Abomination

It was a minor point as part of a post I made quite a while back (think it was something about hitting fundamentals). I was defending my opinion on it when challenged, not making it a major point of contention.

I can't recall all of the things in the interview (was half doing other stuff), but he said that: -Mottola was offered the opportunity to stay in the organization and will be given lots of time to make a decision on whether to accept or not. -Gibbons has a few hitting coaches in mind who he's worked with before to replace Mottola. -Something about not being happy about the high strikeout numbers on the team, as well as 2 strike approach if I remember right. -Said some players who finished strong may have changed the organization's thoughts on their futures (took this to mean Lind and Santos but can't recall if he mentioned names or not), as well as some who finished very poorly (didn't mention JPA by name, but certainly seemed to indicate him in combo with the previous statements). -Seemed (indirectly of course) to be some indication that the team wants to transition away from home run or bust approach. -Internal talk about Cecil and McGowan for rotation. Decided to keep Cecil in his current role, but will re-evaluate McGowan in the spring. #1 thing is keeping him healthy, but may look to stretch him out and see how it goes. -No decision yet on JJ. They hope to have him get on the mound for light sessions before they have to make a decision. -Morrow injury thought to be caused from throwing cutters in the spring. No mention if he will abandon the pitch or not. They're hoping to have him throw in November and see how things are going. -Doesn't expect anything to really happen until winter meetings. I think there was more, this is just off the top of my head during the hockey intermission.

Sportsnet has a video of it up. Actually well worth listening to imo. There were some very interesting tidbits I don't recall hearing from AA before. http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/pts-anthopoulos-talks-coaching-changes/

I think Scherzer might be fired up. Hard to tell, but gonna go out on a limb here.

At least the CS degree has some application to astrophysics. I think you're always better off if you have knowledge in multiple areas, as many people don't work in a single job or field their entire lives.

Interesting. I guess I'll reserve full judgement until we see who they bring in, but I'm still leaning towards not liking the move. My suspicion is one of the new coaches might be Alomar.

I think it's more of the difference of how much you'd make without them. If someone told me I could play ball and make 100 million clean or 200 million taking banned substances, I'd probably value my health more and take the 100 million. If the choice was between being in a minimum wage job or making 100 million, I think 99.9% of us would take the steroids.

True, but I'd still expect to see some improvement (at least in technique) considering how bad they were at it. Also, CM had been working with some of the guys in the minors for a few years, so I think some of it is fair to pin on him. That's about the only bad thing I can say about him though, and I was surprised and disappointed when I saw the headlines yesterday. I still think there's more to this.

Some of the fundamentals (like bunting) were horrid as well, but I would have kept CM unless there's something we don't know about. As I said before, maybe he didn't get along with Gibbons. If Cito takes over as hitting coach, we had better sell high on all our left handed bats immediately.

That felt kind of familiar ... He sure turned things around this year though aside from that.

They did that the previous year with Yunel and Johnson too. The pitcher feels the slightest thing and they're out 6 weeks. A batter can barely walk and they're playing the field regularly. Doesn't make sense.

I'd love to know exactly what you think you read from my post...

I suspect this was Gibbon's decision rather than AA's. Maybe Chad and Gibbons simply didn't get along.

I just can't do it. That crooked cap annoys me too much (not fond of his celebrations either).

NOT funny... I'm going to have nightmares about that for the next 6 months. As others have said, there has to be more to this. Glad to see Murphy gone, but Chad seemed like a perfect fit.

Seems like a bit of a waste to bring Jansen in here.

I think the only way I'd let them have Hutch and Sanchez in a trade (wouldn't include Morrow) for Phillips would be if they took back some dead short term salary in return as well (can anyone say Romero?). Perhaps throw in one of our non-elite relievers too.

Canucks are making the Oilers look really bad right now.

In fairness, basically all of that value came from the glove, not the bat.

Maybe the fans should now sue A-Rod for emotional distress or something. I wonder if this will spur the Yankees to try to void his contract?

My point was that if you consider 2011 to be a career year, then 2013 was the only year he's declined, which may have just been a bad year (or perhaps he was battling some minor injuries).

I'm not convinced he's (significantly) declining as much as just having had a bad year. 2011 was probably a career year for him, but his previous seasons were all pretty much like his 2012 was, which was almost bang on his career averages. His defensive numbers were also pretty much in line with what you'd expect, with the exception of a few extra errors. With that said, if we have to spend a higher amount next year on a second baseman I think I'd rather just go out and get infante or someone similar rather than give assets too.

This might be the first time where "the only winners are the lawyers" is a good thing.

Hockey and basketball are also far more dynamic, and individual results depend much more on teammates. It's much harder to do advanced analysis on it I would think.

That was rather interesting.