DrungoHazewood

Then it is true, he's become the new, improved Melvin Mora. Random utility guy in his 20s, MVP candidate in his 30s. Good for him.

The part of baseball I like the most/least is April. Because it's so hard to tell what people mean when they talk about 31-year-old .219 hitters going 8-for-their-first-16. Do they mean that this is an almost miraculous, divinely inspired change in their ability and they've somehow gone from barely passable to highly productive at an advanced age? Or are they just remarking how cool it is that something with a 21% chance of happening can sometimes occur 50% of the time if you give it enough four game trials?

No. Well, any reference to Rutherford B. Hayes is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I think post-Civil War Presidents look a lot cooler than the modern ones who are deathly afraid of facial hair because polls and stuff.

Love the beard. Keep it, Jim. It's dignified, like Rutherford B. Hayes.

Yea, I forgot. Cal had a mildly controversial slip 40-some years into being a public figure. There are others in the public eye who eclipse that by 12:15 am every day.

I guarantee if I had to talk to the media several hours a day I'd say something impolite or ill-advised pretty often. I don't have Cal Ripken's strange ability to speak to the press for decades without ever saying anything even slightly controversial. The 27th time someone asked me about Ryan Mountcastle's plate discipline I'd either start babbling nonsense about alien hypnotism, or just leave and go be a chicken farmer.

"Playing baseball is fun. If I could play, I'd never retire. But managing is work. It's constant decisions of whose feelings you want to hurt all the time." "You must remember that anyone under 30 - especially a ballplayer - is an adolescent. I never got close to being an adult until I was 32. Even though I was married and had a son at 20, I was a kid at 32, living at home with my parents. Sure, I was a manager then. That doesn't mean you're grown up." “I gave Mike Cuellar more chances than my first wife." "You can't help loving (players), yet you can't afford to. You're the person who decides all the worst things in their life." - Earl Weaver

He's a 21-year-old kid. He is a blockhead to some degree. I was. You probably were.

I don't know that I'd characterize Buck's interview as embarrassing Mountcastle. I think he was having trouble getting through to him, and changed strategy a bit. If Mountcastle is a little embarrassed I think that's the point. And if you, as a leader, can't get through to 100% your charges with your preferred method of communication maybe that's sometimes because you've been given a blockhead.

No, I probably wouldn't go that route. But I'm open to different approaches to different people. Maybe Mountcastle is the kind of guy who responds to getting ribbed on social media when his manager talks about him swinging at everything.

If you're one of the vets it's too late. Chris Davis is no Jimmy Sheckard. Nobody is going to radically change their approach at 32.

Rickard is a cautionary tale. Even with great plate discipline walk rate doesn't always translate. With Mountcastle he apparently doesn't yet realize that a 3.2% walk rate is the result of someone who can't tell a pitch you can drive from one that's going to one-hop the backstop, and that also means you're not going to hit well enough to play in the major leagues. You basically have to have hit and power tools that are absolutely off the charts to be an impact hitter at 3B while you walk 2% of the time. If you make a list of the most successful MLBers who walked in 3% of PAs or less you'll get luminaries like Alvaro Espinoza, Boss Schmidt, Tim Anderson, Paulo Orlando, Whitey Alpermann, Jay Kirke... Basically the only good players who walk that little were pitchers who could hit a little, and guys who played back when it was 8 or 9 balls for a walk.

You'd be better off quoting run context, since Colorado Springs was 1.544 x the PCL's 4.9 runs/game. Or 7.56 runs/team/game if I'm grasping this fully. While Norfolk is .948 x 4.0 or 3.79 runs/team/game. Basically a run in Norfolk is worth two in Colorado. Gunkel was paying with pounds sterling, Hader with lira.

I think most 3B coaches are probably too conservative, and we remember Cal Sr. as a great 3B coach because he was pre-internet. Today he'd be on the chopping block like everyone else.

I'd have them live in a world where they're eternally stuck repeating a 1996 game against the Braves they lose 1-0 and Tom Glavine always gets a strike on every pitch 6" off the outside corner and they don't.

That's strange. About a year ago he was playing rather poorly in the Atlantic League.

The money is also what keeps players from throwing games. Who's going to risk never getting that free agent payday to take what's almost certainly less money from underworld scum? It's hard to pay off someone to lose when they're pulling down an average of $25k a game.

He's been between .288 and .310 every year from 2011-on. .338 was probably an anomaly. It's a big leap to trust BA-driven value spikes.

He's a guy with an 87 mph fastball who had his best years as a low-K flyball pitcher in the Oakland Coliseum. I'm not seeing how he's an upgrade over what's on hand. Vance Worley has better ERA/FIP/xFIP, K rate, and 2/3rds the HR rate.

He should get a bonus for risking his season for the good of his teammates.

It's related to the fact that 60 and 714 were sacred, 61 and 755 and 762 are meh, and nobody has the slightest idea how many of anything Sammy Baugh ever did back a million years ago.

Ha! I'm sure the law firm of Peter Angelos would have a field day with that. "Of course we knew nothing about this, we highly encourage all of our employees to strictly adhere to all laws and regulations and therefore have no responsibility for a player's alleged indiscretions."

When you start sorting players on criteria like "second basemen with .150+ ISO through age 24" you get a lot of all stars.

I don't like the idea that the clubs escape all blame and get to benefit from PED-enhanced performance right up to the moment someone is caught, then they get out of the entire contract. Right now it's nearly certain that teams sign players they suspect of cheating knowing they don't have to pay during suspensions, this just removes all responsibility from the clubs. The league would be telling the clubs to sign anyone, take advantage while you can because you have total protection from that contract, it's 100% on the player.

Quite a coincidence that Bonds has gotten involved in one of the 30 MLB organizations that have PED users.