SeaBass

Yes, Cain was injured during 2019. If you'll remember he had issues with his thumb which ultimately required him to get the same cryotherapy that Braun had done a few times for his thumb issue. Cain's 2nd half in 2019 saw a performance more in line with his career slash numbers. Still wasn't as great as his 2018 but it was more of a normal performance for him. 2019: Pre-All Star break (83 games): .246/.309/.352/.660 Post-All Star break (65 games): .281/.350/.403/.752 Career: .288/.348/.413/.761 I just keep seeing posts doubting Cain and, while the future for any aging player is always questionable, I think people focus on his season numbers from 2019 rather than looking closer and remembering his injuries. He still regressed and the thumb bothered him for "a little over a month" so it can't explain away all of his struggles but I think it's important to emphasize that his 2nd half showed evidence of him performing more normally and snapping out of his early season funk.

Three things related to this: 1. I think people, myself included, remember the 2017-2018 Shaw and don't think Arcia at his peak could come close to producing a .258/.347/.844 slash with 30+ HR potential. If you took Arcia's peak #s of any year in his career, you get .277(2017)/.324(2017)/.734 (2019) with 15-20 HR potential 2. Arcia is not a 3B and is not a guy who you have to find a spot for in the lineup because of his bat. Arcia's career slash is still .244/.295/.660. In arguably his best offensive season of 2020, Arcia was .260/.317/.734. In 2020, Shaw produced .239/.306/.717. Even in a "down" Shaw year in 2020, he almost reached Arcia's career peaks in OBP and SLG and still almost produced the same in OBP & SLG as Arcia did in 2020. 3. I think most people are rooting for Shaw as he was quickly becoming a fan favorite at the time of his slump. While not the face of the franchise, the blue-collar type production (e.g. solid not elite offense coupled with solid not elite defense) really resonates to this fanbase. In terms of production, you generally know what Arcia is. A .250/.300/.700 guy. Shaw has a wider range of outcomes but if he approaches something close to his peak, significantly passes Arcia's OBP and SLG and is an actual 3B. I give Shaw every chance to lose the job. To me it's not that people prefer Shaw, I understand all the history there, it's the incredulous reactions to Arcia being in the mix. They were basically the same player last season and there's seemingly no understandable reason for why Shaw's production fell off the edge of the flat earth in 2019. His 2020 just doesn't inspire me to believe he's figured it out. It would be great if he builds upon that and makes himself obviously better even if he's still not the Shaw that hit over 60 HRs in 2 seasons. Until then he's just Eric Sogard in disguise.

Per ESPN: I'm assuming that means the 40 man roster, that's too early for the Brewers to be setting their final 26 man roster. I'd expect Shaw to get plenty of ABs leading up to March 15. Also, just because that's the date in the contract it doesn't prevent Shaw and the team agreeing to push the opt out date back by a week or longer, I believe they've done that in the past, with Stephen Vogt I think? I also wonder if the wording of that means Shaw can request he be added to the roster anytime after March 15, not that it has to be that day. Could he wait to make a formal request on March 20 and then the team would have 3 days to comply?

These are just guys I could think of off the top of my head. I could be forgetting some. Paul Molitor - left in FA Richie Sexton - traded C.C. Sabathia - left in FA Zack Grienke - traded Prince Fielder - left in FA Carlos Gomez - traded Jonathan Lucroy - traded Mike Moustakas - left in FA Yasmani Grandal - left in FA These are all guys I'm sure the team would have preferred to keep but were unable to re-sign or were going to become too expensive to re-sign. So I'd say re-signing their own guys counts.

Arcia as everyday 3B... You gotta be kidding me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My favorite part is how so many people on this board are penciling Shaw in as the every day 3B when Arica has outplayed him each of the last 2 seasons. I don't know about everyone else but I'm still a skeptic when it comes to Shaw. A kinda, sorta, squint-your-eyes-real-hard minor bounce back in 50 games last season wasn't enough for me. I don't dislike him and I'm open minded but I need to see him prove that he deserves playing time.

Arcia as everyday 3B... You gotta be kidding me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My favorite part is how so many people on this board are penciling Shaw in as the every day 3B when Arica has outplayed him each of the last 2 seasons. I don't know about everyone else but I'm still a skeptic when it comes to Shaw. A kinda, sorta, squint-your-eyes-real-hard minor bounce back in 50 games last season wasn't enough for me. I don't dislike him and I'm open minded but I need to see him prove that he deserves playing time.

Slightly OT, was just thinking the other day about how I miss Jerry Narron's line-up cards. He's still going strong coaching for the White Sox.

Slightly OT, was just thinking the other day about how I miss Jerry Narron's line-up cards. He's still going strong coaching for the White Sox.

Okay, cool. Doesn't change the fact the statement was completely wrong and stereotyping how well he was set off financially because of how much his parents have. Either his dad has already blown most of his money or raised his kid(s) to earn their own money. It is curious why he would feel the need to accept money from that investment firm at age 19. He was a top prospect going into that year (2018), he had been paid a decent signing bonus of $825k back when he was an international free agent in 2015. So why would he need to get more money and sacrifice a percentage of future earnings? Tatis Jr. did suffer an injury, a broken thumb with ligament damage, in the summer of 2018 that required surgery, maybe that spooked him enough to take that offer. We've seen what thumb injuries have done to players in the past. I think regardless of his father's wealth, whatever it may be, Jr. was an adult at age 19, had earned just shy of $1 million on his own merit and likely wanted to secure his own financial nest egg independent from his father.

Tatis Jr.'s grandfather, also named Fernando Tatis but with a different middle name than his son and grandson, played in the minors in the 70's but never reached the bigs (according to the internet's most reliable source, Wikipedia). With the gradual success of each generational son I fully expect Tatis Jr.'s future son to become the best baseball player in MLB history (half blue). Reminds me, speaking of generations of baseball players, saw a tweet a few days ago with a video of Prince Fielder's son, 16 y/o Jadyn, hitting a dinger, accompanied with an apparently slow trot around the bases.

If he's coming back for cheap in '22 to chase some milestones I could definitely see the Cardinals bringing him back if the Angels are ready to move on.

That got walked back a bit by Albert's wife shortly after. It seems likely since his contract will be done but I guess they're not ready to make a formal announcement yet.

This SI article doesn't seem to feel the Packers would have any trouble finding cap room to fit Watt, if that's something they really want to do. https://www.si.com/nfl/packers/.amp/news/money-isnt-issue-for-packers-watt

I give Buehler the benefit of the doubt, I got the sense he was trying to be playful but the tone came out wrong which is why he deleted it. I really don't think he was seriously trying to insult the Brewers or their fans. To him it's real easy to see it as of course Turner wasn't going to leave the Dodgers unless the Dodgers left him first, which just about everybody except the most delusional of Brewers fans knew anyway.

Braun was the guinea pig. He was the first player of any consequence to be caught by a PED test. There was no template for him to follow, he became the template for what NOT to do after testing positive and being suspended. People want to blame him for the collector losing his job or whatever. That's not why though, he was fired because he screwed up. It's understandable how and why what he did went down the way it did but it was a huge mistake waiting to happen due to the procedure not being meticulously nailed down beforehand and that guy was the casualty. I understand he caught a lot of hostile treatment from angry fans that went way too far by tracking down where he lived and stuff like that, that says more about those people than it does Braun. Does anybody really think that guy wasn't going to get exposed if Braun never mentioned him (he didn't even use the guy's name)? Seriously? Come on, be smarter than that. That guy was screwed the second the story hit the headlines. Anyway, baseball fans "hate" players around the league for various reasons, who am I to say hating a guy for doing PEDs is any different? I don't like lots of dudes, Yadi Molina comes to mind. I guess if I can "hate" him, others can "hate" Braun. But he's more than ok in my book.

I knew I saw a tweet today with an outline of a breakdown, I don't think it's inclusive of everything but enough to go on. Plus it's from Heyman so all the grains of salt apply. Jon Heyman @JonHeyman As I just said on @MLBNetwork Tatis Jr. will be paid $34M over his next 4 years and $306M over his 10 free agent years for $340M. He’ll get a $10M signing bonus w/salaries of $1M $5M $7M and $11M in 1st 4 years. The deal tops out at $36M. Theres a no-trade clause, no opt-outs.

Yeah I think Watt immediately jumps to 2nd most popular Packer with fans the moment he signs. For many he will be #1. Clay Matthews was hugely popular here, Watt eclipses him easily.

I'll be honest, I didn't look anything up before answering. I should have. What I said about a non-guaranteed year at the end of a contract is really the only reason that occurred to me that made sense. It's likely still true (as I believe it is with Rodger's current contract, but I could be wrong there also) but I guess I was thinking it'd be a longer deal than 5 years. I don't think a 5 year deal is too long, he'd be a free agent again going into his age 33 season which is still young enough in QB years. Yeah not sure. I don't really care either way and I can't think that what the talking heads on ESPN say matters much either no matter how they're framing it. They just want to have loud arguments about stuff so they can sell commercial air time.

NFL contracts are not typically guaranteed like in other sports. That makes contract length irrelevant to a player unless the team is saying they will fully guarantee the contract (which I doubt they are) or give him an opt out. Like we just saw with JJ Watt, the Texans were able to release him even though he had 1 year left on his contract for around $17 million. That last year was fully in the team's control, they could have kept and paid him if they felt he was worth it or they could do what they did and release him. By this time any guaranteed money Watt was paid upon signing the contract had no impact on that last year of his deal, the Texans released him and were free and clear of that $17 million obligation with no salary cap penalties. Yet from a player perspective Watt had to ask for his release, he was locked into that year and was at the mercy of the team's decision. JJ Watt is still good and likely to get a good contract now that he's a FA, maybe not $17 million per year good but still good. But if Watt's performance had dropped to a point where it made no sense to pay him $17 million he could be cut and out of a job and the Texans still would have been free and clear salary cap wise. That's a huge advantage for the team and not any advantage for the player. Dak just wants more control over the end of his contract. Or he's just trying to get more guaranteed money from Dallas than they're currently offering.

I seriously doubt Jordan Love will be the last QB drafted by the Packers in the next 3 seasons or however much longer Rodgers will be here. It would be incredibly silly to draft one guy and call it there, he hasn't even had a proper training camp with exhibition games yet. Ideally Love moves into the backup position and they start evaluating other young QBs. We've just really gotten used to having a franchise QB that's going to be a future HoF'er where the team hasn't had to expend draft capital on QBs, that luxury has pretty much ended until they have their next proven guy and probably not even then.

Wasn't there some altercation between a Dodgers fan and a Giants fan that ended up with one of them dead a few years ago? Not a lot of common sense out there. It's just a baseball game. Not worth going to prison over who wears what jersey.

Being with Charter does not give you immunity to the Sinclair negotiation circus that's currently going on with streaming services. Cable was the original playground for these tactics before streaming services even existed. I'd rather see Sinclair starve than play their game. If they'd like to bring it back to YTTV then I'll watch, otherwise no thank you. I'm not even sure streaming services will even want to bring them back now that they're gone, I feel like they've already endured the pain of losing them and losing customers, I frankly don't know if they'll see much benefit from starting the rollercoaster up again.

Can I vote for "Perfectly Cromulent Field"? I don't think it gets any better than that.

This felt like a Mark Attanasio special. Not sure we should expect them to allocate the money they were willing to spend on Turner on other FAs. Not saying they won't sign more players but I'm expecting sub $5 million 1 year deals to fill out the roster. Hope I'm wrong.

Urias' key to more playing time is earning it through performance. I think he'll be given opportunity to perform until someone else claims more time or he does. That's just how it works. Right now between 3B and SS and to a lesser extent 2B there's enough time to go around, if Turner is signed that time decreases a bit. Turner is hardly an iron man though so 3B will still have 30 to 40 games where someone else will get playing time even if he's signed.