Laika

Hmm Manoah's stuff doesn't seem as impressive

I think the model would be very easy to build. Modern pitching science can get you all of the inputs. The problem in practice would just be getting all of the information from specific players. Who wants to measure fingers and submit to grip analysis and all that. Easier to just have someone check during games. You would do random testing by like, stopping the pitching during their windup (ump calls time) and then checking their fingers and the ball for foreign substances. Surprise - stop and frisk

In light of this, I guess I'll put that Sam Long guy on debut waivers

It's awful! hitters - you can get a decent option at most positions rp - there are like 100+ holds available sp - chase anderson or matt shoemaker

In his defense, the league has been turning a blind eye to this problem for a few years. It has obviously become part of pitching culture. Kind of hard to hate on specific players for going with the culture. That's an impossible question to answer in a satisfactory way. ALTHOUGH can Gerrit Cole reasonably blame pitching culture etc. if he is one of the biggest influencers and trendsetters for that culture? A younger player, sure, but he's a face of baseball and a true Ace - one of the guys that CREATES pitching culture.

I'm surprised the Astros don't get dragged even more with all of this foreign substances talk. If they were banging on trash cans then we can assume they were at the forefront of foreign substances cheating. I mean, they clearly were. Just look at Cole's spin rates when he got to Houston. The depths of cheating in Houston probably go much further than we publicly know. They are a piece of s*** organization and they deserve nothing.

Baseball is so hard. Andrew Vaughn, insanely good college hitter and #3 overall pick, is hitting only .230/.312/.412. Did you all see the pitch he took out? 96.6 mph, almost a perfect pitch on the outside edge of the zone, probably wouldn't have even been called a strike.

People always cry about coercion and manipulation and power imbalances when players sign extensions before they debut, but we've seen enough of those guys flop at this point to prove that teams are legitimately taking big risks when they do this. Kingery, Evan White, the pot head 1B in Houston from several years ago. Singleton.

Yeah, and it was fine for a bit but it went off the rails. A lot of the time with COVID, Jimcanuk is the culprit. Seems like he just can't help but make some generalized political comment.

Jim 1 Spanky 0

Tough game to watch slip away. Ray was so good. After Vaughn homered I didn't expect the pen to hold that game within reach so I watched Castlevania on Netflix. Weird cartoon sex scene towards the end of season 3 and now my wife thinks I'm an even bigger nerd. Basically flipped from the baseball game straight into Hentai. Thanks, Netflix.

Let's not get carried away. It's nice that Smith is turning himself back into a future depth option but that's all he really is - a depth option. Smith has like a 40 hit tool at best. It's pretty likely that Panik is a better MLB hitter than Smith right now and Panik fits the roster better as a LHB. Smith is pushing Espinal on the depth chart, not Panik. Breyvic Valera and Cristian Colon are also hitting down there and if there are injuries those two might get a twirl before Smith.

They'd have to play like total garbage going forward. Can't really see it happening. Worst case scenario seems like a .500 team

At some point you just start to accept that he has a terrible batted ball profile. Very low true talent BABIP.

Robbie K

Wtf Riley Adams is up???!!!

Yes. Seems like a bit of a problem at first glance but in the LoD this has proven to work itself out over the offseason/spring. The big IL hoarders just run into an inevitable roster crunch and have to drop a bunch of guys.

Not exactly. It will work the same as LoD. You won't have to cut long-term IL players to get down to 26.

No cut downs, ever. The only forced cuts are players in minor league slots who have too much MLB experience, and that only happens once per year at the time of the draft.

uh huh

What happened in the OHL? Taya Currie getting drafted? She said she wants to be treated like everyone else. If she's not good enough she won't make the team. She played AAA with the boys, maybe she's good enough to play a bit. I know lots of boys from my year who got drafted to the O for no real reason at all, other than personal connections and stuff. They had no realistic shot to play. Co-ed sports at the highest level are only inevitable in sports where there can be a woman physically talented enough to hang. Hard to imagine but there could be niche cases and there would nothing wrong with it. It would actually be v cool. If the basic idea turns you off then you're blatantly sexist.

You're overreacting. It's fine to not like .500 teams winning championships but if that makes you bloviate about women in sport and think about finding new interests, well.... 1) you might need new blood pressure pills 2) see ya!

I don't know what to think of the NHL anymore. They have changed the league structure and rules quite a bit. In the last seven years or so every finals matchup seems to feature one random/lucky team against one good/expected team. It certainly feels like the league is super random and the days of legitimately superior talent shining through in the form of dynasty teams are over... but if you look at the last 15 years or so as a whole, A LOT of the teams making the finals are exceptional. Boston has been there several times, Chicago when they were good, Pittsburgh like four times, Tampa Bay, the Kings were amazing when they won two, everyone expected Ovechkin to eventually get one... arguably the only super fluky winner in recent history was St Louis. Definitely a number of random finalists who ended up losing though. Baseball is just as bad for this. The playoffs are probably more of a crapshoot than hockey. This is why most people hate the idea of expanded MLB playoffs. If you want a sport where the best teams win more often, Basketball is your jam. Barring injuries, the cream rises in that league because the scoring is so granular, stars run the game and have massive impact, and they play long series.

No, Kikuchis contract sucks. Team has to decide at end of 2021 whether or not to pick up all four option years at 16.5. if they don't he gets a player option for 2022 for 13

Kikuchi's options are not small. He's interesting from a stuff perspective but I'm not really interested in paying him $16.5M per year through 2025!!! Gonzales, not really into it either. Throws 88 now.