biggentleben

...and virtually none of those who used PEDs were using illegal supplements. That argument doesn't work in the world of baseball and substances from that era. Many of the most widely used are still very legal, albeit often banned by professional sports leagues.

Simply is a trademark with a number of products.

The draft is significantly cracked. This may not be the fix, but there are significant issues.

Completely depends on how you set it up. You can do something like they do in the international market now with a limit in spending that's a hard cap. The big issue is that you then open yourself up to the same manipulation of pre-pubescent boys' futures due to the game by MLB teams offering under-table money.

From a few analytics guys that have talked with me, the big thing noted is that fastball variants are taught much more. Sliders do not break the same way. Big, looping curves don't work the same way (unless you have unbelievable command of one like Greinke), so you see much more movement to hard curves over sliders and cutters and split-fingers over sliders. As far as velocity, Alan Nathan's report stated that in a pitch, there would not be enough force applied by an arm to affect a difference in drag to encourage velocity.

I can get behind the Arizona Fall League hitting competition, but not this. Not at all.

Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson didn't play against African-American players. Joe DiMaggio and Jackie Robinson never had to deal with West Coast road trips. None of them had a strength coach (be disgusted all you want on the "steroid era", but PEDs were a small portion of what inflated offense at the time). Many players now play in a park without a single dimension over 410 feet. There are many reasons that comparing statistics plainly across eras simply doesn't work.

Based on Fangraphs' pick valuation and prospect valuation articles from Craig Edwards, that'd be $2-5M in value lost, which would equate to a 45+ prospect on their list. Per Fangraphs' list for the Twins, that'd be the equivalent of Wander Javier or Luis Arraez. ....and that's not counting the loss of international money or just the straight salary.

Still would have Brandon Morrow returning in the second half, along with Brad Brach and Brandon Kintzler even without Kimbrel. One report this week stated that this put the Cubs over on luxury tax to the point where they will be dropping 10 spots in the draft in 2020. As the Cubs sit third in the NL in record and in a dogfight in their division to even make the playoffs, I'm not sure closer is the position that you gain the impact enough to make that worth it.

He's using him late, but if I were a Cubs fan, I'd be no more sure of my favorite team's lead late in an October game with Kimbrel than I was with Strop or Cishek.

The issue with that being that the primary thing most velocity programs work with is flexibility of the whole body, but specifically of joints in the kinetic line for throwing. Pitchers who have been through those programs (and still use their methods) thus far have had a reduced rate of TJS from general population, but not by an amount that would get teams really investing heavily in said programs in-house.

I ended up not putting him on due to reports that things were "stable" this winter, but Cameron Boyce obviously took a downfall. The Disney Channel actor was just 20 when he passed away in his sleep Friday evening.

Same. Not sure where they go from here, but very well orchestrated season.

Narrator: it does.

He won't have a qualifying tag this offseason hanging over him. Keuchel relies on his defense plenty, but with a solid D behind him, he can be a tremendous starter as he'll go deep each time out.

That's a bit of the rub in all of this. Kids signed today from Latin America may be 6'3" and 160 now, but they'll be 6'3" and 185 by the time they make the upper minors, and could "tip the scales" at 205 with major league strength coaching, but they would be considered overweight at that point.

Oh, absolutely, and remember that's just the big pharmaceutical companies that work together. There's plenty of lobbying done by other groups with similar interests, though at a much smaller scale. This also doesn't include any of the medical provider lobbies, which are often taking in money from insurance and pharma to then turn and lobby on their behalf with the stamp of "from a medical provider" behind it. Looking at that list, is it any wonder that we can get absolutely nothing done to make significant changes in these areas mentioned? Oh, and to answer your question on real estate, I asked my uncle (a real estate broker), and he said that would be likely combined among real estate brokerage groups lobbying to keep regulation there minimized, real estate loan lobbies to keep their loans in a separate category (and much less regulated) from other banking practices, and potentially even state lobbyists working to keep the federal government out of state imminent domain cases. He's a fairly right-side Republican, but he and I can always discuss where we stand on things, and he can understand my concern on regulation. He's someone who does things by the book and doesn't understand the need to regulate...but when you do things right and assume others do things right, that's not a surprising stance, y'know?

He was missing badly, but he compensated by hanging stuff in the zone that was just too easy to crush for Pirate hitters. I love Craig. His passion for the game is unmatched. However, he may have been better served finding a team that didn't want him to pitch in 2019 and getting his knee finally properly taken care of...

Another solid start for Teng today: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER (solo HR), 2 BB, 2 K He's no Matthew Liberatore (good Lord, what that young man has done since he came up!), but Teng has taken the ball and gone at least 6 innings in 3 of his 5 starts this season. He's now sporting a 2.33 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and a 9/25 BB/K over 27 innings on the year.

https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/1145760228509507586

Absolutely insane. That organization in 10 years has lost Nick Adenhart, Tommy Hanson, Luis Valbuena, and now Skaggs.

I would like that! I'll DM you (or I would if I could )!

With the draft passed, I have settled into doing more scout reports, and I'm going to be putting up a rolling top 50 for each team (will keep it up constant, not have certain release days), rolling top 200, and hopefully a report each day on top of the other stuff that's been going up. I recently did a piece on fixing the draft that required a ton of research. I think that could be of interest here. My most recent scouting report was also of a former Twins prospect, Luis Gil. Let me know if there's anything you would be interested in seeing!

I think the political/religious combination hurts honest dialogue on either. However, it does bug me when otherwise rational folks here get into back-biting and heavy generalization on the topic of religion. I've spent years studying religion. I'm a very active Christian, providing pulpit supply to churches, yet I've been involved with church politics as well at the local, regional, and national level, so I see both sides of the coin. Faith is a deeply personal thing for each person, and there are few things on a psychological level that we will defend stronger than our personal religious beliefs (or non-beliefs, whatever they may be) across all humans, no matter what faith/belief one holds. The fact that any person or group would co-op faith into their political actions and force any political belief to then assume religious backing is heinous to me. Jesus/Muhammad/Buddha/whatever faith/moralistic leader you ascribe to is not someone to reference when pursuing a political discourse. Sadly, in American politics, roughly as World War 2 ended, pieces of the Republican party with an extreme religious belief began to attempt to mobilize others with their religious belief to their politics as well, and through that, we've seen an incredible divide build in our country. I truly value those of you who will have open/honest discourse here on the political arena, whether I agree or not. The discussion here has been something that I do believe has informed my own political beliefs, even if it has not changed them, and that is a positive thing. I hope we can find a way to remove religion from politics as they should not have a direct influence on one another, and honest discussion with one another on either topic is so much better with the other topic removed.

True, and frankly, the correlations being as strong as they were with other factors engaged is notable as well. Like you said, I'd be surprised if someone isn't already on this research on big league clubs and likely working on more in-depth breakdowns on size vs. health measures and UCL injury correlation. I know from researching a piece on Thoracic Outlet Syndrome that teams were finding that bigger guys had a statistically significant increased rate of TOS. It'd be interesting to know if there was a reason behind the size correlation for both injuries or if one was more directly causational and the other more corretional. (making up words, but it works)