Moose Milligan

omg, people from Baltimore love to mention Natty Boh (even though it's not made there anymore), Old Bay and Under Armour every chance they get. And they love to put the Maryland flag on absolutely everything they can, too. It's a bit absurd.

Yankees? Hell no. They wouldn't tarnish the pinstripes.

Looks like it's "National Hey, Let's **** Up A Perfectly Nice MLB Jersey Day." It's odd that they're announcing these all on the same day.

There's nothing wrong with a little ball busting on a sports message board. And I suppose in the long run there's nothing wrong with a Motorola (maybe they should be focusing on making better phones, though) patch on a Padres unofrom other than it's tacky as hell.

Don't have to visit a gambling hall if I don't want to. The Fan Duel commercials are awful enough. But yeah, I agree with your point overall.

Ugh, that's terrible. The NBA jerseys are awful with their stupid advertisements. The hats are bad enough with the New Era logo on them. I'm an adult and I don't buy player jerseys anymore but this isn't NASCAR. There's enough advertising on the outfield fences. There's no decorum anymore.

Better be Frazier.

****, this is boring. How can it be so boring when ST is underway?

I think he has to. He’s a big enough target. SS/3B will be Holiday and Henderson most likely. The system looks like it could be stocked with outfielders. Maybe he makes Mountcastle expendable at some point.

I don't think anyone disagrees that they've had moments where they've spent big money. I believe the gripe (I honestly really don't care about it tooooooo much) is that they don't do it consistently. That they could year in, year out, afford a payroll of 120-ish million. I don't care if they can afford it or not. At this point I'd like them to lock up some of our younger guys that we have right now before free agency is in their sights and they get prohibitively expensive. In regards to the deals you mention, it's been spoken about ad nauseam about how Chris Davis was a PA move. I believe Buck wanted to keep Jones and Hardy and pushed for their contracts but I could be wrong. Anyway, what matters is that Elias has a better understanding of where value is for ballplayers and I don't think he's going to get too emotionally attached to anyone.

It begins.

I think of all the guys in the system, Mayo is the one I'm most interested in headed into 2023. If he has a great season and really cements himself as a top 20 guy that would be huge.

So does Elias and Hyde. They might disagree with you on which ones those are.

I'm not a big Hays fan either but two things: 1. Frobby has a mancrush on him. Hays is, like, his favorite player on the current roster. So you're not going to convince him. (Frobby also really liked Jeff Fiorentino, so if you want to razz him a little, this is a good time to remind him of that, too.) 2. I thought your original analysis was pretty solid, and I thought "one of the worst" was a little harsh, too. I think he's pretty average, maybe a bit above or below depending on the week. That's what I don't like about him, the inconsistency swings on offense are either scorching hot or a terrible slump. July and August of last year with a good chunk of September was misery watching him. Swinging at everything, getting frustrated and then swinging harder at everything, practically screwing himself into the ground was just awful. Yeah, all players slump but it looked like his approach to getting out of it was just to swing more and swing harder...there didn't seem to be much of a nuanced approach to taking more pitches or waiting for something in a zone that he knew he could mash. He swings at sliders in the dirt and fastballs at his shoulders, it's terrible to watch. You can't really move the goalposts to make your point comparing him to all offensive players with at least 250 at bats. You had it right the first time, comping him to other LFers in the game. But the all offensive players with 250 at bats is watering down your argument a bit, I don't care how he performed against Jonathan Schoop, IKF, Elvis Andrus, etc. I mean Hays is 20th on this list and Jeremy Pena is 5 spots higher, there's no question as to who's more valuable right now. I get that it's offense only but in order to properly comp players you need to take their positions into account. I believe your overall premise is correct but you're watering down your argument against someone when you're trying to stack the numbers in your favor to prop up your point by bringing irrelevant players and at bat totals into the mix.

I'd be curious as to his reasoning for this. Bradish finished strong last year, it looks like they were able to figure out his pitch mix and how to be successful without a great fastball. I don't see how Bradish gets sent back to AAA this year unless it's on a rehab assignment.

I'm glad he feels that way but I don't see how he's in the rotation. Gibson, Irvin, G-Rod, Bradish and Kremer are all pretty much locks for spots. The only way I see him being in the rotation is if they decide that they're going to game G-Rod's clock (75% chance of this happening, IMO) or if someone is on the IL. This isn't a bad thing, it's nice for once to be able to have 5 guys in a rotation and a 6th guy who could easily lay claim to a rotation spot on the outside looking in. This is a big step up from a rotation that consists of guys like Wojo, LeBlanc, Milone, Harvey, Lowther, etc.

I do, too. That said, it’s good to see Bradish get a nice writeup.

That’s optimistic for Bradish but the philosophy of the pitch mix makes sense. It’s been discussed on here a lot, but if they can figure how to get some movement on the fastball, that’d help. But that’s kind of what worries me about the mix. He’s essentially pitching backwards, it looks like. Leading with the slider, moving to the curve and I’m assuming the sinker before the fastball. But the league adjusts, and the fastball isn’t good, so if he’s trying to put away batters with it, they can still sit on it. I think it’ll be tricky for him to avoid throwing his fastball but if the slider/curve/sinker are that good it might not matter.

I still maintain that if he had a last name that wasn't Angelos this would be much ado about nothing. I don't think JA is perfect but he's at the helm of a franchise that has been getting things right more than wrong lately, especially when letting Elias do what he was brought in to do. He's damned if he does and he's damned if he doesn't talk to the media.

You two are no fun.

Ryan Flaherty, Padres hitting coach eh? I wonder what wisdom he’s going to impart on Juan Soto? Can you imagine what’s going through Machado’s head when he’s listening to Flaherty? “Dude, I played with you, I was your teammate. I know you don’t know how to do half this stuff.”

I haven’t got there either but judging how he writes about these people involved it doesn’t seem like he’d discuss these topics. There’s not much at all about their personal lives except how they relate to their jobs.

You're a little ahead of me, but the parts about Fast and Sig are really interesting, plus all the Taubman stuff. Drellich kind of does a shoulder shrug and infers "it was going to happen anyway" in regards to electronic sign stealing when he talks about how the Mariners were stealing signs via video. The Astros hired a scout away from the Mariners in 2014 IIRC and that scout told Dave Trembley that he needed to switch up his signals, that the Mariners had them deciphered the previous year when the Astros were in town. That, and the proliferation of video cameras being installed in major league stadiums so MLB could introduce league-wide replay in games makes it sound like it was all headed this way no matter what.

You can simulate a game in less than a minute. And then you can have it stop and you can control situations in late and close games from a strategy perspective (what pitch to throw, hit and run, take a pitch if you're at the plate, swing for contact or sell out for power, etc). You can get through a whole season in a day or two...or you can really slow down and manage every pitch of every game. I'm not huge on Hall but I wouldn't trade him for Kelenic, especially with the amount of positional talent we have now. 558 plate appearances across two seasons, he's not been good. And he didn't get better from 2021 to 2022, he got worse. I realize that's not a huge sample size but you want to see him get better from 2021 to 2022, not worse.