While We’re Waiting… Carrasco under the scope
April 12, 2013Hoping the Indians used the rain to regroup
April 12, 2013I don’t think you can go to cold-weather cities if you only go there one time. I think you have to stay within your division the first month. Or, I know teams want night games, but if we would have had a day game today, it gives you a longer window to play the game. I mean, it’s snowing in Minnesota and the Mets are there. I don’t know who can make the best snowman. […] It’s not what you want. We were swinging the bats really good. But you’ve got to deal with it.
— New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi, to the New York Daily News, after his team was rained out in consecutive games against the Cleveland Indians. The Yankees are not scheduled to return to Cleveland this season so the teams will be forced to make up games during days when both teams are scheduled to be off. May 13 appears to be one of the first days on the potential docket. No official announcement has been made, but Girardi was under the impression that the Yankees and Tribe would play a doubleheader on that date.
[Related: The Diff: On quality starts and the Indians bad pitching]
38 Comments
Awesome…I have tickets to the Tribe playing @Philly on May 14….haha sweet
I feel bad for those brave soles who hung up there last night, but there is no team since the ’88 Durham Bulls that needed a rainout so badly. My numbers may be a little off but I believe last night the Tribe would have used at least their 458th pitcher of the year.
Girardi has a point. I understand that schedule-makers face a lot of difficulties putting together a six-month schedule for 30 teams, but it seems like they could use some more plain old common sense.
it seems to me the tribe played their first two series’ in domes: toronto and tampa. probably not an accident.
what in the wide wide world of sports does girardi want… no games in cleveland till june? s happens.
Worked out pretty well for the Indians… let those Yankees cool off a bit. Also, Hafner should be injured by the time the Yanks come back to the Cleve.
The Indians held the Yankees scoreless the past 2 nights. Impressive.
No, he’s just saying that we up north should play division games early on because there are more opportunities for make-up games that aren’t too disruptive. New York was not scheduled to come here again until sometime next year.
I blame Bud Selig. But then I blame Bud Selig for everything.
Girardi’s saying it from a place where he is just upset that his team was hitting well and had our pitching staff on the ropes. That might not be the case when these games are made up.
It rains in the warm weather cities in April too.
Interleague play is to blame. The Yankees would be here more often if not more the opportunity to get to see teams like the Marlins and Brewers.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about. It’s Bud Selig’s fault.
I’d rather play the Marlins and Brewers than the Yankees.
there’s truth in that. Believe moving Houston to the AL has caused yet more ripples in the scheduling with the resulting additional interleague play due to uneven number of teams. On the other hand, if the the scores of the last two games were reversed Girardi wouldn’t be saying a thing.
Girardi would have a better point if it was cold and snowy. It rained. It rains in NY too. Not much can be done about back to back rainouts (unless we want to have a boondoggle retractable roof discussion about the football *and* baseball parks in this town.
Or, they still gave up over 6 runs a day over a series with two rainouts.
Guys, guys, you’re missing Giraradi’s point. He said if you’re going to go to a cold-weather city ONLY ONCE, then it’s a lot smarter to do it when the chances of good weather are better. In the meantime, you could open the season against teams in your own division, who you play more often and with whom make-up games are easier to reschedule.
That’s all he’s saying.
Bring in McKinsey or BCG to do the scheduling they’ll come out with a plan that makes sense for everyone
I like Tom Hamilton thinks everyone gets drunk and gets together to make this current disaster of a schedule.
but but but.. no domes in the central and all teams are up north.
now then: with the tv revenue, one would think teams could forego a home date or two and do some old-school doubleheaders to clean up rainouts/snowouts. of course the MLBPA would have to sign off.. but i think it’s a good idea. in fact, the concept of a loss leader to gain future biz is a proven one. once you suck a family into the park for an early season twin-bill, good luck NOT bringing your seven-year-old back again this year.
correct me if i’m wrong: you, me, and harv may be the only people on this forum to have attended a doubleheader?
1. You’re right. No domes in the central. And rainouts are unavoidable. So if you’re going to have rainouts anyway, you might as well have them within the division because it’s easier to make them up.
2. Yep, I’ve been to double headers, but I wouldn’t go to one today. The games take too long now. Even if you started at noon, you wouldn’t get out of there until after 7. Because after every single pitch, the batter has to step out of the box and stroll around for a while. I hate that. I blame Bud Selig.
I have a soon-to-be-7 year old that plays and loves baseball. 6-7 hours of MLB baseball would be way too much for him. No way he can sit still for that long and I’ve usually exhausted moving around a ballpark for “different views” after one game.
(and I have attended double-headers. minor league games count, right? Sacramento Rivercats!)
I don’t blame Girardi but at least the schedule makers were smart enough to start the Indians on the road in domes. The problem is they had to return home sometime in April which means games weren’t safe.
The answer is to push opening day back a few weeks after shortening the season. 162 games plus with all these playoff tweeks is entirely to many games. 150 games possibly even less is more then enough IMO.
P.S. anyone know where I can find Carlos Quentin I need to speak to him about something?
Our best pitcher was going, mother nature!
I think the two domes were mostly by chance. It’s not like they always do that, and there are too many northern teams to have it work out that way for everybody. Remember the snowout of our opening series a couple years back?
April 2nd is early in Cleveland, but not in a bunch of other places. And fewer games will never, ever happen. Not unless there is an economic downturn so severe that playing games loses money for a majority of teams in the first month. (in which case we probably have bigger problems than the Indians’ schedule, lol)
There aren’t enough domes to cover all northern teams anyway. Just because it worked out that way for us this year doesn’t mean it did for any other northern team or will for us ever again.
I think he’s right about staying in the division for at least the first couple of weeks. There are a lot of division games to schedule anyway and this puts some interesting matchups early in the schedule.
I hear what you’re saying about double headers, but then you risk raining out two games in one day if it’s a rainy one. I guess you’d have more April off days in which to make them up, but then you still end up with two games on a weekday in April. Even aside from money though, nobody wants to play double headers these days. It wears out your bullpen too much in an era of 5-6 inning starts. It’s bad for both teams.
Oh, I see what you’re (he’s) saying. He does have a pretty good point then. You’d think baseball would have figured this sorta stuff out by now.
In other news, it’s absolutely pouring in NYC right now.
This makes Girardi sound like a whiney little brat. When the schedule was made, did he look at the first road series and say “crap, when we go to Cleveland we will definitely have at least 2 straight rainouts”? That’s ridiculous. What would you prefer? Cleveland play the first 21 games on the road because it might rain there in April. News flash Joe, it’s raining everywhere in the US right now. He’s starting to carry this “Yankee Attitude” where bad things aren’t allowed to happen to them. I used to like Girardi, but this really ticked me off. I’m adding him to the list of Noah, Ichiro and James Harrison as people who disrespect the city of Cleveland without having any reason at all except ignorance.
As a kid Sunday games were usually doubleheaders, and I would go with my Dad. Of course, games were around 2 hours rather than 3 back then. Now, it would be difficult with the extremely slow pace of the game. They need to eliminate all mound visits, keep the batters from stepping out, and enforce the rule that pitchers must deliver the ball in a specified time frame. Those 2 hour games were more enjoyable.
Could have been chance regardless it was the right move and I’m more concerned with the Indians home opener then the other teams but the same applies.
i was king of the twi-night…
Heard a good point this morning: The Yankees should be happy to get rained-out this early in the season – that way, there’s a better chance that they will have Jeter, Tex, and Granderson back in the lineup by the time they play again.
Joba agrees.
The problem is that there just aren’t that many cities where you can guarantee good weather in early April.
Tampa, Toronto, Oakland, Texas, Anaheim, Houston, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, Milwaukee, SF, LA, SD, Arizona make just 13, not even enough to hold a full slate of games for a day, and it still rains in some of those places too.
It’s a lot more difficult to schedule than it seems.
Why dont we just move all professional and collegiate teams to warm weather cities? I did not know that New York enjoyed such balmy temps this time of the year!?!? These damn people are so spoiled now that if they cant have clubs, great restaurants and perfect weather the place is a dump. They can all take their garbage to south beach for all I care. If everything is not perfect, they cannot perform. Middle America, you are not worthy….
I’m not saying there is. The whole point of this discussion is that bad weather in April up north is inevitable, and therefore rainouts are unavoidable.
So, as long as rainouts are going to happen anyway, you might as well make them as easy as possible to reschedule. And you do that by scheduling early-season games against division opponents, who pay more visits to your city than do non-division teams. You try not to schedule April games against teams who are not scheduled to visit your city again because they’re harder to reschedule.
That’s all Girardi is saying.
hahahaha
At five teams in a division, someone will always have to be playing interdivision, and how long do you do that for? April 15 isn’t a whole lot better bet in NE Ohio than April 1.
Fine. Forget it. Sorry I brought it up.
I think the Indians should just play on the road until June. Nobody comes to the games in April or May anyway.