Rob

Du-rag isn’t inherently derogatory. As many have noted, it’s a very common thing worn by African-American men. It’s the way that Brenly felt compelled to point out an old great like Tom Seaver wouldn’t have ever worn one that made the comment racist. It was a pointed comment on how the game has changed, and implied not for the better. Fwiw, I don’t think it was meant to be racist. But it was insensitive. So the sensitivity training feels appropriate here.

Well, I was disappointed when they didn't bring him back. He was 27, and had just come off his 2nd season better than any Chris Coghlan ever had. A 27 year old leaving a terrible team seems like a perfect candidate for improvement. At least to me. Castellanos had his best season in 2018, where he put up 2.9 fWAR. He was great at the plate (129 wRC+), but a butcher in the field (-12.3 UZR). Coghlan's best year was 2015. He put up a 113 wRC+ that year and was a net positive in the field. So he tallied up 3.1 fWAR. You can quibble on the numbers. Baseball-reference may like Castellanos more because they use different defensive figures. But at the time of signing his contract, he was known as a straight-up butcher in the field. It was almost like watching late-career Jermaine Dye out there. Or Gary Sheffield and his esoteric routes. Has he gotten better? Sure. Was it a guarantee? Absolutely not.

I'm not broken-hearted over Castellanos. He mashed with us, but there was nothing to suggest he'd really turned a corner and was about to establish himself as a great ballplayer. His absolute best seasons looked no better than the stuff Chris Coghlan did for us a few years prior, and nobody was beating up the front office over not giving Coghlan a massive contract. There's a lot of valid criticisms of this front office, but passing on Castellanos isn't one of them. That contract looked bad from jump street. That said, trading Darvish sucked. But it would have almost been better had we just committed to the fire sale. Now, we're stuck in an awkward no-mans land where we can't sell our valuable assets because we're in it. And we aren't good enough to justify using long-term assets to push all-in.

Some of them may be real, but they’re all jokes.

Tbf I don’t think they’re trying to change him or consider him a project so much as he’s cheap, healthy, and likely was better than most 5th starters on opening day rosters I’m really looking forward to him being bounced, don’t think there was ever any expectations that Trevor Williams was going to lock down a rotation spot all year His ERA the prior 2 years was 6.18 and 5.38. They had to have seen something they thought they could fix to get him back to 2018 performance when he was actually pretty damn good. There had to have been better pitching options out there for relatively cheap but I'm too lazy to go back and see. But I feel like coming off of his performances the previous 2 years he seems like a guy that would have signed a minor league deal with an invite to ML camp not a major league deal for $2.5m Tyler Chatwood got 3M this year.

Tweet has been deleted.

I’m still used to saying this about guys who didn’t get a ring with us, but Kris did. So he has to stay forever.

I vote we call them Gombers.

I'm sure teams will be lined up to give a "solid return" for a 33 year old reliever who hasn't pitched well since 2018 and is earning $16 million. Do you know how baseball works? Yeah, I don't see his contact as being untradable or anything of the sort. 33 is still relatively young in the grand scheme of things, and we can eat money if we need to. We are also talking about one of the legendary closers in baseball even with his struggles on our team. If he is looking like he has regained his past dominance, teams will be lining up out the door asking for him. Granted, these trades are harder than they used to be because he actually has to be pitching well. He can't just luck into a good ERA and get that level of interest. The underlying metrics have to match up, his velocity needs to be appropriate, etc... But yeah, if he's pitching well he's extremely tradable.

but how will that change the IP? I'm over the age of fifty, so I'm not really the right person to give advice on this. That said, I don't understand the question. I have a Roku that's plugged into the TV. MLB.tv is one of the streaming choices. I log in using my MLB.tv credentials (username and password). I watch the games on the TV. Omar mentioned that he also got NordVPN to change his IP address. In short, if you're in what MLB has determined to be a "local market" you'll be blacked out of watching games for that team on MLB.tv. So if you live in Chicago, no Cubs games or White Sox games. But you can watch everybody else as long as they aren't playing the Cubs or White Sox. If you live in Florida, no Marlins or Rays games but you can watch Cubs and White Sox games, etc... Some places the local restrictions make sense -- some they do not. I believe Iowa was blacked out for six different teams, for instance. People use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to convince MLB that you're really watching the game from some location other than where you're actually watching it. Essentially, it reroutes your internet traffic through a server of your choice. If you use a server in Brazil or Luxembourg or wherever, MLB thinks you live overseas and have no local market teams -- so you can watch all the games without any blackouts whatsoever. So people living in Chicago can use that to watch Cubs games. Trying to get a streaming service to work with a VPN can be a bit of a pain.

but how will that change the IP? Will try casting it. Cannot connect it, usually am doing work on my laptop. I remember there being an issue with chromecast and MLB.tv a while back. It wouldn't work if I'd try it from the main window they'd opened. But if I copied the link to my own new tab, I was 100% fine. Not sure if that's still a loop that needs jumping through, but it's worth keeping in mind.

You're welcome.

Maybe just poor circulation? I'm guessing the dude has ice-cold hands.

While the pitching is surprisingly good, the offense completely falls apart. Bryant is constantly dealing with minor injuries that hinder his performance and tanks his trade value. Baez tries too hard and is awful. Rizzo is injured and misses a bunch of time. Contreras has a weirdly low BABIP. Heyward turns back into a pumpkin. Happ is merely okay. The only hitter who actually hits is Joc Pederson, who is traded off at midseason. We will find out at some point that an interesting prospect was offered to us for one of our tradeable assets. But instead, we'll take nothing useful and toss in Heyward and a bunch of cash for the partial salary relief. He'll be great for his new team. I wont watch a single game after August 1.

Yes, and then everything went [expletive] up for four years.

Somewhere this morning, TT is waking up in the best mood of his life.

I always used to get so mad when playing games like MVP Baseball 2005. The computer GM in franchise modes would make the weirdest moves like trading an ace pitcher for a bunch of nobodies, and then bring on some retread old dude who barely deserves to be in baseball anymore. In fact, those were the only players available -- retreads and nobodies. No real GM would ever try to fill out a championship team like that. It was so frustrating, having a GM like that.

My interest in chess has been mostly in the last five years or so. Is Leko roughly equivalent to Giri now?

This cracked me up something fierce when it happened. Now all these "respectable" sites like chess.com have to list the Bongcloud in their lists of openings. It was a hell of a way to achieve a fast draw.

They're picking us at about 78 wins, so 90+ wins seems a little excessive. I'm not sure anyone else in the NL Central will get to 90+ wins either. I think it's certainly possible. Standard variance combined with the fact that basically any NL Central team that starts slow will quickly transition to seller mode.

Jake is looking pretty washed up. Velocity is down from his peak. Not getting the same results from his offspeed stuff. Maybe they see something they can tweak. Add some spin, change an arm angle, alter pitch sequencing, etc...Pitching is complicated, and there are a lot of levers to pull. The Cubs know him well, so if they think it’s worth a gamble I’m inclined to believe them. But I’m not expecting much.

Assuming it doesn't cost much, it's a solid move. He was replacement-level last year, but IDGAF about 2020 stats given all that was going on. Prior to that he looked like an average or slightly-above average regular. Young enough worth taking a gamble on with a short term deal.

I am probably alone in stating this, but I wouldn't mind a Wil Myers acquisition. Don't get me wrong, I think if we acquire him we can kiss 2021 goodbye. But he's a former top prospect with a few pretty good years under his belt, and who positively mashed last year. I don't think he keeps it up. But given his ability to fake it in an outfield corner or at 1B, he might be attractive to a number of contenders at the deadline. So if he is hitting well, there should be some suitors.

Is this when we finally get Jake Peavy?

There really needs to be a public list of who was banned and why. Then we can vote on who to un-ban. Let's bring back Da Bum.