Balta1701

Having him throw starters innings in the minors and briefly in the majors followed by a playoff bullpen stint is the David Price plan.

If you're not going to push him into the range of 125 innings next year, then you may as well just make him a permanent reliever. By the time he got up to an innings total you were happy with penciling him into the rotation, he'd be arb eligible and approaching free agency. And, if he's in the bullpen the whole year, the team isn't going to want to let him leave - he won't ever have pitched more than 70 innings, how are you going to push him higher than that?

after missing nearly all this year, if he doesn’t start building innings he never will. So as long as you’re ok with having drafted a permanent closer in the top 15 picks.

So you’re in for full time starter this year to maximize innings?

The question is...are the teams chances better if Crochet is a permanent closer or if he is a part time starter this year (with some bullpen time) and is available as a full time starter the next few years? With their payroll commits in 2022 already, I want a starter if at all possible. Unless the team is already planning to sell players next offseason.

I checked and Elvis got it 2 years after the vaccine became available. I literally would have no complaints about Biden getting it (age 77) or Pence getting it before me, but after health workers and nursing homes.

So why is Mike Pence at the front of the line for a pair of doses? Neither a health care worker in contact with patients nor in a long term care facility (jokes accepted here).

Watching the White Sox make decisions I disagree with is something I have a fair amount of experience with.

If you want the Sox to be competitive for years, I just don't see how you can have Crochet spend the whole year in the bullpen.

When we last saw Kopech in 2019, he started the season with extremely poor control, including an outing in June where he walked 7 in ~3 innings. Then, all of a sudden in late June, everything clicked for him and his walks per game dropped to something like 0-2, and he dominated for ~10 outings before being called up. Even if he has a complete spring training and looks great, I want to see several weeks of him against live, competitive batters in Charlotte before the step to the big leagues again, because I feel like the odds are high he would struggle with the control and feel unless we give him that time, and a competitive roster can't have him walking 5 people in 3 innings more than a few times.

Pence might actually win...if none of the Trumps run, as being Trump's loyal servant may still count for something with his voters. If he was running against either Trump or Trump Jr., I don't see who his supporters would be.

If I were doing it? I would start Crochet as a starter in Spring Training, get him stretched out for 5 innings. If he shows he is ready for big leaguers, I bring him up. If he isn't, then send him to whatever minor league affiliate is appropriate for a short stretch, with Lopez or FA signee holding that rotation spot. He then pitches...with a limit of ~100 innings. Once he gets to 100 innings, he gets shut down for a time, and then after some rest break with only bullpen sessions, is moved to the team's bullpen for a stretch run. Gives him a shot at ~125-ish innings, maybe a few more if playoffs are possible. Kopech is treated the opposite. He starts in Charlotte, with a goal of slowly ramping up his innings. If he performs well enough and his innings are limited enough, he comes up in ~July and takes Crochet's rotation spot as he's shut down. Thus, between Crochet and Kopech, you have a shot at getting almost a full pitcher between them in the rotation while still maintaining innings limits, and could have Kopech available to start games in the playoffs if needed. What do I think will happen? LaRussa is going to insist that Crochet is going to be his closer after the team doesn't spend the money to sign a veteran one, and Crochet spends the season in the bullpen.

Deep down I felt like "Crochet will be my closer" was something that TLR was going to insist on immediately after he was announced.

So the Russians have been inside the computers of the National Nuclear Security Agency for months and I feel this is a bad thing.

Vizquel lasted a lot longer than he could have so far, but Andrelton Simmons’s fielding numbers are on par with Vizquel’s best years.

Well the details behind this are complicated. The Players didn't want the cap to plummet by what, 30% this year, due to being tied to last year's revenues? That's bad for the players and its bad for any team that would want to, say, re-sign a large Greek man for example. Hell, it would be bad for most teams too as teams would wind up having to pay the luxury tax just from their current contracts, without any regard to FA or trades. As a consequence, there was an agreement that the cap would stay flat this year, but with an acknowledgment that it is going to either have to drop sometime or stay flat for a number of years to make up for the losses. In other words, this is a case where both sides would have been in worse shape had they not come to an agreement. If you get MLB to that point - where both sides are being hurt by the lack of an agreement, then one will probably happen. That's what happened last summer when they got to enough time for about 60 games.

That’s based on 2 months of baseball in a bizarre year. Based on that, Bergman was vulnerable to extended slumps (narrator: he wasn’t).

One would also hope That Eloy and especially Robert show development progress to balance some of that out.

I mean, ironically they added something like $50 million in payroll in the offseason before 2019 through trades and FA.

So the average MLB team has 2x as many home games and only brings in 14% more revenue?

Altuve currently has 36 career rWAR and 1600 career hits. If we want to think of him a a HOF, he needs to nearly double those, either push 3000 hits or 60 WAR. He’s 30 years old, so we would need to be talking about him as a 4 WAR player or better at age 35-36, and his last 2 seasons have been a big step down. As of right now, he looks to be on the path where he’s not quite good enough to raise the question. Another MVP caliber season and maybe you can more realistically ask it.

Because the other leagues are capped. They are just going to hold the caps constant for multiple years (NBA) or even reduce them substantially next year (NFL) to make up for the losses this year.

Wait, Realmuto has 80 WAR in 2.5 years?

Just so we stress this - you're hanging an awful lot on provably there. We can hope that it provides a sterilizing immunity, or at least limits transmission. We will know better within a couple months, including by spring trainings start, because people who are being vaccinated are also participating in survey testing. There is not strong evidence that it does provide sterilizing immunity, but there is also no strong evidence that it doesn't. The health crisis in this country is so bad right now that "we can save lives by demonstrating it is safe and effective" was priority #1, and long term survey testing studies are a lower priority but will still happen rapidly.