kcjaysfan

That's a serious ass grab. http://i.imgur.com/jqpDrqI.gif

That s*** has been going on for a decade now. I remember Angelos getting his undies bunched ever since the talk of the Expos moving to DC started.

Seeing that the Jays had interest in Beckham reminded me of quite possibly my best post ever: http://i.imgur.com/l6O3vbH.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/Z8tbMRY.gif

It could have simply just rolled under a nearby car. It doesn't appear to have gone through the windshield, and since this isn't a perfectly inelastic collision, the ball will have rebounded from the windshield somewhat. You can see in this someone throwing a baseball roughly perpendicularly into a vertical windshield, and the ball bounces back quite a bit. Melky's home run would have impacted the SUV's windshield roughly perpendicularly. In Melky's case, the magnitude of the rebound might not have been as much since it was directed about 45○ above horizontal. However, it was still likely enough to have bounced back onto the hood of the SUV and rolled, possibly gaining enough velocity to roll fairly far from the vehicle. But you don't have to take my word for it.

Travis Wood's pitching has been worth 0.8 fWAR this season. His batting/fielding, 0.9 fWAR.

Cleveland at Kansas City is the MLB.TV free game today. Cleveland just scored five runs in the top of the second.

The problem with using "ace" in this manner is that is then becomes an almost completely meaningless term.

s***, I wish.

Even though I wasn't posting, I would read through some of the threads to keep somewhat up to date on the Jays. But really, I was just waiting for that one question to bring me back.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Yeah, I wound up having to take a class last term when I though I'd be only doing research/writing. So with the class, trying to get a paper finished and submitted to a journal, and doing research for my thesis, I didn't have a whole lot of time to post.

Winters perhaps. Not as cold, significantly less snow. The summers, though, are disgustingly hot and humid. And there really isn't much of a spring or fall.

Hmm...

http://i.imgur.com/gvDdF.gif

However you feel you need to acknowledge my intellectual superiority.

I know, and my jimmies get rustled. Every. Goddamn. Time.

I'm not sure I even understand what you're asking. The percentage of what? By velocity, I assume you actually mean speed, since velocity is a vector, and would include what I think you mean by movement.

As was I. In 2013, Lind had the 32nd highest wRC+ of all players, on all teams, in both leagues. Edit: That's of players with at least 500 PAs.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/12/minor-moves-donald-mesa.html Melky Mesa sounds like one of those names in baseball games where they just randomly mash a first and last name together.

Your name is an anagram for "done in drag."

This one? Blue Jays’ Alex Anthopoulos on thin ice: Griffin Fourth straight losing season would likely end GM’s Blue Jay tenure, but seems unlikely. Pursuit of Masahiro Tanaka, Matt Garza, Ubaldo Jiminez could help. The honeymoon could be over for Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos. No longer is he viewed as baseball’s Boy Wonder, as he was after taking over from J.P. Ricciardi on Oct. 3, 2009. No longer is he perceived as the game’s rising star, a 32-year-old with unlimited vision and the vigour of youth. No longer is he looked upon as one step ahead, ready to re-invent the GM position. No, it seems others have adjusted to him faster than he has adjusted to them, and after four seasons the clock on his tenure is clearly ticking. Early, he was renowned for his knowledge of all 29 competitors — what skills they sought, what players they were willing to offer. He could call GMs to discuss trades he had no intention of making, simply for the knowledge, the information. It was gold. Whenever he needed a third wheel to finish up a trade, he knew where to go to find the missing piece. He was the ringmaster with information as his whip. It was radical, game-changing stuff. It was just a year ago that Anthopoulos shocked the baseball world by swinging blockbuster trades with the Marlins and Mets, signing Melky Cabrera and hiring the overlooked John Gibbons to manage a group that was a Las Vegas favourite. The national media fawned over his aggressive tactics and closed-mouth approach to dealing with other teams and the public. If info leaked, it was the other guy. Ultimately, his team fell on its face and there was little, if any, sympathy within the GM fraternity. When right-hander Doug Fister was traded to the Nats in November, Anthopoulos was surprised and indicated the Tigers surely knew he was interested, that he would have liked a last chance to bid on the talented starter. Would he have been given the opportunity two years ago? Perhaps. One executive at the recent winter meetings indicated that other GMs now realize that when they are talking to Anthopoulos about a potential trade, it may just be information gathering. Some have become more careful in their conversations. Maybe it’s time to adjust. In Anthopoulos’s three seasons as GM since transforming Ricciardi’s 80-82 team of 2009 into a faux-contender at 85-77 in 2010, Anthopoulos has constructed teams that have posted win totals of 81, 73 and 74. He needs a winning season in 2014 or he will likely be fired. The fact is that since Baseball America began keeping a database on MLB GMs in 1950, only two have put up a winning record in their first season with a team followed by four straight losing records — and still kept their jobs. Anthopoulos can equal that dubious precedent in 2014. The two who did it were Sal Bando, with the 1992-96 Milwaukee Brewers, and Jim Beattie, with the 1996-2000 Montreal Expos. Bando survived another two-plus losing seasons in Milwaukee before offering his resignation in August of 1999. He survived primarily because he was a local hero, a third baseman in the team’s glory years. As for Beattie, he stayed on through 2001 because the Expos were in the process of being contracted by MLB and nobody else wanted the job. When the commissioner’s office was forced to purchase the franchise and keep it afloat after contraction failed, Beattie was replaced by Omar Minaya, who stayed until 2004 when the Expos moved to Washington, D.C. If the Jays do indeed post a losing record in 2014, Anthopoulos, who grew up in Montreal, could join Beattie on the short list of infamy. The irony is that Beattie was the GM Anthopoulos convinced to give a kid with no experience an internship in Expos player development, a foot in the door that led him to where he is today. Anthopoulos did not forget. Beattie is currently a Jays major-league scout and trusted adviser to the GM. Of course, that perception of failure could all change in the next 10 months. With four months until opening day and 162 games of the regular season to follow, Anthopoulos has enough time to make necessary changes. He might start by competing hard for Japanese right-hander Masahiro Tanaka or, failing that, signing a free agent starter such as Matt Garza or Ubaldo Jimenez. The Jays are not that far away from being a contender. This, after all, is a team that was odds-on a year ago, that had the country excited on the basis of huge trades with the Marlins and the Mets, bringing in a competitive payroll and big-name players. The team has not changed dramatically in terms of core personnel. That perception of failure would change with a winning record. But until then, Anthopoulos’ tenure over four seasons has been a tremendous disappointment. How does A.A.’s record stack up against other Jays GMs over 37 seasons? That list includes Peter Bavasi (1977), Pat Gillick (1978-94), Gord Ash (1994-2001), Ricciardi (2002-09) and now Anthopoulos. He’s fallen back and needs to separate again. In 2010, despite being forced into trading Roy Halladay and with only the Phillies as a true trading partner, Anthopoulos emerged as the first Jays GM to begin his tenure with a winning record. His passion, Canadianism, outside-the-box thinking and thirst for information on other teams’ needs made him a rock star. He is now just one of the boys, with Ash and Ricciardi, when it comes to judging his four years at the helm. Putting Gillick aside — because his teams were basically the product of an unfair expansion draft — here are the win totals for the previous two Jays GMs after four years and five years: Ash, 301/385; Ricciardi 311/398. Anthopoulos, with 313 wins after four, needs a season of 85 victories to equal Ricciardi, the much-maligned Worcester, Mass., native who claimed upon his arrival in November, 2001 that he had come to teach Toronto fans about baseball. Anthopoulos, like his predecessor, has found out Jays fans are knowledgeable and hard to fool.

A rational line of inquiry would not lead one to that definitive of a statement.

If the Jays sign him, someone needs to make that a sign to bring to his first home appearance. I agree that there is a difference between agnostic and atheist, and I'm not a fan of someone definitively saying there is no supernatural being. I do think it's legitimate to say "it's quite unlikely that there is a god, so I will choose to believe that it does not exist." As BTS said, the burden of proof should lie on those that claim the existence, not the other way around.

I'm not terribly well-versed on string theory, so I can't really speak intelligently on how it suggests a formation of matter. I do know, that in quantum physics, it's acceptable for virtual particle-antiparticle pairs to be created from vacuum fluctuations which would allow for the formation of matter in “empty” space. I'm not a cosmogonist, so this is also quite a bit beyond my area of expertise. I consider myself an agnostic. I don't hold the belief that there is no god; I simply hold no belief at all. There is no way to scientifically explore the existence of a higher power, so I see no reason to contemplate its existence, or lack thereof. The majority of atheists and agnostics (as this term is often used interchangeably) hold a fairly similar viewpoint. There are some that do take it a step further, saying that there is no god, but to suggest that their reasoning is “cause I say so” is patently disingenuous.