Twodogs

Maybe they should have kept Chacin??

This is a problem with baseball and America. First, I want to address what is considered black in this argument. So I am assuming in this argument that Miguel Sano is not considered black. Because if he was then I believe that the percentage would go up. So I am assuming that Sano is considered Latino, but just to play devil's advocate for a second that then means that the fastest man in the world Usain Bolt isn't black??? Ok ok, I digress. But this is an American problem because of finances. Sports in America such as baseball are becoming extremely expensive. So I pay 40 bucks per week for my son to see his hitting coach and 50 bucks per visit to see his pitching coach. My wife and I are doing well financially so we don't have a problem affording these things. My son also plays on two travel ball teams a ten year old team, as he is ten and a 12 year old team. He plays little league, which on its own cost us 90 dollars per kid, (my daughter plays also but she is much younger) plus we had to sell 100 dollars of raffle tickets per kid and you know as well as I do that most parents end up buying more than half of those. Plus we get charged 50 dollars per kid for snack bar. So you get this money back if you actually volunteer to work snack bar during the games. Now we have two kids so to get that money back we'd have to work two snack bars. (This is California, but I'm sure it's similar everywhere). Imagine for a second if you have 4 kids playing, imagine octomom for a second. Ok again I am digressing. Other sports aren't any better. My niece, my sister's daughter, was nominated for NCAA woman of the year, her mother spent between 20 to 30 thousand dollars per year while she was in high school to play on the Nike national team. My sister was inducted into her former college hall of fame, so she was able to do a lot of my niece's coaching as she was growing up, but imagine if she didn't know anything about basketball and had to send her to trainers once or twice a week? Sports are becoming rich people's games, I mean guys like Kobe Bryant and Steph Curry come from families that are well off. It didn't always used to be like that; think back to guys like Daryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, they were inner city kids that grew up playing baseball in the parks, or stick ball in the streets, or they'd play a pickup game at school, I mean kids aren't even allowed to bring baseball equipment to school these days as it's considered dangerous, basketballs are ok, but baseballs and footballs are not ok, it's kinda sad. If you drive by a baseball field these days there are no kids out there playing baseball unless they are in uniforms and there is some sort of organized activity going on. You just don't see kids playing pickup games, over the line, 500, pepper or anything like that these days. If it's happening, it's been organized by a sanctioned event, which needs insurance, umpires to be paid etc.... Again, comes at a cost. Again this new American society affects all poor people, black, white, Latino, Asian, etc.... Sports in college is also starting to get harder for poorer people. They continue to increase the standards to become eligible to play college sports. Now on face value, most people would say that is a good thing, but it's harder to qualify to go to college to play sports than it is to just qualify to go to college itself. Now if you are a poor inner city kid, there is a good chance that you were not as well prepared to go to high school than kids from a more affluent area. So now, colleges look at your classes as 9th graders and if they bomb them they can re-take them to get a better grade, but the NCAA looks at the first time you took the class. Now just to get into school, they won't do that, but to play sports they will. So again another strike against kids from poorer neighborhoods. So now in my opinion MLB is also at fault. They put academies down in the Latin American countries like the Dominican Republic, etc... Many of those kids, a lot of them black, but also Latino are trained in these academies to play baseball. Most of them drop out of school and focus on baseball only. https://www.thedialogue.org/blogs/2019/03/baseball-education-dominican-republic/ So, these kids train in baseball all day and then they can get signed by an MLB team as early as age 16, whereas our own youth, our own African American black athletes can't get drafted until they are 18, if African American black athletes go to college, (all of the American kids, but we are looking at black Americans) they aren't allowed to go into the draft until they have completed 3 years of school. So you have a guy like Ronald Acuna who probably was getting trained by MLB coaches in Venezuela by the time he was 12 or 13. Was signed to an MLB team by the time he was 16 or 17, was already in the majors by the time he was 20. Doesn't it seem like that would put all American born players, American black players at a disadvantage if they decide to better their education and they can't even get drafted until they are 21 at the earliest? Our 18 year old draftee's were playing 25 games a year in high school, getting prob about 2 hours of practice per day for 5 days a week and if you grow up in a cold weather state that might only take place for 3 - 4 months max with your high school coach. There is no way a black athlete in America (or any athlete for that matter) can compete with the sheer amount of hours spent working on his baseball craft as Ronald Acuna was able to. Our kids are at a disadvantage, baseball wise as compared to the kids coming out of the Latin American baseball academies. Heck even Max Kepler I think was signed by the time he was 16? So there are a lot of things at play here when talking about the decrease in American black baseball players. Even many of the black American baseball players have come from well off families. Guys like Dee Gordon Ken Griffey Jr. Barry Bonds to just name a few, their fathers played major league baseball and as a result were a little more well off and could afford whatever their kids needed growing up, not to mention they had all access to great coaching starting at a young age. But nonetheless, sports are becoming rich people's activities including at the college level, and the baseball academies in places like Latin America are making it harder for American born athletes altogether and that also includes black American athletes. Now as far as managers and GM's that seems to be a problem in all sports. How many black coaches and GM's are there in hockey? Even basketball, I mean you have Michael Jordan but this is a rich people's issue, and until you have more black ownership that one may be hard to solve. I think getting more black people into prominent roles in sports management might be an easier fix in the short term.

Is the Nipon league going to be on TV at all?

How many instances are there where the twins started hot and then faded down the stretch?

But if the money shifted from 1 player to 3 wouldn't the same agents make their money? I think the big thing is trusting the owners to actually spend that money on those other players and not just pocket it. That is probably the biggest thing is trust between the players and the owners.

I think that MLB teams should be able to field as many minor league teams as they want. I mean if the Yankees wants to have a few more minor league teams then that should be up to them. I get it that some places don't have the facilities to maintain a group of up and coming minor league players, but if a team like the Yankees want to have a couple of more teams so be it. If they want to drop a couple teams and have less than other teams out there then so be it also. I mean all of these teams are not required to have all the same amount of academies in the Dominican? So why do they all have to be the same every where else?

In 1981 after a strike shortened season MLB had a world series rating of a 30.0. Last year Washington's world series win had a rating of 8.1. The owners should really be looking at that when they consider these crazy bargaining conflicts. I mean this type of bull headedness is going to, in the end, decrease their profitability over the next 10 to 15 years. I mean most of their profits come at the hands of TV contracts and deals of that nature. I mean billions. With those ratings headed for the toilet, why would anyone pay MLB so much money for losing viewers? They won't and all of their greed will beging to bankrupt them as they will have to charge more for the games and stuff like that which in turn will decrease the number of overall fans. I mean I get it that this year will be a tough year, they might have to take it in the shorts a little so as to profit at a higher level in the future. I mean when I see the offers of a 50/50 split because of the decreased revenues this year, I kind of get it. But are those same owners willing to do a 50/50 split for all of the good seasons too? If they aren't then they should just get it going now, if they are willing to split profits with the players 50/50 forever then let them know that. But they won't, because they are only willing to split 50/50 when stuff is bad, not when it's good. So at your local grocery store, are they asking the employees to make 50% of a pro-rated salary? No, they are paying the employees what they normally make, and in these crazy times with the virus and all these stores may not make any profits, but they know that if they can keep operations going that on the other side they will. Could you imagine the outrage if someone came up to you at your place of employment and offered you the ability to make 50% of your normal pay. Imagine if you make minimum wage and now you get to make half of that? So yeah I know MLB players make a lot more than that, but still, the owners are making billions off of their backs, and if they screw it up, they might not be in the very soon future.

That is exactly what I was saying, hardly ever does anyone talk about gold gloves first when talking about a hall of fame career. I mean Rafael Palmero won a gold glove and I think he only played like 28 games in the field that year. I know Hunter's gold gloves were earned for the most part, but so many of them aren't. So to talk about his gold gloves first probably means that his counting stats don't quite add up. Otherwise those would be the first things mentioned and then they'd say oh and he also won this many gold gloves.

Lyman Bostock Larry Hisle Jim Eisenrich Mickey Hatcher Tim Tufeul Les Straker John Castino Mark Funderburke Luis Rivas

Your first statement that he won this many gold gloves tells the story. However, he might get lucky if there isn't anyone else to vote for?

1992 twins won 90 games also, led by John Smiley, Kevin Tapani, and Scott Erickson. They didn't hit that many homeruns that year, but had a decent batting average.

I'd watch Kirby for sure, I think Mauer would be boring, he was great, but not very interesting other than being a really good baseball player. Plus they never won the big one with Joe, whereas Kirby was a part of and a leader in a team that won it twice.

The Reds have a lot of nice parts, a championship caliber team, but it seem like they have had nice parts a lot over that last few seasons, so my thinking is there must be a lack of leadership in that clubhouse or something? Something that brings what looks like a talented squad down. Not sure what it is, but I hope it continues on this year so that the Twins don't need to worry about them. As long as Yelich has a say, Milwaukee will be better than that.

Yeah, I really hope all those guys do great things. It's just that when someone doesn't, albeit I feel crappy for them, but I'm not necessarily surprised anymore. That's why I say, hey we know Eddie has done "this" year in and year out, and the Twins are in a window of contention right now, so I'd say don't rock the boat. Yeah, I hope to see those guys perform a little with an expanded roster, that would be great for them. Now if the Twins window was closing up, then yeah, maybe trade some guys, but I wouldn't do that right now. Plus I like Eddie.

I remember when Brian Buchanan and Michael Restovich were going to be the next super stars also. So a bird in the hand is worth at least two in the Busch leagues maybe three? Nonetheless, dang I really hope that Kirilloff and Lanarch become really good players one day, but I've see a lot of can't misses miss. Right now Eddie is a known quantity and as long as the Twins are in contention, I wouldn't want to fill our lineup up with question marks. Right now Arraez is still a question mark, he had 2/3rds of a great season, but so did Danny Santana a few years back. So adding more is not probably a good idea at this point in time. If Arraez goes and hits .300 plus again this year then you probably know that spot is no longer a question mark and you might take a chance on a new question mark. But right now Eddie is proven and he's proven to be pretty good and pretty good under pressure. I'd stick with him for now, and not consider trading him.

What I'm implying is that all anyone ever does is talk negatively about him, yet if this is what they think then why wouldn't other people feel the same way and in that case why would anyone want him in a trade??? I personally really like Eddie, my family and I had a great experience with him at a San Diego Padres game in San Diego a couple years back. Nonetheless, I feel Eddie is a good player and right now is a good fit for the Twins and I just get tired of everyone always saying we need to trade him, and then after saying we need to trade him, they then start to talk about everything he does wrong or does not so great. So my point was, if I try to sell you a car, and all I do is point out all of the flaws, then why the hell would you want to buy that car? I'm all for keeping the car (Eddie) myself.

Everytime people start talking about all of Eddie's negatives then they say that he needs to be traded. Who would trade for someone that only has things wrong with him, I mean OF is probably one of the deepest positions in baseball, no one needs him. Looks like we are stuck with him for a couple more years, and I am fine with it, I like him. Yeah I have a car I want to sell, there is a lot of rust on it. It starts well but doesn't keep running for very long, it's not very fast and it can be uncomfortable to look at while its in your driveway. How much you wanna give me for it?

I'd say September 1st then about 55 or so out of the 80 proposed games of the season will have happened, around 2/3rds of the season. Or no trades at all? I mean one side of the deadline is looking for prospects, they probably won't even be playing any of those games, so it will be hard to do a lot of trading when the prospects probably won't even be playing. No trades could possibly play into the Twins hands as the wealthy teams will be stuck with what they have and the Twins, however not great, have a lot of decent depth on their pitching roster. Obviously they have the hitters, plus depth in the field also.

How many more rules will they have to change to speed the game back up since this will obviously make the games longer. Plus I think it would negatively impact the Twins, I know that is a biased take, but, how likely will the Twins be able to outbid the Mets and the Dodgers for the likes of a Nelson Cruz??

The faster the owners get their product back on the market the more future income they could have if they draw new fans in that can't watch their normal sports that they like??

Yeah, I think that was about the same thing with Tommy Herr.

I definitely thought about Tommy Herr, that was a terrible trade; Brunansky for Herr. Another one that irritated me was John Smiley, he could have been good for the Twins in 92 but then was gone.

I could see AJ being hated by some of the teams the Twins played against frequently.

I have to agree that AJ is more on my favorites list rather than hated list.

I always picked the Bears on Techmo bowl.