Balta1701

I'm totally ok with Vaughn being Freddie Freeman

I'm genuinely expecting him to demolish the minor leagues this year, now that the "long college season" excuses are gone.

If he's walking 5 MILB hitters in 5 innings as he was doing in the first half of 2018, would he benefit more from walking 9 big league hitters in 5 innings?

You're very much contradicting yourself here. If Kopech needs to work out his control, and he's going to do that in the big leagues, then this won't be a contention year. You can't have Kopech coming out and walking 5 people in the first 2 innings if you actually intend to contend, and he has a history of doing that in the first half of the season. If Kopech is walking the world and you call him up anyway, then you're not acting like a contending team, you're acting like the 2017 white sox when they called up Moncada because they had a roster spot open so why not. For reference, I'm specifically not talking about his performance once he was called up. It's the stuff at Charlotte beforehand that should worry people. If his control is like it was in the 2nd half of 2017, then yeah he'll be a solid contributor when he's called up.

If service time were not a concern, I'd still be 50/50 about wanting him to break camp with the big league team and a lot would depend on what we saw from him in ST. In 2018, he started off the year at Charlotte and he really wasn't ready - he had major control issues, topped off by a performance in mid June where he walked 8 batters in 3 innings. This wasn't just him working on something, it literally took him April, May, and June of that year for him to figure out how to control anything he was throwing. Once he figured something out, in early-July, he put together a run of 7 starts where he walked 4 people total the entire time. If he's throwing in the spring and his control is that pinpoint, then yes you can say he's "no doubt one of their 5 best SP". But we saw the same sort of control development for him in 2017 and 2018 both, where it takes him until May or June for him to find his control, then he would simply not be ready. So it's not just service time, it's not just the innings limit or protecting him physically, we have seen him need a long time to find control before and until we see him in games throughout March we don't know where his control is this year.

Apparently he's wearing a shirt that says "All me, PED Free" on it.

1. I always kinda liked the unbalanced schedule. Yeah you get stuck playing the bad teams in your division 19 times per year but it also sets up some interesting rivalries and results. The White Sox inability to beat the Twins in the early 2000s - that mattered far more and knocked the White Sox out of the playoffs a couple times because one team handled the rivalry. The 05 chase for the pennant was a chase because the White Sox had to play the Indians a ton. Last year the Indians handled the Tigers and that almost single handedly kept them in the playoff race. 2. Yeah, playing more of the opposing league every year would be a worthy reason to cut some of those games. 3. I'm now at the point where I'd be open to the Cubs and Sox being in the same division and think it would be entertaining.

Well it's a good thing we haven't ever said that before, because if we had said exactly the same thing every year for the last 10 years about that team someone might start thinking that the coaching and training staffs are contributing to that problem too.

Apparently I was at a road game where this pitcher Danny Farquhar noticed an odd banging coming out of the dugout, brought the catcher out, changed up the signs, and then struck out Evan Gattis who was no longer looking for an offspeed pitch.

That's the most terrifying thought ever....

So far today "#FireManfred" and "#FireGarPax" have trended on Twitter and I think that's just great.

If we can take one more thing from Correa making up a BS lie about a tattoo, it’s that this is already getting to them.

No you missed not autocorrect error, otherwise you’re on track.

This is the most convincing bit suggesting that Altuve probably was wearing something.

at some point in MLB, someone is going to press charges against a pitcher for throwing at a batter. It meets all legal definitions of assault. I wonder if this could be the year.

That’s correct.

Quintana no, they could have not picked up his option if they wanted salary relief that badly. Heyward yes.

He could strip that title.

One of two things is true. Either people in glass houses are throwing an awful lot of rocks or the whole league is genuinely pissed right now. So far it seems like the latter. If NYY or LAD or Wash were doing something like this, they would really be setting up to have someone call them out. Instead everyone’s like “ok now it’s all out there and we knew it but no one believed us.”

You realize that the extension argument is extra silly since it is also possible to "Sign guys as free agents"?