mvp 78

Buck said he was not injured and was ready to go.

My kids don't typically wake me up in the middle of the night when I'm on a business trip.

Sandoval and Rutledge are prospects? Hanigan and Hill are FA's.

He's already provided something.

Yup, Toronto fans are s*****. That's two playoffs in a row marred by them throwing s*** on the field.

What if he provides them nothing? We could still say "well, if the Sox held onto Espinoza a little longer they could have spun him into an even better pitcher."

I don't really care either way. I would appreciate another dust up between Odor and Bautista though!

Well, do you want a pitchfork or not?!?

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/why-would-a-male-athlete-like-manny-2009-05-08/ The hormone does, however, help male athletes right their chemical balance after the use of other performance enhancers. "Basically, HCG may be used in an attempt to prevent testicular atrophy (shrinkage) that otherwise may occur when using anabolic steroids for prolonged periods," Kicman says... "HCG may also be used," he says, "following cessation of prolonged anabolic steroid use, to try to hasten a return to normal testicular function," when the athlete would have very low levels of circulating male hormones.

Didn't he test for a masking agent and NOT for PED's?

I didn't say how high the cliff should be.

BABIP Hill: .218 Hernandez: .350 K% Hill: 11.7% Hernandez: 17.9% WAR Hill: -0.2 Hernandez: -0.2 My guess is that Hill is better than what he has shown and is more likely to outpace his current performance. Hernandez's defense has been pretty bad since coming up to Boston. Hernandez does have more positional flexibility and youth, but I wonder if they'll go with Hill for his experience (though he only has 5 games of postseason experience).

Manny was the best. Anyone who complained about his defense needed to be thrown off a cliff.

And maybe the commissioners office decided to be lenient on the Padres since maybe other teams hide injuries prior to trades as well? I think the Sox were being more unscrupulous than the Padres were and it's not really close.

https://theringer.com/the-red-sox-are-secretly-almost-as-good-as-the-cubs-818c07b011bf#.a42ro6rhq The Sox, meanwhile, have had the American League’s best offense, led by a likely MVP winner (Mookie Betts), the best 40-something hitter ever, and two other veterans, Dustin Pedroia and a revamped Hanley Ramírez, who’ve spent the second half hitting about as well as they ever have. They’ve led the league in performance versus finesse pitchers, and they’ve led by much more against power pitchers, who become more common in October. Successful comebacks from injury (Craig Kimbrel, Koji Uehara), trade additions (Brad Ziegler), and long-awaited conversions (Joe Kelly) gave them one of the game’s most unhittable bullpens down the stretch. They lead AL playoff teams in Defensive Runs Saved, and they’re the league’s second-best base runners. Their rotation, which is widely seen as their weakness, ranks sixth in the majors in both Deserved Run Average and park-adjusted ERA, and while it suffers from the absence of breakout star Steven Wright and midseason trade acquisition Drew Pomeranz, it’s not so thin without them that the rest of the starters can’t keep the offense in games. I guess this team is alright...

http://www.espn.com/mlb/features/cyyoung ESPN has him ranked 5th. He wasn't great at the start of the season, but he's been a beast for a while now.

I still think it's a little weird that they didn't pick up a speed guy for late inning situations.

Only having an 8 man lineup? That's a bold strategy Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.

They already punished the Padres for this. What the Sox did must have been doing was so brazen and beyond the pale that they needed to make an example out of them.

I don't see any posts that show any sort of "concern." Seems that it was just a simple factoid.

I agree with that. I just don't see MLB doing anything further about this. Shouldn't Pomeranz have told the Sox trainers what treatments he had received in San Diego the second he came here?

The only way the league can deal with this is to no longer trade with the Padres. I'm not sure what else the commissioner can do. The Sox were given an option to rescind the trade and they refused to do so.

Moncada will be in AZ, not in the playoffs.

Do it.

Neigh.