Is the new pitch clock seen as a success? I saw some complaining about it initially
Must be current 
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Yeah everyone is loving it, it’s way better for watching games on TV.
When I go there I don’t mind the 3 hour ones, just sitting there drinking beers
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Good game between Mets and Astros on BT Sports 2.
Middle of the 7th, Astros lead by 1.
Hope Knollsy is in enjoying this dominant cubs performance
The Angels scored 13 runs in the third inning of Saturday’s game against the Rockies at Coors Field en route to a 25-1 win. Here’s what you need to know:
- Los Angeles became the only MLB team in the modern era to score 20-plus runs over a two-inning span, according to Opta Stats.
- They added two runs in the second, eight in the fourth and one apiece in the sixth and eighth.
- Colorado’s sole run came off a homer by Brenton Doyle off the Angels’ Kolton Ingram in the eighth inning.
- The Angels improved to 42-36, second in the American League West, while the Rockies (30-49) sit at the bottom of the National League West.
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Angels also scored three home runs on three straight pitches. They are finally threatening to put it altogether in what could be Ohtanis last year there
Perfect game for the Yankees! 4th time in their history
Domingo German pitching
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There was a mad run on perfect games about 10 years ago but it completely dried up, great achievement
Was somebody taken out of a game a couple of years ago while pitching one? Or was that ‘just’ a no hitter?
Yep, I remember Boone pulling Severino when he’d a no hitter going through 7 innings, the guy is frustrating
It was only Oakland in fairness
One of the great things about Major League Baseball is that the best players who ever held a bat only reached base on less than 35% of their appearances, while the shittiest journeymen have done it around 25% of the time
Anyone able to put this up?
Good movie too.
Twenty years ago, the most influential book in the history of sport was published. Moneyball was not just a terrific read — and subsequently a movie starring Brad Pitt which grossed more than $110 million — but a challenge to every sports team in the world.
Are you relying on hunch or have you embraced science? Are you throwing money around at recruiting players or thinking smart about strategy? If you have not joined the analytics revolution, what the hell is keeping you?
The book about a baseball outfit, the Oakland A’s, carried lessons and insights for every sports lover, and certainly sports administrator, on the planet about eking out advantages by looking into data.
Oakland fans have led a revolt against Fisher, the billionaire owner who wants to take the team to Vegas
JEFF CHIU/AP
In fact, the catchy notion of Moneyball became a mantra in business too, which made sense given the author Michael Lewis was a former bond salesman. “An investment book,” he calls it.
This revolution was always going to happen as far more data became available in the 21st century, but Moneyball propelled it to a global audience. When Billy Beane, the A’s general manager played by Pitt, was in England a few years after publication, I joined a long queue. Sir Alex Ferguson and half the managers in the Premier League were among those seeking an audience, trying to find out what data secrets might be unearthed in football.
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The overriding message was that sporting success did not simply have to rely on funds for star players — though money certainly does help. The most successful team in the world, Manchester City, have covered all the bases by deploying vast Sovereign wealth but also a huge analytics department including a “Lead AI scientist” with a PhD in computational astrophysics.
An anniversary worth marking, then? Well, yes, for everyone apart from fans of the Oakland team which has turned from a lesson in how to run a club into the most egregious example of the decline the A’s franchise which, as one American sports writer put starkly, “Is one of the more demoralising stories in professional sport”.
I spoke to Brian Murphy, morning host of KNBR radio, who even as a fan of nearby San Francisco Giants, laments the decline of a team whose four World Series since the franchise was established in Oakland in 1968 can only be matched by the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox.
He explained how a working-class city with a proud sports heritage is about to be bereft of a big team. Oakland had already lost the Raiders, its American football side, to Las Vegas in 2020. The Golden State Warriors in basketball departed to San Francisco a year earlier.
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Now it is about to say a sorry goodbye to the baseball team because John Fisher, the billionaire owner who had the good fortune to be the son of the founders of the GAP empire, thinks there is more money to be made in moving the team to Vegas.
As Murphy explains, Fisher, the majority owner of the A’s since 2005, has become almost a “movie villain” to fans who have seen him gradually extinguish all hope; trading good players as soon as their talent demanded a pay rise; reducing the payroll to the lowest in the MLB at $60 million (£47 million) — an embarrassing $100 million under the league average.
The book inspired a Hollywood film starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill
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The team has always made do with less — Moneyball celebrated the fact — but neglect has not stopped Fisher also hiking up the ticket prices. The fans became so disenchanted that the dishevelled old Coliseum — baseball’s biggest stadium with a capacity of almost 57,000 — drew only 3,407 fans for an early-season game in April.
That revolt against the owner turned into a “reverse boycott” last month when almost 28,000 fans arrived with banners, T-shirts and chants demanding Fisher sell the team. “F**k John Fisher” they hollered, and threw trash onto the field before departing, most of them forever.
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Fisher has said nothing. “He’s done a remarkable job of staying invisible,” Murphy says. He has tried to let it be known that the Oakland authorities are to blame for not funding a new stadium, but supporting a billionaire was hardly going to be a political priority. “A ten-year odyssey of the A’s ‘trying to build in Oakland’ ”, Murphy says, scornfully. “Were they ever really?”
Las Vegas wants sports teams to bolster its reputation as an epicentre of entertainment, so the legislature in Nevada is ready to commit about a quarter of the cost of a $1.5 billion stadium. Fisher looks certain to get his way, and the Oakland A’s will forever be associated not so much with deep-thinking but desertion.
Some fans fear that Beane has become more interested in football, after Moneyball’s success brought invitations from around the world
MICHAEL ZAGARIS/GETTY IMAGES
It is a wretched denouement which may yet have one last twist, with politicians debating a “Moneyball Act” which would require any baseball outfit which moves cities to pay ten years’ worth of taxes to the community it leaves behind. Scant consolation for the sports fans of Oakland and a sad legacy.
All sports, including football, had plenty to learn from its example, and from the data. Simple things such as not only looking at goals scored but putting value on them — was it skill or a lucky deflection? — which has grown into an industry.
We have to remember how much scepticism there was in English football 20 years ago to the idea that a computer engineer might have something valuable he could tell a leading manager; or that the numbers had a story to tell at all.
Las Vegas wants teams such as the A’s to bolster its reputation as an epicentre of sport and entertainment
CARLOS OSORIO/AP
As Beane told me: “The statistics are a tool. Saying you don’t believe in them is like saying you don’t believe in a hammer.”
Beane was bright and engaging — the rarity of a former athlete who could talk fluently about regression models — but he, too, has been caught up in the team’s downfall. He has remained connected with the A’s, most recently as an adviser to Fisher, but has kept his head down as the flak has flown.
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Fans think he is more interested in football, which he fell in love with after Moneyball’s success brought invitations from around the world. He was part of a consortium that had a stake in Barnsley and is said to spend as much time gripped by the Champions League as baseball.
In the past 20 years, there have been attempts to question whether Moneyball oversold the story. After all, the A’s never did win a World Series, or even reach one, in the Beane era.
“What makes a champion?” Murphy says. “You still need the best players, a Messi or Mbappé. All these marginal pieces are great but probably not enough to win at the highest level.”
Oakland, a working-class city with a proud sports heritage, is about to be bereft of a big team
THEARON W. HENDERSON/GETTY IMAGES
More than ever, it takes vast pots of resources to win the biggest prizes, but it is no coincidence that two of English football’s recent successes, Brighton & Hove Albion and Brentford, are owned by two former colleagues in sports betting for whom data analysis is an obsession.
They are new poster boys of the Moneyball ethos and there will always be gains to be eked out by smart people willing to look hard enough. But the demise of the A’s is now a cautionary tale rather than a manual for success.
The team which inspired a sports book with a business brain, a bible for underdogs, now looks set to epitomise how billionaires can fail a cherished institution. Perhaps that is the sequel, and its own revealing tale about modern sport.
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Angels @ Tigers on BT Sports (TNT Sports) 3.
Ohtani pitching and hitting in this game.
He does that at least once a week. Angels are buyers making a push to do something and try get him to stay. Might be too late.
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Pitched a 9 inning shut out in the first game. Just hit his 2nd homer in the 2nd game here.
Unreal.
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Guy is going to get a half a billion dollar contract
The Shohei road show moves across Lake Erie to a sell out Rogers Center in Toronto and…