Laika

66th percentile spin rate on the fastball is close enough to middle of the road and that velocity is not special in this era. At this point I am willing to begin to think that Nick Pivetta is just one of those batting practice style pitchers who can post good K/BB rates but gets hammered on contact. Could be an ultra hittable fastball, lack of a third pitch, or both - or it could be random.

Is that a three way trade??? Fantrax benefits!

nice was almost a top 100 prospect in the past. might be a good reliever if he can stay healthy and put in a full season... sat almost 95 last year

Kerfoot's hit was very dirty and dangerous. Marchand's wasn't nearly as dangerous or dirty. Bortuzzo should have received more than 4 - I think there was an intent to injure. It's the intent (or neglect) that should really be punishable, not the results.

IMPORTANT CHANGES TO MINOR LEAGUE ROSTER MANAGEMENT AND ASSOCIATED RULES Background: - In Yahoo we did not allow prospect demotions. The main reason being it would have been a pain to ask the commissioners to process them. - In Yahoo any player who played in AA the year prior could be added. With no demotions and one NA slot the effect of this was that a small number of near-MLB prospects would be owned in Yahoo. - In Yahoo we used mandatory prospect promotion thresholds. The initial theory was to prevent prospect hoarding by good teams and to promote turnover/transactions. The main effect seemed to just be the rare punitive effect on an owner who forgot to promote. New Substrate: - Fantrax opens up easy movement of players to the minors, allowing demotions. - Demotions would clash with our AA eligibility rule, allowing any team to stuff their minor league roster with decent prospects from free agency. - The mandatory prospect promotion thresholds don't seem to really matter. Teams will probably promote or trade good prospects and cut bad ones naturally. New Rules: - We will have unregulated promotion and demotion from/to the MiLB roster (in Fantrax you can't demote unless they have a green flag; in Fantrax if an MiLB player loses their flag it does not lock your roster). - Waiver draft eligibility will be changed to only include prospects who played in AAA in the previous year (or a prior year). - Free agent eligibility will be changed to only include players with MLB service time. Players making their debut will be eligible to be added at 8PM EST on the day following their first active day on the 25 man roster. If desired, an owner can request before the 8PM EST eligibility time that a commissioner place a debuting player on "debut waivers." A commissioner who places a player on debut waivers has to announce it in this thread. There is no general obligation to use debut waivers, which is an accommodation for owners who can't compete for an 8PM EST add, but there is an obligation for commissioners to respond to requests for debut waivers. - The mandatory prospect promotion thresholds will be no more. - I had previously added a 13th MiLB slot to replace the NA slot. I have decided to reduce the MiLB slots to 12 again in light of all of this. I think all of this is sensible but I am still open to comments, particularly about the debut waivers thing.

Draft orders are done. I emailed Spanky and Abom the results as they were generated. MiLB: 1 spanky 2 njh 3 torontofan 4 abomination 5 orgfiller Waiver: 1 njh 2 spanky 3 torontofan 4 abomination 5 orgfiller

If we go to free movement between MLB and farm, I think I would change the FA eligibility rules to be more strict. Maybe: A) must have hit AAA, or must have been promoted to MLB 25 man roster in real life at some point previously, or C) current AA rule or new AAA rule during waiver draft only, every other time use , and teams can only take two no-MLB-experience players in the waiver draft.

Maybe you're right here. The MiLB draft might be all the incentive owners need to promote active players.

Okay, the one reason to be hesitant is that teams with s***** farms could just stuff their farm with prospects who hit AA in the prior year, at any time. That's a problem and very much changes the farm dynamic of our league. These tend to be decent prospects based on our league depth.

It wouldn't need to be proactive. We'd just use the tattle-tale system, and maybe peruse farms around draft time (which I already did in DDL).

I can't think of an obvious reason to keep the no demotions rule. The people with s***** farms will use the extra space as expanded MLB roster depth. Do we think that is an issue? Maybe? We can make it so once a player is over the IP/PA threshold they can't be demoted (to solve the hoarding problem). We can still keep the rule where MiLB players are not force-promoted until they pass the PA/IP thresholds. Is that feasible in Fantrax or will the system f*** up their transactions once the green flag is gone?

I likely won't do it any time soon. Would be real nice if someone else did.

Reportedly Ljay Newsome is being left exposed in the Rule 5

4. Alejandro Kirk | C UNBAN BOXCAR

Baseball has brought this mechanical sign stealing blight upon itself by refusing to enforce the rules around foreign substances. I think the prevailing thought with the mechanical sign stealing by the Astros and whichever other teams have done it has probably been that it's close enough to what is accepted within the written and unwritten rules. It has always been accepted that players on the field are allowed to pick up on pitching signs and relay them. It has probably been about as accepted that if coaches can pick up on signals coming from the dugout with their eyeballs, that's fair game too. What gives these teams the confidence to make the leap to mechanical sign stealing is that MLB just does not seem to care all that much about strict rule compliance.

I think enough time has passed for that to not be the case anymore. At least for Blue Jays fans, I would say that most people remember him simply as the team's best position player in the 2000s (yes, I am aware that he is probably not the #1 position player in fWAR from 2000-2009).

Wisdom! He’s almost an archetype

Yeah his fitness is a borderline non-story. Even if Vlad got in great shape (not likely), he'll still have that fat ass. He's not going to be able to change his body type. There is no athleticism miracle coming. It's more about preventing long-term breakdown for him. He needs to avoid ballooning.

Maybe. And then by August he’ll be fat again.

Liar

Literally leaving the country would open him up to a lot of criticism

lmao watch the video - he looks exactly the same. you can see his belly jiggling. the clothes are just more flattering than a full MLB uniform.

Under MLB's proposal to shrink the minor leagues Bluefield is the one Blue Jays affiliate implicated. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/sports/baseball/mlb-minor-league-proposal.html

Amazing that Kevin Pillar could switch teams, be exactly as average as before, and still win the hearts of every Giants fan just as hard. What a great dude.

differing feddishes for everybody!