Balta1701

Literally less than an hour apart:

In what is the least surprising headline and, at this point, the least surprising by line in history: First paragraph also seems to allege that the early hints of this one reaching the Senate last week are why the Senate Republicans were pushing for a Monday vote.

Thanks, Hawk.

Eloy, Kopech, Robert should be arriving in 2021, and we should have at least 1 big FA signing somewhere before then, and it's entirely reasonable to think that there should be 1-2 breakout guys from the list of players already up. If those guys systematically bust, then we can write Rick Hahn's epitaph as worst GM in baseball history in 2021.

Ok WTF? Where did that come from? Buffalo was looking like they had a shot at 14 or 15 losses.

That Buehrle/AJ perfect game story was incredible, best story I've ever heard of that game.

No, not enough coming up by then and especially with Kopech in recovery mode in 2020. But this team better darn well be great in 2021.

He's been like this every year of his career. He has that knock everyone out slider when its on, and a good fastball to go with. When he gets into a groove and both pitches are working, he goes into a stretch of utter dominance. Then, he'll follow that up with a stretch of wildness and inconsistency with his pitches, and he'll give up 4-5 runs in short stints over several games. Part of this comes from the limited selection of good pitches he has, when one pitch isn't there, he's a 1-pitch pitcher. He reminds me of a left handed version of Edwin Jackson - great pitches, but limited selection of them, and only wins when they'er both on. He had some games back in August where he didn't have good stuff and still worked his way through it, but it seems like there might just have been some luck in that. Either he has to figure out how to win when he doesn't have good stuff by stranding some runners and getting balls on the ground/well timed strikeouts, or he has to have his best stuff more often. I could have written this post about him in 2015, 2016, 2017, and now 2018. I'm pretty sure I did each time.

I don't imagine that anyone will take Castillo's contract on for free if he's put on waivers given the steroid suspension this year for a minor player, so in my eyes if you want to get rid of him you have to designate him for assignment and buy out his contract. Frankly, I would not complain about this, but let's not pretend that he is worth anything. Davidson might not bring back anything either, so if we have to non-tender him in the offseason or put him on waivers I won't be that mad, we gave these guys shots this year. But, at least Davidson was almost a 2 bWAR player this year, so he was at least worth something, it'd be kinda odd if he was unmovable.

Yes. If a position player was gonna convert I wanna see him get AAA hitters out for half a season. They dropped Sergio Santos down to Kannapolis A-Ball and Winston-Salem high-A for half a season and gave him a full season in the minors after he converted to a pitcher.

I don't know why your post is so long. Anywho, if a position player wants to turn into a pitcher, you're going to have to show me that he can be consistent against them in AAA for several months rather than just as a blowout gimmick. Since Davidson has no options, I guess we could put him in the bullpen on day 1 but I'm genuinely uncomfortable doing that. I'd do it if we had a 13 man bullpen, but we don't have the roster spots to play this game without removing a couple guys. We coulda tried it this year if we thought it was a decent idea, but the roster crunch becomes urgent when the monster arrives next April. If someone like Sanchez or Engel were moved this offseason, fine, then something like that works, but to make it worth a shot we need to clear the roster space to do it. Someone has to be moved and these guys don't have a lot of trade value. Sanchez should, but teams don't trade a lot for guys who aren't great players even when they have years of control remaining.

20/20 is kinda cool

Is Chris ready?