41 thoughts on “October 3, 2019: The Gang’s All Here”

1. 

   Salt River scored two in the seventh to break a 2-2 and defeat Scottsdale 4-2. The Rafters are 8-4 and lead their division by two games.

   Luke Raley was 0-for-3. He is batting .121/.198/.212 in 33 at-bats.
   Dakota Chalmers struck out five in four shutout innings, giving up two hits and two walks. His ERA is 4.32 with 13 strikeouts in 8.1 innings.
   Jovani Moran pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a walk. His ERA is 4.15 with 8 strikeouts in 4.1 innings.

2. First Homer Hankies have started showing up on eBay; no, I'm not paying $8 per plus $4 to ship it.

3. Is Game 3 confirmed for 7:00?

   1. That's just sean's placeholder. No announced Monday times yet. Could be affected by whether the NL series require game 4s on Monday or not.

      1. That's so ridiculous. I have tickets for game 3 and still don't know if I have to take off time from work on Monday.

         MLB is stupid.

         1. I have strong feelings about this.

            1) This kind of flex scheduling is ridiculous. Even when I had hardly a care in the world and watched a ton of baseball, I couldn’t just adjust my schedule on a moment’s notice.

            2) Who does this even optimize for? How many fans can there be who possibly have time to watch multiple games on a weekday? They should prioritize first for the hosting team, with some regard for the visiting team’s fans. Even if some fans can watch all the games, I feel like you’re better off getting more local attention on the game and trying to expand outside the “hardcore” audience where you might actually have some growth potential.

            3) It would help scheduling if the league was arranged by time zone rather than by the historical AL/NL alignment. East/West always winds up a crappy compromise. TB fans had to stay up til something like 11:30 local to finish the game, while I’m sure a large percentage of A’s fans didn’t make it home from work til the 3rd or 4th inning.

            That said, I’d prefer for them to pick a format and stick with it. Like if 5:30 local works for west coast teams to host, just have all teams host at 5:30p local, and sure you’ll have work conflicts, but it’s the playoffs and maybe people find ways to slip out of work. Or pick 6:30pm local if you want to bias more for an evening crowd. But generally pick some kind of format and stick with it. I want to be able to at least plan to watch the games.

            1. I think the main driver for the game time slots should be based completely on time zones. The ordering of the slots should be, from earliest to latest:
               1) host team's time zone, ordered East to West; in case of tie...
               2) visiting team's time zone, ordered East to West; in case of tie...
               3) TV market

      2. I've been trying to glean some suggestion of what could happen with the scheduling by reading into past practices....last year there were three games on Monday: Astros at Indians at 12:30, Dodgers at Braves at 3:30, Red Sox at Yankees at 6:30. 2017 had four games: Astros at Red Sox at 12:00, Nationals at Cubs at 3:00, Indians at Yankees at 6:00, Dodgers at Diamondbacks at 8:00.

         It seems like a good guess that "Yankees will get a primetime weeknight slot" will hold, although both of those past Monday games were in New York. This year the four potential Monday sites are Washington, Tampa, Minnesota, and St. Louis. I would lean toward guessing the Tampa/St. Louis games would get daytime slots, and perhaps the Dodgers game will get the latest slot even being in Washington.

         1. MLB should just be honest and release a "TV Priority" schedule that lists which teams have preference for the prime time game. They could even have it on a cumulative scale, so that even if the Twins and Yankees are playing, if two teams with less priority than the Yankees are in, but higher than the combined Twins/Yankees score, they get it.

            1. The time zones of the teams sometimes has an effect on the game times too.

         2. I got this almost right, but Dodgers-Nats is the earlier slot and Yankees-Twins is at 7:40.

            1. *Unless both NL series are sweeps; in that case the Twins game is at 6:37.

               1. Appreciate you.

   2. No, the plugin I wrote needs a time so I guessed that. I haven't seen game times released for Sunday and later yet.

      1. Sunday has times now: ATL-STL at 3:10 and LAD-WAS at 6:45.

         1. Thank you gentlemen.

      2. 12 midnight was an option.

4. Jay Jaffe breaks down the only division series that matters.

   The bottom line is that these are two very good teams with power galore, and while their rotations as currently constructed have their flaws, the quality of their bullpens should offset that, so long as managers Boone and Baldelli act with urgency.

   1. Ctrl-F "Tyler White"

      1. No results now.

   2. Yeah, that assumption Odo pitches Game 2 and Dobnak Game 3 is flawed.

      1. The starters for the Yankees is off too with Severino starting Game 3 instead of 2.

5. Mickey Callaway fired by the Mets. Even though he had a winning record, he seemed a little over his head.

6. There's something disturbing watching Twins personnel being interviewed at a table with a huge NY on the skirt around it. And on the podium.

7. Bomba Hankies procured.

   1. The local Cub had a grand total of 100 ordered. They were obviously gone within an hour.

      I got my online order placed. Now, I just hope that they're still in the playoffs by the time the Hankies arrive.

8. How are we doing postseason game logs? Should I plan on doing one for Sunday's games?

   1. Yes, please. My preference would be for people to continue with the schedule through the postseason.

      1. Seconded.

9. Sean signal:

   I am trying to figure out best options for addressing terribly slow wifi reception by my desktop.

   We have Uverse, which provides a nice, fat, 75 Mbps to the router. The box and WAP are downstairs, computers upstairs.

   The desktop (802.11n wireless LAN card in an HP with an i5-2400S CPU, 8 GB of RAM) is varying between less than 1 Mbps and 2.5 Mbps on internet speed tests. My laptop, in the same location, was doing something like 30 down/20 up.

   Thoughts?

   1. Changing the antenna location/orientation for the desktop could help. That large disparity between the desktop and laptop could be several things: antenna or wireless NIC. The desktop antenna is probably at the back against a wall or inside the (metal) case versus the laptop's would be around the screen and be less blocked.

      Failing that, mesh networking is the easiest method for blanketing the home in wi-fi waves.

      1. Yes, it is inside the case. No place to install an external antenna for this card.

         I will try moving the box around a little. Currently it is on the floor butted up to an exterior wall.

         Costco has teh Google mesh kits on sale for like $270. I was looking online at an Ethernet adapter thingy that uses the home electrical system for $40 (TP-Link AV1000 Powerline Ethernet adapter).

         Given the reception disparity between desktop and laptop, I didn't think They'd (err, Rhu's, that's a spectacularly bad autoincorrection) suggestion would help (unless the new card comes with an external antenna?).

   2. Get an 802.11ac wireless adapter, assuming your router supports it. I bought one of these bad boys when we went to fiber, and it's consistently getting me 180Mbps/120Mbps speeds.

      1. Ah, USB. I hadn't looked at this link when I replied above.

         There are a lot of similar options available on Amason for around $20-25.

         Thanks!

         1. Don't go with the simple USB dongles; having an antenna you can move around I think is important, and if you have your PC on the floor, having an antenna on a cord that allows you to position it further away is even better.

            1. Looking at this one. Any thoughts?

               the desktop is from 2015. Pretty sure it doesn't have USB 3.0, but... ?

               1. I'm sure you can find online reviews.

                  Be sure when you install it to go to the wireless setup and disable your internal adapter so that the new one is the one it's defaulting to.

               2. The USB 3.0 specification was released on 12 November 2008

                  It certainly has a USB 3 port.

                  Agreed with Rhu_Ru that getting an external antenna is important. All the better if you can move it.

                  1. thanks, both of you. I will report back on how the unit works.

      2. also, fiber? What are you paying for and from whom?

         Uverse has faster, more spendy options than what we have now, but I figured that 75 Mbps (we had 50 at the old house, but they told the Mrs when she arranged the move that 50 wasn't available in this neighborhood and gave us 75 at the same price) should be more than fast enough for our streaming needs at the moment, giving that we are paying for Uverse tv and aren't trying to stream everything from the series of tubes per se.

         1. AT&T fiber, normally $100/mo, I think $60 or $70 with the bundling and discounts. With working from home, and now with AT&T TV, we appreciate the large pipe.

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