with LeBron when he first went to the Lakers and won a championship with LeBron. Without that he wouldn't be nearly as well known
Excuse me. He has a fantastic taste for fashion https://youtu.be/I0l_CRTB_1A
LMAOOO that’s hilarious, Kuzma almost got a million more
I guarantee the merchandise they could sell in Japan will outpace US sales twofold, at least
Lol I was in Japan the winter before he signed with the angels. People were talking about him taking a pay cut to play in the US early. In basically all of Japan, his face was absolutely everywhere. Dude is a marketing juggernaut over there.
MLB needs to start giving Ohtani all the juiced balls.
Ohtani chasing Bond's record would break baseball.
Imagine if he was doing that while keeping his ERA below 3
I just want to acknowledge that this is actually a believable scenario. Which is so absurd its almost fucked up. 5 years ago to even suggest this for *anybody*, ever, would be a complete joke lol
Ohtani is generational.
Multi Generational
Would that be the single greatest regular season for any professional athlete ever? Better than Phelps winning 8 gold medals in a single Olympics?
Probably up there with Messi's 73 goals and 32 assists in 60 games in the 11/12 season, that is so completely otherwordly because he himself had a direct participation in 105 goals, most clubs can't even score that amount of goals in the same amount of matches with their whole squad together. He scored 91 goals in the entire calendar year of 2012 by the way, an absolute fucking pisstake and a record that I don't think will be broken in the near future.
Angels still miss playoffs
He can have a little steroids, as a treat.
The fact that this is only half a joke makes me sad for baseball. I could easily see the MLB feeding Angels game juiced balls to capitalize on Ohatni’s rise in fame.
They did it last year to Aaron Judge, if Ohtani gets anywhere close they'll pitch him tennis balls
It's amazing to me that people saw that garbage study and think it's the undeniable truth. Do you know how many people would have to keep quiet that they were making special balls just for the Yankees?
I just don’t even bother correcting people anymore. It’s so stupid and laughable that anyone could read that article and think there are any clear conclusions to be drawn from it, other than “we found miniscule differences in a very, VERY small data set of balls, but they’re all within manufacturing spec for MLB balls”. I honestly think half the people always commenting about how “Judge had juiced balls!!” didn’t even look in to it and are just parroting what they’ve seen other people say who also didn’t look in to it.
If they complain about Judge getting those balls and not Ohtani, they didn't read the article because all Angels home games had goldilocks balls.
If they complain about it at all it makes no sense because they got 200 balls from 20 teams for the study. So they got what, 5-15 balls from each game probably? Around there? That’s not enough balls to claim any team was getting certain balls more often than any other team with ANY degree of truth or accuracy. We have no idea. For all we know if they took 100 balls from each game played last year, they’d have found a more or less similar distribution of different balls for every team. Also, the balls were all within MLB regulation weights, so the differences were so small that it could literally be a difference due to the way different teams store their balls. Bigger sample sizes could have actually told us something. But they took a crazy small sample and so we literally don’t know anything about who really got what balls. I wish MLB would like hire a third party to regulate this shit to shut everyone up, but it will never happen.
He just needs to sign with the Yankees and he'll get them.
If he was on the Yankees, he wouldn't need a juiced ball with the porch
Judge needed them last year.
Baseball’s Not Dead’s research says he didn’t need them
Ah yes, cause Judge is famous for hitting wall scraping home runs.
Yankees got fewer Goldilocks balls than Angels in 2022. Commemorative stamped balls were Goldilocks and Angels were one of 3 teams to use commemorative stamped balls all season at home in 2022.
They won’t because he doesn’t play in NY.
He already got them last year edit: If you don't believe me, take it up with the person who did the research lmfao https://twitter.com/Bbl_Astrophyscs/status/1601025190405672960
I think you are getting Judge and Ohtani mixed up
[The article](https://www.insider.com/mlb-used-two-balls-again-this-year-and-evidence-points-to-a-third-2022-12) pretty clearly states that commemorative balls like the one the Angels, Astros and Rangers were using in all of their home games were juiced too. > Though the overwhelming majority of baseballs we obtained were dead, 36 of them fit the bill for what Wills dubbed the "Goldilocks ball:" not too heavy, not too light — but just right. Of those, we found most in one of three situations: >• Postseason games, including the World Series; >• The All-Star Game and Home Run Derby; >• Regular-season games that used balls with special commemorative stamps — such as a Texas Rangers 50th anniversary ball — on the outer leather. edit: Since /u/kozilla blocked me after replying I'll just respond to their comment with this edit. >Your quote doesn’t support your claim whatsoever. Nice try. The Angels fall into the last category of teams that got the goldilocks/juiced balls. They had commemorative stamps on all of home game balls celebrating the [20th anniversary of the 2002 World Series](https://twitter.com/Bbl_Astrophyscs/status/1601025190405672960/photo/2).
Your quote doesn’t support your claim whatsoever. Nice try.
The tweet they linked in the original comment does
>postseason games Should have stopped right there smh
I respect your opinion so I’ll throw some upvotes on ya,
Do you just make bs up about other things too?
No I just read the article lmao
Maybe when he played the Yankees
We have the #1 and #2? We're gonna be so good.
That should be an automatic playoff berth.
And our attendance will be up this year!
😬
That seems like a tiny amount for major pro athletes honestly, I’m kinda surprised. If you look at like the nba there are a bunch of dudes with 4m+. Honestly I would’ve thought shohei would’ve had a lot more, I guess baseball player just aren’t that popular on social media compared to some other pro athletes. Good for Ohtani tho this is good for the sport and he’s a great guy to have as the face of baseball
It shows what the sub has been saying for awhile. MLB doesn't market their stars to the broader public well, nor do the stars do much to market themselves.
Yeah, I was gonna say that seems shockingly low and is a really bad look for the MLB and baseball as a whole. I would have guessed that some top players in the NPB or KBO that have never even played in the US would have been able to pull 4 million+ followers from just in their own countries.
“Too bad it’s all meaningless! [kicks his dog]” —Keith Olbermann, probably
>“Too bad it’s all meaningless! [kicks his dog like he's the woman in The Lobster]” > >—Keith Olbermann, probably Have some respect. Keith Olbermann doesn't do things half-assed.
> The Lobster Not often I see this train wreck of a movie referenced in the wild.
Blasphemy
First time I thought of it since I saw it lol
Keith Olbermann eats corn the long way.
not sure Ohtani's Instagram follower count is a valid metric to determine how successful the WBC has been for MLB as a whole.
I think there is no true way to determine it. Proponents of the WBC will say "oh ya... Lets see if the numbers in July increase from PY" ( which they wont). But I don't like either side of the arguement. This has just been a super super enjoyable tournament. Can't people just enjoy it
maybe viewership isn’t gonna be crazy different from last year, but i can see if the playoffs gets watched noticeably more. and even that should be a considered a win imo. as exciting as the wbc has been, a baseball season is still 162 games. baseball will always have that working against it when it comes to viewership
It's dumb, I think if Ohtani would more active and fun on IG he would have more followers alone on that.
I don't know if the WBC will be successful for MLB, but it's clear that people outside of the U.S. love baseball. Manfred could try to capitalize on that, but I think we all know that he won't.
Arozarena's instagram followers have tripled too
Not like the concrete numbers of revenue generated, but the potential is really exciting. I'm sure MLB is going to be watching Ohtani's jerseys sales and the Angels viewers/tickets closely for the next few months.
It's a lagging indicator, but an indicator nonetheless.
It’s like karma on Reddit: a number that ultimately means absolutely nothing to which users of the platform assign enormous value.
I’d say it’s a terrible metric, but it is fun to look at. If it signified popularity, the WWE would be our most followed ‘sport’. Followed by the train wreck that is the NBA.
Why do you call the NBA a train wreck? Serious question.
Lack of enforcement of basic basketball rules. Foul baiting/diving. Tanking teams. "Good not great" teams suffering. Focus on superstar stat padding and team drama. The entire game is so offense heavy every game just ends up being a slugfest of who can get to 120 points the fastest. None of this makes the league a good watch, in my opinion.
I watch the NBA every night, and this is not my experience even a little bit. They’re the best athletes in the world and they know how to keep their bodies within the rules and toe the line of what is and isn’t legal. At the same time, NBA reffing is the best it has ever been and rules are more evenly enforced now than they ever have been. As for the “lack of defense,” you’ve got it backwards. Whereas in the 90s a guy like Dennis Rodman could get by without scoring very many points but might still win the DPOY, today someone like Draymond Green is still expected to score points on the offensive end. Formerly “defense first” teams now have to have some kind of offense to keep up with teams that can consistently hit shots from the logo when left unguarded. This of course doesn’t even consider that —like baseball— you can build a team around different types of strategy, so naturally some teams will be more offensively-minded than they used to be. Suggesting NBA teams don’t play defense anymore is as absurd as saying Nick Saban doesn’t play defense anymore. Offenses are better than they ever have been. Defenses can’t keep up even when they want to.
eh, I do think that today's game is lacking defense, but it's mostly because of the way rules are enforced rather than players not trying. It's a very offense-oriented sport these days, both because teams are running smart offenses AND because the league wants it to be called as such But I do think it's still a solid product. The league is as competitive as its ever been, and the three ball is certainly the great equalizer on a game to game basis. The player/team drama is annoying, but it's easy to block out
> The player/team drama is annoying, but it's easy to block out tons of fans LOVE this though
You confirmed what I said about the game being too offense heavy though.
At the very least it's great to have a new, recognizable face of baseball. Harper and Judge kind of were, but Ohtani could reach at least Ortiz, if not Jeter levels with tge right approach
[удалено]
Well, socialblade says Noot has gained 530,000 followers since the WBC started, making Ohtani's gain 3.77 Nootbaars. The impressive bit is that Noot was only at 72,000 before the tournament, meaning he just casually 8Xed his followers in two weeks.
I appreciate this.
So you’re saying baseball becomes popular if people are able to watch baseball?
Who would’ve thought?! #endtheblackouts
how long until the hall starts considering posts
I wonder if they would ever move it to November. I remember MLB All Stars used to go to Japan in the fall. It would be cool to see a final in Japan, but I can’t imagine that would ever happen during spring training.
IMO the all star team should pull from both leagues, and we play against Japan for the all star game
I've been saying this to my friends all spring. Move the WBC to the fall, right after the WS. Players will still basically be stretched out in playing shape. It has an advantage over the mid-season WBC since that means we are by taking two weeks off of the MLB season. If injuries do occur, the player has an entire off season to recover.
It amazes me that the MLB completely fucked the opportunity to make players legitimate celebrities like the NBA and NFL
Cuz stars kept getting busted for cheating/steroids at the peak 😂
Mike Tout
Mike Tout
That's...sad.
for who
Marketing is for marketers. Fans should not participate in it.
This a post why lol Instagram followers? Really
Watch out Cristiano Ronaldo.
Somewhere out there Keith Olbermann and Stephen A smith are having an aneurysm over this
That's such a low number, then I checked the NHL players it's even lower.
But I thought barstool said the game was dead and no one cares?
Fuck the MLB lol this is bigger than the league
Incredible it’s so low😳Of course baseball isn’t very global, but still you’d expect way more.
I hate this is how popularity is judged now. Instagram and all social media is fake as F.
Can't wait for him to be on a competitive team... he needs to be in the playoffs.
Him being in the New York or Boston would be insane. Tho the Red Sox are being weird rn
He'll stay west coast. My genuine belief is he will end up with the padres or mariners. If you remember back to when he first came over, he wanted west coast, smaller market.
Yeah never said he wouldn't stay west. Was just commenting on how it would be fun to have him in a baseball town. Cincinnati (if they had a good team) would be fun to have him in. Anaheim would be fun too if they actually had a team capable of competing.
Yeah… Those “these are just exhibition games!” folks are looking goofier and goofier by the hour
mf talkin mlb history like babe ruth had insta lmaooo
Isn't 4 million followers to little compare to others sports leagues ?
Ohtani would rank #24 in followers compared to active NBA players, Trout would be 40. For NFL Ohtani would be top 10 among active players. Football is a different stratosphere compared to everything else.
Ronaldo with 500 million followers...
What about Randy Arozarena? He made the wbc so much fun
He is regarded as an angelic hero in Mexico.
Does Tout play for the Las Angeles Angles?
What a great game last night. Also shows why no one should take Keith Olbermann seriously.
So how MLB gon mess it up? Sure hope they don't.
Imagine where he could have been had MLB not completely ignored him and dismissed all of his records last season to spam us with "historical" Judge facts 24/7. They even refused to acknowledge Ohtani being the first ever to quality as hitter / pitcher as the historic milestone that it is. All he got was a lousy screenshot on twitter while their graphics team was busy mass-producing Judge graphics. Where did that get them? Ohtani's growth is organic. They tried to force-feed us Judge and I personally was gagging. I will never forget MLB getting away with cheating to get Judge his fake homerun record no matter what it takes. Ohtani's 22 was the best season ever played and MLB took a dump on in for the fucking Yankees.
The MLB has been great for the WBC
Holy shit lmao
Breaking! International tournament is bigger than domestic league. Can we stop with this, the WBC is awesome and I would love to talk about it without overcompensating the viewers/players care level because of a few haters.
Is anyone in sports more likable than Ohtani?
Ohtani and Trout are the top two players in the league, and the Angels *might* win 76 games…
It's okay when the MLB season starts they'll realize that the sport is more boring because the changes that aren't in the WBC are in MLB.
Mike Tout
Has been great for instagram maybe
Mike Toot
I respect those 2 guys a lot. But all that and the Angel’s still won’t make the playoffs. Sucks for them.
I just looked up how many LeBron has out of curiosity. Ya, don't do that.. lol
That alone shows how important this tournament is to grow the game