biggentleben

Unlike the AL, where 3-5 teams are good, and they pad their records beating up on truly crap teams? The Indians would not have won a single division in the NL this year. They had a great starting staff and two of the top MVP contenders, but from there to their next quality player is a HUGE drop-off. Without the crap of the AL Central, they're barely a .500 club.

That's where we won't agree at all. Injuries ripped through the Diamondbacks this season, but Greinke, Corbin, Ray, and Godfrey when healthy is definitely a top 10 1-4 in the league. The Diamondbacks have tremendous roster flexibility and depth, but losing Jake Lamb, assumed their #4/#5 hitter in the lineup, Taijuan Walker, who would make the rotation one of the elite in the game, and Steven Souza, a defensive stud in the outfield who brings 20/20 potential when healthy, all for significant time is huge for any team's depth. Goldschmidt is one of the elite in the entire game, Marte is a very solid offensive player (though I think many miss his overall excellence offensively because of his lesser fantasy impact), Pollock was one of the most dynamic players at the plate when healthy, and then they have multiple guys with multiple position ability like Chris Owings, Daniel Descalso, and even were able to move Brandon Drury due to the depth they had in positional flexible guys. Their bullpen had one elite arm in Bradley with plenty of depth. I'm not saying they were at the level of seeing a guy like JD Martinez get shuffled out of a spot, but they were not crap for sure.

Do you truly believe the Diamondbacks are thinner than the Tampa Bay Rays or Oakland Athletics? Those two teams were the #4 and 6 team by record in the American League, one making the playoffs and one competing to the last week of the season (whereas the "soft" teams you mention were out of the running fairly early in September in the NL). I personally thought the top 3 of the AL was better this year, with only the Dodgers on par in roster depth, but the depth of the NL was truly much better, and I'd put the leagues overall even in 2018.

After some discussion with people around the game on what the Twins may do at pitching coach, I came into a very good discussion with someone in the Marlins org, who believes the Twins could bring in Kyle Snyder and he and Baldelli would be very willing to try new things with how pitchers are used in Minnesota. I had my own thoughts, and I was told that they aren't insane...check them out! https://calltothepen.com/2018/11/02/minnesota-twins-new-pitching-trend-2019/

Not the point I made at all. Choosing to direct the funds that would go to Bryce would be better utilized across the roster. The team panicked on Strasburg and certainly the payroll now regrets it. They paid a premium for him.

No, I'm going to not agree because I look at baseball in general. Many things in baseball have become as divided as our political landscape. The NL/AL, DH/no-/DH grouping is sadly one of the obvious ones.

I'll take deGrom and Syndergaard over basically any AL duo outside of Houston, perhaps, maybe Cleveland. Just those two guys at the top of the rotation can lead a lot of hot streaks, and two long hot streaks are exactly what left them near .500. Add in Zack Wheeler pitching up to his potential and Steven Matz when he was healthy, and that's one of the best rotations in baseball. You can downplay it all you want, but I posted an article earlier in here with the statistics showing how the NL playoff teams played like a 95-win team against .500 or better teams. AL playoff teams were roughly an 85-win team, and that was only because the Red Sox were at a 100+ win pace. Multiple AL teams had sub-.500 records against teams with a record above.500. It was not just the Orioles and Royals. Four of the top 5 picks next June will be AL teams (3 in the AL Central, which is why a lot of people thought the Indians were quite overrated). Not terribly surprising that 4 of the top 5 were also AL. However, when you get to the top 10, it balances out (technically 6-5 as Tampa Bay and Atlanta are tied for the 10th best record). The bottom 10 are 6 AL and 4 NL.

FS1 is not out there, though. It's not part of a lot of packages.

Sports Illustrated writer Paul Zimmerman, aka Dr. Z, passed away at 86.

The guy they were willing to move in the summer but that the Marlins wouldn't accept as a headliner, Carter Kieboom. He's moved up to a top 25-30 prospect in all the game, and the Nats have some very high-upside guys lower in their system with some solid pitching scattered throughout to make a package quite feasible.

2017 had a HUGE benefit of the Houston Astros being in after the Houston hurricane...

...and what would have fixed this World Series? The narrative for most of the country on this World Series was "buy your way to the Series". It tunes out a lot of people who now have competing options in their sports that they did not when the games were a bigger deal. Another narrative? You can't expect the fans to tune into network games after putting them on (often inaccessible) cable channels for 3 rounds. A final narrative of the most publicity surrounding anything heading into the game was how much of a jerk Manny Machado has been this postseason isn't exactly going to win over the non-baseball fan to watch. There were great narratives....30 years since the last Dodgers WS win, Dodgers returning to the Series, Dodgers and Red Sox meeting again for a championship after 102 years, etc. Those were after thoughts (if even mentioned) in the non-baseball-focused media on the matchup, and it showed.

Boston has won 4 championships in the last 15 seasons. They have lost 3 games in those 4 World Series. If you want an exciting World Series, don't include Boston.

Not at all. The AL bottom was ridiculously worse this year, which allowed the AL top to be ridiculously better via record. In depth of team, I think you could easily make arguments for the leagues being even if not swayed NL in overall talent on rosters. The issue is right now, there are 3-4 monsters in the AL and 5-6 horrible teams, and that allows everyone to look a lot better on W/L.

He'll do well for Washington next year, and they're going to be a much better team by not having Bryce in 2019.

Postseason things are allowed in there as well (bonus if the team makes the postseason, bonus if player plays in postseason, bonus if pitcher makes postseason start), but basically anything that says "hitting .320 will get you $3M more than hitting .300" is not allowed.

Or a guy willing to structure things to deal with injury concerns in order to finish his career with the same team he began it with...Adam's expressed that many times over. He's incredibly loyal and essentially was doing this, considering a return to the Braves as the team that drafted him, or retiring. In other words, I wouldn't count on this as an indication of anything to come.

From someone who was part of that transition, there's been no coach handed a worse hand in the last 20 years than was Glen Mason. Mason brought the program farther than any coach has really since the 1960s. He struggled, however, to get the team from the second tier to the first tier in the Big 10. Folks thought that was on the coach, disposed of him, and since, plenty of work has been done to try to improve the edges of the program while not addressing that a competent coach was a huge issue. I truly believe that without his health issues, Kill was on his way there. The University ponies up for basketball and hockey. Instead of looking for the young, trendy coach...instead, why not go the route done with Mason and Kill, guys who took over programs at lower levels and showed sustained success (Fleck's quick rise is not sustained). Mason had built up Kansas before coming to the Gophers. Those are the guys who can walk in the door and coach. You want to recruit? Call in Tony Dungy, Ben Hamilton, Darrell Thompson, Eric Decker, and Marion Barber to walk into living rooms with you. Moreover, call in someone like Ben Utecht to come into a living room with you. Frankly, it's filtering more and more back to high school how insignificant the facilities you see truly are. Most impressive will be proper training facilities and medical facilities, not the lounges and oversized video rooms that were the focus of the most recent upgrades for the Gophers. You want to know why a number of smaller schools haul in some surprising recruits, look at the number of their strength coaches and/or athletic trainers that end up moving on to the NFL or other pro leagues. That's a significant piece for young people who know they are sacrificing their bodies for the betterment of a millionaire coach with no return for them most likely. Shiny toys attract the type of players who go out on Saturday and are not focused, cannot execute, and simply don't put the time in where it should be (the weight room and practice field rather than a lounge), so they fall apart whenever pressure is applied or they run into even comparable talent. One of the hallmarks of both Mason and Kill was the commentary about how obvious it was that their team was the less talented team on the field, but typically either right in the game or winning it. The raw talent complaint is not one that can be made right now. As far as I'm concerned, that goes to one spot...

The fact that a Republican is trying to run on her alignment with Trump and is losing in the polls says plenty.

Screwing over farmers doesn't play well in SoDak....

That's the issue. If you had DC voting the way their constituents elected them to, this would not be an issue.

The most popular (and powerful) Senators from South Dakota in the last half-century were both Democrats. I think either could run again today at prime age and be voted in. While the state in general swings hard R in voting, there is strong consideration given to the best candidate typically by the majority of the populace. Even then, the state is flowing more and more to Sioux Falls and Rapid City as "urban" areas in the state.

Dodgers broke union lines to stay at the hotel they did during the hotel workers' strike. That's really incensed a lot of people against the team. FWIW, the Astros found another hotel that was not part of the strike in order to not break lines during the ALCS.

Plenty. Dassey had a ton, many of which are outlined here in this thread, but the full sad follow up is included. With Avery, new evidence, questions on previous evidence, even in-fighting with the Avery family as another one of them could be implicated.

Anyone watch the second season yet? Thanks to plenty of writing that needed to be done, I plowed through the season over the course of a weekend as I worked, which probably means i missed plenty, but the outcome still makes little sense.