Kalapse

And he put up no fight at all

Better give up a couple outs for Tim, I assume both Hamilton and Leury will bunt since that's all Leury does.

Julie Brady is awesome, btw

Yeah, this is pretty much what we envisioned when he was drafted and then some.

No, he was talking up Jake Lamb's great advantage of hitting left handed before the AB kind of annoyingly. Just to reiterate: the platoon advantage does not matter if the hitter sucks, stop using it as an excuse.

Loving the Jake Lamb experience thus far. Yes, Stoney, great AB.

I hate that 3-0 take by Moncada, he needs to be pouncing on that.

Rodon ?

Yeah, chat was great because I was a teenager and stupid.

I'll concur that chat was awesome. Game threads are really fun in blowout wins but that's about it, it's instant reaction trash most of the time, chat on the other hand was special.

So I've never actually read this thread but I find it funny that I see it as the lead thread in the diamond club on the main page all the time and it's ALWAYS Caulfield as the last poster and it's just the least surprising thing ever.

I was there, it was extraordinarily fucking cold but worth every second. I got to see, in person, Nick Madrigal hit a baseball 321 feet on a line, it was a thing of beauty. Nick had quite a series. I'm starting to build an affinity for this year's team, they're really good and fun as hell.

Rosters are located in a little circle in the upper right hand corner and there’s like 3 nesting menus to save a franchise.

Oh yeah, trade logic is broken and the new trade feedback bar makes no sense.

I get why they do it and understand that it's the lament of a lot of sports video game fans but they really don't fix the small things or make even small quality of life improvements anymore, it may not make them money but it's still a part of the product so it's still annoying regardless.

Everything just feels less, for example player morale is gone, it was annoying at times but rather than retool it they removed it. Playing it some more it's basically the exact same game as '20 in a more annoying package, for example: the bars for player ratings on player cards are extremely skinny and hard to discern, the wheel of player ratings is really ugly and harder to make out, everything is kinda like that. 2 improvements I did notice: you can view AAA stats on player cards and the budget page is much better as well as the budget portion of the trade screen, it tells you exactly how many millions you are under or over budget and how the trade will affect that. But that's about it.

The menus are god awful, the ratings are basically the same as last year and they stripped down an already kinda shitty franchise mode. Sports games are pretty fucking terrible these days if you're into franchise mode and not collecting cards considering that's the only part of the game that gets updated.

The hyperbole around any Madrigal discussion is annoying as hell. For me, perhaps for others but I'll speak for myself as someone who's been critical of Nick: Nick Madrigal has been assumed to be a low ceiling, high floor player, he has not shown the floor to this point. In his limited big league experience Nick has proven to possess 1 real skill (beyond his 1 assumed ability: plate coverage/K avoidance) and that's hitting singles, he's clearly very good at it, he has not proven, through his play on the field, much else. This does not mean he can't or won't be a plus defender or baserunner or hit for any power at all, it just means he has not done it yet in the big leagues and has in fact shown the opposite of those abilities. He very well may be very good. I badly hope he becomes a very good baseball player, that would kick ass for the team and Nick seems like a good guy, I'm just not going to assume he'll get there. That's all, I do not have enough faith in Nick Madrigal's abilities to presume it'll all come together in the end. It's really hard to overlook a sub .100 ISO (around .030 for his career right now) when he's not doing the other things well. He has not played near enough to make a true determination on his future IMO, it's just, his draft pedigree and the hollow .340 batting average he put up in 29 games and 103 AB's is doing a lot of heavy lifting in discussions around here.

Tim and Yoan have had some success against Civale

See, is that so hard?

Kinda bullshit that it'll be out on Xbox but not on PC. The Show and NHL, the only 2 major sports games not on PC.

It would be funny to be constantly harping on players having to "earn" their spot on the roster only to send down the guy with the 1.005 OPS in order to keep Jake fucking Lamb around. There may not be a place for Mendick with Anderson back but Jake Lamb sure as hell doesn't seem to have any real role on this club, his lack of versatility makes him pretty worthless. If Nick Williams is earning playing time based on his Spring stats then Lamb's awful March numbers should cost him. I do not care that he's left handed.

Just incredible, all the potential we knew was in Rodon was fulfilled in this game, he was fucking perfect.

32 singles and 3 doubles in 103 at bats made up that .340 batting average

Baseball people make mistakes constantly. And not all "baseball people" love Madrigal, he has plenty of detractors in the scouting community. Not everyone is enamored with a player who's only real plus tool is single hitting.