Pickles

Speaking of permanently banned, one of my favorite posters from way back in the day was Rshackleford. I hope he's doing well. I liked his posts.

He'd have enough time for it!

Constantly. LOL.

You get reputation points for starting popular and highly rated threads, correct? If that's the case, the congratulations @Chelsea_Phil, you're sure to get a reputation bump for being the thread starter!

I appreciate all the options. The one with the sunglasses looks like it was drawn by the same artist who drew mine. Looks like a series of hip pickles.

Sometimes a pickle is just a pickle.

I honestly hadn't until Tony said something. Now I've decided to lean into it.

Geez, what's with all you guys obsessing about penises?

Not nearly athletic looking for me. This is a baseball forum afterall. I like mine raising his arms in victory, the veins throbbing slightly beneath his skin. Veiny and triumphant, like all good pickles.

I can't keep track of how many times I've been downvoted. I'm pretty sure Tony downvoted me on opening day in the game thread. After every play Frazier made, and he had a good opening day, I just kept posting over and over, "That's why we brought him in boys!" "That's what he's here for!" After about the 7th time Tony downvoted me. I can't complain. That was a clear troll.

Hahah. Tony made the same comment recently. I honestly never thought of it looking like a penis/testicles and I really don' t think it does. My name is pickles, so I just chose a cartoon pickle as an avatar. I like that he is triumphantly flexing.

IIRC, he dinged you in one of the endless Frazier threads from this winter.

I think there's something wrong with the board. I have zero warning points but have been issued 7 warning points which were never supposed to expire, but apparently have lapsed. Could the mods please reinstate my 7 points and upgrade my record? I have been warned four times. Three times for insulting Sports Guy. LOL.

Again, you consistently undervalue these guys; that isn't me having a love affair. You have consistently labeled them 1.5 -2 WAR guys. Completely ignoring that Mateo and Urias both produced far more than that last year, and are on pace to at least repeat those performances. You want to ignore the obvious improvement in health and performance that AS has shown over the last two years, and judge him on a lot of at-bats he received as a very young Rule 5 player whose development was clearly impacted. But the greatest proof is in the pudding. These guys are the very guys who have turned the franchise around. If they were as middling as you claim, that wouldn't have happened. Now, that doesn't mean I want to pay them 10 million dollars a year, or extend them for eternity. But I'm not going to throw them out for every bright prospect that floats by when the team is one of the best teams in the league. And that's what they are.

You're right about that. I forgot how many games were played in 2020. So it's more like 80% over the last four season. I mean I guess my issue is if he's healthy he should be playing everyday for this team, or the equivalence. You want him playing 80% of the time when he's healthy with the idea being that is what you can "depend" on him for. I don't think that actually keeps him healthier though. He misses games when he's hurt; he doesn't need to miss games to not get hurt.

With Mateo it is a question of how valuable is he going to be, not whether he is going to be valuable. If he ends up with another 3+ WAR season under his belt he'll have trade value, more than he had last winter imo. If he ends up higher than that, and he's on pace for much higher, but the bat is tailing off, he'll have a lot more trade value than he had last offseason.

He's played full seasons in 2020, 2022, and 2023 so far. He missed about 1/3 of 2021. Again, he's played about 85% of the games over a four season stretch. That isn't Cal Ripken but that isn't Jeffrey Hammonds either.

85% availability over four seasons is spotty?

Guys are going to get moved for sure. I think it will be a mixture. He'll trade from the young vets and from the prospects.

If you had dealt Mateo this offseason you'd have left a lot of meat on the bone.

Mateo, Urias were worth significantly more than 2 WAR last year.

These guys for the most part are 26, 27, 28 years old and were guys who did not have traditional exposure to the big leagues. Hays was rushed; Santander was a Rule 5, Mateo DFA, Urias was DFA. Their track records are not as spotty as you consistently try to paint them to be because they simply don't have these long track records. Take Santander as an example. Over the last four years he's played about 85% of the games and put up a 115 OPS+. Has he missed time? Yes, but that's not a "spotty" track record imo. So yeah, I hope Cowser is a better player than that. But there's no guarantee that he is; most importantly, immediately.

Well, I think you consistently undervalue our young major leaguers like Mateo, Hays, Santander, etc. They're the reason we're winning. Other than Adley, the fruits of the farm system have not been responsible for the franchise's turnaround. I'm not so eager to toss those guys aside for every bright new prospect. That said, they're going to have to get value from Westburg and Ortiz and others, and to do that they either need to trade them or find roles for them on the major league roster.

I used the word essentially, because without Frazier there's a rookie- either Ortiz or Westburg- getting basically every day at bats somewhere between the IF and DH. Part of that IF mix. So Urias may have been the "starting second baseman" but two rookies would have been in the lineup in the IF the majority of the time. And of course they had no idea that Mateo would have played so well that he basically needs to play every day.

That was part of it sure.