Tim

No. Fortunately, the ban list imported just fine.

I would get it if they did a trade like that, but I still wouldn't be happy with trading either Baez or Soler for a minor league prospect. Heck, I wouldn't be happy with trading either one of them for McGee, either. There are deals for combinations of players that I could live with, though.

He'll be the youngest of their stars. Of course, he's only four days younger than Martinez.

Hell yeah! I actually got one thing done even better than requested.

I had the hosting company scan the files about five times now, but I may as well reinstall that part of the site from scratch, too.

The mod that put the "active topics" view at the bottom of the page, too.

I think that was part of it. I also was hitting 97% usage on the partition with the database. I eventually took the opportunity to upgrade the message board, php and apache since everything was fubar anyway. I started off trying to find the errors in the code. That was a couple weeks ago until yesterday. But there's a huge amount of code behind the board and I'm not that deep into .php development. Couldn't find it. Couldn't find any useful hints after a lot of googling. I was actually slowly making things worse as I was trying things. Eventually I just decided to upgrade the board from 3.1.14 to 3.1.17 to see if the upgrade would fix it. But then it wouldn't work at all. So I went to the backups I made. For some reason, those no longer worked, either. So then I started running experiments to see how much of the old information I could bring in and still have it work. It turned out I could bring in everything except: - The mods/extensions - The configuration table (which has references to the mods/extensions) - The posts Now, if I brought in the posts tables, the board still kinda worked. I could log in. I could see the forums. I could see the active topics. But as soon as I tried to open a topic, it would hose the database and lock up everything on the server. I tried this about 8-10 times tweaking different things each time. But no matter what I tried, it would hose things up when I tried to import those. So...I'll do this. It should speed things up and reduce the load on the server, anyway.

So... Someone mentioned that there are tweets about talks between the Cubs and Tampa heating up?

Well, the smilies are back.

Down with megaforums!

After messing around with things for around 30 hours without sleep, I've made a decision: We're going to start fresh. The archive posts are alive and well. I'll try to get them up asap. In the meantime, we have a forum we can post in and stuff. Please post any errors you find here. Or mods that need to get reinstalled. or whatever. I'm tired.

The Revitalization of Trevor Cahill

So everyone do cartwheels of joy.

I feel like the majority of people want to acquire two SP for next year. That would mean that Hammel has to leave the rotation. I understand the rationale of not wanting to rely on a guy who has been much less than durable throughout his career. For those that want to displace him from the rotation - is the thought to put him in the pen as a really expensive swingman? Or is the thought to dump him and his $11M salary?

First, some assumptions. 1) the crowdsourced contract estimates at Fangraphs are correct (they're typically low for the big contracts) 2) there is $40M free cash currently available 3) reasonable backloading is allowed on FA contracts 4) The Marlins are being honest when they say Fernandez is NOT available ----------------------------------- Needs: 1) SP 2) CF 3) SP Depth 4) Bullpen Depth 5) Farm Depth ------------------------------------ The Plan: Even though SP need is #1, I'm going to fill CF first and then plan around it. Heyward at 8/$184M is my first move. I'm going to backload the deal a bit and also give him an opt-out after four years so he can hit the market again when he's 30. His 2016 salary hit will be $18M and it will ramp up like this: 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 25, 25, 25. Next I have to address SP. With $22M left in the budget, Price, Greinke, Zimmerman and Cueto are effectively out of reach if I want to address 3-5 on my list. Looking at the next tier of pitchers gives: Shark, Lackey, Gallardo, Kazmir, Iwakuma, Leake & Chen. Lackey is a prick and I don't trust Gallardo. That leaves Shark, Kazmir, Iwakuma, Leake and Chen. At this point in their careers, the last four of those guys are similar in statistical profile. Average to below strikeout rates, below average walk rates and somewhat elevated HR rates for several. The arm in this group with clear upside above the rest is Shark. He's crowdsourced at 4/$16M per. I'll backload that a bit to 14/16/16/18. Next is SP Depth. We have a full rotation at this point with Arrieta/Lester/Shark/Hendricks/Hammel. I'm actually okay with leaving Hammel in the rotation, but I really want to add depth in case of injury. The best way to do that is by adding a player with options. Yaisel Sierra is my main target here. The main comp used for his contract is Raisel Iglesias. He got a seven year contract for $23M that paid a $5M bonus up front and then cheap salaries. I'll assume something similar here and say that he'll cost us $5M in 2016. Bullpen Depth is up. I really want Darren O'Day. But I only have $3M left in the budget. So I'm going to make a couple moves at this point. I'll trade Wood and Coghlan for the best return I can get for each guy. I don't expect to get much for Wood (I'll non-tender if I can't get anything), but I'm hoping for an upside arm for Cogs. That should free up an additional $10M. I'll use $6M (in 2016) to sign O'Day, giving him 6/7/8 on his deal. To fill in for Wood in the pen, I'll sign Blevins to a $1.5M deal. That gives me Rondon/O'Day/Strop/Grimm at the back end of the pen with Blevins there as my loogy and a litany of contenders to fill the rest. Farm: Hopefully I added depth here with the Cogs & Wood trades. I have $5.5 left in the budget and I'm going to use all that on Cubans. I'll also explore what value I can get in return for Castro. If I can add a potential impact arm near the majors, I'm going to make the trade. I'll also invest his $7M salary for 2016 in IFA and consider that as part of the return on the trade. Given the situation, I'll see if creative accounting can be used to borrow his 2017 $9M salary to use on IFA this year, as well. That would give me quite a few potential impact guys in return for Castro. --------------------- So...there's the plan as of this morning. I'm sure it'll be different again tomorrow.

We have a thread for pitching options, but I thought I'd start one for the realistic CF options. In free agency, there's: Rajai Davis (35) Dexter Fowler (30) Chris Heisey (31) Jason Heyward (26) Austin Jackson (29) Justin Maxwell (32) Colby Rasmus (29) Shane Robinson (30) Justin Ruggiano (34) Denard Span (32) Drew Stubbs (31) The names that are probably available via trade are: Marcell Ozuna Cameron Maybin Ben Revere Are there any other options out there?

I found a replacement manager for Juan's old team. Welcome back to one of the more successful (and active) managers - tadowdaddy. He'll be taking over Juan's team. Don - make sure to review the rules changes. The biggest one is that as a daily league, you can change your lineup as often as you want during the week. Still just seven starts - most things are still the same.

With Apple's recent decision to push ad blocking to help in their war against Google, I've noticed a growing gap between the number of page hits vs the number of ad displays. In September, there were actually about 50% more overall pages displayed than pages with ads (33% of all pages were displayed with the ads blocked). I totally get why people do this. Ads are annoying and slow down the page load quite a bit. They're particularly annoying on mobile. However, I still have to pay for the server to support the site, as well as a few miscellaneous other charges that occur from time to time. So... Would the people who view the site with an ad blocker be willing to make donations from time to time? What would seem fair? Should I post a link on the page to my paypal account or take another approach? Thanks!

First question: Is everyone back? Second question: Are we implementing any rules changes? Third question: Are we realigning?

At the risk of being mocked endlessly (no, there won't be a cash reward), let's pick a minor league player of the year and minor league pitcher of the year. The criteria can be anything you want, just explain your answer.

At the risk of being mocked endlessly (no, there won't be a cash reward), let's pick a minor league player of the year and minor league pitcher of the year. The criteria can be anything you want, just explain your answer.

We're still freezing rosters at the end of next week, right? In other words... So no moves allowed by non-playoff teams. Playoff teams have their rosters revert to the rosters as of 9/6.

I get the feeling that we won't have as much participation as normal. Boring draft.