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TheLeviathan

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Everything posted by TheLeviathan

  1. TheLeviathan
    Yeah, this team's starting depth is going to get really precarious here. How close might Balazovic be to getting a look? They've been aggressive promoting guys.
  2. TheLeviathan
    Look, you can certainly feel that about Anderson's remark. It isn't relevant, hard as that might be to swallow. Donaldson employing that phrase in a scrum is a jackass move. He meant it to be hurtful and rub Anderson the wrong way. Pretending it was a joke only doubles down on that. And here's the part where you need to look in the mirror: MLB didn't suspend him for anything regarding racism. You think they did and imply it here, but YOU planted that into the conversation. And it sure feels like you're looking so hard to be offended by it that you never bothered to check the truth value of what you're arguing. Here's what the MLB ACTUALLY said: And they are 100% right. It was disrespectful. It did show poor judgment. It was clearly baiting given his knee on Anderson a few days earlier. He was THE key part in that escalation.
  3. TheLeviathan
    With respect, your own flawed memory free of context is not the same as evidence. There are mountains of evidence versus your flawed anecdote.
  4. TheLeviathan
    What he said.
  5. TheLeviathan
    Sure, but I don't think Scott Boras negotiated a contract he has zero chance of getting paid for going forward. They have a plan and it ain't "opt-in".
  6. TheLeviathan
    Yes, there is a 100% chance he opts out of this deal. He will not continue that contract because Boras doesn't get paid. The team has the budget space to tear that contract up and resign him though. And if he walks, he walks. But you can't deal him when the team is doing this well and he's a heart and soul reason why.
  7. TheLeviathan
    You're not wrong that talent can give a team an edge going in. I'd even agree that there can be a mental component to it where teams beat themselves before the first pitch. I just think it's luck by a country mile that decides the outcome of MLB playoffs because they're a small sample. And we see all too often how weird that can be in any one week span of a baseball season. I'd rather crown the best record the champ every year and turn the playoffs into a series of wild, WWE inspired zany antics. Strangely though, Manfred and Co. have not returned my calls.
  8. TheLeviathan
    I don't know if he intended to be racist, but I know saying what he did as a slight made it possible to perceive it that way to Anderson and others. And if I were Donaldson and I opened that door, my apology would've looked a lot less jackassy. He lost my sympathy with "but I was joking....derp"
  9. TheLeviathan
    This is the natural by-product of being told for years that "This is what a World Series team looks like" and if you don't fit that mold you can't win. How many years did Twins fans lament the lack of an ace to win in the playoffs while completely ignoring how many L's we took while having Johan freaking Santana. Look, trading Correa was something we had in our back pocket preseason with the way this contract was structured. It was absolutely on the table in early April if this team wasn't good this year. Well....they are good. So it's off the table. You get to the playoffs now.
  10. TheLeviathan
    Everyone should just listen to what Judge said, he hits it spot on. And he doesn't shy away from saying it again even after a private apology from JD. Think whatever you want about whether Anderson should've made that comp in the first place, dropping it in the middle of a brawl after you kneed the dude off 3B and spent the series chirping is, at best, pure stupidity. He did it to upset Anderson, knowing why it would upset him, and then a totally BS line of reasoning to excuse it. I'd have had a lot more respect for Donaldson and his intentions if he had just said "I got heated and wanted to say something nasty because I was pissed off, but I crossed a line I shouldn't have. It wasn't ok, I'm sorry."
  11. TheLeviathan
    Yes, they are literally the unluckiest team in professional sports. See? The cognitive dissonance need not happen! Random happens in coin flips too. There's just less variables. Baseball is filled with a crap ton of variables that roster construction and money can't account for. Most of playoff winning comes down to plain old good fortune. Again, just to summarize: Rosario and Soler were DFA guys that hit like Ruth for a two week span, the 2019 Nationals only got out of the wild card by beating Josh Hader with a two out, error filled rally that would make Benny Hill proud, remember how the legendary.....Steve Pearce?....carried a team in 2018?, and I could go on. Nope, luck is the mistress you flirt with in small samples in baseball. No reason to be in denial about it.
  12. TheLeviathan
    You equate "edge" to "not random" and therein lies your mistake. Every series inflicts randomness on your "edge". Hence why teams with an "edge" sometimes survive the first roll at random **** happening, but regularly can't survive the second or third volley. At the end of the day the game of baseball minimizes those advantages in small samples to such a degree that even massive financial outlays aren't enough to do much more than make postseason odds a coinflip. (60% "edge" over multiple rounds is basically a coinflip. Worse, really) You started the conversation arguing teams repeat in baseball regularly and that's false and was demonstrated to you by @chpettit19. The reason you made that claim without knowing the truth of it is because you've arrived at a conclusion without evidence and keep trying to find evidence that meets it. Hell, it's the story we're all told as baseball fans to make sense of being champions. If you try, even for a second, to look at the past 22 years of baseball with the mindset of "random happens"....you'll find the cognitive dissonance disappears.
  13. TheLeviathan
    It's both, they aren't mutually exclusive. The Dodgers have bought themselves a better chance (I've always said, the key is depth, not aces or stars or any of that), but despite the massive advantage they bought themselves they have still largely failed. They won once, in a pandemic shortened season, despite a MASSIVE advantage. Why? Because the playoffs are nothing but a series of baseball random samples. Will talent give you an advantage over the long haul? Sure, even in the short term you get a slight advantage just like it does every time the Yankees play the Orioles. Will that stop the Orioles from taking two out of three one weekend? Hell no. Lesser teams win constantly in baseball, why would it be any different because it's October? All the playoffs are is a prayer that your talent advantages show up for that one week blip or that some dude goes Ruth enough to carry you for a week if it doesn't. That's literally what happens year in and year out. You're so stuck wanting to believe there is some master pattern that you can't rectify what is easily rectified: small samples are cruel and random.
  14. TheLeviathan
    You mean have a 300M payroll so you have lots of chances to get lucky? Sure. I guess that's sorta a "blueprint". Not unlike Elon Musk has a better chance at walking out with more from a casino than you or me. But yeah....blueprint.
  15. TheLeviathan
    This deal will only look better as it ages.
  16. TheLeviathan
    Feel better snowflake?
  17. TheLeviathan
    I want to see how the season plays out, but right now? If I had to? Yes, I would.
  18. TheLeviathan
    The Dodgers getting there three totally different ways indicates there wasn't some blueprint they followed, they just synched up enough random **** that they advanced. Go ahead and look through the list of WS winners and their regular season records. In the last 53 years (since 1969, cuz that's the quickest google search I found) the team with the best record in the regular season has won the World Series 13 times. Only 4 in the last 22 years. The playoffs are a series of small samples. And like all small samples, drawing elaborate conclusions is ridiculous.
  19. TheLeviathan
    Baseball is a much more random sport than the others. Only hockey is even in the same ballpark. And I will never understand why people fight so freaking hard to deny this notion. Baseball in small samples is full of so much noise it's impossible to derive patterns. The playoffs are just a series of small samples. Pretending there is some grand logic to that when you would never do that with 5 random games in May is absolutely bonkers. Atlanta isn't the exception. That crazy stuff happens all the time. Hell, I bet you THINK you know that teams repeating are doing so for a reason. Yet the Dodgers, who made it three out of the last five years, did so in completely different ways. 2017: They rode Bellinger and Turner offensively, but Yu Darvish who had gone 2-0 with 11 innings of 2 run ball prior to the world series, absolutely imploding against the 'Stros 2018: Muncy, a dude who wasn't even in the big leagues in 2017, rides them there offensively, but Kershaw and Ryu spend the playoffs getting shellacked. 2020: All those dudes above? Non-factors basically. They rode Will Smith, Seager, Betts, and the one year Kershaw didn't suck. Again, you wouldn't pick 5 random games in May and declare from your mountain top "This team shall be named champion. They have earned it clearly with this small, totally representative sample" Yet, that's what the playoffs are. In other sports, where less random crap happens, that makes sense. In baseball it's just silly.
  20. TheLeviathan
    They're on track to make the playoffs and that makes them a good baseball team. They play great defense, a good team game, and they protect leads well. Judging the quality of any team by "they can't win a World Series" is part of the long delusion that we know anything about what it will look like to win a WS this year. I mean, last year the key was "Pay two cents for dudes about to be DFA'd, watch them go Babe Ruth on us for two months". So....moral of the story....in the playoffs, $^*# happens. Punch your ticket and hope!
  21. TheLeviathan
    1. I don't know how anyone can argue Baldelli is mismanaging the 'pen. The bullpen has been phenomenal, the Twins are all but undefeated once they have a lead, and he's getting production from a near constant shuttle from AAA. Honestly, I don't know what successful looks like if it ain't this. 2. I said it at the time: the deals with the Rangers and Yankees were about creating flexibility and looking for upside. Garver has really struggled, Rotervdt looks like damaged goods, and Donaldson is a DH a third of the time. It's possible they knew his future was there and that Buxton's health would require more use of that spot. They also bet on helping Sanchez improve behind the plate, that Urshela would be a leader and a defensive stud, and that the money freed could land them something spicy. All of those things are happening and the team is so much better for it. A similar move with Rogers/Paddock didn't work out in the near-term, but it was the same kind of thinking: don't let the past have too much influence over the future. Swing for upside. 3. The young players are really developing. They've missed on some bats it looks like, but man do we seem to have the development pipeline humming right now. Frankly, and I know I'll have boos chucked at me for this, but it's time to start thinking about extending this FO. They're doing what they came here to do.
  22. TheLeviathan
    Whatever exciting stuff happens in baseball will now happen more closely together. How is that anything but a good thing? A movie might have a super exciting part....but do I want to sit through 5 hours of nothing to see it? No. And that's why Zack Snyder sucks at his job and baseball is no fun for kids.
  23. TheLeviathan
    It isn't just batters. Pitchers are doing the Mike Hargrove too. Are some players faster? Of course. Are the majority of players meandering ala Hargrove? Yes. You just don't notice because it is so pervasive it doesn't stand out.
  24. TheLeviathan
    it shortened games by an average of 24 minutes. This is simply a fact, there is no speculation.
  25. TheLeviathan
    Hargrove stood out as the exception. Now EVERYONE is Mike Hargrove. Seriously, this isn't hard.
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