RandyMarsh

I don't love the expanded playoffs idea but I don't hate it. Yeah there's a real possibility some 85-90 win team ends up winning the World Series but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to deal with in exchange for more teams and markets playing meaningful games down the stretch. Also short of going back to the days where there was just a World Series there is going to be a very real chance that the overall best team isn't going to win the championship regardless of the number of teams.

The problem is that it's not just the teams with more resources spending more on payroll it's how they can afford to spend in all departments. There's a reason that the Dodgers despite graduating a lot of young talent in recent years, dumping top prospects at the deadline for a top 3 starter in Scherzer and a top 10 overall player in Turner and picking at the end of the 1st round for 10 years still have arguably the best system or very least top 3 in baseball and that's because they can put so much more resources in things like scouting and analytics. Yeah there has been alot of parity in baseball but I think that's just due to the volatility of the game in general and not because of how it is currently constructed.

Agree, I'm not going to comment on the vaccine thing but I do think it's unfair to say he doesn't win. Yeah he's "only" won one SB but he has put the Packers in position to get there several times which they otherwise wouldn't have without him.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/picks-to-click-who-we-expect-to-make-the-2023-top-100/ Guys who they expect to make the jump to the top 100 next year. There's about 50 guys listed and 2 Tigers made the list, Ty Madden and Colt Keith. I would hope more than just those 2 make it but if that ends up being the case the Tigers will have 4 guys in the top 100 along with Jobe and Dingler(assuming they don't fall out) which I suppose wouldn't be that terrible considering the influx of top guys they graduated to the big leagues. Speaking of Keith, McCoskey says he has filled out big time and appears to be like 225lbs and appears to be heading to 3B like scouts figured. For the record by filled out I mean just matured and put on muscle weight not filled out in the Isaac Paredes way.

Assuming it runs in the Spring you may also want to look out for cities that have NBA, NHL and MLB teams since they are running the same time and competition for the fans entertainment dollar could be tough. Of course almost any major city has atleast one of them but perhaps you'd be best to stay away from any that may have 2 or 3.

Came across this on twitter. We probably still would've found a way to lose though.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2022-top-100-prospects/ Tork 5, Greene 6, Jobe 33 and Dingler 108.

It's crazy when I think about how young these kids are and try to compare it to what it would be like for me. Like with Santana being born in 2004, that means that Tram's prime was 15-20 years before he was born, that would be like a guy in the late 50s to early 60s to me. When I was 18 I'd probably have no idea who that hypothetical player was unless it was like Mantle, Mays, Aaron etc. No disrespect to Tram but I certainly wouldn't have known who an equivalent player to him was.

I love Skye Moore but no way I'm taking him with the Rams pick or our 2nd rounder which brings me to Justin Rogers of the News Mock. He has us taking David Bell from Purdue with the Rams pick and says "In this scenario the Lions miss out on all the number 1 WRs so they'll have to settle for Bell who should make a good number 2." See this is the strategy I hate. If the Lions miss out on all the guys they feel could be number 1 WRs don't just take the next best 1 cause you feel you need to take a WR there. It's not about the rankings of guys it's about the tiers, you don't reach for a guy on the same tier when you can get another one a round or two later.

I guess the point I was making with this is that while I totally side with the players as a fan if this scenario is commonplace with players it's hard to feel sorry for the ones that leave baseball without any money.

This was back in like 2008ish but my neighbor befriended a AAAA pitcher Roman Colon who he met out on the water in Lake St. Clair I guess. He pitched for a cup of coffee with the Tigers around that time, long story short he would show up routinely to my neighbors house in these high end cars, like there was a Aston Martin, Mercedes coupe convertible(not sure of the model) and Bentley, so one day I asked him who was driving these cars that were always at his house and he told me. Now I don't know his financial history or if he made money elsewhere but it caught me off guard cause I always assumed guys like that didn't make much money but I guess it doesn't take many MLB paychecks to accumulate some wealth.

Bummer, I mentioned this before but I remember back to those intra squad games in 2020, Hess was a guy that really impressed me, his stuff looked really electric and I even remember going as far as saying that I thought he was going to be a key piece in the backend of the bullpen that year in the bold predictions thread. Now here we are 2 years later and he's gonna be out atleast a year and a half.

I use "wordaily" and it must be really easy or something cause all my words have been pretty basic. Either that or I haven't played long enough to get to the tough words.

I don't use the official app I think. I just started playing last week and the app I use you can play as many games a day as you want. I was on a 51 game win streak before that.

Its not so much about what is fair its about what is best for the game. Most agree that there needs to be more balls in play and short if deadening the ball which it seems the league refuses to do the next option would be to make it easier for balls in play to be hits. Perhaps with more groundball singles or bloop hits that we saw pre shift we would see less of guys feeling the need to swing for the fences. And for those that say just go the opposite way and take the single, again that is easy in theory but extremely difficult in practice cause the pitchers pitch to the shift. They're not giving you pitches that you can take the other way with any sorta ease.

There's illegal defenses in other sportsso I have no problem if they did it in baseball. It can be as simple as you have to have atleast 3 guys on each side of the diamond. "The hit it where they ain't" approach is fine in theory but not easy to do unless you're Ted Williams or Tony Gwynn.

Gonna be a bad day for me then. My word was found. I had the nd after the 1st, then proceeded to guess sound, round, mound, pound and wound for the loss.

I guess we're just not allowed to have good things. A year ago we all thought and hoped Juwan was the second coming but things haven't been so rosy this year to say the least.

https://theathletic.com/3138898/2022/02/21/what-would-happen-if-baseball-killed-the-shift?source=user-shared-article Behind a paywall but interesting article about the shift. A crazy number I'll share from the article is in 2013 there were 6882 shifts over the season, last year there were over 59,000. Just insane how much it has gone up in less than 10 years. Joey Gallo had a good quote in there, to paraphrase it "How am I supposed to get a double or triple when there are 6 guys in the outfield?" He kinda has a point, it's no wonder guys swing for the fences nowadays.

How was Anibal's name supposed to be announced? I've heard it said like you described Scully, Ive heard it said like Hannibal Lecter without the H, Ive heard Uh-knee-ball and probably a couple others but I never got an official pronunciation.

About 15 years ago I was in a Red Robin eating and a freaking TV above me that must not have been anchored right fell right on my head and busted me open. I'm the type of person that hates being the center of attention so when everybody came over freaking out I just downplayed it and acted like nothing happened, they ended up paying for mine and my then girlfriends meals and that was fine with me. A few weeks go by and I'm getting these headaches and dizzy spells, now mind you I'm also epileptic so I see a neurologist regularly. I ask my neurologist about it during my regular visit and he asks did I suffer any head trauma recently and nothing came to mind until my GF who was in the room with me mentioned that TV incident which by then I forgot about it. My Doctor says he is certain I suffered a concussion, I again downplayed it but for about 5 years after that I suffered from post concussion syndrome where I would get these horrible headaches, sensitivity to light, dizzy spells etc. Long story short I regret not making a bigger deal out of it from the start, I fortunately had top of the line insurance so nothing costed me anything but my life did suffer for the better part of 5 years cause of it.

Soto is 5th all time in OPS+ among players at his age only trailing Ted Williams, Mike Trout, Stan Musial and Ty Cobb. All 4 of those guys got even better after that so there's no reason to think Soto won't as well. I think he has a real chance of being the first 500 million dollar player when he hits FA at 26 he is just that special of player and hitter.

India was the 5th pick in the Mize draft and just won ROY, Kelenic 6th and after his rocky call up he appeared to look like a legit bat going forward, Madigral has looked good, Bart is a top 20 prospect in baseball, Grayson Rodriguez is top 5 so even without Mize there's a good chance we would have ended up with a really good player anywhere in the top 10ish range and right now any one of them could end up turning out to be the best in the class which is how it usually is in baseball.

Lunardi has them as one of the last 4 in now. Let's see if they can hold on to it.

Kiley McDaniel of ESPN has us at number 13 in his system rankings. He echoed what many people on here have said, to paraphrase "It'll be interesting to see how Avila and Co. Build the system now that they are competitive at the big league level cause almost anybody can hit on top 5 picks but now we will see if he can hit on picks that are later."