biggentleben

So, to continue the thought of the original post on this thread, that same little angel pulled another one today... We're at a swim meet without enough seating today, and the two girls that we have swimming are coming up soon, so the family was leaning against a wall. The youngest (now 4) is sitting on the floor and observing the world. As I'm attempting to ensure the other kiddos don't end up in the line of traffic, I feel a pull on my pant leg. I look down, and she's looking up with a huge smile, and as soon as she has my eye, she hollers out, "I love you, daddy!" She ensured she could be heard above the crowd. She waited for me to return with an "I love you, too!", and she then returned to people watching. That's why I've gone through the two-year struggle, fight, whatever you want to call it, so that beautiful little girl can soon be my youngest.

I'm glad we had both sibling groups at the same time. We'll end up done after we get both of them done (and with 5 kids, that's plenty!), but if we had to start from the beginning with each once the other was done, it'd be nuts. We're just short of 2 years with the one sibling group, and they came to us essentially "adoption ready", just needing TPR to be finalized, but then all kinds of things happened with judges, dad coming back into the picture, mom's legal issues, and all sorts of things, and here we are nearly 2 years later, finally knocking on the door to finalize that group (and there will be another picture when that happens.

We actually traveled to another county to allow the judge who began her case when she was less than a year old to finish the case. He hugged my wife and I and spoke to our teen daughter-to-be for a while as well, which was very cool for him as well. His voice broke as he brought her up to bang the gavel and finalize the adoption. Definitely glad we chose to make that trip. She turned 5, got a new last name, and her present from us was to get her ears pierced (something she's been requesting for some time). She also got to see her former foster family, where she spent over a year of her life as well, so it was a good day for her all around.

I doubt they'd make the decision based on results, but perhaps on how guys look.

It's happened around the league before and sure could happen again. Wouldn't be horrible on the Twins to do it, especially if someone like Rooker/Austin/etc. force the move.

Since I posted this, we still have the three siblings, but we also have two more that came to us "ready to adopt". After time with them in the house, reviewing their files, and all the background stuff to go through, on Monday, my wife and I officially became parents for the first time. The three siblings will be adopted most likely around the first of the year, and then one more to go. We'll go from 0 children (officially) on December 1st to 5 by April 1st. Oh, and it was this little beauty's 5th birthday on her adoption day as well!

A good friend of mine who has represented the Republican Party of South Dakota at national GOP meetings mentioned her as having an "early Obama" vibe to him. He was telling me Obama would be a president multiple years before the 2008 election.

This came up recently in a discussion. Those deals to avoid arbitration are only guaranteed if the player makes the team. Cron right now is not guaranteed anything.

Former President George H.W. Bush dead at 94.

In many cases, the player is providing for his family out of the country. They aren't forced to sign the contracts, but there is often some tremendous misleading by the teams about what they'll be providing and paying for in the training between seasons.

No, it's additional. There are multiple minor leaguers who are on 40-man rosters and make that much already in each org, plus you are taking the difference for each player to $100K, not pure $100K on each player.

It's ADDITIONAL $8 million, not $8 million total.

Bumgarner fits well with their plan to get guys who could get qualifying offers next fall as well. With the loss of IFA money, extra picks are going to be very valuable, which is why I could see them putting in extra players to acquire a CBA pick along with someone like Greinke or a Cleveland starter or even if they make a move for Domingo Santana with Milwaukee.

The Cardinals have been well-run for years on the development side, having some of the best farm system coaching in the game. There's a reason they consistently turn 13th round picks into productive major leaguers. That had to be built before their current run, however, as the team had fallen away from that model in the late-80s/early-90s. Once you have a sustaining farm system and a development system that will continue to create major league players out of the players that are put into that farm system, whether they're top 5 picks or #30 overall picks, you will see plenty of success. Also, don't fool yourself into thinking the Cardinals don't go big on finding talent. They scout the top prospects in every draft to attempt to snag an elite talent that falls. Sometimes it works (so far with Nolan Gorman), sometimes it fails miserably (Delvin Perez), but it's a way to get elite-level raw talent into your system at a pick level where typically that player isn't usually found. That kind of scouting takes time to set up as well. Finally, the Cardinals have been very invested internationally in recent years. The big 2016 Braves signing class that got taken away from them? Many in the game believe the Cardinals were major whistle-blowers on the Braves as multiple reports came out that the Cardinals out-bid the Braves on Maitan, Severino, and Juan Contreras, but all three remained with the Braves. The Twins have been building a system in that way over the last few years. It's been incredibly impressive to see the way the Twins develop arms and young bats in the system. Now it just needs to happen at the big leagues with a few guys for fans to see the fruits of that labor.

Had a talk with someone near to Corbin who told me that he's likely going to have a decision Monday. He got an offer that nearly ended his free agency in Philadelphia, but he wanted to give teams a chance to beat it over the next few days.

It's also why the Braves signing guys for one-year deals makes a ton of sense right now...add for 2019, don't take away any of the depth in the system that has you primed for years of competitiveness...

It's very, very different. Teams require hours out of their minor leaguers to put in certain amount of time, yet on average, a player at the complex level earns less than your average food service worker - and significantly less. No one is saying that every minor league player should be paid millions. I'm not sure where you get your information, but most minor leaguers aren't able to work in the offseason as they are required by their teams to be at certain workouts, often sent to overseas leagues, and subject to being traded all offseason and having to start a relationship with a new organization. One minor league "lifer" recently made the major league 40-man, and it was the first year that he said he'd be able to show an income over $30K. He'd spent almost a decade in the minor leagues, working all the way up to AAA. If you're okay with that staying the same, that's all well and good, but I'd rather see those players forced to alter their lives for a decade rewarded for it.

Yet, it took over 3 months for my wife (a school teacher at the time who had to go through intensive vetting every year) and I (after just leaving a job working as a juvenile jailer where I had to go through federal background checks three times in 15 months working in the job) to be cleared in our backgrounds in order to foster abused and neglected children. Sounds about right...

Yeah, I have been predicting this since about April. Donaldson cut off extension talks when Anthopoulos left Toronto. They have a very good relationship.

That money clipped out options and basically all game-play incentives. It's exactly what he was paid last season. His incentives will be for awards and then to hit the market again next year, hopefully after a healthy, productive season in the middle of the lineup for a team playing in October. For the Braves, one year with no options makes a ton of sense, as they are looking to stock up on draft picks in lieu of having IFA money, so guys that would make qualifying offer guys (Donaldson has never received one) after 2019 make prime trade targets as well. I'd expect that now that the collective bargaining picks have been announced, they have been a trade target for Atlanta as well in deals.

On this issue, Jeff Passan's piece at Yahoo today is incredibly good and worth the read... https://sports.yahoo.com/donations-cindy-hyde-smith-reveal-mlb-league-can-remedy-grievous-error-035527945.html The incredible thing to me is the amount of money spent on lobbying by MLB. It's been estimated that to bring the salary of every minor league player employed in the game to at least $100K, it would cost an additional $8 million (and that's if NONE of the minor league players are on 40-man rosters, which so many are, so there's likely additional savings, but I digress...). That's total throughout the entire league, not for each team. Yet, there's $3.7 million directly from the league donated to Congress over the last 17 years, let alone what owners privately gave, to ensure minor league players were underpaid in the spending bill provision tacked into this spring's spending bill in Congress. Some of this gets into a blurry off-topic/baseball mixture, but the money is definitely around for MLB and individual teams to do much more for their players.

To death? Not so much, but enough to leave the game, many times over in the minor leagues, yet the argument for not paying more for minor league players is not that they don't deserve it or anything of the sort...it's consistently been that it would cause a strain on certain organization's financials too heavy to enforce at the level of the entire game, so teams can make their own choices. And, just like teams were "allowed" to make their own choices about race after a public statement from Landis in 1942, no team challenged that line until two years after Landis' 1944 death, and even then, it took an extremely bold person to do that. No one's going to break rank-and-file to pay their minor leaguers more until the league enforces it, and there's absolutely money in the game to do so.

However, at changes of ownership, there are windows of examining and renegotiating existing contracts that have been acquired. Liberty did that to some degree when acquiring the Braves, though they obviously could not completely rip up the old deal. Now, with the forced Disney sell-off, there could be an opportunity to renegotiate again for more favorable terms for the rest of the contract. Certainly not going to get a Dodgers deal, but any little bit is more revenue.

You mean that he called out Gordon sluffing a ball in center and defended himself when Gordon attacked him in the clubhouse? Yeah, get that guy off my club...

A big part of what is helping the Braves to be profitable was the development of the land around the stadium that the club is considered owner or part-owner. That makes significantly more money for the team than any revenue generated from baseball. If not for the non-baseball revenue, the Braves would not be making near that much money. There was a chunk of adjustment when Liberty bought the team and was able to negotiate some adjustment to the horrific TV deal in place. Of course, the Atlanta TV market is such that if the Braves could negotiate a new TV deal, they'd end up making big money off that on top of The Battery.