ashbury

I think you answered your own question. All but the top prospects have minimal trade value, the next tier maybe are sweeteners in a trade for bigger names, and that value drops to zero as rule-5 eligibility approaches. Good players in an absolute sense, at least compared to the guys we knew in high school, but too many interchangeable parts to make it worth it to someone else to trade anything of value for them. Bundling up several doesn't help either - it just makes the other team's 40-man problems that much worse. Roster churn is hard to watch sometimes, but that's the business side of baseball.

And then there's Terry Crews in this interview. Interesting compare-and-contrast situation on multiple levels.

There's one about a mile from me. I make myself walk. Like you said, without gaining an ounce. That not being the case, I don't do it very often. And I do just the Little Burger and Little Fries. The regular size? I. Can't. Even.

Ish.

How was Palacios's defense this year? Is it a given he will stick at SS?

Five Guys, all the way.

Funny you should ask. I ran across it just this week via On-Demand, which has only season 2. I'm enjoying it. The actress who plays Janet, D'Arcy Carden, is a real find.

In addition to agreeing with Mike Sixel's hope that "my" team wouldn't do such a thing, I will observe that this is why they make you sign a contract in ink.

... for sufficiently large values of 2.

Officially it's an island surrounded by water, big water, ocean water.

I dunno, teams like the Yankees and Red Sox tout one-dimensional prospects and then trade them for established players. Call Felix Jorge undervalued, and then see if he can be a key piece in a swap for a high-end pitcher. Wait, they're two people?

As the Adopt-A-Prospect sponsor for Ben Rortvedt, I gotta stand up for my guy. I don't know if he'll eventually hit either*, but it's spelled Rortvedt, just like it's pronounced. *Actually I think he will.

There's an article on how the award came out, so I am closing this thread to further discussion.

It is always difficult to rate managers, but I like this choice. His disciplined management of the bullpen in the early weeks possibly made the difference in several wins.

I agree. We have a good young core, but they're not all that young anymore. A lot of the really top hitters in baseball history had monster years at age 25, and that's where our key talent is or will be soon. It's not impossible that 2018 is a small step backwards in terms of team record, but they'd better be really clicking in 2019 or this rebuild is going to be looking pretty questionable.

Some really nice photos, Seth. Are they yours? Did you get them to pose for you, as opposed to purely candid/action shots?

Yeah, even the above photos don't fully get across the mood in the ballpark because of the length of time involved. We know the medical procedure in such cases is very conservative, but it's not easy sitting through 15 minutes of two guys told to lie motionless and then one wheeled out. Your mind sifts through lots of scenarios.

Surprise Stadium has a radar readout, Peoria's park (Friday night) does not. I didn't take notes, but I don't remember any of our guys hitting 95 the way other organizations' prospects seemed to. Maybe Jay hit 93 once on Thursday, more like 91 or 92 most of his fastballs. I was hoping for better. You could ask Chief because he might recall something. (Insert "worse memory than Chief??? But he's OLD!!!" joke.)

You should do yourself a favor and give the Cape Cod League a whirl sometime, too.

I offer a brief writeup for the final game of my three-game Arizona Fall League visit, which the host Surprise Saguaros lost to the Peoria Javelinas 11-10 in disappointing fashion Saturday night. The headline from the game of course would be Lamont Wade's concussion injury from a collision in right-center field. I posted a few photos in reply to that thread, found here. He was injured in the top of the second inning, before having a turn at bat. I haven't talked too much about the other teams, but in this game Ronald Acuna launched 2 home runs for Peoria. The guy hasn't turned 20 yet - he's a huge prospect for Atlanta. Here he is: One thing about Acuna: he doesn't cheat himself when he swings. Chris Paul had a nice game. He went 2-for-4 including a triple, scoring both times and driving in 4. He was part of the big 7-run fourth inning, in which he was driven in by Nicky Lopez's grand slam. The Twins' other batter on the roster, Sean Miller, did not appear in this game. Given the 20-man pitching staff, it was questionable whether we would see any Twins pitchers, either, given that they all had pitched on Thursday. But Andrew Vasquez did come in, in the eighth, and unfortunately the results were not good. You'd think the big inning for Surprise would have put away the game, but no, pitchers for both teams were giving up rockets all over the place, and the bases were loaded with only a two-run lead by that point. Vasquez earned himself a Blown Save by surrendering a walk and then a hit batsman before getting that third out on strikes. The lefty was brought in to face a lefty - a classic LOOGY situation - so had he done his job the lead would have been protected. Very disappointing that he wouldn't throw strikes. A rude fan was heard saying "you had one job. ONE JOB!" Wait, that fan was me. Peoria pushed across another run in the top of the ninth, and Surprise went quietly with three strikeouts to end the game. A downer of an outcome. I still found the short vacation very satisfying - beautiful weather, and it's baseball! I close with a post-game photo of Chris Paul visiting with (apparently) a relative or family friend.

So says the US Air "Force Chief". signed, Ash bury-john

Not to be glib, but they lost their mojo shortly after Lincoln. Their brand of progressivism back then was highly tied to big business (transcontinental railroad for example), and it quickly corrupted them.