biggentleben

I just can't see him doing it right now. The guys I talk with in the Braves organization talk about how distant he's become in the clubhouse. It's about the worst kept secret among those in the game that he wants badly to be a Yankee.

I doubt he misses out on free agency for anything short of being the first $400M man.

AJ really surprised me with how "anti" that reputation he was last year in Atlanta. He did all the right things, which is why they brought him back.

It depends on where you look, though. Jim Johnson signed back with the Braves for $2.5M.

$11M for his performance is really not bad at all when you look at what the going rate in the market is. It's the off field stuff that makes him untradeable and laughable when the Nats acquired him in the first place, creating a rift with their closer they already had on board, a huge issue in the clubhouse between players and management that Dusty Baker sure isn't going to change, and bringing in a guy who'd sparked multiple dust ups with his new teammates as division rivals over the previous few years. Matt Williams and Nats' management did many things to ensure that Strasburg and Harper will extend their careers elsewhere upon reaching free agency, but this is definitely a prominent nail in that coffin, especially with Harper.

The $7M wasn't surprising, it's the 3 years on Madson that's really shocking with him.

That was one heck of a football game. My brother was there as an Iowa alum, and he's just torn up after that 22-play, 9-minute drive. Makes things open up now for the #4 slot in the playoff.

Helps when you quote what you're talking about.

I would think this puts them either 1) hard into the Johnny Cueto sweepstakes, or 2) hard into the Shelby Miller trading.

So, here's an honest question. Would you make a special effort to attend a game in 2017 if Alex Rodriguez made it known before the season that he would not seek another contract after that season's deal ran out? His 2015 garnered a lot of good will for him in the game, but I'm just curious where he fell in the "retirement tour" spectrum.

Can you show a past history of violence and proclivity to behavior that would make gun ownership an issue? Of course. However, that behavior is as likely to come from someone with a mental illness as someone without one. As far as I see it, it'd be akin to getting a loan. You wouldn't give a loan to someone who had no income and no assets, and that wouldn't matter who the person was if that was their financial situation.

No, that'd be discrimination. So far no law has reached the US Supreme Court on the issue, but states have quickly changed their laws in the face of lawsuits from mentally ill on discrimination. You absolutely cannot assume someone mentally ill is incapable of safely owning and securing a firearm any more than someone who has no illness. Any law identifying a specific illness is just asking to bankrupt the state that passed it.

That is not the point. Politics and parties should never, ever inhibit making laws that can better society, but that's not the case in America, sadly. We're faced with bought and paid for politicians, not people who actually care for the betterment of the country. All of these issues we lament - this is where the issue truly lies.

That's what's absolutely despicable. Reasonable gun control should not require compromise. That should be one of those things that there is near-unanimous support on, but Republicans have their NRA boxers on and no way it'd get out of the House because of that.

So you believe Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn wanted extra dollars and were overrated? These "tours" have been going on for a while, but they get a ton more press now, and we've been tremendously inundated with the last few because they've been Yankees and now Kobe. How much did you really hear about Chipper Jones' farewell tour? He played 125 games in his next-to-last year and hit .275/.344/.470 while playing league average defense at 39 years old, but he just knew he wasn't going to seek another contract after his expired the next season, and he let the Braves know to start seeking a replacement. Outside of maybe his stop in New York against the Mets, I don't recall ESPN featuring any of his stops on his "tour". The Braves did a big thing for him, and he did have a presentation at every park along his final season, but it wasn't a big media deal like the last few have been. Guys like Jeter, Rivera, Chipper, and Kobe - love them or hate them, they're first ballot guys. David Ortiz announcing to his team that he's retiring shouldn't predicate a retirement tour, and I hope it doesn't, to be honest, but within the construct of that team, he's doing the team a significant favor by allowing them to plan their roster construction going forward. If a guy like LaTroy Hawkins announced his retirement before his final season, he really shouldn't be getting a "tour". However, a guy like Jeter, Rivera, and Chipper, I would make the extra effort to go watch them one last time if I knew it was my last chance to do so.

Yep. First, a closer, now an ace, next what?

I put this on my Facebook a few days back bragging him up as a fellow South Dakotan. Good on Doolittle.

I'll just throw this into the mix: As someone who works in the mental health field, I am 100% against any ban on weapon ownership by the mentally ill based on their diagnosis. If there is past behavior or indications of violence that make such a person a concern to own a weapon, then so be it, but to refuse a gun to someone based on a mental health diagnosis alone without basing it on the person beyond the diagnosis is flat out discrimination. I will support better scanning and testing and restrictions to gun ownership whole-heartedly, but checking a box that indicates schizophrenia should not automatically refuse you the opportunity to own a shotgun to go hunt deer (or pheasant or duck or whatever your choosing). In fact, that's the real issue I have with the gun culture in this country. There are some restrictions in place in various states and those states do disallow anyone with a diagnosed SPMI from owning any firearm, which would include a hunting weapon. However, I work with many whose best memories growing up were going hunting with friends and family before their illness took hold and they'd love nothing more than to go out to shoot birds. These same people go fishing constantly and enjoy the outdoors as much as anyone, but they're denied one large part of being an "outdoorsman (or woman)" because of a disease they were genetically "gifted", regardless of whether or not they are a legitimate concern to society by having a 12-gauge in their possession. The conversation on guns needs to move away from mental illness desperately. We have a gun issue in this country. We have a mental health issue in this country. On very, very rare occasions, they tragically intersect. Outside of that, they have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and beyond that, solutions should be sought for each independently, not assuming any change in the results of the other without significant independent change happening in that issue as well. If you change gun laws and expect that somehow to better the lives of mentally ill, well, just read that sentence, and you get the idiocy of that line of thinking. If you change mental health laws and assume that will change how the entirety of the country approaches guns, well, once again, read that sentence and you'll understand how odd that even sounds. They simply have nothing to do with one another outside of political rhetoric.

But is it anything the player does? A long-standing superstar announces before his last season that he'll be done. It can be viewed as incredibly unselfish if anything because it allows his team to prepare for life after rather than just leaving them high and dry. Many players didn't want it. Heck, Mariano spent his meeting the stadium workers and team employees, not VIPs, and I loved that.

The M&M boys in 61 were an easy pair along with Ruth. I'd watched a thing on Gonzalez recently, so I remembered him, but the guy I mentioned was Lou Gehrig who had 49 twice as a champ.

I just had a discussion on the guy who you guys are likely citing as the fourth guy on the list or I'd have missed him. I guessed one other one that surprised me didn't make the list, but then I noted he had 49 twice when winning a World Series, which is a pretty good trivia question all its own.

As a fan of a team that's faced Zimmermann frequently, I wish you the best of luck. I have a feeling your opinion will change soon.

Zimmermann may not be a 300-K guy, but he's a guy who strikes out 7.5 per 9, so he's not exactly a "high-contact" guy. He's a tremendous pitcher that is extremely under-appreciated.

I think Zimmermann will be a solid signing for Detroit. Not a bad price, really, at $22M per.

I just about fell out of my chair when Rosario Dawson showed up. Great series.