squally1313

Counterpoint, Jokic is an incredible player who is also an horsefeathers with serious temper problems and probably should have gotten this figured out a while ago.

This is just picking up Zach Davies again, but without having to give up the dude who finished second in the Cy Young. If this would have been the price for Davies, I would have loved it. Hopefully this one works out better.

Because they played a 60 game season last year so everyone pitched a fraction of what they typically do (and minor leaguers even less) and then were expected to go back to a full workload?

Because nothing is happening in that extra time. We're not getting 4 hours of baseball, we're getting 2.5 hours of baseball spread over four hours. It's the sports equivalent of a Judd Apatow movie. More like we're getting 30 minutes of baseball action over 4 hours. Also, horsefeathers these managers and their overmanaging. Greinke had given up 3 hits on 56 pitches over 4 innings the other night and Dusty pulled him. Why? Why is this the thing now? We had World Series for over 100 years where the starter went 6 or 7 innings, now managers can't get out of their own way. This is a weird hill to die on. Greinke had a 4.71 FIP this year. They needed innings, he gave them what they needed, but they have better pitchers and it was a win or go home game. It's absolutely not sustainable to do it this way for 6 months straight, but losing the World Series because you chose to continue pitching a worse, tiring pitcher would be very dumb. Edit: Was not an elimination game, the rest of my point still stands.

Overmanaging + too many commercials + no pitch clock I don't understand people bitching about watching something they purport to enjoy being too long and boring. Baseball is like an opera and for a fan of the teams/game, the ups and downs and pauses make it that much more compelling. It's for the World Series where one mistake can make or break a season. Then start the game at 3:00

The last thing I want to do is absolve Toews, Kane, or anyone else present and silent during all of this, but as mentioned above, it's not terribly difficult to figure out who this player is, and (assuming I have it right) in 2014 he was no longer a member of the Hawks organization. Of course, there's those other stories from 2011 in which all those guys were there. Just disgusting up and down the organization. Edit: See below, important to get the facts right.

northsidebullsball.com amirite

$3300, but yea. Guessing they got a lot of thoughtful response along the lines of what I told them when they offered the opportunity this fall. I probably should have known this by now, but when I clicked through mine I saw the schedule that basically just did Thursday/Friday games and asked if that was an option. Was told that they haven't offered that in years, was just for the people that were grandfathered in, and then her super helpful suggestion was to find more friends to split up the full season. Like she didn't see the last two months of bleacher tickets going for $5/each on Stubhub.

Just give me drama. And/or chaos. If I can't get game 7s, I want Sale to be a superspreader right before they start the World Series.

All except the "Thor, Gray and Matz" part When the first guy listed in there has thrown 10 innings in the last 2 years, forgive me for not getting too excited. Here's your roster below: C - Contreras $8m 1B - Rivas $600k 2B - Madrigal $600k 3B - Escobar $10m (based on one Brewers blog I wrote, that's the high end) SS - Taylor $14m (Zobrist contract, saw a couple comparisons) OF - Conforto $20m (says he's a lock to accept the QO, so let's just guess a little higher) OF - Happ $6m OF - Rosario $15m (total guess) C - Chirinos $1m UT - Hoerner $600k IF - Wisdom $600k IF - Schwindel $600k IF - Bote $2.5m That's $79.5m. Heyward at an almost complete loss gets you to $100m. Hendricks $14m Mills/Wick/Adam/Heuer/Azlolay/pick 5 other bullpen dudes $600k each, $6m You think we should be looking at $50m to fill out the rotation?

Did Tom Ricketts write that post

It's not "giving up", but it's admitting that you have pushed the idea of a competitive team back another year or two. Considering he only has one year left, 'or two' is not accurate. Or at least it's a different conversation where you can prove out a reasonable extension.

For the 'absolutely don't trade Willson' crowd, is there a reasonable extension you'd be happy with? He'll forever be a Cubs legend, but he's basically the Rizzo conversation again, except worse because he's a catcher who has repeatedly had the 'he's too worn down' conversations surrounding him. I can squint and see working with him enough to get to an adequate level of first base defense, hope more reps over there keeps his bat in the 120 wRC range, and run with some bizarre Schwindel/Rivas/Contreras/second division starter rotation at 1B/C. But if that's the case, I want to see KB and Correa or Seager on the left side of the infield.

As we have seen, that's much easier said than done. It's stupidity draped in 3-dimensional chess. 19 teams managed it last year, the Cubs were not one of them.

No problem with them feeling out the market for someone with one year left before free agency, especially when that guy is a 30 year old catcher who has been used very heavily when healthy for the last 5 years. Fair amount of teams facing 40 man roster crunches, and as much as we all love Willy, the difference between him and a couple stiffs who can throw together a 1.5 fWAR isn't going to make or break the season.

not to mention that they have a tv station that they cant afford to completely cripple with a long tank + rebuild, unsustainably high (much higher than what they were in 2011-14 when they also had the good will of people buying in to the theo rebuild) ticket prices that nobody will pay to watch a rebuild (and a season ticket base that isn't just going to stick around in hopes of getting to see that first world series like they might have in the past), and just flat out the fact that the landscape has changed - hoyer himself has said the sign and flip stuff they did back then would not fly today. all that said, horsefeathers ptr and his stupid horsefeathering letter. I believe the majority of the TV revenue comes from people who pay for it as part of their normal cable package, which was always the plan. Seeing rumors online that season ticket prices will drop a very small amount, which, combined with the 6 digit waiting list and your standard stream of Chicago tourists, will be more than enough to keep ticket revenue high. I can see there being some pressure just in terms of keeping the surrounding area lively, but it's pretty much a locked in cash cow at this point.

Maybe as well start googling '2021 version of Scott Feldman'

I just read this about check swing calls in MLB: So if true the angle that we're talking about is technically not the determination of a swing Yeah and I think you need to change the rule. The NCAA has it as a certain point/line. It might mean hitters need to change their approach, but would still be better than the current set up.

Small picture, Flores was 0/18 with 9 Ks going into that AB against Scherzer, and definitely looked like it. Big picture, adopt the NCAA rule which actually puts a line (believe front of the plate or the batters front hip) and figure out some way to automate it. Shouldn't be too hard to throw a camera in every dugout that can get the angle right.

Flaherty for La Russa. Do it.

This is simultaneously extremely fun to watch and profoundly unfair that an essentially 6 month battle for being the best team in baseball will come down to a few innings (and infield singles like that) to earn the right to enter two more slightly weighted coin flips.

Has there been any talk about extending the blue line past O'Hare (or making like a Yellow Line type extension) if the Bears end up out there? Would think with enough lead time you could follow 90 and get pretty close, but I also understand being weary of building out public transportation in a remote work heavy world.

Liam Hendricks is 31 years old and signed for 3 more years, and isn't chasing down any save milestones or anything like that. Turn him into your 6th-8th inning fireman, let Kimbrel close if you don't find a good deal for him.

But doesn't the 'actuarial reality' come for every team? By that logic, won't the Astros be worse next year too? I get that pitching is more susceptible than offense, but this was still a 6th in offensive fWAR, 3rd in wRC team with every major piece coming back next year. I don't see why regression is a White Sox unique concept, and so if you set that aside, the core they have (Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Anderson, Vaughn, Sheets, Gio, Cease, Kopech, plus the guys in their 30s), don't need to improve much on 6th best offensive team, best pitching (by fWAR) team to have as good a chance as anyone the next couple years. Yes, but they needed a 2016 Cubs level of good outcomes to be the 7th best team in MLB(beating 9th by a game), and they don't have the financial resources of many of those teams to stay there nor the farm system(Fangraphs has the Sox system as 30th by a non-trivial margin) to keep up on that axis. And again, the implication isn't that the Sox are doomed, I like lots of their players and I'd be surprised if they don't have multiple other playoff appearances in the next 3-5 years. But in terms of the probability of winning a championship, I don't think those teams will be as strong as this year, similar to how the 2017-2020 Cubs turned out to not be as strong as 2016. But they didn't get the 2016 Cubs level of good outcomes right? Their team, by advanced statistics (total fWAR), was the best team in the AL this year, and 3rd overall. And then they lost to a 'worse' team. Maybe we're just splitting hairs on percentages (and maybe I'm just bored at work), but just replicating their level of play should give them as good a shot as any non-Dodgers team next year, and I think the room for improvement at least comes close to balancing out the expected step backs. Essentially, I don't think this is a 'the playoffs are a different animal and they don't have the resources to take the next step' situation as much as it's a 'the playoffs are a crapshoot and once you get to 8 teams you probably have between a 10% and 15% chance of winning it all, thank god the Cubs won one of their dice rolls' situation.

They can definitely be the 2015 Cubs or 2015 Astros, but as I mentioned in my last post, I don't think they are set up as well for the future as they hope they are. The 2015 Astros still had 4 top 100 prospects, the Cubs still had 5 (not including Eloy who didn't make it). The Sox have 0, and doing a quick google search saw one site rank their farm system 29th after this year's draft. Their payroll is already pretty high, though I don't think they have any Heyward like contracts so they have some maneuverability there. Their window is right now and maybe the next 2 years unless they hit on a high percentage of their moves, which they could. Like I was saying a few pages ago, the easy part is accumulating talent during a 4+ stretch of tanking. Expectations are low, you can afford to take risks, you have extra draft and IFA capital. The hard part begins now when you have the good team but need to not only make it better, but sustainable. Based on the state of their farm system, I'm not sure how sustainable it is. We'll see...I like their team overall. Also I think the Tigers are the sleeping giants there. They have a top 5 farm system, a ton of money to spend and had an unexpectedly decent year. Fair points on the future help in the pipeline. Some of that is timing/qualification based, because at this point their future help depends a lot on Sheets, Vaughn, Burger developing and Kopech/Crochet taking off rotation spots, but not much in the pipeline after that. I just don't see a team that needs to get better, and I think they're pretty set up to maintain this level for a couple years at least, assuming they are comfortable with the arbitration costs continuing to rise.