This is the thread where we ask stupid questions we should probably know the answer to about baseball, and people answer those questions

1) RISP = Runners In Scoring Position
2) Because Bud Selig is a fucking asshole.

RISP = runners in scoring position.

leagues need even #s of teams otherwise one team would never be playing although now they could fix that with some interleaguing.

Or because having 15 teams in each league would either mean one team would not be playing every day (lame), or there's interleague happening every day (lame).

(Bud Selig: Still A Fucking Asshole)

(Me: Still X-Posting)

Yeah, you cannot interleague all year long. Shouldn't be doing it at all.

SOLUTION: contract the Red Sox & Yankees, redistribute the monies & players everywhere else.

RESULT: Mets become the center of the baseball world; Jose Reyes becomes Emperor; Michael Kay serves me Slurpees.

Or add teams in Carolina and Oklahoma City. Or Jacksonville, Florida. Or Round Rock.

St John's and Anchorage.

Why is there not a third team in NYC? Florida has two they don't want.

MONTREAL

OUI

WILPONG & STEINGRABBER

"Slurpees"

Why are there so many games in a season? How can anyone keep up?

LARGE SAMPLE SIZE

Answer to the second question: PLAYERS COFFEE

more games=MO MONEY

When a player is fined by the league, where does the money go? To the league, to the team, to a charity, to the secret Players Assn hookers-n-blow fund, elsewhere?

Ditto for when a player is fined by his team.

Pitched balls that hit the dirt are tossed aside now. Are they checked by a ball boy for scuffs and possibly put back into play, or are they all put into the home team's BP bin? Or is there another option?

They're all cut up into a thousand tiny pieces and Fed-Exed directly to Upper Deck.

I think you're right about pitches in the dirt, they get tossed aside for the time being, the home plate ump checks them between innings and adds them to his ball bag if they're usable. So they're more or less in the same temporary "reject" pile as the balls rejected by whoever is pitching.

i think the balls get donated to little leagues or something.

OTM ^^^ if you replace little leagues with BP.

right. i know when i played as a kid my coach told me the balls were donated from somewheres in the baseball world.

maybe the BP balls? game balls are really special. i saw a box of them once on sale for a ridic amount of money.

maybe donated from the nearest A ball team. there's also the possibility the box o' balls was a rip off!

everything -- EVERYTHING is re-sold; there's no way in hell used MLB balls get passed down the food chain. Go to steiner sports if you dare. the new BP balls have "practice" stamped on them.

" the new BP balls have "practice" stamped on them."

are you ruling out that these could/could not have been used in actual games? i can't remember who told me that at one point...

well i'm sure if they're running lowthey'll be cycled in, but MLB makes too much money on dads buying balls for their sons (lol) and dads buying balls for themselves (lol) to give them to the dominican republic.

I'm assuming the answer to this is yes, but: has there been research done on the efficacy of arguing calls? Like, an ump is never going to reverse a call he just made, so the point of arguing calls would have to be to encourage them to rule in your favor in the future. But it seems like it could easily have the opposite effect, making the ump mad and making him less likely to rule in your favor. And this would probably depend on who the ump is. So do teams have research on individual umps about whether arguing is effective or not?

they do it for show.

So I watched the post-season thrillride of 2012 and now I'm hooked. I think I pretty much get it but here's a stupid n00b question I have -- why does it seem that sometimes a foul hit counts as a strike and sometimes it doesn't? I can't discern the reason through watching games and I am way to lazy to read some Idiots Guide to Baseball type book.

Anyway, hi! I might be regularly posting to this sub-board now.

fouls are strikes unless you already have 2 strikes, in which case it's just a re-do. ie, you can't strike out on a foul ball. UNLESS you bunt it foul with 2 strikes, then that counts as a strike and it's a strikeout

thank you!!!!

Viceroy, do you have a favorite team?

clearly, the Blue jays.

Just to complicate things...
A foul tip is a type of foul "hit" that is "a batted ball that goes sharp directly from the bat to the catcher’s hands and is legally caught".
A foul tip is always a strike, regardless of the existing ball-and-strike count.
A foul tip is considered a strike and the ball remains "in play."
Thus, a player with two strikes against him is automatically struck out

The Nationals are my favorite team.

People make a big deal when a player who normally plays CF plays RF or a RF plays LF. Is there really a big difference between playing any of the outfield positions? It seems like the skills should translate equally among the OF?

I think it's mostly about range if I'm not mistaken. There's not as much ground to cover behind the LFers and RFers, but there's a huge amount of space behind CFers. Which is why Kyle schwarber can be planted in LF but to put him in CF would be an extremely bad idea. Not that some LFers should be out there anyway, cf raul ibanez.

It does seem weird that LF is where the ibanez types are stuck if they can't DH. It's never RF.

i think in RF you want your guy with the best arm, so if you got a guy who maybe isn't the best fielder and you're sticking him in a corner OF spot, the quality of the guy's throwing arm is the deciding factor.

Yeah, the RF-LF difference is just arm strength. Which is why LFs include awful defenders (with bad arms) but also sometimes pretty good defenders like Barry Bonds and Rickey Henderson (who didn't have quite enough range for CF, but lacked the arms for RF)

OK that all makes sense, thanks!

They do sometimes stick guys with noodle arms in CF too, if they can cover the ground out there well. And sometimes you'll see RFers who aren't particularly great at defense but have a cannon arm.

it's also a v different to read the ball off the bat in cf as opposed to either corner spots

It kind of depends on the team and their ball park too, as clubs with big spacious outfields usually have to have a burner in center or get killed by balls hit into the gaps.

Charlie Blackmon of the Rockies was one they were talking about this very situation. He's a pretty good fielder, but he's really not quite a fast enough to cover the acres of real estate in Denver's centerfield.