gunnarthor

I wonder if this is more of a you know it when you see it thing. Certainly, the Marlins and Astros have both had seasons where they unquestionably weren't trying to win as opposed to rebuilding. I think the Cubs, Twins and White Sox, who have all had bad years as well, never went as far as some of those teams. Stark doesn't mention it but the tanking in Houston, for example, had a pretty toxic effect during the tanking seasons with fans completely leaving the team and ratings for games nearing zero.

I don't believe anyone suggested Hunter was a better candidate for the HOF than Edmonds (or Lofton). I certainly did not intend to suggest that, if it was me you think did that. I did say that on an uncrowded ballot, he might be able to stick around (unlike those two who were on crowded ballots). WAR is a bit interesting - by b-r it's about a 10 WAR difference while fWAR it's 25. I wonder if we'll ever move beyond WAR in grading our HOFers or move more toward it.

Interesting piece from Jayson Stark on tanking and the possibility that the 6 worst teams in baseball will be in the NL this year. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/14568028/odd-troubling-state-national-league An interesting idea was the suggestion of a draft lottery to stop tanking. ""To me," another NL exec said, "there's a difference between rebuilding and saying, 'We're going to get the No. 1 pick,' and then really trying to lose -- trying to lose 105 or 106 games to get that pick. ... If it's the system that's leading to that, then one way to solve it is to have a lottery."" It also pointed out that the winning teams in the NL will have a few more victories than they deserve b/c of how bad those six teams might be.

I think if I had to rank their chances I'd go Mauer, Santana, Hunter, Nathan. I think Mauer's got strong support with voters who like WAR and his 3 batting titles will impress more traditional voters. But he really could use a rebound season or two. I've complained about this before but the HOF should be more about HOF seasons than career numbers and Santana had an absolute HOF peak, he should be in. He probably won't get in but he should. I think Hunter will stick on the ballot for 10 years. He got 50 WAR which is borderline but he was also seen as a leader and a good guy by most of the voters who might reward his intangibles. He also managed a crap ton of hits and had very few bad years. I suppose on a crowded ballot he could drop off like Edmonds and Lofton did but by the time he's on the ballot I think a lot of the logjams will be cleared up. I don't think Nathan makes it. He was dominating in the regular season but horrible in the post season and he played in an era where a lot of closers put up video game numbers.

I think the Browns move was probably the worst. It was the most iconic of all the teams and it just crushed the fans. Colts and North Stars are up there, too. The Giants and Dodgers moves probably were actually very good for baseball but pretty big deals at the time.

I didn't see anything posted on TD about him so .. http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/67603/baseball-loses-an-all-time-great-in-monte-irvin Irvin was one of the greatest players in the Negro Leagues and the fourth African American inducted into the HOF. Joe Ponsanski had a very nice write up on Irvin when he was creating his top 100 players list. He worked for MLB from 1968 to 1984.

Projected standings are usually not that reliable so I wouldn't overly worry about it, esp the final records. I'd probably be more concerned about the projected order of finish but even then, meh. It's too early. I think the Twins will win around 85ish games this year and make the playoffs but we'll see.

I think if your opening day DH is your 7th best prospect, that's a pretty good system. I'm more interested to see Mayo/Callis' rankings at mlb.com but this isn't a horrible ranking. I'd have Kepler behind Park, Jay and Gordon and probably put Burdi 8th. I really like him. Nice system.

No, but 1) a lot of people are getting really rich off of it and not the players performing. 2) Most of these kids don't have other options. With the exception of an 18 year old Hershal Walker, most young men couldn't play football in a pro league (even in Europe) against 25 year old guys. I recall a year or so ago, the payment plan for writers at bleacher report was brought up and many people were bothered by it b/c a lot of writers would write tons of content for the website but get very little in return - it was where they were supposed to cut their teeth before making big money. This is similar but on a much larger scale and a much greater pay difference. As for the "pay" of college, the college gets far more in return for a years scholarship to the players.

This is probably a pretty good example of society looking aside. At least that's how I and the author see it.

One of the problems in saying this isn't a racial issue becomes, then, what is a racial issue? Outside of a cop using the N-word while beating a black man, what does someone think racism looks like today? College football and basketball create billions of dollars of revenue from all sources. Gambling, video games, advertisements, tv deals, bowl-agreements, etc. And literally none of that goes to the people that actually perform on the field who are mostly young black men. Their only official benefit is a paid scholarship, which doesn't cost the school anything to give. As Mr. Yee noted, young black men are under-represented in colleges except in college sports. Our society is tolerating this because the victims are mostly young black men. That's why it's a racial issue.

I don't want to overly discuss this point - we don't agree on baseball's unwritten rules and I don't want to turn this into that thread. You make some good points and certainly the medium involved affects how the viewer/reader receives that information. I like the show but thought it was a bit misogynistic for some of the reasons I stated. But I still liked the show - and most of my dislike with the show was based more on bad story telling/plot lines than an anti-woman theme. As for Winds of Winter, hopefully it'll come out soon.

I really disagree with your last two sentences. The point the author was making, and that I agree with, is that if this was affecting young white men (or if old black men were the ones making money off of it) it would have been fixed years ago. By refusing to accept that racism is a factor we can ignore how black men are disproportionately affected by the NCAA (while sports that are predominately dominated by black men can fund sports programs that have fewer black men). You may be right that an faceless NCAA doesn't care who is being robbed but the fact that their victims are mostly young black men is definitely a reason those in power let it still happen.

Why should a swimmer or golfer's inability to get paid mean that Cam Newton shouldn't have been paid (officially). The stability of the swim or golf teams shouldn't concern the other students. That's a concern for the NCAA schools, who would still have more than enough money to cover those programs, if they wanted to.

Yeah, there will be problems and perhaps the end result dramatically changes what college football looks like. It's changed before. The Ivy league used to be the best football conference.

I imagine the eventual solution will be something like paying all college players X amount in a sport, so you'd be paid the same to play QB at LSU as you would Michigan and individual players should be able to negotiate money for their jersey sales, advertisements etc. Eventually, these kids will get paid and those problems will be addressed. But right now, billions of dollars are created through college football and the players themselves get none of it. That's not fair and we shouldn't expect it to stay unfair just because solutions are complicated.

Even if we allowed Nike to pay Ezikel Elliot (which we should) that still gets the NCAA off the hook for the millions of dollars they'll be bringing in through the games and merchandising of the players.

Milone was fine last year and Nolasco was on the DL, he wasn't the reason May went to the pen.

Maybe. But there aren't that many directly horrible scenes like the show put forward. Sure, there's a ton of violence and rapes referred to in the books - Khal Drago's sack of the sheep people, for instance. But I think "Pillar's of the Earth"'s rape scene was much more graphic than anything Martin wrote. I think it's fair to say there was a difference in how this stuff was presented in print and tv and HBO went a bit too far into the shock value. The toughest parts of the book - in my opinion - were the Red Viper's death and the Red Wedding. And it's not quite the same to say something happened and to show that something. In "Gladiator", for example, Russell Crowe's son was crucified and died crying. Had they actually shown that, instead of just saying it happened, it would have been a very different movie. HBO went too far with the treatment of women and I don't think Sansa's rape was the only indefensible part. We didn't need 5 minutes of shaming naked Cercei. She also wasn't raped by her brother in the books, just the TV show. We didn't need to see a child tortured for minutes (and the story telling before hand was so heavy handed that we all knew it was coming, which was a second issue). The sand snakes were useless and used as eye candy. While the sexuality of several dornish women is a big theme in the books, the tv show seemed to just want to put a naked 19 year old girl on camera. Robb Stark's wife in not only murdered in the show, but she is pregnant and stabbed in the stomach. Rose's death required one last bit of nudity. While the books show a lot of problems not being a rich guy in Westeros, the show seems only able to show how it affects young (usually good looking) women and girls, who are forced to sell their bodies or be victims. Again, there are major limits to a TV show but I do think the show could have either done a better job of dealing with these things or omitting some outright. (It also hurts the show that neither Arya or Danny are quite as good in the show as they are in the books).

Yeah, he's the son. It'll be revealed either through Bran witnessing it at the God's Eye through the Weirtrees or Howland Reed telling people. The other question is whether Jon has a twin sister who grew up with Reed, which would explain why her exact age isn't in the back of the books and why Howland never visited Winterfell but often wrote private letters to Ned. It would also explain why Alfie Allen said there was a "star wars" like plot twist.

Generally, agents don't exploit their clients. Sure, in some cases they might but usually agents have their clients best interests in mind. Boras was the only person who was talking about Thor's longterm health (I think it was Thor, maybe the other great pitcher) when the Mets wanted to keep him pitching, for instance. I do think the NCAA could set up a fair salary structure to compensate kids - I don't think it would be an bidding type thing. I don't think paying only football players and basketball players, as the market dictates, would violate Title IX. I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure I read a few things about that when the O'Bannon lawsuit came out and the authors weren't overly concerned with Title IX.

I'm not sure one way or the other. I also don't care that much. I've enjoyed the series and I like the rambling nature of it but he's certainly not the best author out there. But he's created a pretty interesting and enjoyable world. His "Dunk and Egg" stories were nice and light and enjoying. Comparing the books to the TV show will always be a problem because of the limitations of each medium. The TV show was (rightly) condemned last year for their misogynistic bent and the producers say they'll fix that this year. I'm sure the next book will wander, esp above the wall, and highlight characters not even in the series. I'll watch and read both.

Yeah, Royals will still be the favorites but we'll see how their starting pitching goes. It could be just as bad or worse. Royals relief pitchers threw the 5th most innings last year in all of baseball (and first in the AL). They should be due for a bit of comedown just based on how good they were last year. But re-signing Gordon was really big for them.

Couldn't disagree more. This disproportionately affects black men. From the article, "After all, who is actually earning the billions of dollars flooding universities, athletic conferences, TV networks and their sponsors? To a large extent, it’s young black men, who are heavily overrepresented in football and men’s basketball, the two sports that bring in virtually all the revenue in college athletics. A 2013 study by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education found that 57 percent of the football players and 64 percent of the men’s basketball players in the six biggest conferences were black; at the same schools, black men made up less than 3 percent of the overall student population. (In recent NFL drafts, five times as many black players were taken in the first two rounds, where the perceived best players are picked, as white players.) Athletics administrators and coaches, meanwhile, are overwhelmingly white. So by refusing to pay athletes, the NCAA isn’t just perpetuating a financial injustice. It’s also committing a racial one."

I can't imagine that there was any scenario where Ryan decided to do something based on what the Astros did. Buxton got called up b/c Hicks went on the DL. If you'll recall, Buxton was optioned back to AAA after his own DL stint. If Ryan was worried about appearances, Buxton would not have gone to AAA. I'm sure the Twins know what they have with Berrios - they've pushed him pretty fast through the system and he'll be making a lot of starts for the Twins next year. Maybe not on opening day.