Nine of twelve

Yes. On a major league team the player who is the least skilled at fielding almost always plays LF. (See Young, Delmon and Willingham, Josh.) If the player has a strong arm then RF is OK.

Thanks for this reminder. Now that I'm retired it will be much easier to get to day games. I am now in possession of tickets for the home opener!

I agree that locking up good young talent early in the process is the best thing for a team to do. The key is to success in this specific matter is the same thing that is the key to success in general: accurate player evaluation (in other words scouting) and effective player development. Do those things well and you'll have a continuous pipeline of emerging stars with little to no need for free agents.

I still think a standard uniform strike zone in professional baseball is the way to go once an automated system is in use from the major leagues all the way down through rookie ball. I certainly realize that this position is not universally held and never will be but I have enjoyed the spirited discussion and I want to thank everyone who participated.

Point well taken, although I think any baseball player capable of playing professional baseball will have the ability to adapt to a different zone.

If you are going to bring up the topic of rules no longer in effect you should at least be complete. From the rules of that time: "Should the pitcher repeatedly fail to deliver to the striker fair balls, for the apparent purpose of delaying the game, or for any other cause, the umpire, after warning him, shall call one ball, and if the pitcher persists in such action, two and three balls; when three balls shall have been called, the striker shall be entitled to the first base; and should any base be occupied at that time, each player occupying them shall be entitled to one base without being put out." Batters decided if pitches were too high or too low. A ball was called after the third unfair pitch, meaning that 9 "unhittable" pitches were required for a base on balls. It's easy to see why the rules that you cite were scrapped. It's interesting to read about this from a historical perspective but that game is quite literally not the same game as modern baseball and that renders the rules of that era irrelevant for this discussion.

You don't have to be 270 pounds to play football. You don't have to be 7 feet tall to play basketball.

And by the way, I don't like that we can't delete our own posts.😡

I didn't assert that. I did assert that baseball is the only major sport that I know of that has a field of play that varies depending on the size of the player. I merely used examples from other sports showing that the field of play does not vary depending on the size of the player in those sports. I did exactly this, and in my 3-paragraph post of about 8 hours ago I explained why the strike zone is defined in the way it currently exists. The burden of proof is on you to show that this is true, which I don't think is the case.

That's something that should be very easy to verify.

Oh, well I guess that definitively answers my question.

The height of a basketball hoop is not adjusted depending on the height of the shooter. The size of a soccer goal is not adjusted depending on the height of the keeper. The distance of a footrace is not adjusted depending on the leg length of the runner. The size of a football is not adjusted depending on the size of the quarterback's hand. Etc, etc, etc. Why should the strike zone change depending on the size of the batter? As I said before, the top and bottom of the strike zone were defined as they are for the sole reason that the parts of a batter's body were the only landmarks an umpire could use to determine the top and bottom of the strike zone. It's not 1880 any more.

A point well taken, but the strike zone can be and has been adjusted from time to time over the years anyway. I guess my point is there would be a large improvement in consistency from pitch to pitch and from game to game within the season. And in fact it would not surprise me if the zone is adjusted at some point during the first years after ABS is adopted depending on how this improvement affects the game.

Everyone knows that if (actually when) this change is made it will take time for everyone involved, especially pitchers and batters, to adjust. That doesn't make the change a bad thing. In fact, IMHO a consistent strike zone, no matter how it is defined, would be a good and much-needed change. And I don't see any way to be consistent unless the strike zone is precisely defined. The current definition of the strike zone, with it being different for each batter, was put in place only because at the time the rule was written there was no technology available to determine the position of the ball as a pitch passed over home plate. The only landmarks an umpire could use were home plate and the batter's body. That is far from ideal because each batter varies in size and stance, because a knee is several inches in height, and because armpits are difficult to see precisely, but it was all we had. Moreover, the human visual system is simply not capable of knowing precisely the position of a pitched ball, but again it's all we had. Today's technology allows us to know very precisely the distance from the ground to the pitched ball, as well as whether any part of the ball passes directly above any part of home plate. I would be interested to read how, in precise terms, people here think the strike zone should be defined. As for me, I would advocate for defining the strike zone in numerical terms. The width of home plate is fine, and I would also specify the top and bottom of the zone in terms of inches above home plate. I see no good (IMHO) reason that the zone should be different from one batter to another. In no other major team sport does the size and shape of the playing area vary from one player to another and again, I think it would improve accuracy, precision, and consistency of pitch calls.

What does it matter whether it's been done wrong for 150 years or 150 seconds? It's wrong either way.

Another way of putting it is that humans tend to go against the rules with their pitch calling. Why would we want that to continue if it can be eliminated? If your hypothesis regarding rounding the corners is verified your conclusion should be phrased differently. It's not that robo umps would be giving pitchers an advantage, it's that human umps are currently giving batters an advantage.

It's my understanding that contracts such as this are almost always insured. That means the insurance company would be assuming the financial risk in the event of a health-related problem affecting the player's performance. As such, it would seem to me that the underwriter would want to assess the risk before such a policy is put into effect. That's why I was wondering if insurance companies hire doctors to give independent opinions in such cases. Maybe Heezy is aware of whether this is done?

These two sentences from your opening post seem more than a bit contradictory to me. Also, you briefly mentioned his 2015 season, but you didn't include that he finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting despite playing only half a season. Both of these examples are what was hoped for, his "billing" as you termed it, at those stages in his career. While he certainly has regressed since 2019, saying that he never lived up to his billing is simply not a true statement.

I'm not clear about this: exactly who engaged the services of the MD or MD's who provided the opinion used by the Giants and the Mets? Was it the teams themselves or was it the insurance company or companies who would be providing coverage for the contracts?

I think this is the primary reason the Twins were on Correa's short list. And notice that the Red Sox, who have the resources to offer a contract the size of Correa's deal with the Twins and who badly need a good shortstop, were obviously not on his list. I strongly suspect that Correa wanted nothing to do with playing for Alex Cora. Kudos to the FO and Baldelli; doing things the right way makes it more likely that you will be rewarded in the end.

And MLB will also figure that out and make corrections.

This. One of the arguments against implementing ABS has been that the systems aren't perfect yet. Well, guess what--they will never be perfect. However, they are significantly better at calling pitches than humans are and have been for many years. Moreover, continued improvement in ABS performance is not only possible but expected. By contrast, improvement in human performance is not possible and will never occur. The whole idea is to get calls correct as often as possible, not just balls and strikes but all calls. That way the outcome of the game is decided by the performance of the players, not by the performance of the umpires.

I don't think this is the case. If he truly didn't want to stay here he would not have signed a long-term contract.

Celestino is too young to give up on. Ideally a good team needs only 4 outfielders plus a utility player who can play the outfield (Gordon, in our case). Two should bat left, one of whom can play center field. Two should bat right, one of whom can play center field. I have hope that Celestino can be Buxton's RH batter counterpart in the next couple years.