Chad ochoseis

Alonso is definitely turning into an asset. But does he get pulled to keep Smith in the game? I'd play Smith.

Are those new specs for Ron? They're sharp.

#LOLNats

Davis!!!

...but only one catcher, and that's Nido.

Fantastic. My favorite topic - travel guides. As far as Cleveland - since you said you'll be driving to Detroit and Toronto, I'm assuming you'll be renting a car from the airport. I think the subway ("rapid" in Cleveland parlance) is easier, but you've got a wife and kids and in-laws, so I can see the value of having a car. Fair warning - the rental car pickup in Cleveland is a pain in the ass. It's a long shuttle ride to the rental area. I'm guessing you're staying at a hotel downtown. Straight from the airport You're arriving midday, so you'll be hungry. Don't go straight downtown. Stop in my neighborhood, http://www.ohiocity.org/Ohio City. Best way to get there would be to pick up 71 north from the airport, and get off at Pearl Rd. Drive north on Pearl for about a mile through a kind of eh neighborhood. It becomes W.25th. Keep going north and you'll hit a big intersection - Lorain Avenue. To your right will be a rapid stop and, across the street, a brick building with something that looks like a bell tower. That's the West Side Market, Cleveland's public market. There's parking behind the market and metered parking on the street. The West Side Market is fantastic. Kind of like the Reading Terminal Market in Philly if you've ever been there, but more fresh foods and fewer restauranty foods. So a lot of your time at the WSM will just be walking around. However, Maha's Falafel, at the northeast corner of the market, has excellent, quick Middle Eastern falafel and kebobs. It's not a sit-down place. If you want to sit down and eat, if the weather is nice, cross W. 25th and eat at Market Square, the little pocket park at the NW corner of W. 25th and Lorain. If you want some beer, and also a regular sit-down lunch, go to Great Lakes, which is on Market (the little street north of Market Square). It's been around since the mid 80s, just before the brewpub craze hit hard. Beer is great, particularly the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and the IPA (which I think is called Conway). Food is excellent as brew pubs go. There are other good places to eat along W. 25th. North of the market, Nate's Deli (also Middle Eastern) is a very good sit-down restaurant. Ohio City Burrito - more fast foody, on the west side of W. 25th, about four blocks north of the market, is quite good. South of Lorain, W. 25th has really developed over the past few years. I've heard Bakersfield has excellent tacos, though I haven't been there yet. A lot of people rave about Citizen Pie pizza, but I'm not nuts about it. Certainly, it's not NYC style pizza. There are other bars along W. 25th, but I wouldn't bother with them for either beer or food, except maybe Market Garden, which is the standard go-to place if Great Lakes is crowded. Great Lakes and Market Garden also have nice souvenir shops if you want to bring stuff back with you. For dessert, Picadilly ice cream in the WSM is very good. Mitchell's, a few blocks north on W. 25th (with the movie theater marquee) is a small, excellent Cleveland ice cream chain. If you want to walk a couple of blocks west on Lorain, Farkas is supposed to have terrific Hungarian pastries. I'm not a big pastry person, so I've never tried it. As I said, this is my neighborhood. I'm off from work April 19 for Good Friday. I'm always glad to meet up with a Cranepooler, so I'll PM you my number if you want me to join you for lunch or a beer. To get downtown from Ohio City, make a left on Lorain. You'll almost immediately cross the Lorain-Carnegie bridge. You'll see some cool sculpture in the bridge pillars ("the Guardians of Transportation"). At the foot of the bridge, the street name changes from Lorain to Carnegie, and you'll be looking right at Progressive Field. Welcome to the southwestern edge of downtown Cleveland. Downtown I'm not a big downtown guy. I prefer the neighborhoods. But the pedestrian mall along E. 4 has some nice shops and restaurants. Take a look at the Terminal Tower, in the center of town at Euclid and Ontario. It's a beautiful building and was, until around 1990, the tallest building in North America between NYC and Chicago. In front of the building is the statue of Moses Cleaveland that the fans stuck an Indians cap on in Major League. Nice shopping mall inside the tower. Plenty of little places to have dinner before the game. Yours Truly - there's one in Playhouse Square just east of downtown, and I think there's one on E. 5th and Euclid - is kind of the standard chain if you have kids with you. It's perfectly OK. If you want to go fancy, the Greenhouse Tavern is about the best place downtown, though you'll need reservations and it won't be cheap (though pricy by Cleveland standards is still a serious bargain if you're a New Yorker). It's casual enough for the kids, though. I don't generally eat at the ballpark, so I can't tell you too much there, but most of the places I recommended above also have booths at the park. And go see the Indians' Hall of Fame outside the park. I'd consider going to the game, myself, but it's Passover that evening and I'll be at seder. Saturday The Rock Hall and the river tours are the Statue of Liberty and Circle Line of Cleveland. If you want to avoid Clevelanders, sure, do it. I went to the Rock Hall once, sometime in the last millenium, long before I moved here. It's beautiful and probably worth seeing. I believe it's crazy expensive. You'll go to the Rock Hall because it's the Rock Hall. But I'd give the boat a miss. After the Rock Hall, go east, to Little Italy and the museums. Take the Shoreway and get off at MLK Boulevard, and you'll go south through the beautiful Cultural Gardens. Little Italy runs for about six blocks uphill along Mayfield Road (not named for the Browns quarterback, at least not yet), between Euclid Avenue and Lakeview Cemetery (which is worth driving through...eternal home of John D. Rockefeller, James Garfield, Harvey Pekar, and Ray Chapman). Presti's has the best sandwiches. If you like coffee, Rising Star on [CROSSOUT]Random Rd.[/CROSSOUT] Murray Hill Rd. just off Mayfield has the third best espresso I've ever had. The second best ran me $8, and the first best was in Cuba. So stick with Rising Star at $2.75, including a glass of seltzer. If you like tea, Algebra Tea House, a little further up [CROSSOUT]Random[/CROSSOUT] Murray Hill on the opposite side of the street, is quite good. You may run into me in Little Italy. I'll be doing this walk: Error M.FACEBOOK.COM See posts, photos and more on Facebook. Error M.FACEBOOK.COM See posts, photos and more on Facebook. . Feel free to join in. After Little Italy, head west on Mayfield about five blocks to the Cleveland Art Museum, which is generally ranked among the top art museums in the country. It's certainly the best free admission art museum. This is the cultural center of the city. Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra, is also there, as well as the modern art museum and the museum of natural history. The Case Western campus is intertwined. If you have dinner in Little Italy, Mia Bella's is excellent. Also a place whose name begins with V that I can't think of off the top of my head. I've heard that Mama Santa's has good pizza, but I've never tried it. Afterwards Are you definitely staying over in Cleveland Saturday night? If not, I'd recommend heading towards Detroit in the late afternoon. You can stop in Lakewood, our hipster inner ring suburb. Lakewood Park has the Solstice Steps, which give a beautiful view of the sunset over Lake Erie. It's fun. The town comes out and watches the sunset, and then they give the sun a nice round of applause when it's over. If you were to have dinner there, Detroit Avenue is the main drag and has plenty of good restaurants. The Root, a hipster vegetarian (not vegan) place, is delicious. Aladdin's is a good Middle Eastern chain. El Carnicero is good upscale Mexican. You'll be west of Cleveland and on your way to Detroit. I'd stay somewhere between. Getting to Detroit The Ohio Turnpike is fast, but blah. I'd take Ohio Rt. 2. West of Sandusky, it becomes a gorgeous causeway over Sandusky Bay. The downside of 2 is that once you're west of the causeway, it becomes a two lane state road for about 15 miles, until you hit I-280 in the Toledo suburbs. Take I-280. You'll cross a beautiful cable-stay bridge over the Maumee River in Toledo. You'll likely take 280 even if you opt for the OH Turnpike. From there, you pick up I-75 to Detroit. Detroit I don't really know Detroit. For the most part, I'll defer to 41. However, the best beef barbecue I ever had was at Slows, in the Corktown neighborhood (which is a good part of Detroit). Toronto We were there last year for a few days. Here are my memories. - Are you staying at a hotel with parking? We didn't drive there, but I remember it being nearly impossible to leave your car long term anywhere in Toronto. Don't drive around Toronto. They have a fantastic public transportation system. It's slightly confusing because it involves streetcars as well as subways and buses, but it's quick, efficient, and easy. - Loved the Ontario Museum of Art, as well as the park around it. - We went to Asiatown, around Dundas and Spadina. Possibly one of the best tasting foods I have ever eaten anywhere was the black sesame gelato at Kekou, on Queen just west of Spadina. - The St. Lawrence Market. I love public markets, and this one is one of the few that I like even better than the West Side Market. And there was a place where you could get a reasonably authentic Montreal smoked meat sandwich, which comes in right behind that black sesame gelato in the Best Foods Anywhere race. - Just for grins, take the ferry over to the little airport on Lake Ontario. I can't remember the name of the airport. It's Billy Something. I want to call it Billy Bragg, but that's not it. It handles domestic flights, mostly from Montreal. The ferry is free, takes you about 100 yards from the mainland to the little island where the airport is located, and offers a great view of the Toronto skyline. It's pretty near the Rogers Centre. Have fun!

Also, George Stone in 1973. And Pat Mahomes that season that Pat Mahomes was good.

And, this year, Vargas. He showed flickers of "not as done as you think" last year. This year, he puts in the solid back-of-the-rotation year that we wanted out of him in 2018.

José "Porn Stache" Valentin, 2006

Devin Mesoraco has the largest mandible on this club since Burnitz.

Pete Alonso drops an R from his name and adds 2 R's for the team.

And yet, at least according to Roger Kahn, there were people who blamed him for what came after. Just like there are people who blame Beltran for 2006. Fans are dumb. RIP.

I believe the saying in the late 1960s was that Brooks Robinson owned Baltimore, but Frank Robinson owned the Orioles. Has a statue outside Progressive Field now. I'm in Jersey this week; otherwise, I'd head over and post a picture.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: You may have noticed the brief downtime we had in mid-December, and the weird characters that have appeared in some of the existing posts or thread titles. I've been seeing weird characters on this site since I joined ten years ago. I don't expect that to change with the new platform.

Much of this is about the total disconnect between cost and value in MLB. Cano is owed $120M for 5 years. He's still good; even assuming he won't stay that way for more than a few years, the value of his service is probably about $30M. Diaz is under team control for 3 years. Figure with arbitration, he'll cost about $6M for that period. The value of three years of his service is probably about $60M So the Mets are taking on $126M in salary from the Mariners for about $90M of value. The "when" of this makes absolutely no difference; we're paying $126M and getting about $90M in value back. So there's a deficit of $36M. ------ Bruce is owed $28M for 2 years. He's probably still better than replacement value, but not much. Figure his value is $3M for two years of service. Swarzak is owed $8.5M for 1 year. His actual value is probably about $1M. The Mariners are adding $20M So the Mets are giving up $4M of value and getting $56.5M in return, effectively gaining $52.5M. ------ So, effectively, the Mets are ahead $16.5M before considering the value of Kelenic and Dunn. I like keeping prospects. They're low risk, high reward plays. Even if four prospects out of five wind up going to law school or becoming managers at the local Wal-Mart, the failure is more than offset by having six years of low-cost team control over the one guy who stays on and turns into a solid major leaguer, or even a star. And Kelenic has star potential. I'd say his value and Dunn's combined is a little more than $16.5M. All in all, like most trades, this one is roughly a wash in terms of value. Maybe a little bit of an edge to Seattle. And although Diaz fills a need, Cano doesn't, though the team is improved with Cano at 2nd, McNeil at 3rd, and Frazier on the bench, if that's the plan. So I wouldn't have made this trade, though I'm not breaking out the pitchforks and torches over it. One worry I have is that when Cano starts falling apart a few years down the road, which is inevitable, the Mets are going to be afraid to DFA him and eat his salary, forgetting that the salary he's paid was really for Edwin Diaz's services, not Cano's. Cano's just the one getting the money; Diaz is earning it. That sucks for Diaz and is great for Cano, but shouldn't matter to the rest of us.

I'd guess negligible. The Mariners aren't affected by Amazon beyond the effect that it has on Seattle's economy in general.

Chad Ochoseis wrote: John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: John Olerud, 1B #29 I was going to ask Edgeward for a ruling on situations like this. I guessed Ole at #27. Does he then go off the board, or can someone else answer Olerud in a different position before Edgy gives the answer? And then closest one gets the points? And while I'm here, I'll guess big sexy Bartolo Colon at #62. OE - that's for his starting pitching, not for his hitting.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: John Olerud, 1B #29 I was going to ask Edgeward for a ruling on situations like this. I guessed Ole at #27. Does he then go off the board, or can someone else answer Olerud in a different position before Edgy gives the answer? And then closest one gets the points? And while I'm here, I'll guess big sexy Bartolo Colon at #62.

Haven't updated this in a while. and, of course,

Benitez, reliever #40

Fonz, #61 2B

Jim Fregosi, the other #30 shortstop

Garry Templeton, one of the #30 shortstops

Olerud, 1B, #27

CF #9. - Beltran