ashbury

Polanco and Kepler having success a good pitcher like Kluber? They're keepers.

Yeah, my question was just idle banter too, with no particular answer in mind. It's a question we should be thinking about, in the runup to the off-season.

I don't know any guys. But I know a guy who knows one.

Every physicist will tell you the ball travels better in a vacuum.

Kluber and Dean giving up an equal number of HR, as expected.

Most likely to take the bait, HitInAPinch.

Nifty play by Dozier. Does Polanco make that play, if he's the secondbaseman?

Clinically compulsive behavior takes many forms.

Yeah, what the hell can be wrong. Cleveland used to be a pretty good baseball town.

FTFY

No, this is a Zen Koan: The nephew of the famed Zen master Hakuin was an accomplished young musician. Quanhuo, named in honor of a wise Ch'an master, was trained in all eight of the tones: silk, bamboo, wood, stone, metal, clay, gourd and animal hide. His most outstanding talent was in playing the Se, the 25-stringed zither with movable bridges. His Se transcriptions of melodies from Zhu Zaiyu brought him renown, first in his own humble village and eventually throughout the province. When he was only a young man, he received an invitation from the emperor's palace, to come perform at the greatest concert hall in Beijing. Quanhuo felt this was an opportunity he could hardly pass up, as it was his chance for wealth for himself and for his family if he made a very good impression upon the royalty. He borrowed enough money to arrange travel to the capital city, with promises that he would pay his benefactors double when he made his fortune. On the appointed day, he arrived in the city. It was by far the largest place he had ever seen. When he reached the center of this overwhelming city, he approached a member of the military guard. "A thousand pardons. Please, how do I get to the famous concert hall on Bei Xin Hua Jie?" he asked. "Practice," said the officer, kindly. At that, Quanhuo was enlightened, and returned home at once to resume his musical studies. Unfortunately, his creditors found out about this stupid blunder, and learning that he had no more money they beat him to death, then came to his uncle seeking compensation. And at that, Hakuin was enlightened; he forsook further study and contemplation, and finally got a job. And at that, the game thread participants were enlightened.

You left out solid contributor twinssporto. How would you describe him?

Missed the sly sense of humor. Well played.

Murphy's probably the forgotten man here.

Suzuki gone in exchange for a low minor leaguer, Garver comes up in his absence. Suzuki DFA'ed and is released for the last 30 days, same 40-man effect as above, oh no no no, can't do that to bring Garver up. If they are more worried about the optics than what's good for the players, I'm bothered.

It's possible Smoltz is the reason these trades don't occur anymore and you have to go back to it to find one.

Moderator's note: I moved this thread to the Sports Bar forum area. There's nothing wrong with the discussion, it just has evolved as more a Sports Bar kind of thing.

Moderator's note: I have removed from view several posts that were no longer about the topic at hand and merely were sniping at other posters. Debunk and rebut what you think is incorrect, or move on.

Just to spell it out for any who don't know, all kinds of splits such as mentioned in this second post can be viewed here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=doziebr01&year=2016&t=b

I'm not sure your scenario of Molitor sticking it out another 30 games and then walking away is any different in this regard. / edit - in any case, firing Molitor at this stage is completely moot. Rob Antony is the acting GM and he would not have his boss's backing to make such a move.

True, but it's very possible for each player on a 25-man squad to think that he's OK, and that it's the other 24 who collectively need to get their act together. I'm not saying Molitor has fostered this attitude, merely that letting the team's record speak for itself to the players won't accomplish anything much at all.

Santana was signed to bridge us to the time when our young pitchers would be ready to step up. It is revolting to discover that Santana's services are still needed for 2017. I do not subscribe to the idea of simply trading off all established talent when doing a rebuild. Dozier is trade bait because we now seem to have a surplus at his position; that's not the case with ESan. Moreover, a 100-loss season isn't license to blow up the team - a 110-loss follow-on season will lead to even worse business fundamentals that will dog us for years. On the other hand... with care, ESan could be traded, if that trade were to be followed up by something else that redeploys those freed-up dollars. ESan to a contender who is willing to give up near-ready pitching talent that won't help them soon enough for their window of opportunity - and then we trade say a couple of corner outfield prospects, of a lower tier than Kepler, for somebody's 30-something starting pitcher to give them salary relief - this would have to be thought through but maybe would be a win-win for three teams. Difficult to pull off; a short bit of web browsing didn't turn up a candidate pitcher to target. I don't think you can simply redeploy ESan's money on the free agent market, which would be the other route to go after a trade, and get a starter as good as we have now, especially not without taking on additional years, a risk we have already weathered for the most part with ESan. It would be like extending ESan himself by another 2 years, and we have seen how well that has worked out with Hughes.

I think Gary would try to spin Flint as an example of when government isn't accountable to its citizens; the lead poisoning was a self-inflicted injury rather than some kind of Tragedy of the Commons that would undermine the Libertarian POV.

Dammit. This is the response I shoulda coulda woulda thought up when it counted: GCTF? I sold all their albums years ago. That band sucks. Lame posting now, I know.

I was planning not to read the entire thread. I figure I'll just get you to tell me the highlights.