Dick_Pole

I mean, Nolan Ryan did it for about a hundred years. Actually looking at some examples, pitchers who have the trifecta of lots of walks, lots of strikeouts and low hit rates tend to "grow up" and walk much fewer once they hit age 30. Randy Johnson being the prime example. Bobby Witt cut his walk rate in his 30's but his strikeouts plunged and hits against increased so he's a cautionary tale. Problem with Snell is that his walk rate went in the opposite direction than you'd like it to once a power pitcher hits 30.

Yankees have been an exactly .500 team since I called them overrated shitbags back in July 2022 and the only one who has noticed has been my bookie. So I'm going to double down hard on this. I already stated my case why I think they will underperform. We'll just have to see how the season plays out. I feel like I live in an alternative universe where everyone thinks the Yankees are good but to me they look like Swiss cheese. They are built like the 2013 Jays. A team where a lot can go wrong and not a lot of contingency plans in place if they do.

Can't wait to bet against the Yankees this year. With how everyone is on their knob with their patchwork offseason moves, I should get some great odds betting them to miss the playoffs again. The team is old, injury-prone, one-dimensional and poorly run. I expect at least one of Judge or Cole to materially decline. I can understand people being on their knobs about their offense. They'll mash a ton of homers and be mediocre everywhere else but that's still considered to be a good offense. But that rotation? Cortes is basically one half-step above Gustavo Chacin. Rodon is done but they'll haul his ass out there every 5 days because sunk cost until he hits the DL. Clarke Schmidt is Clarke Schmidt. Stroman will probably be personally responsible for half of Guerrero's GIDP this year but other than that I don't see how any of his numbers over the past two years with the Cubs - quantity or quality - is going to translate that well to the AL East. The contract was a very fair one. A couple million dollars less than Bassitt. People complained about that Bassitt contract last year but I'm taking Bassitt over Stroman easy. So Cole has to carry the rotation like he usually does just for it to be okay-ish. The Yankees are not a 95 win team. They might be an 85 win team and fringe playoff contender. But most likely they are an under .500 team.

89-73. Pythag also 89-73 -4 Chapman +1 Kiner +4 Varsho = from 2 to 6 WAR Not sure why this got this type of reaction. Nothing I said was particularly outlandish nor did I go very hard at it. At least Havoc was like "yeah maybe what about projections"? Reality hurts I guess. I am not so bullish on this team like I was the last two years. Unless things change roster wise materially between now and April.

The Blue Jays need him to reach 5 WAR if they are going to be a 90 win team that makes the playoffs this year, all else being equal with the current roster.

Yeah but then he'll have about 10 minutes of Nelson Muntz-like "stop hitting yourself" action to deal with before security comes in to escort Donaldson out.

Don't fix it. We want the full Blue Jays fan experience on the forum as well. Lots of potential for being the best forum out there but wonky and sometimes just goes into a coma. Management team promises to fix something but doesn't follow through and disappoints. Still we hang around for 10 years and will be around for 10 more no matter how many times we threaten to leave.

You guys need to give up this talk on Donaldson. 0% chance Atkins exposes himself to potential noogies and swirlies in the washroom like that.

That was some good f***ing football. Especially since the games generally landed in the way I wanted for my bets. Except that Pats/Jets game. For some dumbass reason I bet the over and over prop bets on the QB passing yards, thinking in the final game for Bellicheck that Zappe and the NY jobber would want to impress going into next season. I've got Browns at +3500, Rams +5000, Packers +10000, Bills +1100 and part of my Ravens +600 SB bets in. And none of my teams are facing each other next week

What the Dodgers are doing is annoying in the short term. But as Jays fans, you need to think of the bigger picture. The Yankees reign as the incumbent or cultural leader, top revenue generator and most valuable franchise in MLB is coming to an end. And once they fall from #1, I think the fall is going to be hard. Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2009. The prospects coming up will be too young to remember them as winners. Just as a team that kind of exists in the playoffs, but fizzles out. The most hyped free agents are coming from Japan and they have an affinity for the west coast. On top of the fact that baseball is in decline in general in American cultural relevance. But rising in places where the Dodgers will be favoured. What are the Yankees now? An overpaid, old, frail team that hasn't signed a relevant top free agent since Cole (but paid several guys like top FA) with a moron of a GM who is finally being exposed as such. The Dodgers are cool and hip. The Yankees are not. The team, logo and brand are going to be seen as "your dad's baseball team". It'll be interesting to see whether they simply lay down and die like Myspace or if they are going to undertake a futile fight like Blackberry. The Yankees are going to have a very bad next 5-10 years ahead of them as they have to deal with the fact that they can't just buy an all-star team anymore. That opens it up for the AL East rivals. It'll be a lot easier to try to handle the Dodgers in seven games in October.

Yeah I agree trying to compare Biggio to Brantley is some Twilight Zone s***.

Yeah this is gross. Intentional and targeted. And mocking the outrage. He has predator tendencies similar to R. Kelly and should be punished as such. But...if we are still doing this s***: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia Pedophilia (alternatively spelled paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children.[1][2]: vii  Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or 12,[3] psychiatric diagnostic criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13.[4] People with the disorder are often referred to as pedophiles (or paedophiles). I can't speak for connor but he probably has the same type of reasoning based on his posts. I'm not defending Franco. I'm defending the definition of the word "pedophile".

The Ray trade has triggered another reason why I'm frustrated with the Jays FO. That particular trade I wouldn't have done from the Giants' perspective. But I appreciate the spirit of it and what they are trying to do. In lieu of signing Ohtani or a big name FA that would have broken the bank, the Jays have shown a willingness to use payroll space creatively to both add to the roster and build prospect capital in the past. Most notably using Francisco Liriano. The IKF signing felt like a half-assed attempt at filling the roster and using up payroll, like a path of least resistance. There are a ton of broke teams out there. Why haven't the Jays taken advantage of it? Maybe they are trying and we will see something by the start of spring training that saves this offseason. But it just doesn't feel like it will happen.

You would think at some point in time that Hernandez sees Toronto as the ideal spot to maximize his value on a short term contract. He's raked here before and would have a very good chance of being team leader in all the power numbers (SLG, HR, RBI) which should help improve his perceived value to the Jays and other suitors going forward. He was on the team to witness first hand the outcome for Semien. Plus it's the devil you know both from the team and player's perspective.

At this rate might as well push the fences back at the dome by 20 feet and try to go full 1906 Cubs.

*Morgan Freeman narration*: "However, the Canadians girls were also 15 years old".

Uhh, well no. I'm the one who brought up other millionaires banging teenagers and the hypocrisy of society picking and choosing which ones they want to be mad at. I also haven't described Wander Franco with one positive trait, but used a whole host of negative ones. Just because I don't think screaming "CHILD MOLESTER PEDO!!!" is an appropriate conclusion and that should be reserved for the worst child (aka pre-teen) sex offenders, apparently that's defending him?

Not just Mexican cultures. I have living relatives who met at similar types of ages. You see sometimes on the news about couples married for 80 years or whatever and it's presented in such a cutesy way. Then they say the ages of the people and it's something like 99 for the man and 94 for the woman. Well, do the math on that lol. People might be disgusted about it or in denial, but this type of stuff was commonplace for most of human history and in many cultures. Should we move away from this practice? Of course. But should we also have a grace period where men in their early 20's shouldn't automatically be labelled the worst of human scum for dating a teenaged girl until acceptance of this practice is culturally and generationally cleaned out? I think that's fair too. And that doesn't exclude the possibility that Franco could be the lowest of scum once we learn more about the cases. I've said my peace about the situation. Now everyone can go back to the arm's race of who hates child molesters the most online so they can feel better about themselves and feel that they are better fathers to their daughters for it.

Agreed not a good situation to want to think about no matter what the actual details. I don't like having the appearance of defending him, but I'm kind of thrust into it because I see so many words like pedophile being thrown around. A bit on this site but more so everywhere else. Meanwhile men like Karl Malone, Jimmy Page, Steven Tyler and any number of politicians and rich men walk away scot free? Wander Franco is the line in the sand everyone wants to draw as the most heinous person on earth?

It raises the floor and lowers the ceiling on the range of possibilities of what he could be. If it's an actual relationship with actual emotions involved, at least we can say he's likely not a predator. A predator like a hockey coach ends up molesting dozens of kids to fulfill their perversion. They don't view the children or teenagers as people, but as objects. He wouldn't be on that level. The floor is raised. But it also lowers the ceiling in that it's possible he could be a groomer. Or there is something wrong with him that he has the emotional level of a 14 year old that he connects with one on a romantic level. Given that he's married and has a kid, it's not a good look either way. It's just not on the same level as "OMFG he's a child predator give him the Old Yeller treatment" as Connor stated.

Connor is getting onto the race side of things, but I do get his point. More of a class/culture thing than race though. This is hearsay from other places online because I did no research on it but apparently some states allow marriages with girls as young as 14 to adults as long as the parents consent. We all can imagine the moral fallacy around this kind of set up. Apparently highly religious rural (and presumably poor and white and very much not the drunk partying type) areas make use of these loopholes.

Gonna be an unpopular opinion, but I'm just not that angry about the Wander Franco situation. At least not yet. It's more about society's inconsistent pearl clutching and scapegoating than anything. Karl Malone impregnated a 12 year old and then abandoned her when he was 20. That to me is far worse than anything Franco has done (based on the facts we know so far) and yet he has faced no repercussions. And up until 5 years ago very few people cared and even now only a minority of people care. These rockstars like Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Red Hot Chili Peppers could fill out an entire cheerleading squad of their teenage harem AND they brag about it, some of them to this day. The President of France banged and then later on married his teacher while he was in high school and people shrug like its no big deal. She was 40, he was 15. The vast majority of you were a 21 year old man at some point in time. And at some point in time you might have met a girl at a party or at school who you thought was over 18 but ended up being 14-17. You might have stopped pursuing her at that time, but you were initially attracted to her. Does that also make you a pedo? You're no different than someone who is sexually attracted to 8 year olds or collects child porn? We don't know if Franco was intentionally seeking out these girls like some Epstein s*** or Jared the Subway guy or the hockey coaches. Or just some dumbass hot shot who collected an entire harem of groupies and three of them happened to be underage and he was too stupid or careless before it was too late. If it's the former, sure call him predator or pedo or chomo. But if it's the latter, it's not on the same level of perversion. My guess is that he's just an idiot. Not some dude who would have turned into the next Ian Watkins if left unchecked.

At the end of the day, the Atkins bootlickers and fanboys should be very worried. I'm a bellwether. I was one of the first people to call out his nerdy beta behaviour back in the Stroman days but I've also staunchly defended him on issues like the Morales signing and Donaldson trade. I've defended him as recently as the Ohtani situation, where there was a meltdown of people thinking he was used as a sucker and instead should have been throwing the kitchen sink at Soto. The changing narrative from "big moves this offseason" to "IKF's getting 600 PA this year lulz" is what has turned me into a decided voter. This is the equivalent of the Republicans losing Florida. It's only downhill for him from here. It'll take a miracle to change things. I compare Atkins and Shapiro to Ujiri and Webster. Granted, the Raptors have a championship to their name but the Raptors brass are almost universally beloved by fans despite there not being a massive difference between the two front offices. What sets the Raptors guys apart is that they did two extremely ballsy moves that panned out and changed the course of the franchise. First, trading for Leonard, and second, drafting Barnes above his projected slot position. The first resulting in a championship and the second extending the life of a franchise that was destined to be a basement dweller for a while. Still waiting on Atkins to make his ballsy move.

But did you ever have to deal with a Gen Z fatass who was a Cy Young runner up and thinks he's top s***? Averting nuclear war is child's play to that! Give the man a break!