Frayed Knot

The potential conflict of interest is being both an ESPN employee and a NYM employee is the odd part to me - although maybe it's justified by the fact that baseball isn't one of the two sports the "worldwide leader" covers.

Would the Leiter Side of Baseball be illustrated by Dave Berg?

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Fans want the new shiny thing so bad. a few years ago they couldn't wait to replace Doodoo with Smith; today they're convinced the first couple hundred MLB appearances from Smith indicates he'll suck for the rest of his career and will be used so as to keep Alonso down. I'm already looking forward to developing whoever it is who'll be championed as Alonso's replacement when he turns out to suck This is what I was warning everyone about last summer, including the part where I felt it necessary to point out that Smith was (and always will be for that matter) the younger of the two. That doesn't mean I KNOW Smith is going to be better -- shyeeet, I don't claim to know anything in this game -- only that some were too quick to declare Alonso the next great thing while mentally already tossing Dom out with last night's fish scraps and hoping to get no more than the proverbial bag-o-balls in return. All that said, their differing 2018 campaigns certainly turned things into an open competition. It knocked Smith out of the obvious leader spot and the prospect reports on Alonso were more glowing than I expected and better than you'd usually see for a bat-only RH 1st baseman. Plus, the way the rules are set up now there's no point in NOT taking a few weeks out of his season so as to futz with his future FA sked. You wouldn't delay his call-up six months for that reason (as I argued last summer) nor do you do the approximate 1/3 of a season it would take for one extra arb year. But it's logical that one or both will spend some time in AAA and/or on the [CROSSOUT]DL[/CROSSOUT] IL so it doesn't need to be an either/or situation. In fact, I think 1B would be a great place for a platoon.

8 for 16 so far this spring for Dom; 7 singles and a homer

Edgy MD wrote: For what it's worth, Schmidt has been a juggernaut this spring, including today Is Schmidt Dom's German cousin?

Next thing youse guys is gonna tell me is that bike shorts aren't in fashion! A big part of Cargo's value during his prime was in his defense. Second hand info sez that he's not nearly on that level these days which, if true, doesn't make him all that useful strictly as a CF glove.

Yeah, that metal supply company building was a pre-existing structure with landmark (or something akin to it) status so the stadium was built around it. So where as you'd normally set home plate where you want it and adjust everything around that, in this case everything radiated out from the corner of the building which, because it's not square to the field, doubles as the left-field pole.

I find ZERO reason to grouse over the Bonilla payments

And with the CPF Mets Ranking for 2018 not yet done (we should probably get around to that pretty soon, eh?) the top 20 standings for 2010-2017 with an estimate for 2018 included (which put JdG over the top): deGromWrightMurphyDudaNieseGrandersonCespedesSyndergaardReyesDickeyHarveyConfortoWheelerFloresCabreraFamiliaColonLagaresGeeTejada

Weird that, after all that waiting, he opts for a longer deal -- one where I guess both he and Boras can [CROSSOUT]claim[/CROSSOUT] brag is the biggest deal ever in terms of total dollars -- but for an AAV that's lower than several existing contracts such as Machado, Arenado, Scherzer, Cabrera (just off the top of my head). Not sure I'd see going from 10/$300 (the Nats initial offer) to 13/$330 as worth five months of dillying, haggling, and flying coast to coast for meetings in the end, but if that's what he wanted then muzzle tuff.

http://archives.thecranepool.net/24800/f1_t24819.shtmlHere is the Robo Ump thread from the previous edition of our board in case you want to catch up Anyway, Rob Manfred is apparently willing to delay the implementation of the proposed 20 second 'pitch clock' in minor league games for this season and until as late as 2022. But on the pace of game topic, MLB and the otherwise independent Atlantic League are teaming up to experiment with 'Robo Ump' over the next three seasons. Basically the eight stadiums in the Atlantic League would use the technology while MLB foots the bill and monitors the results. After stating a year or so ago that he thought the technology was still not quite there yet, Manfred is now quoted as saying; “I think we are much closer than we were a year ago to having the technological capability to actually call the strike zone ... The accuracy is way up — way better than what it was a year ago. The technology continues to move … and it actually moved a little faster than I might have thought.” What this is starting to sound like to me is that, while Manfred & MLB play around at the margins of pace of play, he's looking for a big push three years hence when they (hopefully) have a new CBA with both the players and the umpires, and any kinks have been discovered, tested, fixed with Robo Ump. By then the minors will have an additional three years under their belts of pitch clock usage at which point much of the major league players will have come through a system where lengthy ABs are no longer the norm. By that point, it's quite possible that there'll be no need for an actual clock.

Saw roughly the front half of it. Agreed that the non-host wasn't even an issue and probably helped in some ways. None of the lame pre-planned bits (selfies, people off the street, etc) which seem overly-forced. I have fun making predictions and am often right considering I only sometimes have seen the movies, but here I thought Glenn Close was the biggest lock of the night. Spike got his screenplay win but loses best picture to a black/white driver/passenger movie for the second time: Do The Right Thing/Driving Miss Daisy and now Klansman/Green Book

The whole concert scenes thing seems to be both the strength and weakness of the movie: if the recreated live scenes are good, you could save yourself the rest of the movie by just hauling the actual 'Live Aid' concert video with the actual Freddie Mercury up via YOUTUBE

Frayed Knot wrote: - Roma wins the picture + director exacta - Bale for best actor. Yeah he's won before (supporting) but here he's making Dick Cheney look bad and everyone likes that. - Glenn Close has never won despite several nominations so here she gets her first/lifetime achievement award - Probably Adam Driver for Klansman and Regina King/Beale Street in the supporting categories as the two chicks from Favourite cancel each other out - Not sure yet about the screenplays, so I'll say Klansman in adapted before they dig deep for First Reformed in the original Going to change the two Actor awards from my earlier predictions: Freddie Mercury guy is going to win Best Actor, not Bale, and I'm gong with Richard E. Grant for Supporting. But I'm sticking with my initial guesses in the other categories. I also predict that I'm not going to watch. Not much of it anyway.

Saw just the clip of the Alonso HR, but that alone was pretty damn impressive. A first-pitch liner over a billboard in LCF off a slider which was slightly low and outside.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Well, http://leaptoad.com/mets/profile.php?PlayerCode=4G97I've done my part! And https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=alonso000petBB-Ref has joined you.

Can I ask something - Why does baseball have an anti-trust exemption? Why do any professional sports? Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: Goes back to a famous Supreme Court decision in a Federal League case in 1919, and the exemption has withstood years of more recent challenges. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-11/baseball-keeps-antitrust-exemption-as-high-court-rejects-appealshttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-11/baseball-keeps-antitrust-exemption-as-high-court-rejects-appeals The 1919 case took the position that baseball was not a business but rather a sport. It is, of course, both so that decision is widely seen as an anomaly of law. When the 1972 SC decision of an appeal simply reaffirmed the 1919 one (based on nothing but nostalgia really - the opinion cited virtually no law at all except for the court's reluctance to overturn previous versions of itself) they went on to say that any further changes in the anti-trust exemption would need to come from Congress. Someone in Congress will every once in a while threaten to remove the exemption but little or nothing ever comes of it. In the movie CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR when Congressman Charlie was asked why Congress was sitting around doing nothing about Russian aggression in Afghanistan, his reply was "Habit mostly"*. I thing that applies is this case too. Most of the more egregious parts of the exemption -- namely the way they used to be able to treat their labor force -- have kind of been worn down over the years so the threats don't scare owners the way they used to anyway. The main part which does remain is the centralized control of franchises and territories but, even there, removing it wouldn't totally end control of franchises it would just make them tougher to enforce. The NFL, which does not have the same blanket protection so has been forced to get their exemptions (for the takeover of the AFL, single TV contract) on a case by case basis, was told in the Al Davis (Oakland Raiders) case that they Could deny him the right to move his franchise (to L.A.) they just had to do so with bylaws that were more reasonable than the ones they had on their books at the time [3/4 approval, no specific guidelines other than the whim of the other owners]. When that set off a chain of NFL franchise movements (along with the predictable holding up of cities for stadium fees) Commissioner Rozelle chose to claim (and often got his claims repeated as if fact) that his hands were tied by the court ruling without ever mentioning the part where it was suggested that the league simply update their criteria. What he was hoping for was to get enough cities/Congressmen pissed off if/when their teams left town that they'd break down and hand him the same sort of blanket A-T powers as MLB. That strategy didn't work but it's hardly crippled the league in the interim. * I suspect that line was more Aaron Sorkin than the actual Charlie Wilson, but you get the point

Might as well revive the thread from the previous board since the winter signings are still going at this late date -- Marwin Gonzalez - 2 years w/Twins -- Washington Nationals (owner Mark Lerner): We've "moved on" from Bryce Harper

Jimmy Carter was sworn in as 'Jimmy', rather than be James Earl even for a day. I guess you could write than off as a southern thing, but I'm sure there was also a lot of market research that went into it: friendly guy, common man, etc.

Isn't one of the new faster game initiatives 'No Clippards'?

My right elbow hurts. I think maybe I have a bone chip (or seven).

The Giants are reportedly in it for the short-term - although as a rebuilding team under a lame-duck manager you wonder what the appeal would be to the player. I wonder if Harper/Boras would take, say, a two year deal and then try doing this dance all over again under a maybe more player-friendly CBA And then there's always the Nationals. Supposedly their initial 10/300 deal, one they made before the FA period even started, is no longer on the table. But Boras has done a ton of deals with Washington over the years and it's often been over the head of the GM and directly with the owners which means there's always the possibility of going back to the Lerner family and saying: 'Look, just make it [20 mil, 10 mil, hell, one dollar] more than the Machado/SD deal and we'll be in camp tomorrow'.

I think the incentives were more availability-based towards the back-end than they were performance clauses which are restricted in contracts. Apparently the first eight years were locked in but years nine and ten were club options or could kick in depending on GP, ABs, PAs or whatever. So the ChiSox deal was one with a lower floor (~$250) but also a higher ceiling ($320+) than was the route SD took with the straight 10/300 Manny said: Give me the straight cash homey!

The White Sox offer reportedly had a bunch of incentives attached which made the guarantee less than $300M but could have pushed it higher depending on how manny thresholds Many hit ... but apparently he wanted the guarantees more which is basically what he said he wanted heading into the off-season. The Sox thought they were holding the winning hand. As far as the park, yeah it's not as extreme as it was but you could still see it costing him some HRs. I wonder if he'll get mad, a la DiMaggio, if he gets robbed of one and, if that happens, you wonder if there'll be a similar iconic moment of him kicking the dirt some 15 ft from the plate.

Newcombe was also one of the earlier players to fess up to a drinking problem. I believe that didn't come until after his career was over (Darrel Porter was the first I remember doing a mid-career cry for help) but, once he did, he then became an early leaning post for others in his situation. Was often a fixture at Dodger games until fairly recently. Big dude, tough to miss.