DrungoHazewood

Transportation. The Yanks can fly in their gold-plated charter jet part of the year, but gas goes up a little and they're taking a 26-hour Greyhound ride to Milwaukee in September.

I'm sure a lot of business owners would love to cap how much money their competition can spend to a level similar to their ability to spend. But good luck getting the well-off teams to vote for limiting their ability to compete, and impacting their franchise values. This is the conversation: Royals: "Hey Dodgers, will you stop spending so much money so you lose more games and I can win more games at your expense? And maybe take a hit in how much the Dodgers are worth, too." Dodgers: "Ummm... no."

So... won't MLB teams have a huge incentive to get around the salary cap? Teams will get many millions in revenues for winning more, for winning playoff series, for winning the World Series. We already know they'll cheat with sign stealing, doctoring balls and bats. Why not going around the cap?

I'm fully prepared for an announcement by the players and owners (separately) that they made historic concessions so that we can have a 2020 season.

Good points, but players will sign with the Yanks over the Orioles or the Rays even with a cap because of facilities, fans, tradition, coaching, and being on ESPN four times a week. The Yanks will still have $650M in revenues, and they won't just take everything over the cap as profits, they will find ways to make that revenue advantageous. Just like Alabama or Clemson, Duke or Kansas. Limiting player salaries are just one aspect of competitive balance.

So you're saying that NCAA teams routinely cheat the system, but a MLB cap and floor would be impervious to such deviousness?

The Rays are the most resource-constrained franchise in MLB and they've been in the playoffs five times in the last 12 years. The Browns haven't made the playoffs since 2002. I want to watch the Orioles because I like baseball and I'm interested in their future. But that's not the only way to be a fan. When the times get good most of the people in the stands are bandwagoners who don't like the team or the sport enough to stick around during the lean years. There's no real shame in that.

I still try very hard to give people the benefit of the doubt. And to emphasize that we don't know what we don't know. I won't get into these games of "we obviously know Joe Smith was on the roids because he hit a lot of homers when he was 30 and didn't when he was 23." Roger Maris went from 16 to 39 to 61 homers in consecutive years. Was he on something? I really dislike the practice of giving passes to players we like while assuming guilt of those we don't*. When it gets down to facts, we don't know if Raffy took steroids that one time on accident, or 1000 times completely on purpose. We don't have the placebo test case, we have no idea of anyone's career trajectory if they were all clean, all the time. And I think we can reasonably assume that a lot players were on drugs as early as the 1950s and 1960s, although not as many as in the 1990s and early 2000s. But from a higher, more generalized level, it's very clear that PEDs substantially changed the outcomes of a lot of careers and the environment of MLB for decades. * Except David Ortiz. He's a dirty cheater.

If only that were the facts. You're basically saying that you'd take Stephen Strasburg over Jonathan Schoop. It's vastly more nuanced than that. If you're going to assume that one of your choices is going to be an ace starter, you might as well assume that Martin is going to be Joe Morgan or Eddie Collins. I'd take Eddie Collins over Jameson Taillon. Wouldn't you?!

I think we should wait and see where the negotiations end up. Part of the plan is probably to selectively leak things that make the other side look bad to increase your leverage. A problem is that the strategy of playing hardball and starting off with an unreasonable position depends on either you having some kind of big advantage over your opponent, or you have a lot of time. There's not much time here, and both sides stand to lose a lot if the season isn't played. For one, it'll be a public relations disaster.

People like simple, straightforward solutions to complicated problems. A cap and floor could potentially be implemented in ways that increase competitive balance. But I think other things could do that in a less ham-fisted manner. And there are plenty of counter-examples. The Browns and Patriots are both under the same cap and floor. NCAA sports are all capped at the value of a scholarship and some teams go winless for years, and teams like Alabama and Clemson rarely lose. Angelos essentially had a self-imposed salary floor for the Orioles around league-average payroll for most of the 2000s and they were awful.

I'm sure you could dig up some wacky posts of mine from 15-20 years ago. I hope I've learned a few things over that time. Like the impact of repeating a level in the minors. Or that level of competition and context have a huge impact on the usefulness of numbers, and because of that scouting reports are dramatically more accurate than translated numbers from the low minors or amateur ranks. I know I also undersold the impacts of PEDs. While I still contend that steroids and other PEDs don't turn every Ryan Flaherty into Albert Belle, and for the most part we don't know who did what, when or how much, they certainly changed the trajectory of many careers.

I think you might be a nihilist. Many times over the past few months or even years you've talked about how even minor sports like women's soccer are poised to pass baseball in popularity, how nobody really likes baseball anymore. Of course that's an exaggeration, but an ugly labor dispute that cancels the season in the midst of a pandemic probably wouldn't do any good for the sport. You don't want to watch the Orioles but the rest of us fans do. Also, there is a salary floor right now, set at about $13.75M per team. I'm guessing what you really mean is a much higher cap to force teams like the Orioles or the Tigers to spend a lot more on 32-year-old halfway decent free agents to bump the win totals up to 73 instead of 55. Because everyone loved the 2007 Orioles. I'd actually be okay with a floor if they did away with the draft and included all salaries and bonuses, including minor leaguers, in the calculations. Doing away with the draft and having a tiered/capped bonus structure would have a bigger impact on competitiveness than forcing teams to spend $100M MLB payroll every year. The NFL has a cap and a floor and they've had teams go 0-16 and 16-0.

I only know Tinkercad as a simple CAD program you can run in your browser. I don't have one on my local machine. Works well enough for what I've been doing, and my level of drawing skills.

Maybe you do. And it's still the WAC, where an average team scores about six runs a game. In 2019 an average WAC team scored more runs than an NL team in 1930, the highest scoring year since 1900. That was the year you could hit .325 in an eight-team league and not finish in the top 20.

New Mexico State is completely off the charts. Last year the Rockies scored/allowed something over five runs/game. New Mexico State scored 11 runs a game. Eleven point zero nine runs per game. They led the WAC in scoring by five runs a game. They scored almost as many runs as the Marlins did in 162 games, in 55 games. Their average batter had a 1.045 OPS. They were the best team in the WAC and their pitchers allowed almost six runs a game. Sure, Nick Gonzalez hit .432/.532/.773. But they had two other regulars hit over .400. He didn't lead the team in homers. Two other guys slugged .700. This isn't Coors Field, this is like Coors Field on crack and steroids and LSD and Quaaludes. I don't even know how you judge anyone who plays there. You almost have to discount everything, and go by their much smaller sample summer league numbers. Which dramatically increases risk, in my opinion.

For the moment it seems to be good. I was having issues with a connector I'd reused when I upgraded to an all-metal hotend. I need to do that. I wonder if I could build Union Park in Tinkercad? Yes, I should do this now that I have accurate dimensions.

I was, but I don't have an account or ever post. I go there because whenever I look up what's wrong with my 3D printer Google always takes me to some Reddit thread that invariably has some partial answer that doesn't really fix anything.

At this moment. But you never draft to need, you draft the best player and then figure it out in three or five or seven years when the guy is ready. Actually, the Orioles' biggest need for a very, very long time has been someone who gets on base a lot. Hits for average, draws walks, sets the table. They haven't had a consistenly good leadoff hitter since... Brady? Roberts was good, but never had a .400 OBP, career mark under .350.

So you have a bit of selection bias here. The O's are drafting at #2. Yet you've looked at pitchers drafted #1 or #2 overall. You lumped Price, Strasburg, and Cole (consensus #1 overall picks who would have been gone by the #2 pick in almost any draft) with all the #2 guys. If you do that to make the data more realistic and comprehensive you should include #3s as well. I'll help you out: 2016-17, MacKenzie Gore and Ian Anderson, still in minors, jury still out. 2014, Carlos Rodon, average starter with the White Sox 2013, Jon Gray, 4.46 ERA as a reliever for the Rockies 2011, Trevor Bauer, 70-60, 4.04 as a MLB starter. Solid, if unspectacular. 2004, Phillip Humber, 16-23, 5.31 2003, Kyle Sleeth, never played in the majors 2002, Chris Gruler, never played in the majors 2001, Dewon Brazelton, 8-25, 6.38 Also, it's interesting that you count Luke Hochevar as a success story, given that he had one year in his career with > 1 WAR, and that as a reliever at 29 after being sent to the pen after leading the majors in earned runs allowed the prior season. Summing up... from 2000-2016 (I cut off the guys who're still in the minors and might have a chance) there were 21 #1-3 picks . Eight of them ended up with 5.0 or more WAR. Five ended up with 15+ WAR, but three of them were consensus #1 overall picks. Optimistically you're looking at a 40% hit rate, more like 25% if you exclude the obvious #1 picks like Strasburg. You have to count guys like Hochevar (who had a career about half as good as Kevin Gausman) as successes to get to 50/50.

Yes, the last 20 years of history that unambiguously shows that the actual historic rate of pitchers taken in the top four picks of the draft becoming TOR starters is something like one in 10. There's about a 90% chance that Lacy or Hancock do not become top starters.

What are the odds that one of the pitchers you want to take are going to be the next Mussina or Verlander or Strasburg or even Bedard? This century pitchers taken #2 overall are: 2017 Hunter Greene (still very young but missed 2019) 2014 Tyler Kolek, 23 yet to play in AA 2011 Danny Hultzen (195 professional innings, 3 in MLB, in nine years) 2010 Jameson Taillon (solid MLB starter) 2006 Greg Reynolds (out of baseball since 2016, 7.01 career MLB ERA) 2004 Verlander 2001 Mark Prior (dominant for a few years, but 657 career innings, out of baseball since 2006) 2000 Adam Johnson (30 ER in 26 MLB innings) Nine pitchers taken #3 overall in same timeframe. None with a MLB ERA under 4.00. Best is probably Trevor Bauer. The top #4 overall picks among pitchers include Gavin Floyd, Dylan Bundy, and Kevin Gausman. Even among the eight pitchers taken #1 overall since 2000 there have only been three top of the rotation starters in Strasburg, Cole, and Price. Seems like the most likely career for a pitcher taken in the top few picks of the draft is someone like Kevin Gausman. Not a TOR starter. It's about as likely that your pitcher ends up with Brian Matuz' career as Jameson Taillon's. That's what you should probably compare Martin to.

I would certainly hope that they look at each case individually and not use a vaguely similar looking failure (in a path that may not have a high rate of success anyway) and never try it again. Couldn't they just as easily point to the success of Givens and say "look, that worked great, let's do it again"?

It is certainly odd to have a very high pick profile as a second baseman coming out of college. In 2019 the top second baseman was the #31 overall pick, and only three in the top 75. In 2018 the top second baseman was the #25 overall pick, three in the top 100. In 2017 Keston Hiura was taken #9, the next second baseman was #75. In 2016 Nick Solak (#62) was the only second baseman in the first 100 picks. In 2015 the first 2B taken was Scott Kingery at #48. In 2014 the Rockies took Forrest Wall at #35. In 2013 the Yanks took Goskue Katoh at #66. In 2012 the Nats took Tony Renda at #80. In 2011 the Padres took Cory Spangenberg at #10. In 2010 the Red Sox tok Kolbrin Vitek at #20. So in the past decade there have only been two top ten second basemen, and years where no second baseman was taken in the top 50 picks. It's rare to have someone who defensively profiles as a second baseman that early in their career, given the lesser defensive requirements for SS/3B/CF at amateur levels. Of course the issue with drafting a second baseman is if he can't play second at a professional level he gets to try to be a weak-armed OF or a 1B/DH. And at 6', 175, he isn't a typical 1B/DH. I wouldn't dismiss Martin because of that, but he has a very unusual profile. You'd have to be very confident that his bat will be strong.

If people want to debate about the owners and players debating about how much who should get paid and who's losing more money, go for it. I find it tiresome, I'll go do something else. Maybe it that's I'm done with most debates on the internet, which usually devolve into warring factions shouting past one another.