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OT: Toronto Blue Jays to Play Home Games in Buffalo

Howie Hodge

Howie Hodge

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Sep 16, 2017
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MayDay said:
I’d put the odds at 50-50 that the season will be called off before they ever play a game in Buffalo.
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Yep, with St' Louis now having a number of positives, it may well be.

Or they can just eliminate The Marlins (deservedly so) and St. Louis (a bit unfair - but prudent) from the season.
 
Husko

Husko

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Jun 30, 2006
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They need to just get comfortable with players missing games. Every team should just have an entire B squad they can use when necessary. It's not optimum, but nothing about this season is. Just canceling games every time there's an outbreak isn't going to work.
 
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dotcommunism

dotcommunism

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Aug 16, 2007
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Husko said:
They need to just get comfortable with players missing games. Every team should just have an entire B squad they can use when necessary. It's not optimum, but nothing about this season is. Just canceling games every time there's an outbreak isn't going to work.
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That is an extremely silly idea. Any idea of the games meaning anything goes completely out the window once a team has positive tests and suddenly has to send out their team entirely composed of minor leaguers to play games. And what if someone on the B team tests positive? Should they have a C team too? Maybe even a D team? Having entire alternate teams would make these season even more of a farce than it already is. They'd be better off just cancelling the season outright.
 
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Husko

Husko

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dotcommunism said:
That is an extremely silly idea. Any idea of the games meaning anything goes completely out the window once a team has positive tests and suddenly has to send out their team entirely composed of minor leaguers to play games. And what if someone on the B team tests positive? Should they have a C team too? Maybe even a D team? Having entire alternate teams would make these season even more of a farce than it already is. They'd be better off just cancelling the season outright.
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I guess it depends what your priorities are. If your aim is to put something on TV for fans and make money, then my plan is fine. If you actually have delusions that this is about respect for the game and meaningful competition, then you're right they should just cancel the entire season.

Players are going to test positive. That's a foregone conclusion. Just wholesale canceling games in a sport where you're expected to play 6 games a week isn't sustainable and isn't going to work.
 
dotcommunism

dotcommunism

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Aug 16, 2007
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Husko said:
I guess it depends what your priorities are. If your aim is to put something on TV for fans and make money, then my plan is fine. If you actually have delusions that this is about respect for the game and meaningful competition, then you're right they should just cancel the entire season.
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Your plan still isn't fine, really. Who's actually going to bother watching games without actual major league teams? Even the people who do tune in are probably going to turn it off after a few innings because a major league team against a B team would probably get pretty out of hand in short order. It's one thing for a team to have maybe a player who two who hasn't been actually playing any real baseball games, but I doubt that an entire team full of players who haven't played any actual baseball games in months is going to be particularly competitive.
Aside from that, there are the logistical issues. First and foremost is where are these alternate teams coming from? Teams only have 60 man pools to draw from, and those 60 man pools include injured players. They can't field two entire 30-man rosters (which is what the roster limit stands at right now), without even taking into account that the extra players they do have might not be able to fill the positions necessary to cover an actual baseball roster. So if they were to have alternate teams, they'd need to find other players who might not be in player shape, and even if they are, they still haven't played any baseball in months.
Even if teams did have alternate teams to sub in for them if they had positive tests, you'd still end up with cancelled games. The alternate teams would still have to travel to wherever they'd be needed. Sure, they might not have to sit out for multiple days, but you'd still have games cancelled.
Of course, if Major League Baseball were simply concerned with getting games played and willing to throw any competitive balance out the window, then there's no reason that the Blue Jays and Nationals would have been idle this weekend. They easily could have played each other for a few more games. Both teams were in Washington after all. But Major League Baseball was more interested in preserving the terrible unbalanced schedule they have for this season than having teams play games just for the sake of playing games.

Players are going to test positive. That's a foregone conclusion. Just wholesale canceling games in a sport where you're expected to play 6 games a week isn't sustainable and isn't going to work.
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We are in agreement here. A Major League Baseball season, under these conditions, is not sustainable and is not going to work. Even a hub city/bubble approach would not have worked with a baseball season. While team outbreaks would not have necessarily been a foregone conclusion as they are now, the logistics of having one city host 5 major league baseball games a day would not have been feasible.
 
SackTastic

SackTastic

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Mar 25, 2011
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Husko said:
I guess it depends what your priorities are. If your aim is to put something on TV for fans and make money, then my plan is fine. If you actually have delusions that this is about respect for the game and meaningful competition, then you're right they should just cancel the entire season.

Players are going to test positive. That's a foregone conclusion. Just wholesale canceling games in a sport where you're expected to play 6 games a week isn't sustainable and isn't going to work.
Click to expand...

"Meaningful competition" is the ruse that is always put forward to avoid saying "We just want to make money".

Having all these different squads also goes completely against what the MLB is trying to do to the farm systems ; they want to pay FEWER players.
 
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missingmika

missingmika

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Dec 9, 2006
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dotcommunism said:
That is an extremely silly idea. Any idea of the games meaning anything goes completely out the window once a team has positive tests and suddenly has to send out their team entirely composed of minor leaguers to play games. And what if someone on the B team tests positive? Should they have a C team too? Maybe even a D team? Having entire alternate teams would make these season even more of a farce than it already is. They'd be better off just cancelling the season outright.
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Are you from Buffalo? Do you care about Buffalo sports?

The greatest movie ever made, Second String, is aboit just this. An entire team gets sick and the B team comes in. In the movie, everyone still watched the Bills.
 
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vcv

vcv

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missingmika said:
Are you from Buffalo? Do you care about Buffalo sports?

The greatest movie ever made, Second String, is aboit just this. An entire team gets sick and the B team comes in. In the movie, everyone still watched the Bills.
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What the bloody hell. I've never heard of this movie.
 
dotcommunism

dotcommunism

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Aug 16, 2007
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missingmika said:
Are you from Buffalo? Do you care about Buffalo sports?

The greatest movie ever made, Second String, is aboit just this. An entire team gets sick and the B team comes in. In the movie, everyone still watched the Bills.
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Fiction is fiction. In real life, during the 1987 NFL season, when the NFLPA went on strike, and replacement players were brought in, attendance plummeted and TV viewership also fell.

Another issue with this hypothetical, which takes it from silly to unfeasible, is that teams would not be able to perform transactions between their actual team and the alternate team. If they did recall players from the alternate team, then it would entirely defeat the purpose of the alternate team stepping in when the real team can't play. Major League Baseball teams are pretty much always, during a regular season, recalling players from, and assigning players to, the minors. Any time a team ended up with a player having a positive test, there would inevitably end up being a transaction either from or to the alternate team in the past few days. In such a case, the alternate team would also need to be monitored as long as the regular team would to make sure there weren't any more positive tests, because there's no way of knowing where the infection started or where it had spread to.
To ensure that the alternate team was always available when the regular team wasn't, they would need to be kept entirely distinct. In that case, it really isn't an alternate team anymore so much as it is a completely different team altogether.
 
vcv

vcv

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SackTastic said:
It was direct to basic cable, and if you take out the Buffalo Bill angle, it's not very good at all honestly.
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I watched it. It was terribly made, but still enjoyable if your expectations are extremely low. Sound track was awful, lots of plot holes, etc. But they had some big names and the games looked somewhat realistic!
 
SackTastic

SackTastic

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Mar 25, 2011
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vcv said:
I watched it. It was terribly made, but still enjoyable if your expectations are extremely low. Sound track was awful, lots of plot holes, etc. But they had some big names and the games looked somewhat realistic!
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I mean it certainly wasn't the worst thing ever made, that's for sure. :P
 
Buffaloed

Buffaloed

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Feb 27, 2002
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Cheektowaga company is cut out to make stand-in Jays fans
A Cheektowaga company, Minute Print, was given the task of bringing the fans to life, so to speak. The business has produced about 1,550 of the fan cutouts, said Dave Zalenski, the general manager.

The Bills are looking into planning a more realistic experience that will feature cardboard cutouts table diving, sliding down the railings, having sex in the stands, and setting each other on fire.
 
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tmlms13

tmlms13

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Apr 11, 2012
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Waterloo, Ontario
Hopefully they also improved fan areas too so you guys can enjoy that. If anyone here works at Sahlen or knows someone who works there, please take good care of them.

See you all in a few week for the Bills season.
 
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