Swervin81

That really sucks for him, but that was just a freak accident. He already was losing balance and blew a tire, and with his speed, a light obstruction tug by Manning was all it took. Oh well, guess we can give up our Matthews dream. We all know the Oilers are gonna tumble back down and win the f***ing lottery again.

Nice gritty road win. 4-0, baby! Bitchsmack Bionicle is so, soooo useless on the offensive end and so foul prone too. It's really annoying to watch the offense die when he's on the floor. Much better ball movement this year so far as well.

I'd agree with 1.5-2.0 WAR. Which is a really good bench player. Which is exactly where he should be.

Lol Nats. And here today, we come together to join in the celebration of the life of Max Scherzer's right arm, taken from this world far too soon.

*Shapiro drafts the baseball Bargnani equivalent in the draft* Bleh.

He talks as if he's Bryan Colangelo's twin.

Well, Ned Yost is about to be a WS winning manager. Pretty definitive proof managers don't mean s*** with how the Royals have done the last 2 years, at least.

The thing is... well, it's pretty much all in his command. t's not just not consistently throwing strikes, it's being unable to paint the corners and especially being unable to make a really good chase pitch just off the plate. He has the raw stuff to be a K machine, but his command basically destroys that. He needs to continue developing that cutter vs LHP and at least fix his command to reasonable levels, even if it means throwing 95, 96 as opposed to 97, 98, 99.

Thanks. Anyways, by my count, we have $36M left after arb with a roster that looks as like: DH: Edwin C: Martin 1B: Smoak 2B: Travis SS: Tulo 3B: Donaldson LF: Pompey CF: Pillar RF: Bautista BN: Goins, Saunders, Cola, Thole SP: Stroman SP: ??? SP: ??? SP: Dickey SP: Hutch/??? Long man: ???/Hutch LOOGY: Loup ROOGY: Sanchez Mid-relief: Venditte Setup: Hendriks, Cecil Closer: Osuna In an ideal world. Now, that's probably around $104M by my calculations. So we basically have $36M to burn, but how to spend it... You could probably pick up someone in rule 5 for the bullpen (convert a flamethrowing starter to relief). Thole should probably be non tendered and someone else should be brought up and just become glued to Dickey this summer to practice, but oh well.

Where's that MLBTR article on arb projections?

He still gets no credit for today's Indians and how well they are set up going forward, although a few big core pieces are his (namely Brantley, Santana and Carrasco). The same way Chuck LaMar (I believe he's a big part of our prospect scouting) never got any credit for those 2008 Rays, although a lot of those pieces were his.

As long as Parker and co. stay, I'm not too concerned.

That's more of a pitching coach issue IMO (pitch usage over a long period of time).

>Papelbon chokes out Harper and causes a scene >Williams puts Papelbon in the next inning to protect 1 run lead >Papelbon gives up 2 run homer >Williams claims he never saw the fight. Like, dafuq? Is the Walgreens dugout the size of a f***ing football field or something?

Just naming a bunch of buy low targets. Fister, I feel his drop off has something to do with relying on that 2 seamer too much and practically eliminating the slider from his repertoire since he was traded to Walgreens. I feel if he can bring back that slider and throw less 2 seamers, we'll see him return to form. Either way, I'd preferably like to acquire a decent underrated #2 guy (Iwakuma, like you mentioned, is a nice example), and then bring in those 3 to run a starting staff that's 6 deep and just relegate the worst of Shark/Kennedy/Hutch/Fister to the pen for long man duties (Ideally, I'd prefer a pen of Osuna/Cecil/Lowe/Sanchez//Hendriks/long man).

Samardzija, Kennedy, Fister.

I really hope one of Tinnish/LaCava is promoted here. Keep all the scouts as well, the draft record speaks for itself, really.

Last year was the time to give him a 6 year extension. Now, you'd really have to break the bank and almost give him 7+ years for a guy that's gonna be near 40 when that contract is up. Not sure that's wise. Just take it year by year. Our window with this current core might only have 3 years left anyways in all likelihood. I mean, Pujols and Cano got insane deals in their 30's. Someone would break the bank if he was a UFA this year.

Sloppy as HELL, but we got it done. Fortunately, the Pacers decided to chuck long 2's and pull up 3's and our defense really stepped up whenever we turned the ball over (non-easy fast break turnover, that is). That DeMar shot at the end was horrendous shot selection when he had another man open and JV cutting to the inside, but oh well, it went in.

Whatever happens, I just hope we trade DeMar at around the deadline, maybe even after a hot stretch. A desperate contending team would probably give us a couple of decent, cheap and controllable assets that's in desperate need of a rental 2 guard that could help us continue to retool going forward and still be a superstar away from contending and be able to pounce on that when the time comes with maybe even a piece or two we get back for DeMar in a trade for said superstar (or insane potential guy, i.e. Harden). Some idiot GM will pay DeMar ~$25M per this offseason, and I am not comfortable with that at all, especially with Carroll's contract already banking on him not just being a product of the Hawks system.

Pretty sure teams have in house production (like how you are able to watch highlights of untelevised games) and MLBN also does their own production for international viewers. The whole "We need Fox for replays" is just a s*** excuse.

I don't mean to derail the thread, but I think that AA and Shapiro being able to coexist depend pretty much on egos and how much control Shapiro has over everyday baseball operations in general. Beeston was pretty much solely on the business side and let AA run the show w.r.t. baseball ops. I'd think AA will want the same autonomy. If Shapiro does want some input on baseball ops, then it'll come down to egos. If both don't have big egos and can put their minds together and agree to being able to work together, then I think this will be a good partnership (AA's style of going for upside/tools and mental makeup (like a scout) and Shapiro's analytics and extreme focus on stats and efficient production) and AA would stay. If either one has a big ego, then we're looking at a disaster.

I'm gonna throw a name out there for buy low target: Denard Span.

If you told any of us back in July that we'd rally to be a playoff team, when we were treading mediocrity for most of the year and had a horrible first two months masked by an 11 game win streak... or so we thought, I'd be like "da f*** are you guys smoking?". But either way, we managed to rally, and that was even with Tulo being hurt and Tulo not being Tulo with the bat. Oh, and Travis hurt too for most of the year. As much as Price has been s*** on for his playoff numbers, those 3, 4 starts he made against the Yankees... he pretty much secured the division for us on those alone. It was the first time we got a pitcher we could call an ace since Doc, even if it was only half a year. If you guys told me we'd win after coming back from down 0-2 in the ALDS as well, I'd have called y'all even crazier. Yet we did. Took some well time dongs, 2 quality starter outings, and Elvis Andrus... but we did. I would never have envisioned us bowing out in the ALCS when this year started. I'd have just envisioned another mediocre year, AA being canned after the year as well as Gibbons, a horrible rotation with analytic god Hutch, old men Dickey and Buehrle, and totally unproven Sanchez and Norris with no back up plan other than a career tweener in Estrada who would never ever be able to have probably even one good outing in this division, guys like Osuna and Castro being horrible as unproven kids jumping up from single A and a rag tag bullpen being the downfall of a great offense. Guess it just goes to show... A. AA is awesome and has adapted really well on the job and B. What in the flying f*** do I know. Instead, first time in over a decade I've been proud to call a Toronto sports team a legitimate top tier team. We didn't win it, but you know what?We'll be back. I promise. Hats off to a great year. Ever since I became old enough to actually understand pro sports... this is the first time I legitimately feel excited going forward.

With some of the crap written on here, you'd think we'd have 2004 Barry Bonds HR totals with Mark Reynolds strikeout numbers. Yeah, the team leading the league as well in OBP and BA really relies on HR's. The team that still had the best offense in baseball against righties needs a LHH. Come on, guys.