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Fair point, my terminology was wrong then with me using 'rebuild.' As a fan, I'd be pissed if they started to sell pieces tho.

Loving the post @turnin' two thanks. I'd love to see if I could get Pollock / McCutchen / Brantley or something to replace Engel, I've had enough of his offensive inability... he is great defensively. I'm not against Mous, but I'm not necessairly for him either. The rotation is the part that kills it for us tho. So many question marks. Wish there was a way to sign Harper this year and sell him on the future and then find a way to trade Rodon and stock up pieces for 2020, because once we get Kopech back, an extra year of the prospects, we are going to be looking mighty.

Oh my God when I read this blurb today my heart started pumping 100x faster. Please, White Sox, go get Harper! I want to root for him so badly! Machado would be kinda cool too, but hate his attitude. Hell, get both. LETS DO THIS.

Absolutely... however if they choose to do a rebuild as some rumors are speculating, I'd consider them insane and it would be a reason for their fans to move on from that team.

I'm not sure what kind of financial constraints the Cleveland Indians are going through, but if I was them or if I was a fan of their team, I'd be furiously upset about rebuilding. They have a CLEAR path to the division title AND have one of the best rotations in baseball. Kluber/Carrasco/Bauer are front line starters and Clevinger/Bieber/Salazaar are fantastic options at 4/5. To go with that, they have 2 of the very best hitters in baseball in Jo-Ram and Lindor complemented by Edwin in their lineup. Go out and sign a few guys and the Tribe has a chance at a WS title. This talk about rebuilding from them is insane.

I don't see the highly analytical Dodgers team going after a contract like this (10+ years). I see the STL Cardinals as a team to watch.. they've missed on some big names in the past few years, I could see it happening. Phillies are an obvious big time candidate. And I sure as hell hope we go after one of them (hopefully Harper). Such a fun off season a head.

TheFutureisNear, love the trade idea with Jose to the phills. Not sure if they'd do it, but it has to be explored!

lmao @ the results of Crown Jewel.

1. Absolutely need to see more progress from Moncada. 2. Would be really nice for Eloy to come up and dominate. 3. Gio and ReyLo have to progress. If they don't, we need to look at plans to replace them. More so in regards to Gio. These are my three key views on 2019. They are obvious, but without them going right, my confidence in the WS future will be shot. 4. Kopech needs a healthy and sustainable return in 2020. Also would be nice to see some sort of progression with Timmy and his OBP and to figure out who he is defensively in 2019.

WWE is a pity of stale BS and it stems from their pushing of immortals such as Lesnar, Reigns, and now Rousey. Lesnar destroyed anything in his path. He was allowed to do things and say things that others weren't, thus making his storylines and matches feel so much more important, but when it came to his matches he was booked like a machine, squashing opponents in sub 10 minutes. Same thing will happen with Rousey, although I give her some more credit for reasons I won't get into. The main point of this post is this: When was the last time the WWE had a NON-TITLE feud that actually elevated both superstars and featured great, creative matches? Right now, the only thing going on in WWE is a fight for the titles and the titles feel meaningless because of the way they are handled so everything feels stale. Where has the personal matches gone?

The good: Becky Lynch and Charlotte had an absolutely amazing match. Kairi Sane's match was also very good. The bad: Rousey's match sucked, I mean, it wasn't awful, but here we are again with the same Lesnar-type mentality. Find a star (Rousey) and put her in these quick and easy squash style main events where the opponent is manufactured and has no chance at winning. It's the same method each time: Star beats up opponent, opponent finds a way to cheat back, star overcomes and wins easy in a sub 10 minute match or so. Overall, a decent PPV in WWE Evolution, but it should have been spectacular. It's quite lame how WWE just wanted to make up for the woman's wrestlers not going to the Saudi event, so they decide to do this half-ass. The girls gave it a lot of effort tho, so props.

Harper is likely signing with the Nationals/Phillies/Yankees/Cubs, but I soooooo badly want him on the White Sox. Machado we might have more of a chance at, but I sooooo badly do NOT want him on the White Sox. I don't care how good he is -- he's not someone I want to cheer for and he seems like someone who will play with half energy after the big pay day. GRRR.

I was thinking about this again today.. I want to be able to start a franchise as an expansion team from potential lists of cities with different budgets attached to them. I want to be able to take a stadium, either one that I create (significantly more work for the developers) or from a list of past or randomly generated stadiums, I don't care! I want to have a more dynamic free agency and salary negotiations with players as stated in this thread already. I want to have the trade options expanded (so more than 3 players, have salary be possible to trade, draft picks etc.). I want more statistics available in the league leaders and most importantly I want more historical statistics attached to my team and league. In the 2017 version of the show, you could only look back at the last 3 years worth of MVP's, etc. I want to be able to look back more. Ugh! Just such simple things, albeit they might take a lot of data since I'm asking them to hold more statistics in, but the other things aren't that hard at all.

It just infuriates me that the creators of MLB the show can't simply add things like: Create your own team (i.e. like in NFL Madden be able to be like "London" or something). More in-depth statistics like season based statistics (the ones in MLB the show 17 were EXTREMELY limited). More in-depth team statistics that are easier to look at. Better trade functionality (no more limit of 3 only and add in salary to trades). Better contract negotiation ability (currently you need to do your contracts only during the off season, what a joke!). There's more and more, but these are not very difficult to add in and shouldn't be too demanding for the game. It's something that I'd imagine would take a few days of coding and it'd look and be awesome.

So uhh just in here to complain about sports games and their yearly releases providing nothing of new value. I got excited today thinking about MLB The Show 19, but then realized that their franchise mode has been so stagnant and that there's so many obvious errors that it's clear that they just don't care about it. Sigh.

Morton is old and extremely dangerous to sign. Eovaldi will likely go for more than he's worth. Happ is also v. old. Keuchel looks GOOD/Great but might get a big money contract. Kershaw likely isn't leaving LAD, but if he is, I'd be interested -- although lots of risk there too.

Everybody in here seems to want Machado, but pleaseee give me Harper. I don't want to root for Machado, team needs or not. Give me BRYCE!!! I also love the idea of targeting Jon Gray and Nick Senzel (and also any other rockies prospect that is blocked). However, I'm not sure what I'd give up. It's one of those situations where if the price is low on Gray after a rough season, then buy him up. If it's still high, then pass unfortunately.

I was thinking last night about WWE Evolution... It's a pretty poor card for it being the first ever women's only PPV. The top match is Rousey vs. Bella... but this was a manufactured match that didn't feel 'natural' since the Bella twins weren't even a mainstay on the show until about a month ago. This obviously was for the ticket sales, but to me that's pretty lame. But, hey -- I can pass this one off. Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch is great, nothing wrong here. The Lita+Trish vs. Alexa+Mickie match is fine, but it's not fine when it's the second most promoted match. It'd be great if it was the fourth/fifth one, but this is literally their second highest match. Then you got Bayley+Sasha+Natayla vs. Riot squad which is just downright horrid. This is a Raw match x 10000. They do this every week for free on Raw. Boooooring. This is where they should have had Bayley vs. Sasha #1. They could of had one of the best women's rivalarys begin here and then end at either RR or WM for a title shot. I would have booked it to end at RR where Sasha goes over Bayley in a #1 title contendor match and then somehow have Bayley squeeze into the title match at WM to make it a 3-way match at WM with Bayley vs. Sasha vs. (title holder, preferrably Becky Lynch since Charlotte vs. Rousey is the plan for 'Mania) and then have Bayley go over at WM. That'd be an awesome meaningful quest, but instead we get this shitty 6 way tag team. Way to go. Battle Royal, Womans: Seriously? Nothing you can do with the likes of Asuka, Nia, Carmella, and so on, so you just throw them in a battle royal? Kinda a disgrace to woman's wrestling there. Then you have the random title matches from NXT with the Kairi sane match, MAe Young finals, and NXT UK Womans. Ok, those should be fine/good/great matches, but they don't have a ton of meaning to the average viewer. I won't complain too much on these since they are going to be GG's. What's others thoughts on Evo?

Yeah that's some shocking stuff. Super ironic tho in terms of WWE storylines. They try so hard to get him over as a babyface for 3.5++ years and now he can get over as a cancer survivor when the company promotes so much cancer awareness.

Yup - couldn't care less who wins this round, however both teams are pretty stacked. BOS has been the best team all year so kudos to them, they deserve to be here, and the Dodgers went out and made every move possible to be here (with the big win of Machado at the trade deadline). So, while I'm not a fan of either -- they both deserve to be here without a doubt.

Great post and you won me over. Machado's attitude has been questionable to me for a while now. I don't want ANY part of it now. Give me Harper all day.

Perhaps it could be looked at via rules, but I'd have to hear some proposals before I get behind it. I don't mind the bullpen switches... every team has only 25 pieces and if they end up using "x" amount of them during a game due to bullpen switches, theoretically that'll hurt them in a later game OR it just shows how they are using all 25 pieces to win their games. Kudos to them, I say.

Kind of ironic since it's a statistic that is supposed to be the tell all when evaluating players. Would you prefer to talk only in terms of HR/RBI/R stats which are team dependent and luck-dependent?

It's happening more now than it has in the past for sure... But I mean, 2 years ago we saw a strong Toronto team go up against an Indians team for the ALCS. We had the Cubs first world series that year. In 2015 we had KC vs. NYM as the world series, with the pirates, rangers, cubs all playing a role in the playoffs. In 2014 we had SF win, with Baltimore, OAK, PITTS, Detroit all in the playoffs. In baseball, anything can happen and that's the fun of it. You hope for the best as a fan. You just can't do that in the NBA... sure more teams make the playoffs but hte first round of NBA playoffs is often a joke. You are right tho -- more teams are going all in on tanking these days in MLB which I am very much aware of :(.