Orgfiller

Kershaw's and Wainwright's numbers are stupid good, aces by definition. I mean it's baseball and anything could happen but I'd easily bank on games 1 to go to their respective team's way. And Andrelton Simmons, defense god much? 91 wRC+ and still manages to be worth 4.7 WAR, damn.

If it's the one I'm thinking of, the video is up on youtube I believe.

So to summarize: amongst the top 15, JP has: The 3rd most PA 2nd worst BB%, 3rd worst K% 2nd lowest AVG, worst OBP 4th lowest wOBA, 4th lowest wRC+ But he's second in RBI and first in HR so it's all good, great season. #Top10Catcher

While this is a good point, I disagree on the impact that Syndergaard and TDA would have made on the team; yes Noah wasn't a guaranteed ace (no one is) but scouts sure loved his potential, and we all loved the development track (minus the injuries) for d'Arnaud, and basically penciled him as the obvious JP replacement. Right there if Synder pans out you get at least a good #3 starter with plus potential, and d'Arnaud as the clear CoF. I agree about Drabek, but not about Lawrie or Gose. Lawrie had one down year after an excellent start to his career that came right after he dominated the minors. Gose, yeah everyone knew the hit tool needed obvious work, but still young, had great tools, and not someone to write off without giving him some consideration. Then we have Alvarez, Escobar, Marisnick, even more pieces that we had on our team. I know that not everyone can be a star, and that most prospects don't pan out, but it was still foolish for the FO to give up on their original plan and do a full 360 on it where obviously hindsight helps us see the clear flaws, but even then was criticized from the get-go. It's even worse when you add in the money, why get the overpaid injury prone players? People would not have made a huge fuss about the Dickey and Marlins trade if we instead used the players involved to acquire the likes of Price, Latos, or other young, proven players.

I think every GM has a fair bit of luck (good or bad) when signing FA to fill positions, but like you said he then used those good years, appeared to realize the unlikelihood of those being repeatable performances, and then abused the compensation system; a very notable example being the Miguel Olivo trade. I was referring more to the excellent trades mentioned in the latter part of your post, it's very hard to believe that the only reason for this poor offseason was that the money finally became available, because something drastic had to change in the FO from the first few years of his tenure to the one who made this happen. That doesn't mean I give him a pass now because of his earlier moves, you might've been able to do that with the Napoli-Francisco trade, but that ship has long sailed, hitting rock bottom with the Mets trade. I just have to believe that we're not seeing the big picture as to whom to a) credit for the first moves and blame for the most recent ones.

I know this is old but why didn't Latos or Bailey start this game for the Reds? Either way good win for the Bucs.

This is the part that hurts the most re:AA. He literally went from being grouped amongst the top 10 (I'd say easily top 5) GM's in the game to having one of the worst offseasons in recent memory, he basically stated that we were rebuilding, went out and made great deals to acquire young, controllable players, built up the farm system through the draft (let's not forget the pile up of comp picks), and then one year the wallet opens up, and he completely changes his mentality and trades young controllable prospects (even the one he had drafted) and other valuable players for old, overpaid, injury-prone ones, it makes no sense whatsoever. I understand that for a while he was making/not making questionable moves (basically right after the Napoli trade, though not including the Delabar one), but this past offseason was just flat-out unjustifiable.

And when Edwin started getting hot, but at least they were good enough to stay on an MLB roster unlike someone like Goins who is probably at best a AAAA player (or a starter on the current Astros).

I totally saw this coming, I said Pillar would be the Eric Thames type but ironically his BABIP is making him look worse; it's the same type of deal for Goins, if he keeps this up for a month and dat avridge stays over .300 our GM might just let him be on the 25-man next season and we'll have another "situation" on our hands.

To add an example I'm sure a lot of us can remember Mike Trout's awful defensive games (it might have extended throughout the series) last season in his first games in Rogers Centre where at one point he even had a ball bounce right over him; everyone has bad games. I really like how they praise Lawrie's defense, while I know many people think highly of his play at 3rd, I think it often gets understated how good Brett actually plays the position. It's great that once again he's looking to be the young stud we all saw and hoped for way back when he was tearing up the minors and then his short stint in 2011.

DEM ATHLETIC CATCHERS!!! Edit: Caps lock is f***ing with me.

What is this I don't even

I've been trying to catch up on the last ten pages, and his comments about everything else are insulting (IQ drop-inducing) to those with eyes and more than one brain cell, but for some reason I found calling a future first-ballot HOF (obviously ruling out any positive steroid tests that may be found) "rubbish" quite comical, I'll stick with it for my quote of the night.

It's not the worst one we've had, but we just love having Scrabbles on our team don't we? There's like a 35% chance of pronouncing his name right on the first attempt.

And FFS we're talking about freaking Redmond!

I cannot say with certainty but this probably has a lot to do with him moving to the rotation, so he sacrifices a bit of velocity to be able to go deeper into games, not very uncommon for pitchers that make the transition from to the pen to the rotation. Also yeah there is probably the fact that he is not used to pitching too many innings in one season and is starting to wear down.

Oh great, attacking a young naive boy just because he's from a poorer country. Reported for hate-crime.

What? Foster parents are a thing. Carry on.

K I'll bite, I'm 16, legally I don't have any reason to leave my parent's house whatsoever. Lol TheHurl.

Guys can we at least keep the obvious same-person trolling to stay baseball related? At this point I'd rather talk to Angels fans who wouldn't trade Mark Trumbo for Longoria straight up, geez at least they made it look believable (they actually did think that way).

I lol'ed at "her" response to TheHurl about girls not playing baseball. So high level ball? Told the coach the cleavage was just a post-steroids effect?

So anyone care to explain what the f*** is going on?

Picking odd candidates doesn't seem to be panning out so EE (if not playing for any reason then Rasmus).

Are a lot of them close? I don't know too much about their system other than the obvious guys at the top of the list, would Anthony Ranaudo (sp?) be the other guy? Again at this point the only uncertainty for them is relief help which for some reason Cherington overvalues and still fails at acquiring. As things go it's probably Ellsburry or another 3rd good OF (accounting for Vic and Bradley as the other two), I see them keeping Saltalamachia, but they could be in the early bidding for McCann, they probably push hard though if they do see themselves with no starting C. How has Lester been this year? Internet too slow to check, I don't think they can survive with their current rotation unless the mentioned pitching prospects make an instant impact on the team as soon as next year.

Yeah Choo would make sense for them, he'd probably mash in Boston, I think their current situation with Ellsburry is a good one, either he signs a fair deal to both him and the team, or he asks for FA money, leaves, then Boston has good money coming off with the already listed players, and has a chance to offer up good money to some good FA's out there. Because their offense is always good, I still think they should pursue SP help, and maybe trying not to f*** up miserably by trading for "established bullpen help" as we all saw how great that worked out.