Transmogrified Tiger

This is my thinking as well. Bote seems to be able to replace Happ within reason and this might be Almora’s peak year which is plenty fine but a 2-3 WAR OF isn’t that hard to find/replace (like I mentioned Maybin as an in season replacement). I also am just not a huge fan of Almora’s profile long term in terms of ever being much more than a 2-3 WAR player. Plus it opens things up for Bryce in the OF in the offseason and doesn’t make a Happ/Almora trade a forced trade in the offseason. Then you maybe also look to add a bench bat that’s RHH and capabale or playing CF in the offseason. Does Happ even start in the Mets outfield when Cespedes comes back? None of Nimmo/Cespedes/Conforto can play CF with any level of ability, so yes. They'd probably be best served by Cespedes/Almora/Happ/Conforto all sharing time across the OF and moving Nimmo to 1B. Happ could also help out at 2B/3B once they have no use for Todd Frazier or Cabrera anymore, since Cecchini is the only longer term option and he hasn't shown he can hit yet.

Hendricks is pitching Saturday so normal rest would put him at the Thursday start. If they stick with that then Lester would be in line for Friday. But that would leave Quintana on 10 days rest for one of the Saturday DH and then Montgomery and/or Chatwood in the other game. My guess is they don't want either of those guys pitching in the doubleheader, since they are bound to get pulled early and tax the bullpen in at least one game. Then Monday the 23rd becomes an issue, since none of the current 5 would be on normal rest. Maybe they come back from the break with Quintana and Montgomery each coming off 8 days rest, then let Hendricks and Lester handle the DH with the hopes of saving the bullpen. Then it is all hands on deck for the Sunday game. They have to be ready to dial back Montgomery's innings. Maybe they'd be better off using Chatwood/Montgomery as a piggyback situation and calling up Underwood. Then again, we could be due for a Casey Coleman "take one for the team" start in this series. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that the 5 game series in 4 days coupled with 2 guys who can't be counted on for 6 innings means there are about a million combinations that can happen before we get to July 25/26. It depends on how they deal with the DH and who does/does not make it through 5 innings. Since they need 6 starters in 5 days, I'd imagine they use the 26th man on the double header to give a start to Underwood/Mills/Tseng. Starting Quintana Friday and giving Lester another day's rest(especially if he pitches in the ASG) to let him hopefully suck up a bunch of innings in one game of the DH makes sense too. That also pushes Montgomery to Sunday to give him that little bit more rest, although I don't think he needs to be aggressively reined in, especially for this month.

lol, I was so certain that one of those Tunisia goals was a penalty that I missed it even though I pulled up the box score

If you can make a deal for DeGrom using Happ and Almora and basically any reasonable permutation of minor leaguers, that's realllly hard for me to turn down. Especially with Bote looking at least LaStella-caliber with the bat, you can add a bench OF too and shift more of Zobrist's innings to the OF without losing too much. If Bote isn't for real you lose the super-duper depth of position player even if you add Harper for 2019, but DeGrom is very, very good.

Yeah, I admittedly would only exclude him based on how poorly his game seems to have translated to the AA level through his first 3 starts there. It's probably short-sighted, but in a system filled with pitchers that have to prove it at every level, ones that don't get bumped down considerably for me. Thus far it looks like he had some first AA game jitters and had that go poorly, and then has been very good since. June 23: 3 IP, 9 H, 8 ER, 1/1 K/BB, 2 HR, HBP June 30: 6.1 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 7/2 K/BB July 7: 5 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2/2/ K/BB

Harry Kane winning the Golden boot with one goal that wasn't a penalty or a teammate accidentally hitting him in the heel is also extremely funny

Given his size, I doubt he sticks as a starter. Height is overrated, and with the quality of the system at the moment you definitely don't need to be a surefire prospect to be underrated significantly.

In what is almost certainly a kiss of death for his start tonight, after seeing some of the Top 20s in the other thread, I think Thompson might be the most underrated prospect in the system.

man horsefeathers up. the yankees getting machado would be gross, as would giving an actual alive pitching prospect to the orioles who would swiftly destroy him [tweet] [/tweet]

just wait for the HR Derby power rankings

...what were you looking for Anthony

also, Belgium and England playing each other twice in the same world cup with both games having essentially no meaning is very funny

Watching Mandzukic score after Pickford screamed at him while he was hurt on the ground, and then watching multiple English players get baited into wasting time with squabbles because they couldn't help but go on tilt was so delightful.

Say it out loud please. That data means nothing on its own. It's replacing action in the game with mostly emptiness. It's not just weak groundballs, but singles and doubles and line drives and diving catches and double plays that are turned into K's, BB, and HR. We're the same people who love all the fun stuff Baez does, right? That's the essence of it, action in the game. It is very much an aesthetic preference so there's room to disagree, but we also don't have to be dense about a pretty drastic spike in a short period of time.

DeGrom is only 2.5 years from free agency.

This makes for an interesting thought exercise: [tweet] [/tweet] Trade Happ/Almora for a SP, get a clubhouse veteran/mascot to suck up fewer ABs than Happ/Almora the rest of the year, replace him properly with Harper in the offseason seems like a logical sequence of events. I'm not sure the SP target really is out there for that type of decisive deal though.

I haven't read the article to know if it's self-aware, but this is quite the headline/quote tandem they've chosen. [tweet] [/tweet]

BP previews the World roster for the Futures game: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/prospects/article/41206/futures-game-preview-team-world/

Rizzo, catch the ball (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Javy, you are 200 feet away from home plate, if you are trying to bait him, DON'T (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Rizzo you didn't put your hand on a glowing basketball did you

you are what you eat

I am not sure. The only remotely plausible circumstance I can think of for that is if the pitcher starts cussing out the hitter on ball 4 and incites a brawl.

I don't have the legalese answer, but I assume that all that needs to happen is for the runner to cross the plate. The game ends the moment that happens, and I'm struggling to think of a way where the person who took a walk could be ruled out before that happens. And even then that would only matter if there were two outs.

But that's typically not what happens. Again, you're taking someone like r_mack or even Schwarber Fan and applying it to anyone grousing about a cruddy game. And, even then, there's a huge difference between, "I'm worried that X might be a bigger/ongoing problem," and, "I think the Cubs are terrible." If post-loss discourse ever reaches "I'm worried that X might be a bigger problem" then that would be a massive improvement. Or rather, if X ever starts being something remotely worth worrying about at that stage.

The conversation always centers on this 'you can't tell people not to feel' point that is a strawman. Be as irritated that you want that things go poorly, what people are asking for is for a dose of perspective when people try to extrapolate that to bigger picture. It's not healthy to spend a bunch of time talking yourself into thinking the Cubs are actually bad every time they go 48 hours without a win. Or if you do, please shout those thoughts at your TV/into the ether instead of trying to find a way to justify that negative feeling being an actual harbinger of doom by telling everyone else about it.