Beans

No, more like this: "Boss/Chief/Big guy, DM me please. Greetings"

As if the SpongeBob outfit wasn’t loveable enough, check out Walker’s quotables from yesterday’s presser: NEW YORK — A day after being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Derek Jeter and Larry Walker held a joint press conference at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan where they reminisced about their careers and slipped on their new threads. Jeter: "My parents used to always tell me, look, you have to sit back and enjoy the moment. I was just never able to do it. I don't know if that's a character flaw or if it's part of the reason why I'm here. It was always just, what's next?" Walker: "Pinch me."

Those have not been the biggest controversies, at least not to my mind. There have been plenty of other HOF-worthy/HOF-esque players the BBWAA didn’t vote in (some of them done after their first time on the ballot!) and it’s been going on so long that something needs to change there. I’m not a small-Hall guy, so I would have liked to see Trammell, Whitaker, McGriff, Bobby Grich, Lofton, and Keith Hernandez, and that’s just off the top of my head. They’re five years into voting on Billy Wagner and he sits at just 31.7%. And borderline cases (HOF-esque) like Kevin Brown they gave 2.1% of the vote, making him and his 60+ WAR a one-and-done. The writers were idiots then and they’re idiots now.

They already lost their second-round pick when they signed Will Smith, so for signing Ozuna Atlanta forfeited its third-round pick.

He was probably privy to the way they were cheating, and his job involves watching video, so it stands to reason that he was doubtless among the 60 interviews MLB completed in their investigation. In all their sleuthing—including reading over 76,000 emails—they found everything pointed to Cora and Beltran. Their names were highlighted, but not disciplined. And the reason was that the MLB policy on this stuff, going back to 2017, was that the buck stops with the manager and, ultimately, the general manager, so they were the ones suspended. And, come on, I'm sure MLB would have rather pinned the whole thing on coaches than players, so if they had found anything worth mentioning on Hudgens he would have been named in the final report. I say leave him alone.

He went from 55% last year to over 76% this year! Congratulations to Larry Walker!

It would shock me if anyone from Barstool Sports actually had a HOF vote.

Here are the full results of the 2020 Hall of Fame ballot, vote totals and percentages: Derek Jeter: 396 votes (99.7%) -- 1st year on ballot Larry Walker: 304 (76.6%) -- 10th Curt Schilling: 278 (70%) -- 8th Roger Clemens: 242 (61%) -- 8th Barry Bonds: 241 (60.7%) -- 8th Omar Vizquel: 209 (52.6%) -- 3rd Scott Rolen: 140 (35.3%) -- 3rd Billy Wagner: 126 (31.7%) -- 5th Gary Sheffield: 121 (30.5%) -- 6th Todd Helton: 116 (29.2%) -- 2nd Manny Ramirez: 112 (28.2%) -- 4th Jeff Kent: 109 (27.5%) -- 7th Andruw Jones: 77 (19.4%) -- 3rd Sammy Sosa: 55 (13.9) -- 8th Andy Pettitte: 45 (11.3%) -- 2nd Bobby Abreu: 22 (5.5%) -- 1st --------------------- (Players receiving less than 5% will drop off future ballots) Paul Konerko: 10 (2.5%) -- 1st Jason Giambi: 6 (1.5%) -- 1st Alfonso Soriano: 6 (1.5%) -- 1st Eric Chavez: 2 (0.5%) -- 1st Cliff Lee: 2 (0.5%) -- 1st Adam Dunn: 1 (0.3%) -- 1st Brad Penny: 1 (0.3%) -- 1st Raul Ibanez: 1 (0.3%) -- 1st J.J. Putz: 1 (0.3%) -- 1st Josh Beckett 0 -- 1st Heath Bell: 0 -- 1st Chone Figgins: 0 -- 1st Rafael Furcal: 0 -- 1st Carlos Pena : 0 -- 1st Brian Roberts: 0 -- 1st Jose Valverde: 0 -- 1st

To put Jeter's 99.7% into perspective, consider this: J.J. Putz and Brad Penny (and a couple others) got one vote each. So somebody said yes to Brad Penny, and somebody said no to Derek Jeter.

I can't believe Vizquel is over 50% in his third year of eligibility!

Larry Walker went from 55% last year to over 76% this year! Congratulations to him!

396 out of 397 votes...

Ya, Chaim Bloom thinks they can get a deal similar to what the Mariners got for Edwin Diaz. Of course, Diaz had multiple years left and Betts only has one, and the Mariners ate part of Cano's contract and the Red Sox expect a team to take on most of Price's contract. I don't know where they get off thinking they're going to swing a deal like that, but I hope it backfires in their face, too.

photo hosting Many Hall of Fame voters share images of their ballots or write columns explaining their votes before the results are announced. Based on what's been made public, most projections have Derek Jeter near 100% and Larry Walker hovering around the 75% needed to get in.

I struggle with this, too.

One of Manfred's worst moments, for sure.

Unless it were my kin or something, I would never watch a game of little kids playing a little-kids version of an adult sport. (Although I think that part of your IRL job involves watching/working with this stuff, so no disrespect, Hurl.)

... why would anyone watch women's sports... ?! I'm not bananas about having female coaches in men's sports either, and share in some of the concerns laid out in the last few pages of this thread, but I like that the debate is now basically those who defend watching women's sports (why I'll never know) and those who see it as not worth their while because female athletes are not doing anything a teenage boy couldn't do

Right, and I didn't say he'd take away from Biggio or Bichette. My post was a direct response to the idea that he would get much playing time this year. I prefer youngins who could show us something—or even the other guys we picked up recently as depth pieces—maybe one of them breaks out when one of the little Bs get hurt. Like you said, no one is going to play 162 games this year. But Panik not only sucks, he is all but guaranteed to suck, whereas with a youngster there's still a chance to catch lightning in a bottle. He's a replacement-level player, the kind of which we already have, by definition.

When is someone going to make a reference to that song by The Smiths?

That particular shade of red was a real eye sore, especially in the sun and with all the blue surrounding the diamond (blue outfield walls, blue seats, blue infield walls, blue dugouts, etc.) and then add in the dull green shade in the fake grass/turf. They were burning my retinas.

Interesting article in Sports Illustrated, by Tom Verducci, about how modern baseball now feels like a "business" where teams are competing to find an edge, rather than a "sport." "Baseball earned a place in so many hearts on its romance. But it has begun to sound like the insurance and banking industries." "[P]layers become 'assets' or 'a two-win player.' Relief pitchers are 'fungible.' ... The chance to score a run, win a game or secure a postseason berth are defined as a finite percentage." "We don't want championships that make us do mental gymnastics to decide whether they are inauthentic. We don't want player analysis to be derivative valuation. ... We want a clean game decided by fair competition. Clean it up." https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/01/16/astros-cheating-scandal-baseball-crisis

I hope he gets cut. He's potentially taking away playing time, even on the bench, from younger players who could show us something. All Panik shows is that a good walk rate doesn't mean s*** if you can't hit the ball hard, or in the air, or run very fast. His exit velocity, launch angle, and sprint speed are among the worst in baseball (among those with ~500 PA) . He plays good enough D, but he's a scrub. Unless he starts lifting the ball like Sogard did last year, there's no upside, and even then it wouldn't be that much.