Frayed Knot

From the Braves web site via mlb.com: Nitkowski's well-traveled 10-year MLB career included a stint in the Braves' bullpen during the 2004 season. He and his wife, Megan, have spent the past couple of decades raising their three children in suburban Atlanta. Nitkowski is a well-recognized voice on SiriusXM's MLB Network Radio and has won six Long Star Emmys while serving as the Rangers' television analyst since 2017. So, Rockland County no more. Apparently Jeff Francoeur is stepping away from his full time TV role to spend more time with his family (at least he and Nitkowski aren't doing this in order to spend more time which each other's families) so CJN will be the primary TV color man for Braves telecasts starting this coming season. Not sure how/if this affects Francoeur's network gig but both he and Glavine (who Francouer effectively replaced) will work only a handful of games this season for the Braves' local Bally Sports affiliate.

R/R, 29 y/o in May; 6'4"/212; Dominican Republic (not Cuba as the 'Y' name might suggest) 102 appearances, all in relief, for four teams across four seasons (approx 2.5 yrs of ML service time) H/9 rate good tho less so last season [7.1 / 9.2] BB/9 is high tho lower in 2023 [5.0 / 4.0]

Of course Heyman has a vote. He's been covering baseball for decades. The Jeter comment was really just a throw-away line in order to get to his main point about how the voters are still dealing with the aftermath of the steroid issue -- the non-vote for Jeter was bad, but this is worse -- and aren't dealing with it in any kind of cohesive or logical way. And now that I defended over the Jeter comment I'm going to take him to task on the Utley one: covering for a weakness in a hitter's resume by touting his 'clutch' hitting ability makes for a very weak argument.

There was one of those 'championship sports team goes to the White House' event during the tRump administration (I think it was a college football team) where the food offering was fast food burgers and cokes. I think it was from McDonalds but it really doesn't matter.

I keep opening this thread expecting to see a TMZ video of Francisco assaulting the NBA commissioner.

If Trump were the owner he'd have served Mickey D's take out.

That's pretty much what I mean. I don't know if this is an old statement or a new one; one that was part of an ongoing discussion or answer to a direct question. Or is it simply Reggie spouting off in a way to make himself look better by suggesting that the exclusive club he belongs to really should be even more exclusive by downgrading the accomplishments of five guys, four of whom can no longer respond to his statements.

I agree with him on two of those five (Puckett and Rice) ... so not strictly a wanker. I mean, Reggie was often a wanker and for a variety of reasons. Just not necessarily this one. That said, I have no idea what brought this topic up at this time.

⚾️ Immaculate Grid 258 9/9: Rarity: 49 IMMACULATE! 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 Play at: https://immaculategrid.comhttps://immaculategrid.com @immaculategrid x @baseball_ref I used a few NYMs to get some rarity picks: CIN/non-US born = Danny Graves: 0.3% GG/1 G Pitched = Ron Darling: 0.87% (I was like 80% sure he had won one GG in his career so I risked it with my last pick) non-US/1 G Pitched = Eduardo Escobar: 0.1% otoh, Jose Canseco for 30 HRs/1 G Pitched not as rare as I expected: 11%

Looks like we'll be seeing Matt Carpenter semi-often this year as the Braves just traded for the just-turned 38 y/o 1B/2B/OF You may remember him from his .300 hitting/lower power days with StL [.318/.392/.418 in 2013 when he was 4th in MVP]. Or from his later years when he epitomized the power over BA trend [36 HRs in 2018 - 9th in MVP] but an under-.200 BA in three of the last four years. Or maybe even from his ridonculous 2022 season in the Bronx when, until a late season injury, his dead-pull approach put him above Aaron Judge in HRs/AB and, yes, that was the year Judge wound up with 62. He was 39-for-128 as a Yanqui with more than half his hits (24) going for XB and nearly 40% (15) for HRs Here are Carpenter's OPS's since 2019, see if you can guess which was his Yanqui year: 726, 640, 581, 1138, 641 He spent '23 with SDP so the Pads sent him plus a reliever plus cash in exchange for some 26 y/o AA OF

Considering that they've just lost a potential 3B-man for a good chunk of the year, why not talk to him.

cal sharpie wrote: At least we don't have to sit (stand) for God Bless America every game anymore. Unless you go to games in the Bronx.

Even considering the Dodgers and their eye-popping top of the lineup* they are desperate for starting pitching right now**, so taking a flier on someone like Glasnow was almost a must-do for them. * now batting in the top of the 1st: Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman ** Kershaw = age + wear & tear; Urias last pitched on Sept 1 when a domestic violence charge popped up; Dustin May = TJS; [CROSSOUT]Noah Syndergaard[/CROSSOUT]; [CROSSOUT]Trevor Bauer[/CROSSOUT]; [CROSSOUT]Rich Hill[/CROSSOUT]

=metirish post_id=142953 time=1702591972 user_id=72] Yeah the FA Cup is magical,

Edgy MD wrote: [FIMG=250]https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/GfoAAOSwkM5lcQeA/s-l1600.jpg[/FIMG] This card you see above, apart from being the Platonic ideal of "1970s Basketball Card," depicts one Stan Love. Stan was the father of NBA star Kevin, and played four NBA seasons of his own. After that, he helped manage The Beach Boys, as they transcended into a brand new category of money-maker called a "legacy act" — keeping an indifferent recording schedule, landing few hits, but killing it on tour with a multi-generational audience dancing to their standards. Some say that Stan Love's main job as BB 'manager' was to use his 6' 9" frame to try to intimidate Brian Wilson to get back to work writing hits rather than playing in his sandbox and doing drugs while writing weird shit with the likes of Van Dyke Parks. Weird also how Mike Love wound up (7, 8, 9?) inches shorter than his brother. Trayce Thompson is the family shrimp as well, his mere 6' 3" puts him 3" shorter than both brothers and has him looking up a full 7" to pops. The family seems to like Y's in their names.

I understand a tourney within a season when it's done the way of English football. The Premier League goes dark approximately one weekend in four (at certain times of the year) to allow teams to play in domestic FA Cup games or in one of the Pan-European tourneys if they qualify because those are separate tournaments with no connection to the PL season. They have completely different set-ups, different opponents, and different titles that are something other than just champions of a portion of a season in progress because certain games, which are essentially the same as any other games, are designated to be different just to call them different. Watching the Mets being crowned 'Champions of April', or whatever, holds no appeal to me.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Lotta sour old men here. Well then somebody needs to explain to me what I'm missing here because I simply don't get it. I don't understand what the point of this (NBA) tourney was or why, assuming I was a fan, I should care. It seems to me to be a case of the league saying it matters because we say it matters.

Lee's nickname, from his days in Korea, is 'Grandson of the Wind'

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: sign me up for the supportrs shield. an IST in baseball might be fun. You'd have to craft the entire season schedule around it, and rainouts would be a problem. But let's see how the NBA does with theirs. The risk is it devalues non-IST games I had planned to dredge up this thread once the NBA's IST was over ... only to have the topic brought up in one of the all-purpose threads (cuz everything winds up in APTs) so I'm bringing it back to here lest the topic get lost. Here's my take: I have absolutely no idea what this recent NBA tourney was about, how it was structured, what it accomplished, and, most importantly, why ANYONE cared except maybe those who like garishly colored floors (special floors for special games even if it means you can't see the ball) plus even more alt uniforms. It's being claimed that TV ratings and in-house attendance was up for these games -- although I am suspicious whether those claims are actual or partially propaganda -- so the league and the hoops press is declaring it a rousing success. But what was the point? The players apparently loved it, mostly the ones who won the half-mil/per prize money. But do fans care about that?!? - The Lakers won meaning LeBron gets to have HIS name on the trophy, something Jordan, Kobe, Wilt, Shaw, etc can't claim. Wow, I guess this makes him better than Bill Russell. - LA is going to raise a banner to the rafters commemorating this feat ... as befits a team who are the champion of the late-November/ early December period of your season. Does Jan/Feb get one too? - I guess those games count towards the regular season totals but certainly the opponents being paired changed depending on results which means it has to alter the full season results even as I heard that individual records would NOT count if set during these games. So is it part of the season or not? I can't even begin to contemplate how MLB would run a version of this or what it would bring to the game over and above the current set-up.

A couple of further notes on Ohtani's deal From the NY Post: The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal reports that Ohtani has a clause in the deal which states, “if specific change in Dodger personnel, player may opt out of contract at end of season the change occurs.” It is unknown at this time which individual's exit from the Dodgers' organization would enable Ohtani to opt out. The report is raising eyebrows, as ESPN previously reported that Ohtani's contract did not contain any opt-out clauses. -- if accurate, this is the first clause of this kind I can think of since Henry 'Arthur' Wiggen tied his continued employment on the NY Mammoths to that of part-time catcher Bruce Pearson. Also: Earlier this week, it was astonishingly revealed that $68 million of Ohtani's annual $70 million compensation would be deferred until after his deal is up. Ohtani reportedly earns $50 million in endorsement revenue each year, and felt that the deferrals would help the Dodgers be able to afford more elite players around him. For Competitive Baseball Tax purposes, Ohtani's contract is worth $46 million per year[/i]. Again, if accurate, that last statement is a lot different from having only $2mil/yr count towards the cap during the active years of his contract and would be more along the lines of the way I thought the lux tax thing worked. And finally: Buster Posey, who works in some capacity with SFG since his retirement, says that he thinks SF's current rep of high crime and rampant public drug use may have hurt them in the Ohtani-apalooza stakes. He didn't seem to provide any evidence of that coming up in negotiations but did say that those topics have been talked about among players and more specifically among player wives.

There's a theory that women get those kind of drastic knee injuries at a greater rate than male athletes due to simple skeletal structure. Men, with their narrower hips and tendency towards bowl-legged-ness, have more of a straight line from hips to knees to ankles, where as females start with the tops of the femurs wider apart tapering down towards narrower 'knock' knees leading to a greater chance of the knee joint 'folding' inward due to an awkward landing or from the simple starts and cuts as discussed above. That female athletes get ACL (and similar) tears at a greater rate than males is statistically true (at least in some studies, mostly involving basketball IIRC). Whether the basic leg structure is The reason or simply A reason is speculation, but it certainly rings true to me.

I'm surprised that deferred money isn't incorporated into the cap in some fashion; iow, why the contract isn't just figured at AAV for cap/lux-tax purposes even if the team and player want to configure things in any which manner they want.

None

No. Just no.

=smg58 post_id=142613 time=1702225245 user_id=62] You can't count on any pitching in the second half of this deal ...