jad

Nonsense You have absolutely no idea what 'the players will take.' If you do, please provide the evidence; for example, quotations from players claiming they would take millions in salary cuts to smoke weed. Nor is there such a monolithic thing as 'the NFL' that thinks in a certain way.

If so, he's doing a bad job. (And how would one do this? Go to Judge and Sanchez and say: 'Listen, dudes. I'm really worried about the RS, who have almost no chance of getting the wild-card, and whom we beat the crap out of much of the year. How about you two take a couple of third strikes for the team. And WHATEVER you do, don't hit it out.")

Oh well. Not worth arguing. I'm talking only about players I've seen play over the years. I can't think of more than a handful of 50s players (Mays for one; Williams of course another; maybe Mantle) who are as good or better than your basic players of today. Same in other sports (particularly basketball, where, with the exception of players like Wilt or Russell, few would be likely to play even in the D-league; or football, again, with a few exceptions--Jim Brown?--what about those 230 pound lineman of the early sixties!--who weighed less than QBs of today). Of course athletes weren't as good generally as pro athletes are today, because in the 50s you didn't have 100s of thousands of kids devoting their lives, 24/7, to single sports. Much smaller pool to choose from, and even that consisting of players with far less commitment to the sport. I've only seen a few clips of Negro league players, so I have no idea how good they were, and I really don't know what your evidence is that they were so much better than players of today.

Please provide film of tthe great Negro League players you seem to have watched throughout their careers. I'm going by what I saw in ordinary games of the 50s and 60s. You are making straw-man arguments about evolution, which I didn't mention and which you apparently know nothing about. But you do type in CAPS! THAT"S HUGE!

Actually, I will think exactly that. Also, the notion that OF play is "worse than it used to be"--as in the great days when baseball players had to work second jobs over the winter--is ridiculous. The only reason to ban the shift is to appease players like B. Harper who would like to hit for higher averages and earn their inflated salaries.

Yes. I wasn't watching that closely, but I believe w/ a runner on base, it's 20 seconds. I was surprised to see that with no one on, it's only 15 seconds. (The ball doesn't have to be thrown; the pitcher just has to be [i think] in his set.) And I thought I saw that between batters, it's 25. It's different after a foul too, of course. But the mere fact that it's there keeps the game moving.

Oh yes, the game. Just got back from a AA game in time to check it out. What a joy watching baseball under the two conditions of AA: (1) a pitch clock (this can't get into the MLB fast enough, in my view), and (2) NO REPLAY!!!! Remember when watching baseball used to be fun?

Martinez? Holt? Both having good years. Even Benintendi is right on his career numbers.

The improvement is inconsequential. It's not like you keep gaining round by round by virtue of being #1. That's why I prefer to look at it the way I did: you get one free player. One. Then the draft begins, and you are LAST for every subsequent round. (That's exactly what having thte first pick each round amounts to). That's just the mathematics of it. When you realize that, and you take into account that young baseball players are much more difficult to evaluate than, say, young basketball players, you also realize that there is no way you are going to "rebuild the farm system" by tanking unless you plan on doing that (struggling to get that lastt place position) for 10 or 15 years. What is far more important is properly evaluating young players--thatt's where your resources and energy should go.

I'm not entirely sure how the draft works, but I believe choosing first rather than last, nets you precisely 1 extra player. You get that player, and after that, you are last in the queue. So that does not amount to boatloads of players: it amounts to one. In the NBA, this might be a game-changer, but not in MLB.

I must be mis-reading this thread, which is implying that Betts, Devers, Bogaerts, Martinez, Vasquez, Benintendi, Holt are all having crappy years. They're not. Even Bradley is pretty much right on his career stats ,and Chavis is about where Devers was last year. That's 10 position players who are doing about what would be expected, or in some cases considerably better, than they would have been expected to perform in Spring training. Since nothing has changed, why weren't you arguing to trade or DFA them all in the spring?

I was about to say "Why can't he be both?" (given that it's hard to give a .220 hitter the benefit of the doubt). ... So just as I was typing that, he hits one out.

Maybe it will be like ... (I forget; some time in the 80s?) ... They were .500 at the All-Star break. I kicked back, thinking how relaxing it would be to watch them trying to break even. ... Then they won 20 straight and spoiled everything!

Actually, I find this situation much more enjoyable. Now i can watch games just to see baseball--I don't have my enjoyment of that cluttered up with pissing and moaning over games-behind-leader,, playoff percentages, trade speculations, sudden DFAs, managerial second guessing. It's like watching the RedSox in the old days, when it never occurred to me they would make the WS or even make a run at it. Just baseball.

Because we were sick of the way they clogged up I-95 on the weekends, and besides, who wants to have to cross the cultural swamp of New Hampshire just to get to your state capital?

I don't consider myself particularly normal, yet I too have no clue what they are talking about.

Rabbit Maranville! Holy crap, I haven't heard that name in almost 60 years. For some reason, he was one of my father's favorite players ... thinking back, was it the fact that Maranville occasionally used a 'no-look' technique of catching pop-ups? (the method I recall my father attempting many times with only limited success!)

RS missed their chance. Obviously should have traded him (oops, they can't), then at least DFA'd him after those 8 hits in a row, when his stock was high.

The worst. Mine died 30 years ago almost to the day (but who's counting??!). I swore I'd never have another, until I became part-owner of one last year. I dread what I know is one day coming.

It was in reply to an earlier post, suggesting that the reason the RS have had such a rough season, despite their hitting being tops in the league, was because of the ball.

That would explain it if other teams were not playing w/ the same ball.

But allowing for exemptions only makes the problem worse, since only rich teams can afford these multi-bazillion dollar and multi-year contracts. They should not be able to get out from under them,which they most certainly will do (case in point, the Yankees' repeated efforts to embarrass A-rod into retiring.) No team should be able to outbid weaker teams in the hope that they will find some loop-hole in the future to avoid paying up.

It's actually one of the worst fonts in typographical history. (Just sayin'!)

Why does that affect only the pitchers, and not the hitters?

"Multiple hairline fractures"? Any sense that this was exacerbated by 'microfracture' surgery itself?