KingKat

Sometimes it seems like the market has a knack for identifying duds before we do. I don't know if the bust rate on these kinds of signings is higher than on FA signings in general but it often seems that way. I would be interesting to look into that as a real (or possibly merely imagined) phenomenom.

This came up in response to a 'why don't the Indians spend more' question. Wasn't actually being used to discuss Shapiro's record.

I don't think that's fair to parents who allow their kids to be put on meds. I think the vast majority are trying to do the right thing even when that might be the wrong choice.

I think it was just one of those "spend money to spend money" moves. It got them a lot of positive press and fan reaction. Mainstream media and casual fans love to see the willingness to spend money. They love the big splash. It was probably similar to the Jays in the off-season of 2012-2013 where a moribund franchise felt they badly needed to do something to drum up interest.

I don't really think that's the issue. I think they just aren't a very interesting FA destination at the moment. They are not unwilling to spend money. It's just that in their case, spending money means overpaying for second tier talent (Bourn, Swisher).

Casey Blake for Carlos Santana Esmil Rogers for Yan Gomes and Mike Aviles

Possibly the very last human being I'd want to see doing porn.

Can you imagine if Shapiro fired AA? You'd lose your whole reason for hating the team.

Technically no since its a promotion and since they might be looking to make a change anyways. I highly doubt they would go full Angelos over this. At most maybe a David Carpenter-esque player.

I bet Paxton will be next year's Clay Buchholz. (Says the guy who totally lifted his nose at Buchholz when he really had no business lifting his nose at any decent roster player).

I liked it for Boxy.

Hard to believe how recently the Twins were ahead of the Jays in the standings.

Does Posey have strong framing numbers? If so there might actually be a solid statistical argument.

I never even picked up on the your/you're part of that joke.

It's just not meant to be taken literally. I don't use rolfl but I use lol all the time and I'm not going to apologize if I'm not actually laughing out loud every time I use it.

Dietrich is pissing me off. Can't even count the times I have added and dropped him over the years. Trying to stash breakout players is such a fool's errand. Of course Dietrich and Burns would break out on someone else's roster.

I'd give him the full day off unless the game is tight with a lead to protect at the end.

The point was that it's why Sportsnet employs him.

So how real is Buck's drinking anyways? Is it just a running joke or is there more to it. I remember when I worked in radio, we had a guy who would just throw up in the garbage can as soon as he was off mike. I'm assuming it's not quite that extreme.

They are not equally bad. Many are worse. I think there are probably more worse ones than better ones but that doesn't make him exactly "good". He might be above average but he's far, far from being above criticism. Tactically I like Gibbons more than Farrell or Cito but his thinking is still kind of antiquated. He understands the basics of Earl Weaver baseball, platoon advantages, big ball better than small ball, that sort of thing but he doesn't apply those principles consistently. His lineups are mostly good but then he does weird stuff like fetishizing Navarro's bat and he doesn't seem to have a good grasp on run prevention at all. He's very unimaginative on that side of the ball. There's more to run prevention than just assigning bullpen roles. Pitch tendencies, park factors, defense and leverage all matter and don't seem to factor too much in his thinking. The fact that he's probably not even assigning his overly rigid bullpen roles optimally doesn't help either. I vaguely remember the bullpen being an issue in first tenure as well but I guess may of us started to look at his tenure with rose-tinted glasses because unlike Cito, he was at least pro-active with pitching changes. His reputation kind of grew and grew from there until he developed this reputation as a perfect manager of bullpens, a reputation he only gained retro-actively. Much like Cito's second tenure and Beaston's second tenure, Gibbons second tenure has exposed a lot of overlooked flaws.

These moves are pretty sensible on the surface. The only irritating thing is that they could have just shortened the bullpen earlier and eliminated any need to callup Hague by simply keeping Valencia around the whole time.

The nude photos actually crashed the old board which was easily the funniest/best part of the story.

Well he is demoted in the literal sense but yeah it's just a question of using his roster spot while he is being skipped.

Estrada doesn't have options so it would complicate things. You'd have to move him to the bullpen and demote someone else to get the extra spot.

Wow. That would be rich even for Zaun.