added 07/22/2020 by Bob Hulsey
We should take a moment to congratulate Major League Baseball on putting together a baseball season and launching it before the NBA (July 30th) and NHL (August 1st). Unlike the other two sports that are quarantining their players in "pods" where access to the Coronavirus can be better controlled, MLB is taking the risk of playing in home parks (where allowed, sorry Blue Jays)) and carrying a large supply of replacements should one or several players become infected. Some players are staying home deciding the risks outweigh the rewards (roughly 30% of a year's salary plus potential playoff money), including Astros reliever Joe Smith.
After needless and contentious labor negotiations while some people died and others watched their careers ruined during the pandemic, the unseemly rancor of millionaires fighting billionaires was resolved to be unresolved. For added salt to the gaping wounds, Commissioner Manboob declared that the plan all along was to play no more than a 60-game season. Enjoy your union grievance, Commish.
Will 60 games be a fair sample? After the Astros' 60th game last year, here's how the AL West standings looked:
Astros 40-20
Rangers 30-27
Athletics 30-30
Angels 29-30
Mariners 25-37
The playoffs would have been:
Wild card: Rangers at Rays
# 1 seed: Twins
# 2 seed: Astros
# 3 seed: Yankees
So I guess one could argue the differences would be minimal. Although, in the National League, the eventual World Champion Washington Nationals would have missed the playoffs entirely with a 26-33 record.
The damage done to the sport in other ways could be catastrophic. My last times at a big league venue, I was amazed how few seemed to be focused on the game and seemed more rapt in their phones or ballpark food. Put these folks before a tv set and how long would it take before the channel flips to something else? MLB's ratings may plummet severely, pushing baseball's revenues closer to the precipice.
Then there's the sport itself which keeps evolving away from the game we grew up with as kids. Pitchers condemned never to bat, runners beginning innings on second base, lefty relievers forced to face three batters before taking a seat. Soon, baseball jerseys may look like something out of NASCAR.
The East Coast media continues their bloodlust for seeing Astros maimed on the field, cheering that the Royals plunked the Astros three times on Tuesday despite there being no actual fans in the stands. They continue to live in denial that their darling Yankees and Red Sox also cheated in the past few years. They want there to be only one villain - those Texas upstarts who somehow tricked their way into the residing in the cushy American League West.
Naturally, this is a baseball website so we'll continue to watch and comment but I'm not blaming anyone who thinks they should take a long siesta from this national nightmare and focus on things they feel are more important than who wins a pennant.
The broken season will be interesting to watch but it may not be enough to get most fans to care.
Regarding the highlights feed and the live scoreboard feed:
The MLB highlight package in the middle section of the front page and the Scorestream line score app right below it are still being gently tweaked.
Anyone checking the site between the World Series and Christmas probably noticed the highlight feed was missing. That's because of "upgrades" made by the distributor and the alleged solution was for us to redesign our website. I refused. Magically, their programmers found a solution to let me keep the highlights without changing our site. Still, the highlights can be a bit balky in some browsers.
The Scorestream app (it's European but it's free) sometimes places runs under the wrong innings but usually the final score is correct and the other details are right. I took it down during the winter because I didn't want to show the same thing for months on end.
Having tweaked both of these during and after the Royals series, I can confirm that both of them work on Mozilla Firefox (both PC and Android), Google Chrome and Brave browsers (Brave is a new kid on the block that promises not to spy on you and sell your data to everyone between Beijing and Boston). They do not always populate correctly however. I can typically get the page to load correctly by the second refresh.
I cannot confirm that this works with Microsoft browsers (Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge). If you can get these to populate correctly on either browser, drop me a line at bob@astrosdaily.com (note the email link near the top of this page). I will appreciate any feedback on these two products as the abbreviated season progresses.
Thank you for your support, patience and understanding.