What ha happened...?

MLB.tv began its post-season broadcast with tonight’s one-game playoff between the Twins and Tigers and it featured the nifty multi-angle broadcast layout we saw during the all-star game.

The draw is in the ability for you to click on up to 10 different camera angles from across the stadium (or four simultaneously), and at first it seems like a cool way to watch the game. However, after a while, or after settling down in front of your laptop (some of us don’t have a TV hooked up), the whole thing turns the experience into a cumbersome mess.

Zoom zoom

Because you’re fixed on one camera angle, you’ll have to imagine what happens on the field when the ball is in play, if say you’re watching the center field camera (see top screen-grab). It doesn’t shift to a different angle that follows the action as you’ve been trained by a professionally-produced broadcast.

Also, you’ll have to endure the zoom adjustments done by the camera operator (remember, you’re stuck on his/her view), meaning you’ll get taken for quite a ride if you’re on the high home plate camera, which zooms in as the player hits a ball in play, and then back out once the play is dead.

Although the announcers could be heard on a few camera angles during the All-Star game, I actually heard both dudes during last night’s game on all angles, but I get the impression that sound is also fixed. Crowd noise is more pronounced, even causing the speakers to “pop” when it climbs above the 0 db level, which makes me think that you’re also locked into the camera’s microphone.

Again, I think it’s a cool way to watch the game for a few innings, and MLBAM itself is calling the service (dubbed Postseason.tv) as a “complementary” broadcast if you’ve got the game on your TV, but they should also offer users a choice for a single stream that emulates the main broadcast.

If you’re a regular subscriber to MLB.tv, you can simply login using your credentials. Otherwise you can pay $9.95 for the Postseason.tv online package.

IPhone or iPoud Touch users who have the At Bat application can also choose among the different camera angles, or watch four simultaneous feeds.

The UmpBump team went on a sojourn to Tucson to celebrate the marriage of Coley and his lovely bride Suz. Well, we almost got everybody together, Nick couldn’t make it but thanks to the awesome reality-altering abilities of Photoshop, he joined in the celebration.

Congrats to Suz and Coley Ward!

My buddy Glenn likes gifs. He’s prolific at them, actually. He says he’ll soon graduate to flash video. I, for one, hope he doesn’t abandon the wonderful aesthetic and convenient medium of the GIF. Every one is a treasure worth discovering.

Anyway, upon hearing the news that one Bobby Cox would retire, Glenn decided to conceptualize the importance of this announcement in the form of an animated GIF.

This is the result.

As far as Cox’ legacy beyond the animated GIF, ie, baseball? Rob Neyer’s post puts it in good perspective.

Really, the only thing missing from Cox’s resumè is World Championships (plural). He’s won just one of them, fewer than non-Hall of Famers Danny Murtaugh, Billy Martin, Tom Kelly, Ralph Houk, and Cito Gaston.

Which won’t keep Cox out of the Hall of Fame. It’s a lot harder to win the World Series than it used to be, and winning just one World Series certainly didn’t keep Earl Weaver out of the Coop.

For the past few days the White Sox have gone through a torturous road trip that all but killed their post-season hopes. As a result, GM Kenny Williams traded a few of his veterans and now the team fades slowly into irrelevance.

Naturally, the next step is to try and make sense of what went wrong up until this point and what better way to do it than with a nice piece of pie. Nick, our master pastry chef, baked this White Sox WAR pie, which tells me a few things:

>> The team relied too much on offensive contributions from players like Gordon Beckham, Jason Nix, and Scott Podsednik. These are guys that never figured in the team’s pre-season plans and were, let’s be honest, overachieving quite a bit.

>> As Nick told me when he baked the pie,

the White Sox have only gotten 9.7 WAR out of their hitters – 2nd worst in the AL, after only the Royals.

BUT, they have gotten 18.5 WAR out of their pitchers, 2nd best in the AL behind only the Red Sox!

In other words, they are the anti-Phillies. The Giants of the AL.  All pitching and no offense.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about baseball, it’s the idea that if your team is constantly playing low-scoring affairs up until the late innings, your pitching will not hold up. So Nick’s last point  was  certainly evident during their last few games against the Red Sox and Yankees lineups, where they held on to a tie or a slim lead up until the very last at bat. Here’s the pitching vs. offense pie:

>> A bittersweet surprise has been A.J. Pierzynski. I noticed a few weeks ago that he was quietly posting some good offensive numbers, and as his big chunk of pie suggests, he’s the best offensive player on the team. Too bad it’ll be for naught as I doubt he’ll be able to replicate his numbers next year.

>> An unexpected surprise was Alexei Ramirez. Even though he’s posted weaker numbers this year through roughly the same number of at bats than he had last year, his individual WAR is higher than last year’s value.

Knowing now that the White Sox relied too heavily on pitching, it’s no surprising the bottom fell out. The issue is, however, the very little offense they got came from players that have traditionally been mediocre (Podsednik) or are barely in the bigs (Nix, Beckham); and now that Jim Thome is no longer with the team, and Jermaine Dye is a free agent at the end of the year, there’s no question Kenny Williams will have a tough time putting together as potent a line-up as this White Sox once had.

Hall -of-famer?

Here are the pitchers from the modern era who have thrown a no-hitter and a perfect game in their careers: Jim Bunning, Randy Johnson, Addie Joss, Sandy Koufax and Cy Young.

All but Randy Johnson are in the Hall of Fame (and the Unit will join them soon enough), which begs the question: has Mark Buerhle solidified his status as a HOF pitcher?

His career numbers are certainly respectable (133-90 over a 10-year career), but are nothing that would make him stand out over other great pitchers of the past decade. Except, of course, for those no-no’s and the fact that he was a central part of a World Series championship in 2005.

For his part, Buehrle doesn’t even want to think about it, from Mark Gonzaelz “Hardball” blog:

“I think I got to do a lot more in this game to be thought of in that category,” Buehrle said. “Obviously it’s an honor for people to even mention that. I got (133) wins now. I need a lot more wins and a lot more stuff in this game to be mentioned there.”

Speaking to the Sun-Times’ Joe Cowley, Guillen said he thinks the bar for Hall of Fame induction will get lower:

“Hall of Fame is going to need people to get in,” Guillen said. “You will see people in with 200 wins, 220 or 250. There’s no doubt. You have to. I don’t think any pitcher is going to last long enough to win 300 games.”

And Rob Neyer agrees that Buehrle is good, but thnks he’s not that good:

Buehrle’s career ERA is roughly 23 percent better than the American League average during his 10 seasons. That’s really, really good. That’s better than Bob Feller, Eddie Plank, Juan Marichal, Don Drysdale, and various other Hall of Famers. It’s better than CC Sabathia,Josh Beckett, Jake Peavy, Andy Pettitte, and John Lackey.

But would Joe Fan or Rob Blogger put Buehrle on the same level with those stars?

Probably not, because Buehrle just hasn’t done the sorts of things that get one mentioned among such notables. He has never won 20 games, and has won more than 16 games just once. He has been mentioned in the Cy Young results just once (finishing a distant fifth in 2005). With two notable exceptions — first the no-hitter, and now this — he’s never been particularly overpowering.

So what do we make of it…

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So I get home just in time to tune in to the first inning of the All-Star game (in progress) and since I don’t have a working TV, I log on to MLB.tv. To my surprise, the broadcast is not the same TV broadcast (as was the case for the Home Run Derby last night), but instead, is a direct feed from nine different camera angles around the new Busch Stadium. Freaking cool!

The video player is very similar to the MLB.tv player, and it gives you the option to watch anywhere from one camera to four simultaneously. Switching between them is as easy as clicking on the grid, then clicking on the new angle available as a list or placed geographically on a graphic of the ball park.

I was asked for my MLB.com account login info, not my MLB.tv, but in my case, they happen to be the same. Not sure if non-MLB.tv subscribers can watch it gratis, tho. Also, I hadn’t heard of this at all, I did some googling to try and figure when/if it had been announced, and the only thing I could find was a press release for a similar broadcast Fox Interactive did for the BCS.

And the best part? No broadcasters! Just pure unfiltered stadium ambience sounds. Beautiful! Darn. The first three camera angles (X-MO Low Home, High Homeplate, and Centerfield) do have the Fox broadcast audio.

(The main Fox online broadcast itself is blacked out, but is available through MLB.tv, as is Game Day audio).

I’m sorry, but I have to say this is freaking awesome. I take most of it back Bud, Robert, you too Donald, who’s a good new media goonie? who’s it, who’s it? yes you.

My brother, a hard-nosed Cardinals fan, wanted to check his bank account, so he tried BOA.com thinking it would take him to Bank of America. He was wrong…

Update: Arg, whoever runs boa.com changed the picture, now a pair of creepy green eyes stare you down. Before the change, the site featured a large aereal view of old Busch Stadium in St. Louis adjacent to a snow-covered lot, and nothing more. Written in the snow in giant letters was the phrase: “CUBS SUCK.”

I was able to salvage this thumbnail:

Come hither...

When Apple announced the new iteration of it’s venerable cash cow, the iPhone 3GS, it did so emphasizing the speed of the device, capable of delivering faster web pages, loading applications in a snap, and, at least in the future, capable of utilizing AT&T’s faster mobile internet network.

Another feature that will no doubt take advantage of the upgraded horsepower will be streaming video, and because we know these MLB New Media Goons are ahead of the technology curve, Apple promptly partnered with MLB Advanced Media to showcase the live video delivery capabilities of the ubiquitous machine with its latest version of the MLB At Bat iPhone application.

And to complete this delicious new media menage a trois, AT&T gave MLBAM the exclusive right to stream live video via its 3G cellular network, a right previously denied to applications such as Skype and Slingplayer (remember them?).

This is where it gets hairy. It’s no secret that Apple’s extremely restrictive application approval process has been contradictory in giving the green light to certain kinds of applications while rejecting other, very similar ones. But now that AT&T is wanting to play VIP with MLBAM, it raises another set of questions.

AT&T denied Slingplayer access to its 3G network for video streaming saying it would clog up its 3G network, so why give the MLB New Media Goons the full spread?

From CNET:

But now AT&T is allowing MLB to do exactly what it would not allow Sling to do, which is stream live broadcast TV over its 3G cellular network onto iPhones. So what gives? Is AT&T playing favorites?

That’s exactly what Ben Scott, policy director for the advocacy group Free Press, thinks. The group issued a statement Thursday expressing its concern over what it sees as an inconsistent policy.

“We are troubled that carriers like AT&T are playing gatekeeper to the next generation of wireless Internet applications,” Scott said in a statement. “No Internet service provider should be allowed to pick winners and losers online.”

Two things: First, Net Neutrality

Up until this point, the Net Neutrality battle (remember kids, same Internet for all) was being fought on the Cable companies’ turf, in which Big Cable’s bandwidth cap threats could’ve impacted MLB’s own broadband hog, MLB.tv, but AT&T’s contradictory policy towards the MLB At Bat application seems to indicate that it will also have to be addressed on the mobile web.

(An interesting side note, MLB Advanced Media has been a busy little new media whore. Just a few days ago, Boxee, the media center that allows you to hook up your computer to your HDTV and watch TV shows and movies, announced that the alpha version of its software will give MLB.tv subscribers a way to watch games through Boxee on their TVs.)

Second (and here’s my conspiracy angle)

It’s quite curious to note that the kid not invited to the party is Sling Media, the maker of the Slingplayer application for the iPhone.  If you all remember, MLB has once before targeted Sling, which allows you to setup a box at home, and stream your cable or satellite service (or your shiny new public digital TV signal) over the internet to your laptop or mobile phone. Yes, you can stream your Sling connection to your iPhone, but it has to be done through a Wi-Fi connection (which necessitates a hot spot and not AT&T’s much wider 3G network).

Of course, MLB is not getting the double dip in broadcast rights once you stream the home team’s game when you’re away from home. And so you see, in my humble opinion at least, Bud Selig and his New Media Goons are getting AT&T to give them the 3G buffet while at the same time, Mamma Bell kicks Sling Media to the curve.

Full circle

Remember who bought Sling Media? Echo Star, the parent company for Dish Network, which never got a piece of the MLB Extra Innings pie.

Conclusion?

Clearly MLB Advanced Media is spreading its tentacles to as many areas of technology as it can. That is a good thing. But there seem to be some shady shenanigans going on behind the scenes. And what I don’t like is the fact that we have to keep paying an arm and a leg just to watch some baseball.