biggentleben
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Everything posted by biggentleben
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It's $10M this year. There will be prospect cost as well, but there are a number of relievers that you can acquire that make less than $10M when combined.
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You cannot want your front office to employ business analytics in building the team and evaluating players and also treat the team as a non-business. That simply doesn't work.
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No, he won his first term in the mid-1980s. In South Dakota, that was even more strict party alignment as Reagan had pushed the farmers in that direction strongly.
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He was leading all polls going into the final week of the campaign, and the presumed favorite flooded television and social media with a false accusation campaign that was not able to be widely refuted before election day, and exit polls showed that to be the difference in the election. Without that final campaign, he had defeated a multiple-term Republican US Representative that had achieved state election in spite of a lack of production in that role.
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...and he'd be a very tough candidate in that election, very feasibly taking the seat from Rounds.
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This offseason, for $16M, the team could sign Will Smith, Steve Cishek, and Hector Rondon...or they could have Craig Kimbrel, who is not sure to be healthy. Pretty sure I know where the money is better spent, but names are big deals so some...
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After watching the Frontline piece on Mitch McConnell ("Supreme Revenge"), I really don't know if there's a person who needs to be out of Washington more than McConnell. He's up for election in 2020, but in Kentucky, it's almost impossible to imagine him not being re-elected.
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Not if you paid attention to the most recent governor election in the state. A Democrat, very frequently pictured in his wheelchair, had to have a fake news attack paid for by the Republican party the weekend before the election and pushed hard on social media in order to get a multiple-term US Representative Republican elected to the governorship. The votes are still there for someone who shows actual interest in people in the state.
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...and the discussion here has 100% been to eliminate them all from planes. Nothing about better policies or better training or standardized training or any such thing. A former client took her emotional support animal, a German Shepherd, onto a plane to make her first flight in her life, something her illness would have likely made impossible without that extra assistance. She was able to see her mother, who can no longer travel. Excuse me if I don't see it as a flippant, dismiss-able issue.
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As someone who has worked in the mental health field and seen dozens of studies on the efficacy of emotional support animals on SPMI, let me say that these words sound extremely like someone arguing to take funding away from food stamps for those who need them because there are some who abuse the system.
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Tom Daschle did a lot for the state of South Dakota by working hard in DC and spending his campaign time in the state attending all levels of rallies, not just the big ones. He made connections with voters young and old, of all races, and had incredible support from Republican voters in the state. Then he was put in the role of the Senate's voice for the Democrats to oppose Dubya Bush policies. Every conservative radio talk head made him a point of attack, as did early Fox News, and potential voters ate it up. When he ran next, he avoided the smaller rallies, running on his record...and he was defeated. At one time within the last 20 years, South Dakota had three Democrats in DC, so getting the state to vote for a Democrat that takes the time to invest in voters is not unheard of, but lacking a candidate that does that, the state will always end up voting Republican, and it seems very few Congressional, Governor, or Presidential candidates have taken time to engage voters, which will always lead to the default Republican vote.
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You obviously missed the part where the high prices were due to corporate farmers taking over and having the power to set prices that individual farmers simply do not at this point.
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A player would just have to say no. There are rules in place for the minimum amount that must be offered in the first three rounds to recover a draft pick the following year, and it'd be foolish to go below that. While there is no set minor league pay scale as each team determines that on their own, the reason the Blue Jays were more free is that they are in Canada and MLB pushed for legislation in the US that made it legal to pay far below minimum wage for minor league players. That said, the Jays' bumps are still incredibly low pay, as in a player who shows up in February, spends time at spring training and then extended spring before joining a short-season A-ball league and then follows up by attending fall instructs will spend from early February until mid-September/early-October under the team's control, but for significant amount of time in there they aren't being paid (spring training/extended spring/instructs are all unpaid), and being in a non-full league is very low on the pay scale, so it's entirely feasible that player would spend 8 months of their year working full-time in order to earn $3,000. With the Jays' bump, they're up to $4,500 for that 8 months, which is definitely better, but it's still not even $600 per month. What I'm saying is that the minuscule impact that $1,000 more in the first two years or even $5-6K more in upper level minors will be is not going to replace a slot signing bonus in the first two days of the draft.
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I personally believe the TOS stuff was similar to the prevalence of back injuries among NFL linemen as the 300-350 pound weight for an offensive lineman became a requirement upon league entry instead of something teams developed in house after drafting a guy. Guys just built up muscle without regard to how those muscles were useful in the game and also without regard to developing the muscles to support that additional weight. The push to have every arm throwing mid-90s or better has often been done without accompanying work at the high school (and lower) levels to strengthen core and upper legs. Ideally, velocity is generated through the turn at the peak of the delivery, generated through the hips, upper thighs, and lower back, using the arm as more of a slingshot rather than placing heavy stress on the chest, shoulder, and elbow. While there hasn't been an immediate change in how velocity is generated, the reports of TOS have gone down significantly as if there really has been a major change across amateur and pro ball. Ideal velocity generation is being taught more widely through places like Driveline, but certainly not enough that you should be hearing no reports of TOS.
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Basically every flyover state has a law on the books to prevent one person (or company) from owning too much of the viable crop land. However, even if those laws were repealed and/or worked around, the collapse to the economy of hundreds of thousands suddenly without a vocation (or hundreds of thousands working whittled down to 3) would be incredibly impactful on the economy, nevermind what the big companies could do to pricing, which individual farmers currently can't dictate due to their lack of market domination. You want corn from company XYZ's corn fields in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa? You're going to pay $ABC for it, or I'll sell it elsewhere because I'm the only guy who has that corn. Once General Mills or Coca-Cola or whomever finally secures the corn, you don't think it'd cause prices to absolutely skyrocket on consumables?
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Except it'd kill their own farmers. Where do you think Brazilian farmers get most of their corn seed? The people that elected him are already stung. That hasn't changed a whole lot. The blame for the sting somehow falls other places...like the recent argument I heard that the legislative branch has followed to back up Trump's moves, and THAT is what has hurt farmers (nevermind that Congress has saved ag's butts with added deals for farmers to barely keep some afloat). Essentially, Trump has created an agricultural industry right now that is a LOT like the housing industry in 2007. Sure, plenty of acres are being planted, but defaults are being pushed out by government programs that have an expiration date. Once those programs go away, farms go under, and the housing crisis will seem like a really pleasant financial situation in comparison.
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Watching a few of Alex's recent games, he's just off in timing. Balls that last year he was squaring for loud contact are being shot the other way right now. His swing looks good mechanically, and his eye is definitely fine at the plate. I had him higher than Royce entering the year, and I've had some talks with prospect writers around the interwebs who believe that behind Wander Franco, Kirilloff is in a pretty small group competing for #2.
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That would be an interesting pick. I've wondered on the Twins and Brett Baty, but from all accounts, they've not taken an interest, in large part due to his age.
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I'm assuming you mean Carter Stewart. He signed with Japan and won't be drafted. Crazy you bring up Caleb Stewart as one of the guys who really helped me learn what to look for on video scouted former University of Kentucky outfielder Caleb Stewart and used video of him when we were talking about games he saw in person versus what the video showed. I was extremely surprised that there was another guy of the same name in this year's draft!
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While I don't disagree, there is a reason that they made their pitching available for a spell this offseason and did not head into the free agent market virtually at all to fill their outfield holes.
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Finer Points: Draft Bonus Pools
biggentleben replied to Jeremy Nygaard's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
One thing to note that did change in the most recent CBA (and was hidden in some language that was not uncovered until recently) - a compensation pick for not signing a previous year's pick used to require the team holding it to sign the player drafted in that slot the next year. That is no longer true. As long as that pick number still falls within the first three rounds, you can not sign a player the next year and get a compensatory pick again. That has strongly shifted the draft strategy in many front offices this year, when there are 3 first-round compensatory picks (Braves, Diamondbacks, and Dodgers) as well as another before the second round (Pirates in the competitive balance round A). -
They're falling apart because they're deeply in debt (per ownership) after overspending what they could afford for two years and trading away their top position prospects for pieces to supplement what they had hoped would be long playoff runs. There is no team in baseball with more talent yet to play this season than Cleveland (meaning they haven't reached full-season ball yet).
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The guys over at D1 Baseball do some of the best college coverage in the business, so I do pay for their work, and they had an update to the link you posted, though it was done midseason (April 11), so I'm wagering there will be one more update. That said, the top guy on that list was Connor Thomas, who is a 5'11", 175-pound righty from Georgia Tech who struggles to touch 90, but he does have a plus slider and at least plus command, if not better. He's ranked in the 300s on BA's top 500 list, and he's likely a day 2 or day 3 pick that could just end up back at school for his senior year. There's a point where statistical analysis is great, but in drafting, eyes on the player is going to always take significant precedent.
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We discussed your time with Andrews after I put together a piece on Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, and it's great to have that level of insight in this discussion. I think it's interesting how TOS blew up and suddenly disappeared as a diagnosis that you'd see in pitchers while elbows and shoulders persist.
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Just to get a good idea of how difficult this issue will be to rectify, check out the episode from last week's "Whistleblower" on CBS (very good show, BTW). They highlight a Chicago police officer who blew the whistle on corruption in the department that led to officers planting evidence on subjects and even initiating physical confrontations.
