biggentleben

Nevermind the outfield market held up by the trade market. They guys who were willing to "settle" early for less than what they were projected for got solid money compared to the rumored deals for these guys who had to wait while Heyward, Upton, Cespedes, and others were traded around the league.

Aoki stated in an interview that he rejected larger offers because he wanted the chance to win and play, and San Fran was the best combination of the two. Sounds like my Braves were one of the teams offering more, but I can't fault him for going to the Giants if he wants to win in the next two seasons.

Moving Soler was a brutal decision, but I read a report on him following 2013 that discussed a lot of his body actions and how they were going to mean him missing a lot of games. The same place after 2014 says all those same actions are presented, he just had a rare healthy year, so his numbers look great, as they likely always will when he's on the field. Segura I think is somewhere between 2013 and 2014, and Norris is arguably the best lefty in the game and has already hit AAA this early in his career. I figured I'd take that move all day. I had two solid trade offers and chose the Norris one over other ones because he's closer to the majors and still has that elite level talent

I enjoyed the trade I just made. Soler for Segura and Daniel Norris. What did you guys think?

So, I did the research after my last post. In their entire franchise history, the Timberwolves have made three picks where there wasn't a player with more career win shares picked after their pick (and I'm including every second round pick as well), and two of those were Ty Lawson and Trevor Booker, who they immediately traded. In doing this, I'd forgotten about this pick, but how good would Donatas Motiejunas look on this team right now, or ANY of the players acquired when they traded him away? They moved Flynn and Motiejunas along with a pick for Brad Miller, Nikola Mirotic, Chandler Parsons, and a 1st rounder. Unbelievable how poor their luck/development/scouting has been over the years, but this move is a great example. Parsons or Mirotic would easily be starting on this team, but they were both traded as well.

You can be upset about the draft position or maximize the position you have. The Timberwolves may have the worst overall drafting of any team since they entered the league. Yes, hindsight is 20/20, but you would think once, just once, they would get the best possible player at their position in the draft.

And, frankly, involving ourselves as a country is what caused the terrorism to come to our homeland in the first place. It's the biggest complaint I've heard from friends who were raised or lived abroad. The US has a reputation of seeing themselves as the caretaker for the world, and much of the world laments that role.

He basically replaces the lost Luke Gregerson in their bullpen, which was quite good last year.

The Oakland A's have swapped recently-acquired Yunel Escobar and reliever Tyler Clippard with the Nationals. I guess they were okay with Semien at short, then?

It's all subjective. I agree that Fried is the best guy acquired so far, but the rumor is that there's a fourth player that is still being negotiated, but will reportedly be another top-100 type of guy. The heavy rumor is Domingo Santana. Add him to the mix, and it's a tremendous haul. The biggest issue for the Braves is the lack of major league caliber return in their offseason deals. I'd not put the Braves 5 on a top system list, but they have a pretty good argument about #8.

Bark, my office mates just looked at me quizzically wondering why I busted out laughing for no reason. Thanks for that!

This was rather a foregone conclusion when the team over and over discussed their emphasis on defense up the middle. Gattis outside of catcher is a scary proposition to an NL team. I do believe he could have a 40 homer bat with the DH to keep down the wear and tear on his body plus a manager smart enough to play him two days in a row. I will miss the great story around Gattis, but I just have a bad feeling that he'll have a very quick decline as he already has "old man skills" as they say. The return I would consider on par or even better than Justin Upton's return, and Upton was an MVP candidate last season. The Braves have gone from a bottom 5-10 system to a top 5-10 system in one offseason with a lot of money in hand to pursue Yoan Moncada as well.

Yeah, they're also now limited for two years in international signings, just like what whomever signs Moncada will have.

Jamey Carroll was named to the front office of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Based on recent former Twin history in Pittsburgh, he will now become the greatest GM in the game.

Diamondbacks sign highly-regarded Cuban pitcher Yoan Lopez, only needing an $8.27M bonus to get the deal done. Ned Yost gets a contract extension, but only for one year. The Dodgers re-signed A.J. Ellis ...and lastly, in one that involves my favorite team but is rather odd, Wandy Rodriguez reportedly fails his physical with Philadelphia and signs a minor-league deal with the Braves, who promptly state that his surgically-repaired knee shows nothing outside of what would be expected from a knee post-surgery.

I will say that I am very much a religious person, even having pursued a life in ministry before I ran into some lovely church politics, but I have been a registered independent my entire life, and I have actively assisted in campaigns for third-party candidates going back to my college days (sadly, I have to admit that I helped get Jesse elected). I think that's part of the issue going on. If you're part of some churches but hold different political ideologies, you're seen as outcast, and I've experienced similar issues with Athiests shunning those who were Bush supporters not all that long ago, so it's not just churched who push a political side, but also unchurched as well. All that said, I think your last line is the key to this entire thread. The bumper sticker quality quote attributed to Gandhi reads, "Be the change you want to see in the world." While he never actually said that quote, it does ring true, as does the true quote where that summation comes from: "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do." That is where we should focus our energy. I really dislike listening to someone who did not vote or did not engage himself/herself in the process complain about what's going on in the world and still not being inspired to do anything to affect the issues they have with what is going on in the world. Volunteer, donate (wisely, not just haphazard), and engage yourself in your world in a way that allows the changes you'd like to see to begin coming through.

1. That was an exaggeration, and in certain poor taste in this thread. For that, I do apologize. It is a good example of how the human condition longs for belonging and justice both. Sometimes folks find that in religion, sometimes in other causes/areas of life, but always there is some motivation for fellowship and community. 2. I do think there's a very good reason. Religious following is far too easy to engage. Jonestown was began as a religious movement and the Nazi movement was utilized as a focused opposition to one religion. Because religion is always a very personal thing to people, which is why it is much more easily manipulated than even political leaning, at least in my experience. I have known many people who changed political ideologies in their lifetimes, but changing religious belief (even if you do change from one church to another) is something rarely done in a person's lifetime. 3. This I 100% agree with.

We've also seen in this country recently those who are inflamed and willing to die protesting due to injustice while others defend those being protested against with just as much fervor. I guess I was more stating that religion isn't the sole issue for the divides we are seeing in the world. Religion within the Jihad movement has been used as a crutch for those who dislike the influence of American culture and behaviors into their culture and want a reason to be able to respond with a vengeance. Religion within the Crusades was used as a crutch by those who wanted to conquer and expand in a similar manner to global expansion and domination that would follow in the Americas roughly 500 years later. Often religion is cited as a reason for hatred and discrimination that is in the heart of the individual and needs a reason to justify his/her hate. That said, there are certainly those who stand up front in a religious service and incense the people in attendance to violent action, but it's curious to me if that's the religion speaking or the heart of the person on the pulpit driving that behavior. Often one gets into a very chicken/egg argument on the core of where these issues truly begin.

Oh, absolutely. I don't think religion should be removed from the conversation as I believe the extremist issues pervade religion as strongly as any area of life. My argument is that you're finding more and more that religion ends up at extremes as much or more so than our political processes do. It's not the center issue as some have stated, but it's also not excluded from the conversation either.

I don't know that it can be solely honed even on religion, but religion certainly experiences it. It's very strongly about extremism that has ravaged the political landscape both home and abroad. There is no middle ground being sought in most countries. Extremists are the loudest voices, and frankly, they're the most persistent ones as well, drawing legions of followers as much due to volume as legitimacy. I've studied religions, and at their core, each seeks peace and tranquility, but extremists latch onto obscure passages and either turn them much too literally, rely on translations of original writings that are skewed in their translation, or completely ignore context in those passages to use them to justify terrible and horrible actions. Remember that slavery in this country was once staunchly defended by citing Biblical sources. Thankfully, the era of the elite only having access to things like scripture or higher learning has passed and many more people are able to acquire the knowledge to challenge these extremists beliefs, but they're simply being shouted over, again and again, to the point where they simply give up trying to educate those on the fringes and hope that they will scream themselves hoarse, akin to allowing a baby to cry itself to sleep rather than coddling it. The problem is that the extremist movement simply finds someone louder (and oftentimes utilizing even less educated rhetoric) to push itself further in our current worldwide political landscape.

Bobby Cox was the GM who built the team that started the run, and he was the one that orchestrated many of the biggest moves of the era, including trading for Fred McGriff and bringing in Andres Galarraga. Schuerholz basically was given reigns on only a couple drafts in the whole era, being told that Bobby's development team was who he would listen to in the draft. His first draft was his last one that he was given full reigns on, and he selected Mike Kelly instead of Bobby's development team favorites Doug Glanville and Manny Ramirez. That was the last draft he was allowed to pick his own guys without having Bobby and much of the scouting/development team in the room. Bobby lost some of that power when Ted Turner left, but Liberty Media brought him back in to a position of prominence when they removed Frank Wren this offseason after multiple people told them that Bobby was the driving force in developing the 90s teams, not Schuerholz. I won't even get into the blow up he did in Kansas City that was only finally recovered from recently.

Typically appropriate, but on this board, as I have experienced, it's banging your head against a wall.

I think I would take 25 current GMs over John Schuerholz. I think anyone giving him credit for the 90s Braves hasn't taken the time to really research how the team was built and run during that era.

Pretty much the response I was expecting. Thanks anyway.

Is there any way to put articles into a completely different section? I can already see that I'm going to be very frustrated by the GM series in the More Baseball area as it's already enough to sort through the Twins posts in that forum to review actual non-Twins baseball talk, and I personally don't have an interest in reading the posts. I understand it's a cross-promotion and all, but I can put an ad-block on my computer to deal with unwanted ads on the sides of the site yet can't get away from this promotional stuff, which will likely kick all other actual content off of the first page of that board in the very near future. I'm not trying to be negative Nelly, but there should be a way to allow a reader not to have to sift through articles of little to no interest just to get to the discussions that he/she is looking for.