biggentleben

Greinke was never waiving anything for the Yankees. Diamondbacks talked with him Wednesday morning and assured him that they would not move him to a team that he would have to give permission to be traded to. That would have knocked out the Twins as well. The Astros and Braves were the two notable late negotiators as they were both on his no-trade, but the Braves dropped off when the Astros were willing to deal with the D-backs eating less than $30M of the deferred money on the deal. Those who want to put a Twins comp on this... Beer = Rooker Bukauskas/Martin = Duran and Gonalves OR Enlow and Thorpe Rojas = Blankenhorn or Jose Miranda The Astros system has seen a handful of arms graduate this year (Martin would have as well if not for TJS), so their depth was already significantly down, but now they're essentially two top-10/15 guys and then no one else in the top 150/200 of prospects.

Many have said what I would, essentially. I enjoy the fact that discussions here can incorporate opinions of difference (in general) without getting nasty. As the Twins are my second (and sometimes 3rd) team, this shuts down a significant portion of where I participate on the forum - at least actively.

'Tis the Braves 2019-2020 international season. I love reading trade proposals that include IFA money from the Braves. Tells me exactly which writers I shouldn't read again.

Josh Donaldson was another one. Players that are currently hurt are a big reason for the August 31 deadline in the past. We'll see if the one deadline is moved back.

...and this is why USMC is getting much better response with a differing point of view than a number on the board. You come to the table and shirk your use of trigger words while knowing your own trigger words and encouraging the removal of those trigger words from the folks you are talking to - and show a willingness to adapt conversation to focus on the subject at hand while leaving the periphery where it belongs - and productive conversation can happen. For many, the experience of their race is very different. I get incredibly frustrated with people trying to tell me what is racist toward Native Americans. While not Native, I've lived very close with Native people for many years, now have adopted (or plan to adopt) 5 Native children, and my wife and I have received compliments for our ability to understand and "get" a Native view after hours of conversations and mentorship with elders. When Native issues are addressed, and I'm approached as any other white guy, it's not the same. I don't intend to speak as a Native, but I can speak as a parent of Native children. I cannot speak as a woman, but I can speak as a father raising 4 beautiful daughters of multiple races and their experience traveling this world. We can have tremendous discourse here while still addressing difficult issues. In my own experience, a strong negative response to being termed a racist has to do strongly with either 1) underlying racism or 2) guilt for not doing more to address racism in the world. We can all approach this world with open eyes and open arms, but only if we allow ourselves to. Otherwise, approaches looking for a fight, looking for someone to blame, and looking to establish ourselves as being "over" another due to race, religion, sex, or any other host of things will be dominant...as we've seen.

Phil Maton was traded from the Padres to the Indians. I like that move for both sides as the Pads got a high upside, low-floor, flyer sort of guy, and the Indians got a reliever who's shown good K rates (and dominance) at AAA but not translated it to the big leagues yet.

Akin to Dee Gordon, wearing Jose Fernandez's helmet and swinging from the right side as a tribute on the first pitch of the first game back after Jose's death for the Marlins then switching to his natural left-hand side and cranking a home run.

The Tyler Skaggs tribute tonight...that's why I love baseball. The Angels all wear Skaggs' #45 His mom throws out the first pitch The team goes on to throw a combined no-hitter Then, the final feather in the cap was the entire team then placing their jersey on the pitching mound. Dang dusty room.

I'm not personally going after him. I'm just stating that there is a legit reason for people to protest Home Depot, if they are protesting his actions. That is the issue, though. How do we separate those who benefit from the success of companies making an honest effort to improve who may truly be bad people from the company itself? It's not the same level of knowing that a pedophile or murderer could own Home Depot stock. He's got significant payouts that come from the business (though, the one article I read on Home Depot at his retirement stated he would get payouts at the same level regardless of the level of company success, so there is that).

He may have retired, but he still receives massive income from Home Depot. Hence, he is still benefiting from success of the company.

Missed this at the time, and I didn't consider him this year, but had in the past, but Jared Lorenzen, aka the Hefty Lefty, passed away July 3rd at just 38 years old.

The proposal, as I understood it, was not to reduce the overall roster, but to reduce the active roster per game. In other words, you could have all 40 players travel with the team, but you would need to declare 28 active players. Far too often in recent years, we've seen games that use over 25 players.

The interesting part, though, is that feature backs were very rare, even in an era with a lot more rushing. As far as total offense, here are the total yards per team at each point: 2018:5,635 total offense; 3,804 passing; 1,831 rushing 1998: 5,082 total offense; 3,279 passing; 1,803 rushing 1978: 4,810 total offense; 2,541 passing; 2,269 rushing Definitely an increase in offense, but I'd argue that could be as much to do with that added athleticism I mentioned before as the league rules.

While my favorite NL team would have an excellent setup for this rule presently when going to a DH park, many NL teams don't as they do build a roster intended to have multiple moves around rosters full of guys with defensive flexibility. The value of defensive flexibility in a league with a DH is drastically lower and requires much more offensive contribution. Alas, I do not believe the DH is an issue that either side will address in mid-term negotiations, so prepare to enjoy the different rules until at least 2022.

Sometimes perception messes with reality, though. In 2018, the average NFL team rushed for 1,818 yards. For players, 0 had over 1,500 yards, 9 had over 1,000 yards. In 1998, the average NFL team rushed for 1,803 yards. For players, 1 had over 2,000 yards, 3 had over 1,500 yards, and 20 had over 1,000 yards. In 1978, the average NFL team rushed for 2,269 yards. For players, 0 had over 1,500 yards. 11 had over 1,000. The running back situations now look like they did in the day of Csonka/Morris in Miami on offenses that have realized that using athleticism and speed is an easier win in the current era than over-massing up the middle, so that's where offenses are built, yet still a team needs quality backs to run up just as many yards as the peak of the single-back era in the late-90s.

Jim Bouton, former major league pitcher and author of arguably the most influential baseball book on the modern game, "Ball Four", passed away.

Yes and no. Each system has a niche that they really develop well. Good agents know how to find those matches.

If you're a hitter with a mature skillset, the Yankees are likely not the best system to give you the chance to succeed. Their coaches are tremendous at working with raw guys and building approach, but when given a guy who already has a solid approach, they've actually had guys regress. Good agents would be able to help steer their clients in that direction. There's also the guy who says, "I grew up in Minnesota as a Twins fan, hating the Yankees. I want to avoid running into the Twins long-term, so the Marlins are my choice" from your example. This already happens in the Latin market often.

Rose is a whole other take. Gambling is one of those things that simply has been a no-no over the history of the game. One of the major reasons that MLB was so slow to join with other leagues on DFS fantasy and gambling partnerships is that long-standing history against gambling. It would appear hypocritical to partner with gambling when for years the league kept gambling at such a distance. The issue, of course, is that the distance has never really been there. The league has always been getting money from gambling. Owners in the league have made significant money from gambling enterprises (and some even gambling on baseball, per historical records from the early 1900s). The Black Sox scandal that we are celebrating the 100-year anniversary of this year was really the owners responding to losing control of how the gambling money was filtering to their players. Previously, gambling money filtered through owners to players quite often, and no one said a word. There are many documents of players receiving payouts in the early 1900s from gamblers, but those players are in the Hall of Fame today. After the Black Sox scandal, however, the game became very stringent on the issue. Multiple players who lost their careers (and potential HOF chances) in the Black Sox scandal had significantly less evidence to ban them than did Rose, but they don't have people fighting for them to have their names cleared in the same way. Pete Rose is in the Hall. When I visited the Hall, quite literally the largest cutout in the entire place was a roughly 8' tall cardboard cutout of Rose in full sprint. He's not in the one room where there are plaques. In talking with people from the HOF, an average visitor, in studies they have done, spends roughly 7 minutes in the display area of the Hall for every 4 minutes they spend in the plaque room. I personally struggle with putting in Rose ahead of Black Sox guys. There's enough evidence to suggest Rose shouldn't be in at all, but there are plenty of questions to the validity of that evidence, so I'm not the legal mind to discuss whether there's enough grounds for the case against Rose.

Yet baseball conditioning is still significantly behind that of track and field or football. Heck, it's less than 20 years that half of MLB clubs didn't have a single full-time employee in strength and conditioning!

...or to allow for freedom for a player to choose where he plays his career. If I'm Sean Hjelle two years ago, for instance, I'd want badly to be part of the Tampa Bay Rays. They've been renowned in the industry for their work with tall pitchers. However, he's forced into a system where he's selected by a team and then forced to negotiate his bonus only with that one team. A top-30 player like Maurice Hampton would likely not be headed to college if he had the ability to negotiate with all teams from the get-go rather than being forced into draft slots and bonus pools of the team that drafted him, meaning as soon as he got past the first 45 picks or so, he was beyond where his signing bonus demands made sense. Having not seen Mike's piece yet (but I will!), one thought I'd throw out would be to have a bonus pool based on record, and a team like the White Sox could have chosen to spend $7.2M of their $11.565M (assuming bonus pools were the same) on Andrew Vaughn, or they could have chosen instead to spend the same $7.2M to outspend the teams that signed Kody Hoese, Logan Wyatt, Jacob Sanford, and Tommy Henry with money left over to meet the reported bonus demands of top-50 prospect Spencer Jones. They may have chosen to go with Vaughn still, but it would be certainly worthwhile to have the choice for teams and players both.

Bud is in there. At this point, I cannot keep anyone out if the man who truly had the ability to push the envelope on drug testing, though it would have hurt his fellow owners as it would have required giving on other areas, and he simply wasn't willing to do that in order to get the testing. The game had amphetamines banned for 25 years (!!) before ever testing for them. PEDs were "just" 15 years banned by the game, but even then, it was only testosterone-based steroids that were banned by the game, and nearly none of the PEDs actually used at that time were true anabolic steroids. With the substances already banned, the league could have unilaterally implemented testing and negotiated the testing program later, because the players had no recourse against banned substances, but Bud didn't, and he's now in the Hall of Fame. How you can keep out anyone who used substances that weren't actually banned by the game at the time (what Bonds and Clemens used for sure were not banned by the steroids banned) is beyond me.

That's the point of my post. The Arizona Fall League hitting competition requires hitters to hit balls to various places throughout the field. This as part of a larger competition like that, sure, but on its own, no thank you.

No, many substances banned by MLB are available at your local GNC, not by going to Kenya.

I've done the research. They weren't. These are two lengthy pieces I've put out on the subject (some of which crosses over between pieces): https://tomahawktake.com/2016/01/11/is-the-hall-of-fame-already-tainted/ https://calltothepen.com/2017/01/17/mlb-exactly-happened-offense-1990s/