Jopal78

I'm sure the Braves could move his contract somewhere after the season, especially since d'Arnaud and Contreras have played well. In fact, Pina didn't play much for the Braves before he injured his wrist. This is likely the beginning of the end for his career.

Well the bar was set pretty low with Grindle. Levering is alright but being the #2 guy to Uecker has typically been a stepping stone to the #1 gig with another team: Pat Hughes (ChC), Jim Powell (ATL), Corey Provus (MIN), Joe Block (PITT). I don't see Grindle or Maurer distinguishing themselves when discussing Saturday Morning Cartoons from the mid '90s.

Spot on! Levering and Maurer are simply awful announcers. For example, last night they were literally trying to name Vanilla Ice songs. I don't think anyone finds their references to be witty or their inside jokes about advertising plugs and food to be amusing. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but hey should at least talk about baseball when they have to fill in dead air or cover boring games. The Reds TV announcers are homers and were better than these two clowns last night.

I doubt his fractured hand has any lingering effects, I think Williams has actually been really good for Milwaukee. In his 13 appearances this year, almost half of them (6) have been clean innings with no hits or walks allowed. In 10 of his 13 appearances, the opponents went scoreless. Therefore, it is not like he's been struggling on the whole, rather he's had 3 poor outings. In the 3 appearances, however, (totaling 1 and 2/3 innings), he's walked 7 and given up 6 hits and hit a batter. Looking in even further, on April 13th in Baltimore Williams gave up a 1-2 single to Jorge Mateo, was 3-0 to Anthony Bemboom before walking him on a full count, was ahead of Mullins and got the strike out. Next, he was behind on Mountcastle (1-0) when he hit an RBI single, and was behind 3-1 on Santander before hitting him with a pitch and being pulled from the game. Boxberger then gave up a sac fly charged to Williams before retiring the side. On April 17th against the Cardinals, he struck out O'Neill on a 2-2 pitch, was ahead 0-2 on Arenado when he doubled. Next he walked Pujols on 4 straight, gave up an 0-2 RBI single to Edman, struck out Bader on a 2-2 pitch, was ahead of Dejong 1-2 before walking him on a full count, and was ahead on Dickerson 1-2 before walking him to force in a run. Last night in Cincinnati, he was behind 3-2 to Friedl and got a pop up, was behind 3-2 on Drury and walked him, was behind 3-1 on Pham and walked him, was behind 3-2 on Moustakas and gave up an RBI single. Next he issued a four pitch walk to Moran, and gave up the double to Naquin on a 2-2 count. Against Baltimore and Cincinnati, Williams struggled throwing strikes and was knocked around. Against the Cardinals he ran into some poor luck giving up an 0-2 double to Arenado and 0-2 RBI single to Edman, and then couldn't seemingly finish batters off despite getting ahead 1-2.

I guess this is where we disagree. The Brewers are one of the more patient teams in the league. They've given Hiura 400 at bats across 3 calendar years to show them something. In that span he's produced a slash line of .192/.279/.326 and failed to even put the ball in play 182 times out of those 400 at bats. He's done nothing offensively to warrant more playing time with Milwaukee. Don't get me wrong, I wish he would find "it" and be the #3 hitter for years to come. However, given the Brewers signed Wong to a multi-year deal to play 2B moving Hiura to 1B, then traded for Tellez with years of team control to play 1B, then signed Andrew McCutchen to DH I think the writing is on the wall as to what the front office thinks of Hiura. As for other GMs, if they're not trying to compete they should be rebuilding. It's one thing to take a flier on a former Top 10 draft pick if he was on the waiver wire. I doubt any rebuilding GM would trade a quality veteran like Reynolds, for example, for a package of players that includes a major leaguer like Hiura without options, who hasn't hit in years and is a liability defensively.

I didn't misread it, It's just as it stands Hiura has little to no trade value to anyone. Sure, he's got the pedigree being a Top 10 pick, and he's got his 2019 stat sheet, but when he's out of options in 2023, he's the new Billy McKinney: not good enough to crack a 26 man roster and too much talent/pedigree to make it through waivers. Regarding Bell, I disagree. If he keep up his .920 OPS, his bat hits in the middle of the order for any contender in the majors, especially now with the universal DH and the he's a pure rental. They'll get a nice return for him.

Just like with the Brewers, from the Pirates perspective Hiura doesn't bring much to the table: indisputably talented but far removed from MLB success. But with a .973 career OPS in AAA nothing left to prove in the minors, will be out of options and heading into arbitration where his pay will grow exponentially. When the Pirates trade Bryan Reynolds, they will be looking for a return of the most talent that could help them win 2-3 years from now; I don't believe they'd be interested in taking less of those type of players in order to add a Keston Hiura to their major league club.

Hiura has the same amount of remaining team control as Bryan Reynolds...

The Nationals GM will likely be fired before 2023, but even as a rental it would be a terrible move to trade Josh Bell for Hiura. They will have better offers, and would be ahead to take an A ball player with upside over a guy who can't crack the 26 man lineup of the Brewers and is out of options and about to get expensive. If by "Kemp", you mean Tony Kemp, that's the caliber of lateral move I could see them making with Hiura, however they don't really need another player who is offensively challenged and only plays 2B/LF

You could be correct, there is a chance they could trade Hiura before reaching a non-tender situation. However, given his current track record he has little value, and would most likely be in a "change of scenery" type trade, rather than in a deadline deal for top tier veteran talent.

No doubt he's a talented athlete, and that 2019 production .303/.368/.570 is tantalizing. However, he's 26 and heading into arbitration this winter having yet to solidify a role on the team. Also, it been three calendar years since those monster numbers in 2019 with no evidence since that he can approach that level of production again in the major leagues. (.194/.282/.363). The problem is, Hiura has nothing left to prove in AAA (.296/.392/.581) yet he isn't one of the Brewers 26 preferred players. I think a more apt statement is the Brewers are hopeful they can salvage something out of Hiura. Otherwise as a player who will be out of options, without an every day role on the major league team and heading into arbitration he's on a path to be non-tendered after the season.

Brewers have scored 76 runs in their last 13 games; or put another way averaging 5.8 runs per game for the last two weeks.

Yes, $250,000 if Urena was in the minor leagues. $1.25 million for being in the major leagues. As pointed out above, he was added to the big league roster on the 30th. As we all know free agent major league contracts are fully guaranteed, thus the Brewers will pay him 1.25 million regardless if he's in the organization or not. Obviously, at the end of spring training they were looking for an arm to pitch long relief and mop up. Despite already having a pitcher seemingly tailor made for that role in Lindblom, they went out and signed Urena to the above mentioned guarantee. Don't forget the Brewers DFA'd Lindblom in May of 2021. Meaning they had already decided removing him from the 40 man roster was worth eating the year and a half remaining on his contract ($4.5 million dollars) to do so. When he went unclaimed following his DFA, he was outrighted to the minor leagues. At that point, Lindblom could have rejected the outright assignment and become a free agent; however in the process he would have forfeited that remaining 4.5 million dollars he was owed. That is primary reason why he is still in the Brewers organization, nothing else. It is a sign of some good baseball being played that there is a debate going on over an organizational soldier/mop up pitcher.

That doesn't make any sense. Teams do not simply hand out 1.25 million dollar guarantees to players (what Urena received when he was added to the major league roster 24 hours after signing a minor league deal) so they can "drop him when needed and not worry about options or messing with minor league players". If they wanted to add a long man/mop up pitcher for 20 games with the intention of moving on when they needed the roster spot, Lindblom was just cooling his heels in AAA and already under contract on a 3 million dollar guarantee. That they instead went out and paid additional money to get Urena speaks volumes what they think about Lindblom at this point. Never say never, but I doubt he pitches for the Brewers again unless their season has gone sideways.

His suspension is also a byproduct of the societal climate right now. Even if there are two valid perspectives about what went on with the women, he's bad for not only the MLB brand, but also the Dodgers brand; and there's no way for corporate PR people to spin a sex abuse scandal to make themselves not look bad. On the other hand, dropping the hammer on Bauer solves all their problems. Bauer is removed from the equation, they show they take these type of allegations very seriously, and the character of their athletes is as important as their ability to pitch or hit. Moreover, having dropped the hammer on him, the zeitgeist can attach a myriad of labels to anyone who chooses to defend him in essence chilling discourse.

My mistake, you're right. It still doesn't change the analysis. They removed Lindblom from the 40 man roster and the fact they brought in Urena to be the long man pretty much means they're done with Lindblom absent significant injuries to their pitching.

They DFA'd him already, meaning they were willing to eat his contract to remove him from the 40 man roster, so the amount of money they're paying him is already a sunk cost. Technically, every team in the league also had a chance to claim him and nobody did. Third, when they signed Urena to be a long man out of the pen, it showed what they thought of Lindblom returning to their major league team. Fourth, and most importantly, the Brewers 40 man roster is full and there's not a lot of filler there. Somebody would have to go to add Lindblom back, or they would have to have a player go to the 60 day DL to make room. Absent a series of significant injuries to their pitchers, my guess is Lindblom pitches in AAA all season, collects his 3 million dollars in pay and unceremoniously leaves the organization at the end of the year as a rare "miss" by the front office.

The better point is: why is Hiura on the roster at all. He most likely is what he is at this point: a talented athlete but flawed major leaguer with nothing left to prove in AAA. They’ll continue to use his little positional versatility, and to hit against lefties. When they need a roster spot they’ll ship him out to the minor leagues.

When they gutted their pitching I figured that would doom the Reds, but their offense has been unbelievably pathetic so far. Joey Votto has 9 hits on the year and has played in every game. The same Joey Votto who had a .266/.375/.563 line last year and got MVP votes. Besides Votto there is still some decent veteran talent ( Moustakas, Pham, Moran) and some really high draft picks (Senzel 2nd overall in '16, India 5th in '18, Stephenson 11th in '15) to be so inept that they're barely averaging 3 runs a game. Sub-question: does the fact Joey Votto played on some really bad teams (90+ losses six times) hurt his chances for the HoF?

But isn't that also the business model? You need content to drive traffic on an ongoing basis to generate the ad revenue? To be sure, you bought the site, and can do with it what you want (ie. ads, subscription based, etc.) with no complaints from me. However, instead of a benevolent slant, "keeping the website alive," as to why ads are necessary, be direct: it's a business where the site was purchased with the intent to generate revenue from advertisers for site traffic.

It's really no different than Attanasio having a payroll of $63million in 2016 when they didn't have the talent to compete, just economies of scale. I don't think many owners relish throwing away tens of millions of dollars to win 77 games instead of 69

I don't know if that is necessarily true. They got Pete Crow-Armstrong (#19 overall in 2020) for Baez. While he is currently in A-ball, he has an OPS of over 1.000 and will probably be in AA before too long. They also received Caleb Killian for Kris Bryant, he's already at AAA and likely will debut later this year. Nick Madrigal (#4 overall in 2018) is already on the major league roster. Codi Heuer was slated to be in the back end of the bullpen before suffering an arm injury this spring. They did get some low level minor leaguers for Rizzo and Darvish but that is more a byproduct of the fact, Rizzo was having a down year on an expiring contract when traded, and Darvish had an 80+ million dollar guarantee that the Padres assumed. Acquiring a half dozen A-ball players isn't a bad haul given the circumstances of those two trades.

Marcus Stroman got 3 years 71 million dollars from the Cubs. Kevin Gausman got 5 years 110 million dollars from the Blue Jays Robbie Ray got 5 years 115 million dollars from the Mariners I'm sure if the Brewers wanted to pay market rate ($23+ million per season) they could sign Woodruff to an extension tomorrow. If they wanted to pay 30+ million per season for Burnes they could probably get him to sign an extension. Problem is they are never going to pay market rate for a starting pitcher. Most likely they will ride these guys until they're out of team control and then trade them at the deadline or let them walk, depending on where they are in the standings at the time.

Of course it's the NL Central. The Reds and Pirates are not even attempting to be relevant. Given the number of question marks with their roster, most likely the Cubs will struggle to stay relevant as summer approaches: is the real Seiya Suzuki the guy who was on base 21 times in his first 35 plate appearances with 4 homers and 2 doubles, or the guy who has hit .212 with 4 doubles and 15Ks in his last 43 at bats. Ditto Hoerner and Madrigal, Come July they will ship out Contreras, Robertson, Givens and anyone else on an expiring contract. The Cardinals do what they always do, overachieve. Meanwhile in the AL Central, certainly the Twins, Guardians, Tigers view themselves as relevant, if not contenders. The most talented team in the Division, the White Sox, are doing that that franchise always does... underachieve. The only team in the AL Central that appears totally outgunned is the Royals.

Standard of proof in civil suits: “more probably true than not”. In other words 51-49. If he’s merely a kinkster, with his money, he could buy what he wanted in every major city in the world. That he’s picking up women of social media, having them come to his house without having met them first, tells me he’s a fool, and the destruction of his career and reputation is likely inevitable.