Brock Beauchamp

Dunno, didn't pitchers and catchers report between Feb 15-20 most years? Has the date steadily moved forward the past few years? Feb 13 seems really early to me, though most teams are reporting between Feb 13-15 this year.

I understand the desire to field a veteran or two but that list is full of DO NOT WANT.

Actually, just three days away (Feb 13).

I'd certainly take the under on 81. I expect them to finish somewhere in the 70s. The low 70s if things kinda go bad, the high 70s if things kinda go right.

Absolutely, and I heartily endorse that decision. My point is that if a team wasn't willing to bump Carter's one-year deal to, say, $4m... Then why on earth would they claim Park? If Carter went for $7m, maybe some cheap team out there takes a flyer on Park. But not at $3.5m. That's Park's salary for one season.

Once Carter went for $3.5m, I think that gave an overwhelming indication what the market thinks of middling DH bats. Would you take Carter for 1/$3.5m or Park for 3/$9m? I'd take Carter all day long. Not even a moment's hesitation.

Maybe, just maybe, Falvey and Levine know more about the baseball market than we do.

Then why do you care if it's gone? The IBB isn't a baseball skill. It's a game strategy that removes the actual skill from the game (ie. pitching to a batter). I care about this the same way I care if the NFL were to remove the kneel down and automate it.

Agree fully. I don't care to watch a pitcher throw four pitches to walk someone, even if .01% of the time it results in ridiculousness. I'll sacrifice a bit of hilarity for the 99.99% of the time the intentional walk just wastes time.

Where do you think you are? Last month, we literally had a 50 page argument over the definition of "junk".

Range Factor doesn't account for shifting, does it? Unless they changed it recently, I'm pretty sure it doesn't adjust for shifting. The same goes for UZR, I believe. It's hard to put much weight in either statistic at that point, particularly in small numbers and for infielders who shift more frequently than their outfield counterparts.

No one will claim Joe Mauer. That means you pay him $23m to play for the Twins or you pay him $23m to not play for the Twins. Those are your two options.

I'm not familiar with that character, though that doesn't mean he doesn't exist.

It's not a bad bet. I don't see Disney dropping much unless the entire market drops with it.

I got into Disney around $100 as a safe bet stock. I wouldn't be in a rush to pick them up at $109. Upside: - Marvel and Star Wars are printing money - The acquisition of MLBAM was a smart one Downside: - ESPN will continue to be marginalized and ABC isn't going to light the world on fire - Marvel printing money won't last forever, the market is saturating I consider Disney a light growth stock overall. Maybe it beats the market a bit but it won't outpace the market, IMO.

Yeah, that's a little over half what I was expecting. It shows what the market thinks about DH bats right now. If there's anyone out there desperate for a bat but (inexplicably) wouldn't give Carter $4.5m, I guess someone might pick up Park. But I consider that unlikely after Carter's contract.

Fair enough, that's true.

I don't buy into this line of thought, as it's predicated on the idea that pitch framing involves tricking the umpire. It doesn't. Pitch framing isn't only about turning a negative into a positive, it's also about keeping a positive a positive. Pitch framing is as much about convincing the umpire a strike is a strike as it is convincing an umpire a ball is a strike.

I'm not worried about it, really. Any failing of Stranger Things will be due to the writers not having good ideas. There isn't a technical limitation to writing a second season, such as "Everyone's favorite character is a time traveler who breaks everything so we have to write him into feudal Japan because we don't know what else to do with him. The audience will love that story." As a long-time comic book reader and fan, I saw the problems with Heroes as they sprang up in the first season because I've seen comics fail and fail again using those same ideas. Time traveling does not work in an ensemble cast unless everyone else is also a time traveler. Characters who can steal/take/whatever superpowers only work when they're the villain and that villain needs to die/go away. It has to be the story arc of the series because that power in untenable in a hero. Basically, Heroes was a comic book show that felt like it was written by a person who never read any comic books. Those problems weren't new; all one has to do is look at the raging cluster**** that became the Clairemont X-universe to see why one shouldn't play with time traveling on a whim. It breaks everything. That's why good time traveling stories tend to fall into three categories: 1. The audience follows the time traveler exclusively, which allows the writers to ignore just how ridiculous time traveling is and how it really doesn't work if you think about it too much. Doctor Who is a good example of this type of story. 2. A limited story with a clear conclusion. That way if there are larger, over-arching problems that can't be resolved, you get the hell out and, again, don't let the audience think about it too hard. Looper is a good example of this story. 3. You remove the ability to time travel, using it as a story delivery mechanism but only access it from an outside perspective after that point, a kind of deus ex machina. The Netflix show Travelers works in this fashion. Teleportation barely works in storytelling, much less time travel. Look at Star Trek: they have to write the transporters out of 20%-ish of the episodes because it's so easy for teleportation to break a conventional story. So much atmospheric interference in Star Trek. It's amazing everyone isn't dead because the transporters are so bloody unreliable.

Dunno, it's very possible. Though I'd argue any failing of Stranger Things would be more along the lines of True Detective than Heroes. True Detective had a fantastic idea for the first season and they simply couldn't repeat that quality on a tight schedule for a second season. It took seven years to pen the first season of True Detective, there was no way the writer could repeat that effort in six months. Heroes had multiple universe-breaking characters because the writers were lazy and went for flash over tempered longform content. All the **** they caught for the second season was deserved, as their own failures in the first season directly resulted in the second season.

I liked both Luke Cage and DD season two but, yeah, the second half of both seasons paled in comparison to the first half. I thought Cage really fell off a cliff. Elektra was meh and Diamondback was legitimately kinda terrible.

Having a hard time getting excited about Iron Fist. So tired of origin stories, particularly when half of them are the same thing over and over again.

Sometimes, you just have to let the child put their hand on the stove and learn a lesson. I only hope the house doesn't burn down before they learn said lesson.

I suspect yes. Maybe a 60% chance of a claim. Given that he can play multiple positions (badly) but is still quite young (age 26 season in 2017), I think there's a team out there that would put him on the 40-man with Spring Training just around the corner. Would he make it to the 25 man roster out of Spring Training? Probably not. But he's the type of guy a team might pick up on a lark just to invite him to camp.