Transmogrified Tiger

Yes he was. He was the "MLB International" broadcaster. Jesus, how many people were watching that feed in America? A lot of the less scrupulous live streams end up pulling from international broadcasts, so that's a decent guess. His call may have been included in some of the replay packages too, I don't recall off hand.

THAT is the part that I'm concerned about. Maddon isn't admitting that he completely horsefeathers the bed in games 6 and 7. You can't learn from mistakes if you aren't recognizing their existence. Yes. We won the World Series. We were and are all very very pumped. But this board never stuck me a completely results-oriented, ends justify the means, stick-with-what-got-you-there hug fest. Are we seriously going to just repeat "we won the World Series" when Maddon very nearly kept that from happening with gross over-management? Right or wrong, in Maddon's eyes, he had 3 relievers he could trust by the end of the World Series (Chapman, Montgomery, Edwards). He didn't even trust Strop to finish a big lead in Game 6. Yep, this isn't super complicated. Rondon and Strop both had injuries down the stretch, and Maddon(who loved those guys in his 1.8 years to that point) didn't trust them to get high leverage postseason outs. He thought Chapman was a big and strong enough dude to hold up to extended saves 3 times in 4 days and was wrong, but the alternatives weren't great either. He did admit that he should've had someone ready so Chapman didn't have to pitch the 9th in Game 6, although who knows if that would've made a difference. We don't have to worry about what ifs though because the Cubs won the world series. Managing a bullpen is hard. Maddon isn't a savant but he's better than most at it. It's not a cause for concern, especially considering the 2017 pen could have half the expected contributors drop dead tomorrow and it'd still be deeper than the 2016 postseason pen.

This is probably a hot take, but I have to think the odds of Candelario making the team if there isn't at least one DL stint from up-roster to start the year are 0.0%.

Like with any position outside C and maybe CF, Baez is the primary backup, it just might not be him playing the position. You can put Baez on the IF and move Bryant/Zobrist to LF and Schwarber to 1B. If not that, then Bryant would likely be at 1B. He started 6 of the 11 games at 1B Rizzo didn't start, and 2 of those other 5 were days Bryant also had off.

Normally when there's MLB highlights with a review I don't bother watching til the end, I know how the play ended up so no need to see it confirmed. I definitely watched the full length of Gonzalez getting called out at home to live his reaction all over again though.

they're just babies Adi, have mercy Only one game and in a brutal environment, but Minnesota didn't look MLS quality. Tons of trouble maintaining possession for more than 5-10 seconds at a time.

It seems like the original Capps delivery is still legal if he's dragging his foot and not taking a 2nd 'hop': http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mlb-has-clarified-its-carter-capps-position/ Which to me is still nonsense. A professional athlete can push-drag their way all the way to the plate just like they can hop, it's just a bit harder. Seems like a big missed opportunity to say 'you can only push off once' or 'you can only push off from the rubber'.

Grant Brisbee is a prophet: http://www.sbnation.com/2017/3/1/14778474/mlb-spring-training-baseball-months-ranked

I don't really have anything against Tim Tebow the person, he seems like a good enough dude. But I don't want to hear anything about him and baseball. He hit .194/.296/.242 in the Arizona Fall League, he wasn't even committing full time to it with football commentary commitments, and he turns 30 this year. He is less than nothing in the eyes of baseball until he actually does something, several extended somethings actually.

how does this only have 7 likes, what is wrong with you people

yeah, I don't trust much of anyone online when it comes to mechanics breakdowns, most especially when we're poring over like 5 plate appearances. That said, the formerly Cubs Related dude thinks it's a positive change, which even if I don't care what he thinks, he does a good job of illustrating that it is in fact different: http://www.cubsinsider.com/2017/02/26/rundown-notes-heywards-new-swing/

I don't know what it means in terms of MLS's byzantine salary cap, but I do know that European DP's that come in the summer, usually need an additional MLS offseason to get their bearings, as Deuce himself did in Seattle. Not sure if that applies to someone who hasn't exactly been wearing his legs out like Honda, but historically (anecdotally) that's been the case. The salary cap benefit(again, as I see it explained and not based on any knowledge I have) is that Alonso is technically the 3rd DP on the roster since his salary is high enough(1.x million I believe). By adding a DP midseason, the cost to buy down Alonso with TAM(or whichever funny money acronym it is) is halved because you're only doing so for the remainder of the season. It's been unclear whether Seattle was even able/willing to add a DP for the full season because of that cost since no one has known how much TAM a team has.

i don't disagree with most of the logic here but i also don't think schwarber is going to sit vs lefties as a rule. i think when he gets days off, it will be vs tough lefties, but i don't think he's going to be in a platoon. I agree with you, and I think this is also a good illustration of how the new way of roster construction can't be easily simplified to even platoon lineups. Even if you eliminate CF and C as standalone platoons that don't impact anyone else, you still have 60+ games where guys are just getting days off, plus any 15+ day DL stints, doubleheaders, etc. There are 9 guys that deserve to start in any given lineup configuration, which means it's much less likely there's someone that doesn't deserve to start given an extended number of starts.

Following up on this, it looks like today's MLBN broadcast is on an hour delay, because they're broadcasting an earlier game. In other words, the Giants game has no TV, the A's game can be seen live on MLB.tv or WGN local, and it can be seen on an hour delay on MLBN.

No kidding. My inner monologue in re-watching this was 'oh wow I forgot he hit it over the Nuveen sign...oh I forgot that physics broke and decided it was barely a HR"

Has anyone looked into aging curves for guys like Honda who end up not getting much run for years at a time without major injury like he has the last few years? It's a bit of a unique to soccer topic. In either case, it looks now like it's more likely to be a summer move, which to my dummy's understanding of MLS salary cap rules is much better for Seattle(also Honda is out of contract then). Also means someone else could be the target by then.

This is probably true in a vacuum, but you have to consider that Bryant hitting 2nd with Rizzo hitting 3rd is probably better than the inverse, and Rizzo/Zobrist hitting 3/4 is definitely better than back to back LH with Rizzo/Schwarber. The moral of the story is there's a clear Top 4 hitters in the lineup. Working backwards from where you want the best of those guys hitting, you put Schwarber 1st because Bryant should be 2nd and if Bryant should be 2nd then Rizzo needs to be 3rd, and if Rizzo needs to be 3rd then Schwarber needs to lead off.

This is so hilariously salty. So many "almosts" -- except Bryant also almost hit his out. Reading stuff like this also makes me that much happier that we won. I was especially amused by the 'only Bryant hit the ball hard' comment. Here's Schwarber hitting it so weakly that Kipnis can't catch up to it when he's about 3 steps from the warning track: Also, Zobrist hit the ball so weakly that Ramirez didn't even get the chance to take a step before falling into a dive. Although maybe that's more on his Uribean physique than anything.

Yeah, the 2016 core of Rondon/Strop/Grimm/Edwards all being under control through 2018(and only Rondon not being under control for 2019) goes a long way to keep the bullpen from descending to a bad place.

There's some smoke that the Sounders might be about to sign Honda from Milan. If that happens, it appears that Lagerway just wants to throw a band of 3 of whatever the best attacking talent is that he can find and leave the positions to chance. Morris/Dempsey/Lodeiro/Honda with Bruin/Shipp/Fernandez as depth seems really really good for MLS.

Strop has always been sneaky old(he turns 32 in June), I wonder if he figured he wasn't going to get an extravagant deal and he wanted the certain money and to stay on a great team/clubhouse.

[tweet] [/tweet] Very nice.

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LOL at the number one comment

I'm not mad, I'm disappointed