DJL44

I was excited to see Christian Encarnacion-Strand destroy Fort Myers. He's about 6 months younger than Sabato but did much better at that level. It will be interesting to see how the Twins get both of them playing time.

Too late, that's already happened.

Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of their opponents were also cheating by using steroids. For most of those years steroid usage was against the rules but with no penalty if the player was caught. The Hall of Fame has put in Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire's manager Tony La Russa (who had to know what was going on). HoF has also inducted Whitey Ford and Gaylord Perry - who doctored the ball. Hank Greenberg was on Tiger teams that had scouts relaying signs from CF. Mickey Mantle took steroid injections. Lots of 1970s and 80s players were using amphetamines. Cheating to lose is much, much worse. If one team is trying to throw the game to make money then there is really no game happening. It's a staged event designed to deceive gamblers, not an athletic contest. The results are pre-determined. It's the difference between a sporting event and actors following a script.

There is a big difference between cheating to win and cheating to lose.

They seem quite mediocre. There are things they do better than Terry Ryan but not that much better and Terry Ryan had his advantages as well. They need to sign some international free agent pitchers. They're one of the worst teams in baseball in acquiring Latin American pitchers as teenagers. They keep acquiring infielders who can't stick at shortstop and outfielders but they do a terrible job trading them for anything useful to balance the roster. They wait way too long to convert their lesser starting pitching prospects into relievers. I think this is because the cupboard is so bare when it comes to starting pitching prospects that they're desperate to find anyone.

Pretty much, yeah. I put Sano at DH and if he's terrible by June I cut him. There's only one year left on the deal. If Sano can't DH this will be his last season in the big leagues.

If he wants to play in the field he needs to start doing it well enough to help the team. He's the worst fielding first baseman on the roster.

They might be about even now but a year from now Donaldson is likely to be worse. Also, 1B is going to be less wear and tear for Donaldson.

In 2022 Sano would be my full time DH and Josh Donaldson would be my full time 1B. Kirilloff can play LF with Miranda at 3B.

I wouldn't worry as much about prospects. Most of them don't pan out.

This is what the players are fighting for in the new CBA. They've seen their % of revenue go down over the last CBA. They're trying to fight to make sure 50% of that new money goes in their pocket. You want a system that encourages investment. You don't want low revenue teams that are content to run a minimum payroll and make a ton of money losing. You want to encourage large revenue teams to compete for the top free agents. You want to encourage MLB expansion to increase overall revenues, not just divide the current pie 32 ways instead of 30. I think changing from 10 to 12 playoff teams makes a lot of sense - when the league expands to 32 teams. That's 8 division winners and 4 wild cards. I think best of 3 playoff series are pretty stupid after a 162 game season. The NBA doesn't even run best of 3 playoffs and it has much more confidence the best team wins the game.

You probably would but playoff media revenue (the real money) is shared league wide. The Pirates make as much off the national TV contract as the Yankees. Socialism for the rich again.

Maybe they can change the rules of baseball from tagging a person out to tackling them to get them out! People would love that! The NBA and NHL regular seasons are mostly pointless and so are the first playoff rounds. Baseball teams that barely make it to .500 should not be in the playoffs, especially if they keep this stupid idea that the first round of playoffs is only a 3 game series. ANY team in baseball can win in a 3 game series. Did you ever think that baseball loves adding playoff games because the players are not fairly compensated for playoff games? The players get half of the gate receipts for playoff games and NONE of the TV, radio or internet streaming money. The owners would love if players' only revenue during the regular season was half of the gate.

Baines was selected by an Era committee, not the writers. The writers routinely pass over the best candidates (especially if they didn't suck up to sportswriters) and are expected to deliver a shutout again this year despite having at least 15 players worth inducting to choose from. The Era committees induct their friends and personal favorites instead of the best players. Bill James covered this all very well in his book Politics of Glory. Not much has changed since that book was published.

The problem is there are at least 20 guys on the Writer's ballot at least as good as Gil Hodges (including Mark Teixeira). If they elect everyone as good as Gil Hodges there are 150+ guys who should be in and aren't. They keep overlooking 150 guys to elect people like Harold Baines.

Minnie Minoso was a clear omission. The others I'm less enthusiastic about. Every team has a player like Tony Oliva who fell just short of the Hall of Fame due to injury. Are we going to put all of those guys in? Nomar and Pedroia for the Red Sox, Al Rosen and Albert Belle for the Indians. David Wright for the Mets. Eric Davis for the Reds. Dave Stieb for the Blue Jays. Don Mattingly, Charlie Keller and Thurman Munson for the Yankees. Bret Saberhagen for the Royals. Orel Hershiser for the Dodgers. Felix Hernandez for the Mariners. Dale Murphy for the Braves. The list goes on and on. The old-timers passed over the the three best candidates (Bill Dahlen, Grant Johnson, Dick Redding) in an upside-down election that seemed to have little to do with playing ability. Bud Fowler and Buck O'Neil were unremarkable baseball talents. Allie Reynolds would be the worst pitcher in the Hall of Fame and he got 50% support.

I've got a better scenario. Imagine if the Cubs had scrapped their college of coaches and made O'Neil the first black MLB manager in the 1960s. Buck O'Neil is much more important to the game than the Hall of Fame. In this case it feels like the HoF is trying to shine in his reflected glory.

That isn't the positive example you think it is. "Let's be more like the NFL" is a great way to get me to stop watching baseball like I have stopped watching football.

You don't have to imagine this. He gave a speech at Cooperstown when he received the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement award. You can watch it on YouTube. Buck O'Neil Hall of Fame speech (baseballhall.org)

Buck O'Neil might have been the best baseball manager of his era but integration ruined his chances at getting that job. The Cubs wouldn't even let him manage when they decided to do their "college of coaches" experiment. Everyone got to manage except the black coach. Buck O'Neil is in the Hall of Fame for everything he did after his fairly unremarkable playing career. He was a first baseman with a .374 slugging in the Negro Leagues.

That is crazy. 5 Hall of Famers and they couldn't win anything. They weren't even .500 in 1971 and exactly .500 in 1972-73. You would think a team with 5 Hall of Famers in their prime would be better than .500.

If having more teams in the playoffs is great then they should put 24 teams in the playoffs or maybe all 30. They've already destroyed pennant races. Making the regular season pointless would be the next step. A salary floor wouldn't discourage tanking at all. You would have bad teams purposely trading for past their prime players with bloated contracts (paid for by the large market teams either with cash or with prospects) so they can meet the salary minimum while losing just as much as they ever did. This happens in the NBA all the time. The number of wins in a season is a net zero sum. If there are winners there must be losers. "Tanking" is not a real problem, it is an inevitability of math. The union is against more revenue sharing because it takes money out of their pocket and puts it in the owners' pockets. It doesn't make teams more competitive. If anything it creates a permanent underclass of teams that primarily exist so the large market teams can have someone to play. It discourages teams from trying to generate more revenue locally because they can just run a low payroll and all of their expenses are covered before they even start the season. Every dollar a small market team generates locally is a dollar that gets taken out of their revenue sharing at the end of the year. It's socialism for billionaires, turning ownership of a small market franchise into a no-risk investment vehicle. None of these proposals by the ownership or the union address the real problems with the game. There is less action happening in more time. The current version of Major League Baseball is the most boring baseball I have ever watched, especially in the postseason. It's the best athletes in the world standing around waiting to see if the batter hits the ball over the fence or strikes out. I wonder why I even start watching a postseason game, knowing I'll be going to bed in the middle of the 6th inning because the games start at 7:30 and end around midnight.

Except lowering the luxury tax to $180M which is beneficial only to the owners and overrides pretty much everything else. Their latest proposal of $214M is also a money squeeze. The players' share of revenue has been dropping under the previous CBA because of the penalties of exceeding the luxury tax. It is clearly constraining spending for the only teams that want to spend money. The minimum team salary wouldn't come close to making up for lowering the luxury tax threshold to $180M. More playoff teams is a negative if you want people to actually pay attention to the regular season, not to mention the first round of playoffs. A draft lottery doesn't discourage tanking in the NBA. I'm not sure why it would matter for MLB where draft picks are even more of a crapshoot. Bad teams are going to sell off talent. Universal DH is a net zero. Those DH jobs just replace someone else's job. The roster didn't get bigger.

The owners clearly have responsibility for this impasse. They voted unanimously for a lockout. If you look at the demands the players are mostly asking for an extension of the status quo. The owners are the more radical proposal. The owners clearly believe they have the leverage and are trying to squeeze the union.

Hollywood Salaries Revealed: Who Makes What on the Lot and on Location – The Hollywood Reporter "Newcomers can expect to earn just $15,000 to $20,000 per episode on a network or cable series." That's for a 1/2 hour or 1 hour episode. MLB minimum is $3500 a game.