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Not everybody can be Stephen Strasburgesque when they first come up. But then, look what happened to him. The hype machine is always histrionic, although it has seemed to kick up a notch of late. I'm sure there's a promotional/revenue component in there somewhere.

Really? You need to read more. 😉

And the strikeouts. Can't have a Quick Pitch clip show without strikeouts.

Maybe they will just push the quality down until we get used to it. 🤷‍♂️

I’m sorry, there’s no way a10-9 team can be 5-10 in their last 15. 💀 So, 5-9 in their last 14, and 4-8 in their last 12.

I couldn’t locate Matt Nokes’s plaque whe I visited Cooperstown a few years ago.

I’m pretty sure Harris understands that a team can’t build a consistent winner off 13 utility players, so I really doubt that is his long-term smartest-guy-in-the-room plan to win rings. I think we are still in the restructuring phase, and will be for another year or two, in which we are building toward a situation where we will have a team of stars, strong positional players, and versatile bench guys, along with ace, solid rotation, and solid bullpen. The rot was pretty deep when he came aboard, not just in players but in infrastructure, and there has to be equal amounts of investment on both sides to fashion a consistent winner. Based on players he inherited, out of which he has to determine who we can save and who we can dump, we seem to be closer on the pitching side than the positional side. If the hitting part is going to get fixed, it’s going to take another year or two, not another series or two. We simply don’t have all the horses we need to win with, and they will need to be acquired via draft, trade, or free agency. I think it’s becoming clearer, though, that this group of thirteen will not be the group we are going to ride or die with.

I think it’s more likely we are going to see more pitchers coming up (i.e., Next Man Up) then current relievers pitching more.

We may be playing competitively in the sense that we are hanging around in games, but we are 5-10 in our last 15, so, that definitely looks a lot like prior Aprils.

Says the guy who wrote an epistle in response to my one-sentence post! 😉💀 in any event I wasn’t suggesting that the democrats are puppet masters. Of course nobody is. But they could be trying in some small way to help drag the inevitable as close to election decision time as they can manage.

True, even if it was a short season.

Looks like I got here just in time for the good stuff!

Just got back from my half hour bike ride. Did I miss anything?

Fun Fact: among players who debuted before their 21st birthday, Ty Cobb and Willie Mays both had a lower OPS in their first ten career games, minimum 25 PA, than Tim Foli, Aurelio Rodriguez, Danny Ainge, Rene Lachemann, and Fernando Vanenzuela.

TBF, not many twenty-year-olds can get promoted to the big leagues and immediately rake. Even Willie Mays was reduced to tears in the first couple weeks of his big league career.

How convenient that Rendon owuld change his priorities after signing a 7/245 contract. Just sayin'.

I don't agree we can conclude it was a stunt promotion three weeks into the season.

Did he? I mean, it wouldn't shock me, but I didn't know that about him. Maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention.

I remember almost catching my first foul ball sitting in the front row on the first base side looking down the third base line. I could have spit on the home plate umpire from there. RHB hit a beeline right to me. Just as I was about to get my hands on it, a buddy of mine, who I treated to the game with tickets I got from my dad's work, reached over and snagged the ball from in front of me, then had the gall to giggle and laugh and say look dude I caught a ball! I mean, technically, it was fair game, I guess. But we didn't hang out much after that.

I'm not saying this is what's happening here, and that numerous women coordinated on a strategy to get Trevor Bauer, or anything like that. But I can see how, in an repulsive and compromising sexual situation that involves a famous party, the other party could be tempted to blackmail the famous party with exposure of the behavior not because it's criminal per se, but because it is so repulsive that people paying only headline attention to it would assume criminality, and a lot of famous people not named Trevor Bauer would cave to it. Again, I am not saying five different women did coordinate on this particular instance. They almost certainly did not. But I could see how one of the five might decide to go for that.

Well, yeah, there's that ... 😏 But I meant more like, I believe they are of a kind: guys who don't really want to play, but would like to leave baseball with all the money in hand and just go live the rest of their lives.

Plus, the other top projections in that draft were pitchers Asa Lacy and Max Meyer, and hitters Austin Martin and Zac Veen—any of whom would 100% have been Avila’s alternative to Tork, and none of whom are lighting it up either in the bigs or the bushes. Meyer is off to a decent start this year but his FIP is way higher than his stats. But any of those four would also have almost certainly been ruined in our system, especially the hitters. So considering all that, we probably still ended up with the best of the bunch, at least as of today.

Naw, I think we’ll be over it by 2050, 2060 at the latest.

Wyatt Langford raked at every level of the minors, and he has plus defense besides (grades out at 50 for fielding and arm), so the Rangers may have merely concluded that there’s nothing more he can learn at Round Rock and he’ll just have to work it out in Arlington.

I think of Eduardo Rodriguez and Anthony Rendon as being peas in a pod.