RandyMarsh

On the draft subject I mentioned this the other day but not sure you saw it but in a recent Keith Law chat he mentioned that the GM's rarely make any of the pics its usually made my the folks in the scouting and player development camp, how much truth to that is there? I imagine Keith would know better than anybody since he worked in that field but I just wasn't sure if it is like that for every team.

I know we went through this discussion heavily with Maton before he was sent down but I haven't heard as much chatter about it with McKinstry, is it time now that he gets moved down in the order? He has been absolutely brutal at the plate since the end of May.

Totally looks like he could be a cop from Texas or something that solely patrols the roads on a motorcycle.

It kinda sucks that we play Minny in a 4 game series shortly after the trade deadline, it would be nice if that was before it cause the outcome of that could really tell whether he have a legit shot of winning this horrible division or not.

I imagine it's like that for the vast majority of all draft picks right?

Yeah speaking of O/U I saw somewhere last week that OKC was 42.5, considering they won 40 games last year and in theory only get better considering how young their roster was and Chet being back I thought that was pretty low. It may take some best case scenarios but I would not be surprised at all if they managed to win 50 or so games.

As somebody that has been playing golf since they were 8 years old if I ever get a hole in one I think I would react similarly but would probably get winded half way to the hole. lol

I'm not confident enough to place anything significant on it but I think they will beat that assuming we get the Cade from the 2nd half of his rookie year. Personally I think they're going to be more in the low 30s with potential to be a little more if guys like Ivey and Duren take steps forward and if Monty actually proves to be an upgrade over Casey.

Looking at the numbers for Lorenzen and Kirby and I couldn't help but notice that combined they have only given up 30 walks all year in like 200 innings, feels like Lange has given up that much in his last handful of appearances.

That is pretty wild, on a side note it made me go to both their bref pages out of curiosity and I forgot how good Prince was offensively for us in 2012. For some reason my memory always seemed to think that he was disappointing that year but the numbers say otherwise.

Why was Fenech blackballed? My vague recollection remembers some controversy about a Verlander injury or something from a reporter, was that him?

I saw somebody on twitter post their results and they got 9/9 with a score of 17. That is crazy! I was killed by my Edwin Encarnacion answer for the middle square which I think was 40 some percent but even if I nailed that one I still would've only been in the 40s despite having a few under 1% answers.

Yeah Whitmore has looked really good but even if he carries it over to the regular season I think it is going to take time before people can question the teams for passing on him since the concerns they reportedly had aren't something that necessarily are going to show up right away. Like the vague medical reports about his knees, teams may have seen something there that made them of the belief that either an injury is coming soon or more likely to happen at some time in the future. Same with his alleged motivational issues teams felt he had during workouts. That could be something that shows up later in time.

Any "analysis" she usually provides are of the vague "great makeup" or "easy guy to root for" type variety. I never actually see her provide any real substance.

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised with it, my Tram pick for .300 avg season and HOF really helped me, I may have actually been the only person that picked it cause it was .01%. My only bad pick was the Reds/Jays player, I of course ended up picking the most popular answer.

BA updated it's top 100, Keith at 21, Clark 22 and Jobe at 69. I don't think Jobe was ranked preseason so they must be buying the stuff he has shown post injury.

Against Javy I'm sure he could.

While I certainly don't think the Lions are the best team in the NFC I don't think it's egregious to pick them to go to the Super Bowl particularly if you factor in the division they play in. Like you may feel that in a vacuum the Eagles are the better team than the Lions but given the Eagles play in a tougher division you may feel more confidently that the Lions will win their division and in turn have a better chance at the 1 seed, 1st rd bye and HFA. In that case the Lions would only have to win 2 home games to get to the SB vs. say the Eagles, Cowboys or Niners having to win 3 including atleast 1 road game. That difference could be enough for you to feel more confident in them than those 3 even if you feel that as a whole they are better teams.

I'm not really good at comparing a specific player to another in regards to their actual play style but I do like to compare how guys may turn out in the grand scheme of things as a whole. For instance when we drafted Cade I compared him to possibly being a Middleton like player as his floor, I didn't mean that they played the same way I was just referencing the fact that at the very least I felt he should turn out to be a fringe All Star type guy who could be a solid number 2 or number 3 on a good team at the very least.

I know PEDs certainly didn't hurt him and I know there are many benefits to them but I just question how much they really could've helped somebody like him. By that I mean you often hear the narrative that PEDs turn potential long fly outs into HRs but Bonds' HRs weren't wall scrapers, I recently watched a sped up video of all his HRs and I believe I counted 10 post 2000 that I would describe as "wall scrapers" or balls that landed within the first few rows behind the fence. The overwhelming majority were 420+ hit half way up the stands that atleast theoretically would've been gone even if you took some bat speed away.

Brandon Inge could hold a baker's dozen and hit a golf ball 300 yards while doing so.

Don't want to go on a side bar about Bonds and the legitimacy of his records but one thing that I think doesn't get talked about enough about his numbers skyrocketing late in his career is him introducing the armored elbow pad. Once he switched to armored one he started crowding the plate more which in turn allowed him to choke up on the bat even more giving him even more control over it along with just being able to cover more of the strike zone. Of course that isn't the sole reason for his insane numbers, there also was rapid expansion, PEDs and most importantly God given talent but I do think it helped him more than people realize or talk about.

That pic makes me think of this Joel Embiid tweet from years ago, even though it's like 7 years old it has always stayed in my memories.

Agreed about the peers part, also it's all in your mindset but to me I always put more emphasis on peak vs. longevity. I often go back to Johan Santana, he was off the ballot after his first year where as personally I would've strongly considered voting him in, certainly shouldve gotten more support than he did. My reasoning is that for a 7 year stretch he was probably considered a top 3 pitcher in baseball and for a few of those years he was seen as the very best. In my eyes if you are viewed as the very best pitcher on the planet for that amount of time you should at the very least be right on the cusp of the Hall of Fame especially since his career was cut short due to injury, it's not like he was elite for 7 years then was complete trash for a decade.

Freehan was before my time but looking over his resume I really don't get why he didn't make the Hall. I mean he was an All Star for 10 straight seasons so I imagine he was always looked at as one of the 2 or 3 best at his position for over decade right? You would think that would've been enough to get him but since this all happened before I was born I have no idea how he was viewed by the National media or what they really paid attention to when they were voting on the HOF. Lou on the other hand I can kinda understand cause while certainly deserving the things he excelled at weren't really appreciated as much when he was up for the Hall, like if he retired 10 years later I think it's almost certain he would've gotten in.