bmags

two arm injuries that will now have lost 2 years of development for major prospects. An achilles injury that re-tore itself losing another 6 months at least. Re-injury during rehab after re-injury during rehab.

Birmingham OF crunch resolved.

brutal.

The other part with kubat though is there are a lot of reasons to discount him that people may be missing on the thing that may actually make him effective so I do just want to see him keep up. Junior Guerra type situation where maybe we get a couple useful years as a starter for nothing.

It's realistic though to understand the longshot with them. It helps that both are lefties, but there just aren't that many successful pitchers with that low-end velo. That said, at this point the sox could just use dylan axelrod type depth and even if they are that that's useful too. The struggles of stephens, adams, guerrero, etc to be remotely usable really sucks on that front.

Forbes homer too.

This is the stuff I'm talking about when I say I'm sympathetic to the show runners sometimes with a long running show: https://www.elitedaily.com/entertainment/feud-got-cersei-bronn/2059201 I never knew this, but you have to wonder how many better storylines get chopped to reality. George RR Martin doesn't have to deal with that.

I give you the worst home run footage of all time:

I'm talking about literal greek tragedy.

atta boy.

Sometimes the show takes advantage of the world building happening in books/media around show to allow them to be lazy with storytelling, and at the same time sometimes they will say "well that's not present in the show, that was a book thing", and that is very frustrating. Case in point - why even call Harry Strickland and the golden company those names if you aren't goign to do anything with them? They were relying on the media and book readers to give life to those people so you...cared they died?

Yeah this is right, her arc as tragic figure just needed to be shown more. The convo with Tyrion and then Jon was just all they had for it really, which was not enough and also wasn't executed well enough. It's asking a lot of those scenes and the viewer.

I think an interesting point this article hit on was his performance for team USA, which for a while was a "thing" with the white sox drafts - a focus on players that played well on team USA. It could be why we are hearing more of other players like Abrams, as the slam dunk Vaughn to sox was more of a "they like college production over projection" thing, less so tying individual scouting to him.

I think Bran will end up king. He is now the most effective person to understand the cyclical violence, and it would make the cut away from tyrion/bran scene make sense. The problem is that bran is a terrible character, but politically it could be effective, he could "break the wheel", he could regrant nominal independence to the north, dorne, iron islands etc. Sansa would rule the north. He does not "want it", he is tortured by his power, etc. Jon will go hang out above the wall, wild and free. Him and tormund will embrace and ghost will jump on him and lick his face and he'll say "ghost you old dog". Dany will just fall through a trap door or something because they won't know what to do with her. It will end with a wire-esque montage.

I don't like mixing sports but vaughn really is a value question for me. I think players like Pete Alonso are probably underrated in team building - but on the other hand alonso was a below slot second rounder. Rhys Hoskins was in the 5th round. Goldschmidt in the 8th(?). Bellinger in the 4th. You had Seth Beer in the late first/comp rounds. (things that teams with player dev can do). And then lets look at college 1b drafted top 15 in last several years: Pavin Smith - a .342/.427/.570 hitter as JR in college, is now a 23 year old in AA hitting .223/.320/.402 Evan White - a .373/.453/.637 hitter as JR in college, is now a 23 year old in AA with a .769 OPS. And Evan is considered a plus plus defender that could maybe pass in outfield. So, teams have accurately stayed away, especially from rh hitting 1b, but ones that did seem worth it have struggled once they hit AA. Advanced bats, power and contact! But there wasn't much more to tap into, they were pretty much developed, which can destroy college hitting but may not mean a thing for pros. Now, Pavin Smith and White at the time were no where NEAR Vaughns reputation for hitting. But I really worry about the idea that a player like vaughn doesn't have more to tap into to get better as the competition increases, and instead just is what he is so the production atrophies and you just hope you are still getting at least an .800 OPS 1b. And you could fish that out of later rounds unless you are the white sox and you get Gavin Sheets. Edit: I forgot to mix the sports - but it's comparable to running back. Vaughn may be gurley/elliott, but guys that good are plucked later quite a bit.

strangely looking forward to DSL starting. Always kinda nice to start off each day with a 10am game.

Pitchers are throwing much fewer fastballs low and away to hitters in general, but to pull hitters they are getting a diet of inside fastballs and breaking stuff which can be even harder to go the other way with.

No, because only last week I was saying they had laid the groundwork for Dany to turn only to now say they did a bad job showing why she turned in this episode. Because they did.

It's one of those things with birmingham. As long as his k:bb rate is fine, it is worth seeing him with the mlb ball in AAA before I write him off. The stuff that 'birmingham' shouldn't cause is 35% k rates. That's the tremendous AA stuff.

Again this is fine as a wikipedia page. But your last line, meh. She also put her dragons in a cave because they burned a little girl. She also tried to tell the dothraki to stop raping and murdering indiscriminantly. She was quite murderous to those in power but had been merciful to those not, until that moment. "Because she lost missandei" - someone she'd barely spoken to on screen in 4 seasons. We just had to fill in the rest with our heads. A wikipedia page.

I thought Arya's was good, she's been getting more of her humanity back throughout the season, one of the better jobs at thoughtful character development. It's one of the limitations of tv/movies though, at least with arya they really have to beat you down with visual storytelling of her wandering in the city to show her the other side of violence again, as well as effectively propel her to her next beat and make it understandable. I could see Arya both let the violence propel her to fight against Dany, or decide to leave fighting behind after feeling its impact again. And both I'd understand more.

Ah, I thought it was before. That makes sense. So yeah, just slight differences could have signaled something different. War is hell just...it's important but to do it in the penultimate episode is a little strange for a choice.

Right, my critiques are more specifically how they setup that narrative not the story arc itself. It just needed more time to show. It would be fine as a wikipedia page, it just didn't work within thrones where there has been such dedicated character and world building.

This is a good question, and let me be more clear. I do think the groundwork was laid for Danaerys to become if not mad, overly violent and despotic. And what gets me isn't the overall arc its the narrative beats to describe it. For me the issue was they have a scene of her perched on the dragon above the city. The bells are ringing. She won. All that she fought for is finally hers. She then decides to burn the city down. Is she thinking "i've lost everything, they've done this to me, they hate me?" Why did in that moment, in which she made a choice, did she choose that. They don't really give us anything that says in that moment it spurred her anger. It all came prior. So if it came prior that means it was premeditated. They, I believe, tried to show this in greyworm throwing the spear into the surrendering army. If it was premeditated, we needed to have that feeling that we all know she was about to make the bad choice but didn't want her to anyway. Instead they went for more shock - she's going to make the good choice but turned bad. That's my main issue. Narratively I agree that losing the dragon in that moment would sell the turn more effectively to me. Another is a godfather-esque moment, where the camera shows her perched above the city, bells ringing, her tired and sad. Cut to greyworm giving orders to slaughter the retreating army. Cut to a group of unsullied arresting tyrion. Cut back to Dany, she is defiant/angry and takes off and starts laying flame. She planned it. While her former advisers thought she wasn't talking to anyone, she had been planning with the only person she trusts to lay waste to the city. I think ultimately that's what the show runners were trying to show, among other more effective lessons on violence will never be triumphant - and that stuff was good. But I don't think they came close to selling that in the moment. And because htey showed the moment dany made that choice, it seemed unbelievable to me, despite being someone who was bought into that arc.

A lot of people lose people and don’t start randomly killing innocents. It did not explain why she did it, and “well she’s crazy now! With rage!” Isn’t good enough.