The_Phantom

More substantiated proof. Also, a second strike.

Hawk Harrelson is saying Molitor is a great baseball guy so Levine and Falvey are idiots for firing him. And "if they were so smart they'd be on wall street". As far as I'm concerned, if there was any doubt whether that was the right move (there wasn't any) Harrelson getting up in arms about it is the final seal of approval that it was right. That guy's baseball knowledge is a vortex of nothingness.

Hey good work on that research. I don't think those numbers are terribly important though. Straight up "record in close games" is probably a better tool, but really even that is not perfect. When you massively overtax your bullpen and always take your starter out at 100 pitches no matter what, even when the pen is taxed... and so your pen gives up 6 runs. That ruins "close games" AND it affects the pyth. W/L calculation. Pyth is pretty much just if you are scoring more runs than your opponent overall. It's an interesting thought. Because a W/L better than your Pyth could very well mean that you are winning all your close games and only losing when you get blown out. But that's one of those things that in practice probably just isn't as clean cut as that.

But Betts is the best of that group, and he was left in to face him to get to 100.

Big shock, the batter that berrios crosses the magic number is his last. Lol we could just put a buzzer in an earpiece and when the 100th pitch is thrown the player can just walk out. No reason for a mound visit. Autopilot manager.

It's hard for me to agree that he's got a high baseball IQ when every game, no matter what the situation, he goes on auto-pilot and pulls the starter at 100 pitches. There's no thinking to it. If a pitcher gets to 100 pitches during an AB (or 99), that's it for their day. If he's got a high baseball IQ, he really needs to learn how to use it. Because it comes across as daft and not knowing how baseball actually works to always pull a pitcher out based on a magic number. Additionally, remember when he completely butchered a double switch... Also, the time that he let Odorizzi hit. And then pulled him before the next inning started...

This isn’t a complicated issue at all. Molitor strictly adheres to the magic 100 pitch count notion, even if a starter is at something like 5.2 IP and only allowed one run. He very, very rarely stretches the starters beyond that. Whatever batter faces the 100th pitch, that’s the last batter the starter sees. So our bullpen, especially Reed, is horrendously overtaxed.

Dozier will be in boston

Yeah, the Gomez for Hardy trade wasn't a bad trade. The trade that we made to get RID of hardy, however...

list of good times to bunt on the road: Literally never.

That's because Molitor has NO clue what he is doing. Simple as that. 8 walkoffs isn't a fluke, its poor in game management. Bunting at the wrong time, changing pitchers at the wrong time, etc

The thing is, it IS overhyped but you still can’t have a useless player in there. Rodney giving up a bunch of runs in the 8th would have been awful too. Have a good bullpen and there’s not a reason to pay a premium for which inning they pitch in. Rodney isn’t a good reliever, closer or otherwise

Molitor, Lomo, and Rodney should all wake up to pink slips in the morning. This is 2016 all over again in the sense that they are going to dig themselves into a big enough hole that they cant climb out. Toronto always kills us too.

I expect him to be better this year. Baseball players seem to always go through peaks and valleys, slumps and hotstreaks. If he can keep his cold streaks in April, that makes me happier than in September and October when every game is crucial. But even a decent start is better than what he has been doing. He hasn't just been rough in April, he's been downright awful. He will (hopefully) always bring a lot of defensive value to the team, but the Twins will definitely need his bat to contribute too, mostly so the Indians have less of a chance of running away with the division like they did last year.

Yeah. He's making a fantastic showing in spring training. But so did Park and he ended up back in Korea after a poor year in the minors. It's nice to have optimism that he's turned the corner, but we also need to keep expectations in check, especially with that absurdly high Babip.

And that is a completely fair response. I agree with you that I would be mad in that situation. I think in a case like that, it's certainly acceptable and a reasonable concession of posters for you to be able to change an offending word in the post. So I would agree that it is better for you to have the ability to edit out select words/maybe even partial sentences without having to remove an entire post. It's only when it is enough removal that it risks changing the meaning or intention of the post that it is an issue, at least for me. If I had a surefire solution, I'd offer it.

Well, in fairness the suggestion you quoted actually included suspending/temporarily removing the post while it's "under review". And as to the rest, I don't think anyone is actually trying to downplay the difficulty of a moderator role on a forum, especially a forum that clearly has more stringent rules than the average forum. Which, appears to be paying off. I think the biggest issue is the ability to edit. As stated above, I think a lot of us are in agreement that we'd rather you remove the post altogether than to take a (sorry if this is offensive) dictatorial approach that you can edit whatever you want without any warning to the poster, besides it being stated in the "comment policy" thread. There appears to be an entire team of moderators, which can be a great thing. But that means that your responsibility goes beyond just editing whatever you want to edit. Part of the role of editing should be every post that gets edited is accompanied at the very least by a private message explanation. Certainly, at least, to a first time "offender". Otherwise it very much comes across as the moderators simply not agreeing with what you had to say and cleansing it to a more "acceptable" (in their eyes) post. You ask us to understand that you're people too and that your job is difficult. I think it's fair to ask the same in reverse. That we are also people posting our thoughts on this message board, often thought out and edited a few times before hitting the "post" button and it's only fair to think about our message before a post is instantly "cleaned up" to fit what you think is acceptable. Either way, I know you've already acknowledged that it's a deeper issue than was previously stated and I don't expect an immediate response to this. Thank you for acknowledging that some things may need to be discussed and I look forward to hearing what you guys have to say.

I am not really assuming anything, because earlier today I had a post edit that made no swipes at any posters and had an entire paragraph removed with no explanation whatsoever. The paragraph was, in my opinion, a pretty important part of my point and its removal changed the tone of the post completely. It was a two paragraph post. The theme of the first one was to point out that no one besides Betsy and Miguel know what actually happened, and everything else is pretty much hearsay, and if anyone had actually seen anything then they would have been interviewed as part of the MLB investigation. Then that flowed into the next point that MLB likely exhausted their resources to the best of their ability and didn't find anything so we need to move on the best we can and not point fingers. Apparently that second paragraph met the code of conduct, but not the first. There was no personal attack there, no foul language, nothing directed at any one person, really just (When tied into the second paragraph) tying into the thought that people need to be careful how hard they point their fingers in either direction. As edited, it was more just about that the investigation did its job.

If that were remotely true, literally 100% of sexual assault cases would result in a conviction. The alleged victim's testimony is never evidence.

I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I'd much rather it be well known that the site (IMO) overreached and changed my wording than for something that is not actually my own words to have my name by it. As is you're literally making our posts say whatever you decide they can say and having our signature beside them. That's not right.

I don't believe that to be the case. I believe MLB's policies are likely far less stringent than a court of law where someone is, legally, innocent until proven guilty. Considering that another player was just suspended for apparently having a yelling match with his wife, it sounds like MLB found nothing to hang a case on. Which, again, doesn't mean nothing happened, it just means that they didn't even have enough to have reasonable suspicion that it did happen as she said. Perhaps more briefly, in a court of law reasonable doubt is enough to acquit. In a case like this, reasonable suspicion is surely enough to suspend.

I agree with this thread 1000%. Moderators should not have the ability to arbitrarily edit a post made by another member. As stated above, it truly can change the meaning of the post - or at least the intended emphasis on which point was supposed to be getting across. It's hardly fair to have some sort of authoritative hand that can erase, cleanse, purge, add, do whatever they like to someone else's post. The idea of a bold headline "this comment has been edited by moderators" is a fairly decent compromise offer, although I really dislike the ability for that to happen at all UNLESS it is an actually offensive or profanity filled post. Not just because a moderator doesn't agree or like how someone worded their point.

Probably because it was a cesspool of Mauer bashing and nothing else. But let's keep this thread on topic.

It still is circular because there is a laundry list of reasons the MVP voting hasn't always been reliable. I mean the notion that "you can't be MVP if your team doesn't make the playoffs" is just now dying. I could probably say even more recently than this, but with absolute certainty I will say that if 2016's stats happened in 2006, Mike Trout wouldn't be a 2x MVP. Mookie Betts would have, without question, won the MVP instead. Baseball writers also sometimes vote for their home team guy even if it doesn't make a lick of sense (though off the topic of my head i don't know any specific examples where that one has actually changed the outcome of a vote). To determine elite status i'd really rather look at how often they led the league or were at least top 10 in their league, rather than what flawed voters of the past had to say. But anyone with 3,000 strikeouts, let alone nearly 4,000 strikeouts, gets in my hall. Which i know you argued with longevity but I don't see any reason longevity is a negative. And honestly a good chunk of the guys in the 3000 strikeout club have a lower k/9 rate anyway.

I have issues in getting behind the idea of basing HOF vote off of Cy Young and MVP vote totals. You're effectively saying "you don't deserve votes now because you didn't get votes then". It's kind of a circular argument. I especially have issues with it right now, when most of the players that are up for vote are really being judged with different criteria than they were in their playing days. Up until a few years ago the best way to get cy young votes was to get to 20 wins. Now, most writers barely look at the win column because we've realized how team dependent it is. So since you're looking at two different sets of data/criteria, it doesn't make much sense to me to judge it based on how they were voted for previously. That same argument can somewhat apply to all-star selections. There's also the fact that he was a much better second-half player. Which All-star game tallies aren't going to account for. Career 3.12 ERA in the second half is very very good. The strikeout/9 point is a very interesting one but like you pointed out there is a lot to be gained for longevity. PS not trying to derail the thread away from santana, just wanted to point out that I thought blyleven was snubbed for years.