metafour

No, there is a tweet stating that he pulled up running to first base before being taken out.

Greene supposedly hit 101 mph in the 4th inning today. Hot stadium gun? Probably, but that is still slinging it.

Bichette 2 for 3 with two line drive singles and a walk.

But but but David Cooper with a bad back would be a better option right now!

Its kind of comical that people are still complaining about Smoak when he's like 3rd on the team in wRC+ LOL. I mean yeah he probably still sucks, but at least go and crucify one of the many hitters who are actually s***ing the bed.

Hit it right at the 3B. Only reason why that was a hit is because they've got a lard-ass orbiting around third base.

Its just a weird post considering that Drew Hutchison is currently sitting in AAA with a 7.84 ERA.

Yup. The entire notion of "building around a player" in baseball is absurd. This isn't like basketball or football wherein you can get one player that alone automatically puts you into playoff contention (like a star QB, or a superstar player in the NBA). One player in baseball doesn't mean s***, even a player like Donaldson. The question therefore becomes whether or not you can build a NEW worthwhile core that includes Donaldson and contend before he declines to the point wherein you would have been better off just trading him and getting younger players that fit better from a timeline perspective. To me, if you are talking retooling, it makes much more sense to sell high on Donaldson and let someone else worry about paying him $200 million or whatever for his decline years while stockpiling youth that will in theory allow you a much longer period of production. This is actually the situation that AA ran into as he was "rebuilding" but then had Bautista and Encarnacion blow up, at which point he felt pressure to win right away with those two which led to a bunch of haphazard moves to "build around them" (some of which worked well, others which didn't work quite as well). It worked in launching us into the playoffs, but the end result was a very short window as Bautista and Encarnacion were both already well past 30...just like Donaldson is now. The other option at the time would have been to sell Bautista and Encarnacion for ransom at their peak value and supplement what we already had in the minors with several other elite prospects. If you think about it, we could be sitting with Syndergaard/Sanchez/Stroman/Osuna/d'Arnaud/etc. with god knows what else we could have received in prospective trades for Bautista/EE. Would we have two ALCS appearances by 2017? Maybe not, but we'd be in a position for much more prolonged contention. I think we're at the same crossroads again, and I don't want to get into a scenario wherein we're taking a huge risk in giving Donaldson a huge contract and then forced to scramble around to "build around him" because he's already 32+ with only a few years of production left.

It comes down to simple semantics. History has shown that regardless of how many playoff spots there actually are, the rough number of wins needed to actually make the playoffs on a given season doesn't really change. Therefore the logic that there were less teams making the playoffs before and thus those comparisons are rendered irrelevant isn't exactly accurate. We are already frighteningly close to the point wherein it would take an elite pace throughout the remaining 9/10ths of the season just to hit that minimum number of wins. While you can say "anything is possible!" you also have to look at reality at which point you will realize quickly that this roster simply does not have the ability to go on any long-term prolonged run. By the way; the computerized simulations aren't unanimous either. BaseballProspectus has the odds at only 10.4% for example.

How about Anthony Rendon? Future HOF'er since his Freshman year, "lock to go #1", until he slips to #6 by his draft day. The vaunted offense of Rendon never fully materialized (he's been a very good hitter at times, although has shown inconsistency). Rendon is at least helped by the fact that he produces plus defensive value at 3B, which is something that Beer can't even hang onto. Rendon posted a .407 ISO in his Sophomore season.

Its called a prediction. You act like not being a #2-3 pick is some sort of death-wish...as if being picked #4 overall means that you're trash. I said much more than bringing up his batting average (which was a throw-away comment); most notably that he's got little positional value and that that profile tends to be scrutinized heavily. If you want to go deeper, he's also a very average athlete.

How is that even in the end? You can sign Harper for 7-10 years and be pretty confident that he's going to perform at an elite level for most of those years due to his age (notwithstanding injuries). By the time Donaldson becomes a free agent his MVP days will be well behind him and he'll already be in decline, thus signing him on a long term deal will prove to be much less forgiving.

I'm not putting "huge stock" into anything. I like how we're anointing a guy #1 overall over a year before his draft date (#TankForBeer!) despite the fact that history has proven time and time again that these early-career superstars almost never maintain #1 status by the time they are actually draft eligible, and players of Beer's mold (all bat, spotty at best defensive outlook) have very little history of actually going #1 overall.

I brought up his batting average to simply point out that its beyond silly to pretend like he's already locked up #1 overall next season when he's only hitting .266 right now. I don't buy for a second that being pitched around is the full and only explanation to his batting average which is literally dead last among Clemson's starting lineup by over 10 points. Lots of guys have been pitched around and it didn't conclude in them hitting .266, and I'd like to assume that a #1 overall pick who plays no premium position is going to hit better than .266 in College. Obviously anything can happen by next year's draft, but I expect you'll find that Beer falls in the 3-5 range as opposed to being a lock for #1.

Its not disingenuous at all. His power is real; but Pro pitching isn't going to s*** their pants and pitch around him every at bat, so the over-inflated walk rate won't continue. How am I denigrating him? By not anointing him as the #1 overall pick LOL? The history of bat-only players going that high is virtually nonexistent, and I simply don't believe Beer to be a generational hitter or anything of that sort.

Beer won't even be in contention for a ~Top 2-3 pick by the time the draft actually happens. He's very good, but hardly as otherworldly as people are billing him. He'll be picked apart by draft day, and bat-only players who don't play a premium position don't tend to contend for the top pick. #TankForBeer? He's hitting .266 so far this season.

Frankly, I'm tired of these know-it-all experts who actually know nothing spewing ********. I'm going to call him a dumbass because this is what his opinion is: a dumbass opinion. Myself and anyone else who actually knows baseball knew that this was going to be the outcome the second AA made those moves; it was fun for those 2-3 years watching a winning team, but now we're at the predictable fall and we've got all these idiot "fans" flabbergasted that a team built around past-stars (who are now s***) is going to fall apart at a frightening rate. Its beyond comical to see these people who spent all offseason crying about how badly we f***ed up by not signing Encarnacion and Fowler fail to realize that both of those "surefire stars" have done dick-all so far this season, which means that we'd actually still be in the same spot right now LOL (actually maybe even worse given that Morales HRs have been the reason we won our only two games of the season). Shapiro and Atkins know what they're doing idiots: they correctly evaluated that the core of our offense was finished, while our starting pitching (the only reason why we even snuck into the playoffs last year) features three starters who are gone in 1-2 years and are at an age where they're likely to start declining anyway which means that bringing them back won't save the team anyway. With that prognosis, your only move is to move forward with a new core.

Yes, dumbass. He built a flash-in-the-pan roster that was bound to implode on itself, which is why he dipped out while everything was looking golden before he'd have to deal with the long-term ramifications of his moves. When you make that type of decision, you don't get to conveniently receive praise for the good (two ALCS berths) while being exempt from the ramifications that come with an offense that revolves around a bunch of hitters that are 2-3 years past their prime. They didn't buy offense this offseason because throwing piles of money onto a tire-fire is a f***ing stupid move that would have put this team in the hole for the next 4-5 years. How this isn't obvious to some of you idiots is absurd. This is roster building 101: WHEN THE CORE OF YOUR ROSTER IS A SHELL OF ITS PRIME, FREE AGENCY IS NOT GOING TO SAVE YOU. You say that we're bad because we're fielding a team with Smoak, Careera, Goins as integral parts yet are obtuse to the fact that Bautista, Tulo, Martin, Travis...the guys that SHOULD be your guaranteed performers, are trash as well. Sorry buddy, but when that is the prognosis of your roster, then blowing your wad in free agency isn't going to get you into the playoffs. Cool we could have spent $100 million on more aging hitters and we'd be ~5-5 instead of 2-10 LOL.

Amed Rosario from the Mets

Probably because there is a slight difference between an $8.25 million extension and a $100+ million extension (which is what it would have taken to extend EE before he hit free agency). And just LOL at claiming that EE would magically fix this team. Go look up his Cleveland stats please; he isn't doing s*** either. Destabilized the lineup? Get the f*** out of here LOL.

Hech couldn't hit anything. Arencibia drew few walks and struck out at every level despite being college-aged. I've been following prospects for a long time now. I know that this is low minors, I'm not stupid. I'm also not blind enough to not realize that we're looking at a kid hitting .400+ with power all over the field and almost zero strikeouts...as a middle infielder. I saw him in that spring training game get jammed (or what looked like it) and he inside-outed the ball all the way off the wall in right-center. And that is the thing: he's not slapping the ball around and hitting .400 because he's outrunning poor defending on squibblers; he's been lacing balls going all the way back to last season.

No one really believes he sticks at SS, but I haven't seen anyone claim that he can't play 2B or 3B. His bat obviously profiles at either position. There's a lot of (warranted) talk about Vlad's upside, but I really think it may be overshadowing the fact that we could be seeing a Chase Utley type talent here in Bichette.

Why not? I see plus contact, plus power, plus bat-speed with Bichette...and he's taking walks. After today's game he's now hitting a career .424 spanning back to last year's decimation of the GCL. He easily has a better defensive profile than Vlad regardless of whether or not he sticks at SS. To me this teeters on how big a deal you want to place on his "weird swing", but even that seems like a stretch at this point given his ability to make hard contact in combination with his bat speed.

Anyone else think that Bichette could be even better than Vlad? Yeah he's not going to match his power production, but he looks like an equally frightening hitter with more athleticism and much more defensive value given that he's a SS who could move to 3B or 2B versus a 3B who could move to 1B or the OF....

Vlad Jr. and Bo vs. Brady Aiken tonight