Cubswin11

I know he's a senior and 22ish years old coming into the draft but I'm really surprised House is only a projected 2nd rd pick. He's legit.

such a terrible decision by him, even at the time it was questionable at best.

such a terrible decision by him, even at the time it was questionable at best.

KLaw breaking the news

He's worn an all white suit for a game or two a year for the past at least 5 years

That was my reaction as well

In a league where guys like Ray Rice and Greg Hardy have jobs, I don't see Manziel being banished. Difference is though those 2 guys are actually good at football, Manziel probably isn't. Also Ray Rice has been out of the league since his incident.

Manziel apparently had another "altercation" with his GF yesterday that the police were called on but no arrest happened. Generally if this happens once maybe it truly is nothing/misunderstanding but it keeps happening to the guy, you have to think something is there. He very well could be out of the league for good.

A NFL team in Vegas seems like a terrible idea but I guess if they can swindle the tax payers to pay for a stadium it doesn't matter that much. Guessing Vegas is more a pawn to try and get Oakland to pony up public money for an arena.

I believe so, pretty much yes. As long as you aren't purposely doing something dumb like hitting your pitcher or worst regular position player in the top 3 spots I don't think it really matters who hits where as long as some common sense is applied (i.e. some order of Zobrist-Heyward-Rizzo-Bryant-Schwarber-Soler/Coghlan hit in the first 6 spots).

Sure, why not. With the amount of awesome hitters we have and Joe's penchant for tinkering with lineups it's probably something we will see at some point. I'm guessing we will see at least 5 different leadoff hitters over the course of the year, Heyward, Zobrist, Schwarber, Russell, Coghlan, Rizzo, and La Stella will probably all get an appearance there.

Good move for them, I never bought they were just gonna give the old man/scumbag Utley the full-time job. [tweet] [/tweet]

Someone suggested Justus Sheffield a while back, maybe. I'd be into that and another arm like Plutko or Maronde. I'd be willing to sacrifice and take just one Triston McKenzie. Some others that might be fun: To the Astros for RHP Akeem Bostick, LHP Michael Freeman, and LHP Tommy Shirley To the Orioles for LHPs Tanner Scott, and Chris Lee To the Angels for LHPs Greg Mahle and Nate Smith To the Nats for RHP AJ Cole To the Marlins for LHP Justin Nicolino or LHP Chris Reed To the Twins for RHP Alex Meyer or LHP Taylor Rogers and RHP Michael Cederoth Over optimistic on some? Under? My targets for him on the Angels would be Skaggs or Tropeano, even if we would have to add a little bit more.

From Law's chat today;

Yeah, it's so weird. Just because an opinion/idea is based off of another idea or cites an article doesn't mean it can't be a really horsefeathering dumb opinion/idea that should be shamed and mocked.

The Rockies offseason of making no sense continues..... [tweet] [/tweet]

Angels could be another landing spot. I think the Angels are a really good fit too, but if reports are true they can't come close to affording him. They only have around $4 million left to spend without getting into the luxury tax which they apparently are dead set against doing.

There's enough flexibility in a Schwarber/Heyward/Fowler/Soler OF that basically all of Fowler/Schwarber/Soler can get to 140 games played/500+ PAs with Heyward at 150/600+. That many PAs for those four seems unlikely, unless they start trusting Schwarber to catch more than just Hendricks and Hammel, which I doubt. Arrieta has the best stuff in the league, and Lester and Lackey might actually physically harm him if he poorly frames a couple of pitches. Personally, my ideal rest of the offseason would be trading Soler for Blake Snell, then signing Austin Jackson. It helps the pitching situation for 2017/2018 and I think a Coghlan/Jackson platoon (with Heyward switching between CF and RF) has a pretty good shot at outperforming Soler anyway. I have doubts the Rays go for that though. There's roughly 1,944 PAs between the 3 OF spots for next year (4 PAs per game per 3 spots). Heyward at 600 drops it to 1,344, 500 for both Soler/Fowler drops it to 344, that means Schwarber catches about 35 games to get him to 500 PAs, which seems reasonable. There's also an additional 10 games in AL stadiums so DH adds about 40 PAs, if most of those are given to Schwarber/Soler that drops the games Schwarber needs to catch to about 25 games. It can be done fairly easily with those rough parameters. On your ideal offseason move, I'd rather just re-sign Jackson as the 4th OF and get rid of Coghlan for whatever we could get than move Soler.

No, the deal isn't there for Soler. If Fowler is somehow brought back dumping Coghlan is the move. Making Soler a 4th OF is a terrible idea. Play him or trade him. Benching him will just mess with his confidence and waste a top prospect. There's enough flexibility in a Schwarber/Heyward/Fowler/Soler OF that all of Fowler/Schwarber/Soler can get to 500ish PAs and Heyward to 600+.

I've literally never seen this before, nor knew that it was a rule that the inbounded could get FTs

No, the deal isn't there for Soler. If Fowler is somehow brought back dumping Coghlan is the move.

Yeah and OF comes out tomorrow, Mckinney could potentially sneak in top 10-20 (idk how deep they go on OF).

I agree, I think Hammel will be closer to 1st half Hammel last year than 2nd half Hammel last year. Which is a really horsefeathering good 5th starter.

Bold take