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2020 General MLB off-season

Mo Horn

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ChickenSandwich

ChickenSandwich 9843

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1 hour ago, UpperWestside said:

If they're on 2nd base and do it that is part of the game. That is a way every team tries to get signs from their opponent. Using technology is a bridge too far. I am okay with any team who has done it having that season's win and losses stricken from the official record. Like Joe Girardi I do not think the punishment handed down is any kind of deterrent. I cannot make Manfred do the right thing, nor can anyone else. He botched this badly and that's kind of it for now. 

I love the game and want to see a great season of baseball up in the Bronx. Hopefully we never see any teams participate in something like this again. 

Well if the signs are coming from upstairs and relayed from the dug out to the hitter or second there is no difference. 
 

That is exactly what Joe G described as “part of the system”  when managing the Yankees. 
 

It’s stealing signs and cheating. You are trying to play semantics and “levels of guilt”

They can strip wins as long as they have the same thorough investigation of every team from 2017. We already have two on record for cheating the same way, using cameras and going further. Electronic buzzers (Apple Watch).  Red Sox and Yankees
 

Every team needs the same treatment. We already have 3 caught on record as being guilty.   

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ss13
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I will personally thank the very first player to kneel solely for this...     

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Am I taking crazy pills? Mr. “thin blue line” cop defender himself is crying about injustice? The same arrogant fuckface who assured everyone that HPD and Art fucking Acevedo’s actions in the Harding

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UpperWestside

UpperWestside 6169

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1 hour ago, ChickenSandwich said:

It’s stealing signs and cheating. You are trying to play semantics and “levels of guilt”

I have lost count on the amount of times I have said this, but anyone using technology during the game to steal signs needs their record stricken, from the year or years it happened, completely. I do not care what team this affects. 

Baseball is unique in that it is the only one of the four major sports where if you go back and watch the replay of the game you are going to see the signs used. Catchers, however, change their sign sequence after every game so I do not see watching those signs as being helpful unless a catcher never changes his pattern from game-to-game. I cannot imagine a single catcher keeping things the same every game though. 

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ss13

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Here’s a positive story about the sport. 

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The voice mail stayed on Adam Greenberg’s phone for 10 years. Whenever he needed a pick-me-up or a reminder to keep going, he’d listen to it. The voice belonged to Dusty Baker and the message was full of inspiration. The first time he heard it, Greenberg cried.

The emotions were much more upbeat Sunday when Greenberg, who was in Astros camp with his job as national director of sales for Chandler Bat Company, popped into Baker’s office at Ballpark of the Palm Beaches to say hello. It was the first time they had seen each other in about six years, though they talk more often than that. The hug they shared was genuine.

“Dusty is one of the greatest people I've ever met on or off the field, and to see him back in uniform, it’s where he should be,” Greenberg said. “To come into a team like the Astros with everything that’s gone on, there’s no person that I know that could fill this role better than him. He’s just a genuine human being that knows the game as well as anyone and cares about people. It’s so good to see him there.”

Greenberg’s respect for Baker was born out of dark circumstances. Baker was managing the Cubs when Greenberg was called up from Double-A to make his Major League debut on July 9, 2005, in Miami. He pinch-hit against the Marlins in the ninth inning and was struck in the back of the head by a 92-mph fastball from Valerio De Los Santos on the first pitch he saw in the big leagues.

Greenberg sustained a mild concussion and was removed from the game, though the medical problems were just starting. He suffered positional vertigo for 2 1/2 years and battled vision problems and depression. He eventually asked for his release from the Cubs and, years later, had one more at-bat in the Majors with the Marlins in 2012 that was the result of an online petition. He was struck out on three pitches by R.A. Dickey, but that didn’t matter. Greenberg made it back to the big leagues.

A couple of years following the incident, in 2007, Baker got a letter from a fan requesting a baseball card be signed. In the letter, the person told Baker that Greenberg had been released by the Royals and his baseball career was in jeopardy. Baker tracked down Greenberg and left him the voice mail that served as his motivation for a post-baseball life.

“It was so genuine and from the heart,” Greenberg said. “It put me in tears the first time, but it was the motivation and inspiration I needed to get up and keep going. And since then, he’s been somebody that’s been near and dear to me. I wrote a book called ‘Get Up: The Art of Perseverance’ and Dusty has almost a whole chapter in it about [our] relationship and what he means. He’s welcomed me into his home. He’s been someone who’s bigger than baseball for me.”

Greenberg, 39, overcame his medical issues and started a nutrition company that he ran for 10 years before selling it. He ran for state senate last year in Connecticut and is enjoying being back in the game working for Chandler, which is owned by Mets outfielder Yoenis Céspedes. Greenberg also serves as a baseball analyst on the ACC Network.

“Just being back around the clubhouse and the players and everything, it’s been fun for me,” he said. “When they go hit with the bats they come back and say, ‘I never heard a sound like this. This is amazing.’ It feels good. You’re becoming a part of the game. Being on the other side is fun. I’m enjoying it.”

Baker said he will always remember Greenberg’s parents crying after he was helped off the field in what should have been the greatest moment of his life. Baker said it was one of the saddest moments of his career, but seeing Greenberg now brings joy.

“You see guys change, but he’s the same young, enthusiastic kid that he always was. But now he’s a man,” Baker said. “You’re not supposed to have favorites, but he’s one of mine.”

 

Did not know Yoenis owned a bat company. 

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Hall of Fame third baseman Chipper Jones has joined the ESPN lineup.

The former Atlanta Braves star will work as a major league analyst, primarily on weeknight and holiday games. He'll debut on Opening Day when San Francisco plays at Dodger Stadium on March 26.

Jones worked twice last year as a guest analyst for ESPN.

"We were instantly impressed," senior coordinating producer Phil Orlins said in a statement Monday. "He is a charismatic storyteller with an authentic and fun-loving personality."

The 47-year-old Jones hit .303 with 468 home runs and 1,623 RBIs in a 19-year career through 2012.

 

Matt V. & ARod only on SNB, Mendoza on weeknights. 

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Beau Vine

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Stark with a bunch of managers suffering from bruised pussies because a rule change is going to make them have to think harder:

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He is still a week away from dealing with a rule that is guaranteed to have him reaching for his Advil stash. But Terry Francona is already losing sleep over an imaginary game he has managed only in his mind.

In the dream, it is June in San Diego. Francona’s Indians are playing the Padres. And the new three-batter rule is hanging over the manager’s head as he frets about how he would handle a pitcher who doesn’t even pitch for him anymore.

“What if (Corey) Kluber goes 7 1/3?” Terry Francona muses. “And we’re playing San Diego, and they’ve got (Eric) Hosmer and (Manny) Machado (coming up)?”

In another year, in a previous life, not a problem. His team employs a lethal situational left-hander (Oliver Pérez) and a sidewheeling situational right-hander (Adam Cimber). So….

“So we’ve got an answer,” Francona is saying, the managerial wheels churning over this still-fictional dilemma. “But right now we don’t.”

Right. Here in the year 2020? Here in baseball’s first season of requiring all pitchers to face at least three hitters, unless an inning ends first? Here in this strange new orbit all managers are about to enter? He would be correct. Now, they don’t.

“We’ve got half an answer,” Francona goes on. “Pick your poison. Who do you want to face? And that’s not fair.”

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been surveying managers who are still trying to reprogram their managerial brains now that the rules, and their world, have changed. Frankly, they’re struggling. They’re processing. They’re venting.

Joe Maddon (Angels): “You’re going to be put into situations that you never, ever wanted to be in — and you worked hard not to be in.”

Bud Black (Rockies): “A team should be able to do what they want to do with their players.”

Torey Lovullo (Diamondbacks): “It’s not going to be as simple as people think.”

There is no more challenging aspect to the day-to-day life of a modern manager than maneuvering through the daily bullpen chess match. But now imagine Magnus Carlsen, your reigning world chess champ, showing up at the chessboard next week and being told, “Sorry, Magnus. Your king has to move three squares now instead of one. Good luck to you.”

Well, that’s how baseball’s newest rule change feels to the men who have spent a lifetime managing their bullpen chess pieces one way and now are being told that way will no longer be permissible, beginning in spring-training games on March 12 and then carrying right through the season, the postseason and, presumably, the rest of time.

Oh, they’ll deal with whatever they’re told to deal with. But they don’t have to celebrate it.

“Look, I think MLB has done an unbelievable job,” Francona says. “Every time they put rules in, they explain things to us. But this is the one time I cannot get it through my head. They’re telling you how to compete. On our team, we show up early and we stay late. One of the things we try to do is run our bullpen better than the other team. Sometimes we’re more successful than others. We’re not infallible. But I think the unintended consequences of this — I just don’t think they’ve thought them through.”

What Rob Manfred and the folks who devised this rule have told them is that that’s not true. The architects believe they’ve thought through every pro and every con. They see this rule impacting so few real-life situations that they think the actual impact will be minimal. So in the view of the people in charge, this is not designed to be a rule that eliminates strategy. It’s just designed to be a rule that changes strategy.

But how will that strategy be morphing? We’ve asked the managers. Here is just some of what they see coming.

The intentional walk is a thing again
It was just a decade and a half ago, in 2004, that Barry Bonds piled up 120 intentional walks in one season all by himself. Boy, those were the days. But by last year, as intentional walks dropped to an all-time low, the entire AL West didn’t pile up 120 intentional walks by all five teams combined. The Astros, as you might recall, issued zero intentional walks in the entire regular season.

So a mere five months ago, the intentional walk was clearly dying. But that was then. This is now, in the new three-batter-rule universe.

“I know the intentional walk has kind of gone away,” says Cubs manager David Ross. “This might bring it back in.”

We had managers tell us this spring that intentional walks could double this season — which means, by the way, that we could see a swing from the fewest intentional walks per game in history one year to the most the next year. That’s a crazy thought, but it’s easy to see why. Think about it.

Say you’re Torey Lovullo, managing the Diamondbacks, facing the Dodgers. You bring in your best left-hander, Andrew Chafin, to face Max Muncy — who then doubles. Up next, it’s Justin Turner, who hits right-handed. On deck is Cody Bellinger, who bats left-handed. Wouldn’t it suddenly become almost automatic for Chafin to intentionally walk Turner to get to Bellinger? Seems like it.

“If there’s a bad matchup, and then a good matchup behind him, maybe you put a guy on base,” Ross says, “because that counts as a batter faced.”

NEW STRATEGY ALERT NO. 1! In this scenario, Chafin gets credit for three batters faced, but only actually pitches to two. Can’t beat that for modern innovation. But wait. Let’s keep those strategic wheels spinning.

“Say you bring in a lefty to face a lefty,” says Maddon. “And say there’s a runner on first base. Now he walks him, and it’s first and second, two outs, and it’s a horrible matchup with this lefty versus a righty. Do you intentionally walk that dude if there’s a lefty on deck to load the bases? You might.”

NEW STRATEGY ALERT NO. 2! There were only 29 intentional walks issued all last season with a runner on first base. There were only nine issued by all 15 American League teams put together. But here’s a bet you should make: This year, that number should explode — almost solely because that left-handed pitcher on the mound has to face at least three hitters.

But hang on. There’s an even more fascinating plot twist that could come into play because of this rule. This could even bring back…

“The old Barry Bonds”
A manager who asks not to be named is thinking through the kinds of situations we’ve been kicking around above. He is talking about facing one of baseball’s scariest lineups. We won’t name that one, either. But here’s his thought:

Two outs. Two on. He rolls the dice and brings in a left-handed reliever to face a dangerous left-handed-hitting all-star. Let’s call him “David Ortíz.” But there’s a terrifying right-handed hitter on deck. Let’s call him “Manny Ramírez.”

As the manager tumbles those dice to escape this inning, “I’m trying not to get to (Manny Ramírez),” he says. “I’m making sure we get (David Ortíz). But I’m going to walk into that matchup with (Manny) if that out isn’t made. So we’re trying to amplify that matchup (with Ortíz) and say, ‘Hey look, we’ve really got to lock down on this situation, make sure we find the target, make sure we find the right matchup, make sure we get the out.’”

Ah, but this is baseball. And baseball isn’t real reliable at following those scripts. So what happens if they don’t get that out? What happens if “Manny Ramírez” is now heading for the plate with the bases loaded?

“We’re going as far as to ask ourselves, ‘What happens when somebody does the old Barry Bonds – walks (Manny) with the bases loaded and forces in one run?’” this manager says. “Those are internal conversations we’ve had as a group.”

For the record, the intentional walk has been an official stat for 65 years now, since 1955. Exactly once, in all those years, has a hitter other than Bonds been handed “the old Barry Bonds” — and been intentionally walked with the bases loaded. That was Josh Hamilton, on Aug. 17, 2008. The manager who issued that walk? A fellow named Joe Maddon.

NEW STRATEGY ALERT NO. 3! So here we have a thing that has almost never happened, since the invention of the intentional walk. Yet we have an active manager, telling us right out loud, that his team has talked about this in its three-batter-rule deliberations and thinks we could possibly see the bases-loaded intentional walk become a thing that won’t shock us anymore. We’re not sure if this qualifies as “forward-thinking genius” or “another unintended consequence.” But it’s one more sign that this rule is guaranteed to alter what used to pass for traditional baseball thinking.

Beware the left-right-left-right lineup logic
When we’ve asked about how this new rule could alter lineup construction, the first inclination of most managers is to suggest that the way to neutralize the other team’s best left-handed reliever is to do what seems most logical.

“If you do (your lineup) righty-lefty-righty-lefty,” says Toronto’s Charlie Montoyo, “that’s going to be tough to match up against.”

There are times — possibly most times — that’s obviously going to be true, and the way to go. Just review the ground we’ve covered so far, and you’ll see why that makes sense. But are we sure it makes sense in every situation, with every lineup?

NEW STRATEGY ALERT NO. 4! “Normally, I’ve always gone left-right, left-right, left-right,” Maddon says. ‘I’ve always tried to do that with my lineups. But … now you might see stacks.”

So what’s a stack? It has nothing to do with pancakes. It’s a lineup stack that could be triggered if a team has one of those impact left-handed bats in the middle of its lineup, the kind of guy most likely to force an opposing manager to go to a left-handed reliever with a game on the line. In that case, maybe left-right-left isn’t the way to structure the ideal lineup.

Maybe it makes sense to “stack” your best right-handed bats behind that left-handed hitter, so that a left-handed reliever can’t bypass the next hitter with a simple intentional walk. That’s especially true of the Angels lineup, which otherwise might go:

Mike Trout (RH)
Shohei Ohtani (LH)
Anthony Rendon (RH)

“Just say Ohtani’s hitting,” Maddon says. “Would you not then put two righties behind Ohtani? … So that’s what I’m saying. You might see stacks. With a prodigious left-handed hitter, it might be wise to stack behind him, on the opposite side — right-right-right — so if they brought in this fellow to face Ohtani … now they’ve got to go through Trout-Rendon.”

Essentially, by setting his lineup like that, Maddon would seem to be setting a trap, trying to lure that opposing manager into a matchup he’d love to avoid — with a left-hander against two of the best right-handed hitters alive. Or it could work another way, by getting Ohtani a late-inning matchup against a right-hander. What we don’t know yet is how the opposing manager would counter that trap. But this is just one more way in which the 2020 chess match is about to evolve.


Ohtani (Masterpress / Getty Images)
A big year to shop at Target
Here’s how managers used to game-plan in the olden days — by which we mean, oh, last year: Go through the opposing lineup. Pick out the hitter that each reliever in their bullpen matched up best against. Then look for situations that allowed them to force that matchup.

OK, now back to the future. Here’s how managers are going to have to game-plan now, when matching up one pitcher against one hitter is no longer a feasible strategy: Pick out pockets of the lineup where different relievers could match up — or, as Torey Lovullo calls them, “targets.”

NEW STRATEGY ALERT NO. 5! “‘Targets,’ in my vocabulary, is a huge word,” Lovullo says, “when I’m designing strategy through the course of a game — targeting matchups that I want to try to make sure play out. I go through about six or seven targets per game.”

Lovullo’s biggest challenge this year might be finding new ways to use one of his most valuable relievers, Chafin — whose 25 one-batter appearances were the most of any left-hander in the National League. Now that the one- or two-batter appearance is off his drawing board, Lovullo has to recalibrate how he’ll employ Chafin, who faced the second-most left-handed hitters (135) of any left-handed reliever in baseball last season — by design.

“What I do in Andrew Chafin’s case — it’s not a secret, I think the rest of the league knows it — is I target the candidates that I think I want to have him face,” Lovullo says. “And I save him for the highest leverage situation I can get him in there. It’s not going to be a closer situation. It could be the seventh. It could be the eighth. It might even be the sixth inning. So I find my targets.”

When Lovullo hears people say this rule is going to eliminate strategy, he laughs. What he sees, when he thinks about how much more complicated it is for him just to plot out how to use his best situational left-hander, is actually the opposite.

“I think it’s going to enhance strategy,” he says. “It’s not going to simplify things, where you’ve just got to throw him out there for three batters and see what happens … It’s how you can get out of that and maximize that situation, when you have your back against the wall. To me, there’s a strategy to that. So it’s not just ‘throw him out there and watch the game for three batters.’”

Warning! Mid-at-bat pitching change ahead
Picture this scene — because it’s coming to a ballpark near you:

Jon Lester rolls into the seventh inning, and up steps Christian Yelich. The count goes to 3-and-0. And then …

Out pops David Ross, to wave for a right-handed reliever … as two right-handed hitters loom in the next two spots. So in trots Tyler Chatwood and throws … ball four. On semi-purpose, of course.

NEW STRATEGY ALERT NO. 6! So what’s up with that? Here’s what, in the coy words of Ross, even as he’s trying to reveal as little as possible.

“I don’t know that I really want to share my secrets yet,” he says, with a knowing chuckle. “But there are some areas that will come into play where you might be able to give a guy a batter faced without him actually facing the batter.”

What’s up, in other words, is one of the oddest wrinkles in this new rule: In that scenario above, it’s Lester who would get official credit for that walk of Yelich. But it’s Chatwood who would get credit for that batter faced — because MLB has informed teams that the pitcher who is on the mound when a plate appearance ends will be considered to have “faced” that batter. And that would be true even if the new pitcher comes in and throws no actual pitches, because his manager signals for an intentional walk.

Got that? Even managers who have contemplated this stuff are having trouble deciding if it makes any sense.

“OK, let me think of a scenario,” says Rays manager Kevin Cash. “Say we have (left-handed setup man Colin) Poche pitching to a lefty. He goes 3-0 on him … So we’re just going to give up on that guy, bring in (right-hander Diego Castillo) and say, ‘It’s a bad matchup for you, Diego, so we’re just going to walk him now and let him go?’”

Cash shakes his head. You can see his wheels spinning as he imagines trying to explain this to everyone involved — Poche, Castillo, his front office, even Rob Manfred himself.

“They’ll change that,” Cash says, finally. “If that starts happening, I bet that will be something they’ll discuss, that you’re not allowed to do that. Because that defeats the purpose of what they’re trying to accomplish.”

He raises an excellent point. Is any of this open for review, if it “defeats the purpose of what they’re trying to accomplish?” Managers say they’ve been told none of this etched in stone.

“I don’t think it’s like the Ten Commandments,” Maddon pronounces. “I don’t think that any of these things are going to be in place for the next couple of millennia.”

The return of the pinch-hitter
No AL team ran more pinch-hitters up there last season than those ever-fluid Tampa Bay Rays. They used 130 of them — including, at one point, five in one nine-inning game. So when Cash starts mulling what lies ahead this year, in a world in which he now has an extra bench player and a rule that requires pitchers to stay in the game for three hitters, it’s no surprise to hear these words coming out of his mouth:

“We’re gonna pinch-hit,” he says. “A lot.”

NEW STRATEGY ALERT NO. 7! What happens when you combine a team that almost never plays the same lineup two days in a row with a rule change that locks the opposing manager out of the ability to match up a fresh reliever with all its bench options? Guess what? Let the pinch-hitter parade begin, especially in a place like Tampa Bay.

“When you pinch-hit (in the past), there was always a risk of ‘what is the opposition going to do?’” Cash says. “Are they going to bring a pitcher in? … But when you pinch-hit now, the leverage is with the offense. You’ve got the guy penned in. You will be able to just pick your matchup without any concern — within that three batters.”

Again, it’s not too hard to envision how this would work. It’s the seventh inning in New York. The Yankees call on the left-handed Zack Britton to face the top of the Rays’ order, with two left-handed hitters (Austin Meadows and Yoshi Tsutsugo) looming. But Cash has a bench packed with multi-position players. So here comes José Martínez to hit for Meadows and Hunter Renfroe to hit for Tsutsugo — and Aaron Boone has no ability to bring in a right-hander until Britton has navigated through three right-handed bats.

You don’t have to be the mix-and-match kings of baseball to take advantage of this. But it helps.

“As I said,” Cash says, “we’re gonna pinch-hit. A lot.”

What you won’t see
But for every new strategic wrinkle this rule will bring us, there’s another that will disappear. Here’s a sampling of what figures to vanish:

I CAN GIVE YOU ONE HITTER – “Here’s the thing,” says Bud Black. “Let’s say we have a pitcher who throws 28 pitches on a Tuesday night, and he also got a couple of outs for you on Sunday afternoon … And now you get to Wednesday. So you go up to that pitcher and say, ‘How ya feeling?’ And he says, ‘I can get you one hitter.’ Well, those days are gone — because there’s no such thing now as one hitter.”

MOVE THE LEFT-HANDER TO THE OUTFIELD – This used to be kind of fun. Remember the 2017 Cubs-Reds game when, with a right-left-right-left procession of Reds hitters hovering, Maddon flip-flopped two different relievers — Travis Wood and Spencer Patton — between left field and the mound, depending on who was hitting? Good times! And just last year, Cash had two different games in which he moved his best situational left-hander, Adam Kolarek, to first base to help him dodge a right-handed hitter, then shifted him back to the mound when the next left-handed bat came around. That used to serve as the veritable pinnacle of managerial creativity. But now?

“That’s done,” Cash says. “Done. What’s the benefit of doing that, unless I want Kolarek to play for three batters at first base?”

His interpretation of that is correct, by the way (even though we should mention Kolarek is a Dodger now). MLB has informed teams that all relievers have to face three hitters consecutively. So if Kolarek (or any other reliever) enters a game, pitches to three hitters and then moves to another position, he can’t return and just face one more left-handed hitter. He has to stick around for three more hitters in a row.

THE QUICK HOOK – “Here’s the one thing with managers,” says Toronto’s Charlie Montoyo. “They can tell whether this guy has it or doesn’t have it by the first batter. And what happens when you know already he doesn’t have it and now he’s got to face two more batters? That’s gonna be tough to just sit there and take it.”

Well, there is one option: Head for the mound with the trainer — because managers are still permitted to remove a pitcher who is injured or sick. But that’s a card they can only play so much. MLB has told them it has compiled historical data on how rare it has been through the years for any pitcher to leave a game for those reasons, and it will be watching closely. If it feels that exception is being abused, it has threatened to impose rules saying that any pitcher who exits with an injury won’t be permitted to pitch again for a week — or even could be required to go on the Injured List.

Let the trial and error begin
They’re all a week away from seeing this rule begin to wreak havoc in actual exhibition games. They’ve been contemplating what it means for weeks. Many have even walked through simulations with their research-and-development people or brainstormed with their front offices, just to be ready. But are they? They don’t sound ready.

Cash: “I think we’re going to learn a lot in the first month.”

Black: “This is a strategy, or a change in strategy, that we’re going to have to really wrap our heads around here moving forward, because it really changes how use your bullpen — not only on a given night for sure, but even in usage on previous nights, and how you’re going to use your bullpen tomorrow and the next day.”

Francona: “I’m just having a hard time — and I know when the season starts, nobody is gonna give a shit that I’m having a hard time. But I’m going to have to figure out what we’re going to do. And it bothers me.”

They’ve already begun playing with different ideas — like Cash picturing a left-handed masher like Ohtani lurking as the third hitter of the inning and getting the left-hander in the game to face the first batter of the inning instead of waiting for Ohtani’s turn.

“There are going to be a lot of bad decisions made,” Cash says. “And we’ll do it. I’ll do it. I’m sure I’ll screw it up — overvaluing the guy that’s three batters away, undervaluing the two in front of him, and all of a sudden, Ohtani comes up and there are guys on second and third. Or you’re down two runs because you walked a guy and the next guy hit a home run. But hey, now at least you’ve got the lefty on Ohtani.”

They already had a million decisions to make. Now these men have a million more. But the moral of the story is this: Baseball may not look quite the same once this rule drops out of the heavens — but we think we’ve documented what it won’t do. It won’t kill strategy.

“No, it just creates a different one,” says Joe Maddon. “But I can’t tell you that it’s necessarily gonna be better.”

 

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WBT

WBT 20609

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2 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

The Pirates are in mid-season form already..

The play referenced by the announcer:

#2 really should have gone for the kill shot on Fisk after the first guy softened him up.

 

Wasn't there a play like that in The Natural but both runners were safe?  Seems like I remember that in some baseball movie.

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Helobious

Helobious 9462

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On 3/3/2020 at 6:03 PM, Beau Vine said:

Yeah, Jeets!

Yeah, Jeets!

Member when everyone thought Jeter was a dumbass for giving away Stanton? I member.
 

I also member when people said I was an idiot for saying Stanton hits fewer than 10 homers this year. Don’t look too stupid now do I? 

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Helobious

Helobious 9462

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I need all the money possible to survive the impending quarantine and/or medical bills, can’t risk it on on Encarnacion-level fluke. Even I can admit a healthy Giancarlo is good for 35+ homers if he plays in 110 games or so. However it’s clear we’re never seeing that Giancarlo again, as the injuries keep piling up. He’s already going to start this year on the DL, so my point is proven. I think 60ish games played this year and <10 homers is a lock for him. 

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Helobious

Helobious 9462

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Posted
1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

60 games should mean 250 PAs. I don’t know what his walk rate is historically but even if you give him one per game that’s 190 ABs. You don’t think he can pull off a home run every 19 at bats?

He’s like Judge, every game that they play now they’re dealing with a fairly serious core, hip, or shoulder injury. That completely saps your power. I really do think this is the year the wheels fall off for Stanton. Dudes that big & strong just aren’t meant to play baseball, and sadly I think Judge will find that out soon too. 
 

And please don’t bring up Winfield. He was tall but many of today’s players could snap him in half. There’s no comparison.

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Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Should be two 8-6-2's.  8-6-2-2- would give the catcher an assist.

There was a 4-2-4 DP in tonight’s Ranger game, bet there ain’t been many of those in MLB history. 

 

Also, the Rangers are being no-hit through 7 on FSSW. 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54253

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, Helobious said:

He’s like Judge, every game that they play now they’re dealing with a fairly serious core, hip, or shoulder injury. That completely saps your power. I really do think this is the year the wheels fall off for Stanton. Dudes that big & strong just aren’t meant to play baseball, and sadly I think Judge will find that out soon too. 
 

Ever heard of Frank Thomas?  He's in this thing called "the Hall of Fame."

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Beau Vine

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12 minutes ago, Helobious said:

He wasn’t as tall as Stanton or Judge. Also he wasn’t an outfielder. 

Stanton is 6' 6".  Frank was 6' 5".  Maybe the Yankees should put Stanton in a compression chamber to lose an inch so that all his injuries will go away.  

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Helobious

Helobious 9462

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Goo Punch said:

Dave Winfield was pretty good. 

I literally outlined why he isn’t an apt comparison, but thanks for the input. 
 

Maybe I’m not clear in my position. Tall & strong guys can be good ball players, but not at a physically demanding position like outfield. The ship has sailed on Stanton, but Judge could have a few more good years with a permanent move to 1B or DH. Winfield was tall but kept his athletic & lean build most of his career. He wisely didn’t try to turn himself into Hulk. 

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