MrTPlush

Wow, for your sake I hope you are kidding.

I'd be curious to see the catch probability on Moose's fly ball too. It seemed to hang up there a bit. Almost seemed like the RFer may have not really seen it. EDIT: Saw it again, just right between the OFers. No chance catching that.

That was prettttty pathetic Thames.

I like this pitcher, he is not pitching well.

I’d like to thank the baseball gods for not making us wear black pants. Can you imagine a freakin’ hot game? In all black?

Is any other fanbase as concerned about the location of their play by play announcer on a daily basis as some of our forum members are?

Only thing worse than Lyles nickname is Arcia’s. “The Kid”...he isn’t even young anymore. Lol

The best way to get teams to stop shifting is to get people on base. Bunting isn't as easy as everyone likes to think it is. The failure rate would be stupidly high and a waste of so many ABs. I don't think people understand how good of a bunt Moustakas needs to get to first. Add in the fact even when they get on it is a single and puts a likely slow runner on...total waste. There is a reason teams usually don't care if a guy bunts to beat the shift. Lets think about it. Lets assume Moustakas bunts every single AB and has a success rate of .333. Awesome! A .333 average! Except his OPS would be a grand ole .666. That is why teams don't care if you turn your .850 OPS hitter into a slow .666 OPS bunter. It is a terrible idea. Even a 1/3 success rate is probably being generous. Moustakas probably avoids the groundball shift more often than he would successfully drop a bunt down. As far as "Learn to hit the other way, change your approach, etc."...good idea, we should try that with Arcia or with Braun regarding those sliders...or, oh wait. If only it was that simple. There is a recent article about shift prone players talking about how these suggestions aren't that easy. It is like anything else in baseball...sometimes you just struggle in that aspect of the game. If it was so easy everyone would be a Trout/Yelich.

Agreed. Plus pitchers are boring when up to bat. No excitement.

I was checking Sogard's defense over his career, in 3,385 innings he only has 25 errors. For reference Braun had 26 errors in 945.1 innings at 3B. That is an average of an error every 15 games playing 9 innings of defense for Sogard. Keston Hiura, error every 5 games. Yes, mostly has played 2B...but still kinda impressive to limit errors that much.

What’s wrong with moving to the country? The negative environmental externalities? At some point, I think you’ll see the gas tax go up to discourage long commutes. Not sure of negative environmental externalities. The modern internal combustion engine, when properly maintained, emits almost no pollutants. 95% of all pollution from cars comes from the worst (oldest, poorly maintained, or doctored for performance) 5% of vehicles. Also the gas tax probably won’t go up (although it should have years ago). We’ll follow Oregon’s experiment and institute a driving fee where we are assessed for our mileage. As electric and hybrid vehicles continue to grow in use, we find that these heavy vehicles contribute to the wear and tear on roads, but pay minimal-to-no road maintenance fees via gas tax. That needs to be fixed by shifting from gas tax to mileage fees. I had never heard of this so I looked it up. At first it sounded terrible, but I plan to get a gas guzzling truck soon so I would actually come out ahead in this system. That being said I got really confused when it said it doesn't track your location, but you don't pay a fee when out of state (obviously). I also didn't really understand what happens for out of state residents. Are these people paying gas tax then? But what does that do for the hybrid/electric cars people drive here? Once that becomes really prominent this system seems to not really solve the problem. Also if we have to keep a gas tax for out of state people does that mean I am paying that tax at the pump still? Is there a way to tell you are a resident of the state so it gets subtracted off? Am I paying it, submitting mileage, and then either getting paid or paying in like normal yearly taxes?

I don't think it is that shocking to think they could be 5-7. First off they only went 7-5 last year and I can't say this team is crazy better on paper. Mind you they went 7-5 last year with way higher expectations and a pathetic schedule. The key is probably that first game, which they could lose at South Florida. If they win that they have three other cupcake wins (CM, IL, Kent St) to get them already to four wins. For Example: South Florida - Loss Central Michigan - Win Michigan - Loss Northwestern - Loss Kent State - Win Michigan State - Loss Illinois - Win Ohio State - Loss Iowa - Win Nebraska - Loss Purdue - Win Minnesota - Loss 5-7, not exactly a shocking result if you ask me. My personal predictions: South Florida - Win Central Michigan - Win Michigan - Loss Northwestern - Win Kent State - Win Michigan State - Loss Illinois - Win Ohio State - Loss Iowa - Win Nebraska - Win Purdue - Win Minnesota - Loss 8-4, I personally have a hard time thinking they could fail to win 6 games. we will see how the QB play shakes out, but even a poor Coan should be able to get them to 6 wins. I am a bit more optimistic and think someone will lock down some quality play before the last third of the season and they can pull out a lot of nice wins. In some order I think they win 3/4 of their last games.

Santana trade was a product of a talented roster and a player who was not versatile. If Stearns got something useful out of that, awesome! He simply had to be traded and Stearns likely sought the best deal possible. I liked Domingo and he played a huge part of the September run...but we had Braun/Cain/Yelich and needed a 4th OFer who could play all three positions and ideally well. Santana definitely could not do either of those things. This trade needs to stop being compared at such face value.

I always like Feliciano, nice to see him have a real solid year. Zavolas...not exactly young for A+, but I think there is an under appreciation for guys who limit homers and walks. Something that may lead to a lot of not so flashy guys being solid rotation arms in the HR happy league the MLB now is.

David Stearns has done a decent job with the farm system. His drafts don't look horrendous and he really hasn't traded much from it. Not sure where there is to complain. I think he and his staff have done a pretty terrible job after the first few rounds of the draft, but it is hard to rate guys picked after the first few rounds for years.

I am still fuming mad over that game last year they were forced to play in a ridiculous amount of rain and they blew it even after it was obvious the ball was so wet our pitcher could barely get it to the plate.

This team could go on a run if the pitching got hot. Our line up today features arguably two superstar bats in the middle and four guys with approx. .850 OPS. That really isn’t a bad line up. If Cain was passable on top...not bad at all. Not saying it will happen, but...it could.

This team could go on a run if the pitching got hot. Our line up today features arguably two superstar bats in the middle and four guys with approx. .850 OPS. That really isn’t a bad line up. If Cain was passable on top...not bad at all. Not saying it will happen, but...it could.

Nothing against Suter, but the fact we are excited for him to be coming back is borderline depressing and really sums up the pitching staff this year.

I mean once you take out all the airfare, travel, hotel, food, and memorabilia you aren't paying a ton for the "experience". They could easily up this cost considering the demand it gets and always sells out. It is nice they keep the price reasonable. However being sticklers about the flights etc. is pretty lame. It would not be that hard to discount someone if they find their own airfare.

What exactly is the difference between guys trying to get on in front of Yelich and those guys behind him trying to drive him in? Either way you need them to get on to either have him drive them in or them drive him in. It is all the same, just a different order.

I wonder when it is my turn.

Well we didn't exactly hit 3mil last year...and actually we are projected to be about the same or even higher this year. That being said there is reason to believe additional payroll money is possible. A new TV deal is going into effect next year (rumored, somewhat reliably) and Mr '92 mentioned a new national Fox TV deal that is pretty sizable...not sure the relevance on that. The local TV deal alone should bring in 10mil or so we didn't have before. We also don't know if they actually maxed out their pre season payroll before this year. That may not be the case.

So you are listening to IGT hot takes....sir/mam, please do not go down that dark scary path.

You are taking the word predictable way too literal. What I am saying is if we simulated this season 100 times a way too high percentage would have equaled a terrible pitching staff. Which, thus, it wasn't surprising it ended this way. Yes, baseball is unpredictable year to year, especially with non elite bullpen arms...but the point is Stearns created a rotation and pitching staff that was relying on way too much going right to make it passable. He was asking for failure creating a rotation with almost zero track record or consistency (variance of these depending on the pitcher). The odds 4 of those guys were going to be good was pretty much zero and that bullpen? Yah, not very promising on paper. Things are always going to go right and things are always going to go wrong where you don't expect it. However Stearns left way too much failure potential on a pitching staff that didn't have very much "above and beyond" potential to balance it out.