BigRed

There should be a huge asterisk with the notation "if the Jays matched the Red Sox offer". If he signed for 28M here that's 21M he'd be leaving, I don't see that happening. More importantly, even though Beeston and AA are gone, I don't see this front office handing out too many 7 year deals either, especially at 30M+ per year. I'm guessing if they did offer Price a deal it wouldn't have included a 7th year, so that's even more guaranteed money he'd be leaving behind.

haha, that orioles picture is hilarious. those ears are ginormous.

don't most players want contract stuff dealt with in the offseason anyway? This doesn't seem like news to me - most players don't want the distraction of a contract negotiation in the middle of a season. It's in Edwins best interest to get locked up before the season starts, before he possibly gets hurt or not playing well.

Probably this fangraphs article on Tulowitzki after the trade http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/troy-tulowitzki-the-blue-jays-and-upgrading-strengths/ there's also this one http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mark-trumbo-and-the-relative-value-of-obp-and-slg/

The only logical explanation is that Smoak was going to ask for 5+ in arbitration and they weren't confident they'd win. Even if the team went into arbitration asking for 3M I'd think that would be a safe number to win with, especially if Smoak was asking for 5+.

So we have a year where we add Donaldson, Martin, Price, Tulo, Revere, Lowe, Hawkins, etc and people expect that to become the norm. got it.

I'd be surprised if he got 5, he'll be 36 going into the 2017 season, and probably need to be a DH at some point during the contract. I also see a front loaded contract, something like 20x20x18x15? I don't think he gets over 20 as he'll probably be limited to a few AL teams, and nobody will want to have a 39 year old DH locked up for 25 million.

This has been beaten to death, dude. Society's "priorities"? In your first post you mentioned "ethical questions about our society". To me this is about "priorities" or "ethics". They are athletes (entertainers) that have made it to the highest level, and millions of people are willing to pay to watch them do their thing. If I drop a beat on my laptop and come up with some lyrics about cash, money and hoes and it's good enough that I sell enough copies to make 20M on itunes would you have an issue with that? What's your "solution" to the "problem" of one of the best guys at his sport making 30M a year and somebody with a phd making under 100k? Raise taxes (or medical costs / insurance if you live in the US) so that every doctor can make 1M a year? Researchers 5M+? What if its a doctorate / phd in some new-fangled, whimsical field like doctor of philosophy in media, technology and society (that's actually a thing)? Who's paying their salary, and what the hell are they actually doing with that useless piece of paper? Or go the other way - force the MLB and other leagues and put a "cap" on how much they can charge for tickets, merch, etc (they aren't going to willingly lower the cost of everything)? If people are willing to buy the product that the teams are selling at the prices they are asking, what's the problem? So many people have a problem with a doctor, policeman, fireman or soldier's wage compared to somebody playing a game, but nobody has come up with a logical solution that makes sense.

Why do people keep saying this junk? Give your head a shake. Is it because they aren't spending Dodger or Yankee money? Go look at the payroll in 2011. It was freaking 64.5M. It's over double that going into 2016. They are in the top 1/3 of the league in spending.

Im still on the fence. I loved Happ when he was here before, but at 12M? I guess it still has value, but to me it seems like sailing a white flag on Price, or even a Zimmermann/Shark type guy.

definitely. also use your superlike on him.

Kevin pillar needs some sun. looks like he's rockin a farmer's tan.

That's hilarious. Wow.

You're kind of ignoring the fact that payroll was terrible and I don't even think the past owners before Rogers knew what baseball was. Once AA was brought in the team was fast tracked to success. It got derailed in year 3 with a ton of injuries and setbacks that nobody imagined would have happened all at once, but that teams was the odds-in WS favourite. Rogers appears content to commit 120-140M in salary right now (and who knows, maybe more in the future) and they have a good management group. Maybe there's a streak of no playoffs for a couple years, but I don't think you're going to see 20 years of literally no meaningful September baseball, especially with the expanded wildcard.

It was likely a completely different structure with Beeston and AA than it is right now with Shapiro and LaCava as interim. Beeston basically let AA do his thing with the team. AA was the face of the management team, not Beeston. When AA had a deal on the table or wanted more money, Beeston took that plan to Rogers and would try to sell them on it (Marlins increase, etc). Beeston was never a GM, I'm glad he let AA do his thing and stayed out of his way. He didn't need to say anything profound because he was never a scout / talent evaluator, so he left any sort of roster analysis comments to AA to the radio/press. Shapiro worked his way up from player development / scouting and is a former GM. It's a little more appropriate for him to make a comment like this than somebody who was strictly looking after the business aspects of the team while AA controlled the roster. Also, how is this profound? Any Jays fan knows they are incredibly thin at starting pitching, both in MLB and AAA. Yikes. You gotta get the bullpen stocked up before pulling those guys out of there and stretching them out as starters. If they can't fill up the pen first they are wasting options and then pen is left empty.

The drop-off in skill from Martin to Thole is just too huge in my mind to not make some attempt to protect yourself from it, especially if it's via free agency for a couple of million. Thole is good at literally nothing except catching a knuckleball. If Navarro is looking for 4-5M then maybe you have to evaluate other options, but remember, the only reason he was ever brought here was to catch Dickey, and he didn't even do that for most of last year. He's not a serviceable backup at all. The guy should be giving Dickey like half his salary, if Dickey retires he probably doesn't even have a job in the minors anywhere.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/pitching obviously as mentioned, no adjustment for park factors, unearned runs not counted, etc, but overall KC and Toronto's pitching was pretty close. That's all I was trying to say. The guys KC beat Toronto with were nothing overly special.

hahah yes!! I couldn't remember the name and it was killing me. Thank you, I can sleep now.

This always comes up during discussions about teachers, and I think it's blown way out of proportion, at least for certain classes. My grade 9 math teacher I know for a fact did crap-all outside the classroom, other than maybe complete report cards if he didn't finish during his prep period, which he probably did. We had weekly quizzes on Friday, and switched with the person beside us and marked our friends quizzes during class. Probably 75% of it was multiple choice, and then 25% where you had to show your work/equations. We had tests/exams on those computerized multiple choice cards where you just stick them in a machine and they spit out a grade (in college we had full course exams using those cards). biology, chemistry, physics -- any course with lots of math/equations, as much of it was multiple choice as possible. The courses that I see as being "prep/marking heavy" are things like english, philosophy, law, etc where the students are doing tons of essay work, case studies, etc, but if you're getting into teaching something like that you should hopefully realize that by the time you're out of teachers college. Even then, there was tons of times we'd be given a period to work on an essay, and the teacher is sitting at their desk marking, using the class time as an extra prep period for themselves. If you want a strict 9-5, or a job where you can just shut down after working 8 hours, go get a job in a factory. Of course that likely doesn't come with 11-12 weeks vacation, potential 70-95K salary, tons of sick days (that they used to be able to bank and retire early on), and a really good pension. People want all the benefits of the profession (good pay, more vacation than pretty much any other field, pension) but don't want to bust their ass off the other 40 weeks of the year. They want the job to be on a punchclock like it's a factory. The reality is many people who work in an office, own their own business, work something like real estate (or have to schedule their work around that of their customers, many who work days), etc have to put in work at all kinds of hours of the day. 2 years ago when I bought my first house (place I was renting was being sold by owner) I didn't book time off work to go house hunting. Every day from 6-10PM I'm going to houses with my real estate agent. I was going out on weekends. That's typical for them. In the day their taking calls, booking appointments, posting/updating listings online, etc. I work in an office at a factory, but part of my job requires me to audit all 3 production shifts. Typically 2-3 times a month I'm working a midnight shift, or an afternoon (and then I'm back the next morning for my normal day shift), or I'll just work a double shift. I'm non-unionized, salaried management, I don't get paid OT, I get my annual salary, and if we do good, a raise and a bonus. I normally work 45 hour weeks. I don't threaten to strike every 3-4 years like it seems teachers do. I know a few people that went into teaching, and a ton of nurses, and honestly, they seem like the two whiniest professions to me (according to my facebook feed anyway), and coincidentally (or maybe not) they are both female dominated professions.

If you want to look simply at team ERA as a whole (2015 regular season), KC was ranked 10th at 3.73, Toronto 12th at 3.80 and Texas 23 at 4.24. It wasn't really the pitching that was the problem. As a whole KC and Toronto were almost identical on the mound. Looking at the playoffs, a lot of guys just weren't hitting at all against KC. The games they lost, they scored 0, 3, 2 and 3 runs, and with that lineup that's really just not acceptable. The FIP for KCs starters for the games they won? 3.82 (Volquez), 3.57 (Ventura) and 4.52 (Young). It's not like the starters KC was throwing out there were all that great. I'm not worried about Chavez, Dickey and especially Estrada getting playoff starts. Repeat last year's performance, go into the playoffs doing what they did for 162 games, and hope the offense shows up.

It makes sense for community colleges to do that though, especially if you're taking a technical program like mechanical design/engineering for example, somebody from the private sector who's been doing the job for 10-20 years, worked their way up to a supervisor / manager or higher is probably going to be able to explain the technical/practical aspects of the class very well, but they might not be a good lecturer.

My Grade 9 French teacher and 10-12 Spanish teacher was 25 years old when I was in grade 9, and she had started I think 1-2 years prior. In grade 9 my science teacher was fresh out of university/teacher's college. She looked like she was 19 years old. There were quite a few young teachers at my highschool, but this was back in 2000-2004, I know the market has been flooded with teachers over the years. The pay is pretty ridiculous once you get in fulltime, not to mention the large amounts of vacation time. The biggest problem with the entire field (especially in Ontario) is the unions have been bought off by a certain left-winged government, and the market has been flooded. The top two reasons people get into the job is because of the pay and the vacation... not because they actually want to teach. People end up with loads of debt, we have more teachers than we need, so they leave the province or go to the states where the pay is s***. But lets not kid anyone, if you're top of your class and a solid teacher you will find a job, and after you've put in a few years you have it made. Teaching is one of the best middle-class jobs in Ontario, along with policing, firefighting, nursing and most other public sector work.

Yeah, you're probably right, but if Navarro walks that means they really need to devote resources to either signing or trading (which means giving something up) for a backup, which is basically just insurance in case Martin gets injured. Next to starting pitching this is actually the position I'm most concerned about. The bullpen to me is whatever... bullpens are so volatile the guys they have now could end up being a top bullpen, but if they had to rely on a s***** backup catcher for half a season it could be game over.

I saw this earlier and laughed. Not because of the idea of an MLB executive going to the NHL, but because it's the Coyotes. AA's a smart dude. He's a talent evaluator. He's also Canadian, and probably has watched a ton of hockey. I'm sure he'd figure it out quickly and be good at it. But it's the Coyotes. Why anyone would want to work for that team is beyond me. I'd rather be unemployed.