Balta1701

Mitch McConnel's twitter account within minutes of the decision's release:

But you root for its success, as you said, and it's certainly not "sub-human".

Worth considering - they may have been more willing to take on cash last year when cash was something they had in abundance than they would be now that Altuve's mega-deal has been struck and other decisions are in the pipeline this offseason.

So based on what you have chosen to highlight, you would argue that the strong system was rather unimportant to winning the world series, and therefore you would also argue that the current rebuild is a mistake. At least you've gone in clearly with one point, rather than listing players you listed the things you believe were the most important, a couple of successful waiver claims.

Dude listing the entire roster does nothing to support or oppose my point.

But these teams are also making huge amounts of money from their TV contracts now, so as long as people are actually tuning in, people going to fewer games per year isn't quite as lethal as you're making it sound. The problem there is the one I'm noting, I don't want to watch a 3:05 average game length because on TV that starts to drag. Furthermore, if I know my team won't be competitive during the year, I also am not motivated to buy the extra innings package before the year starts.

And guys who no longer counted on that list included 1999s top prospect Carlos Lee, 2000s #2 prospect Jon Garland, and a guy who snuck in at the end of the 2000 top 10 who was rising fast and who got #56. Throw in a couple of the guys that they continued developing and then traded for Garcia and Podsednik, and you've got the majority of the WAR on that 2005 team within 1 trade of the team's minor league system.

Note the language you choose. Ripping kids from their parents and putting them in cages: "I'm against it but I root for him to have success". Tampering with someone's food "Sub-human".

Frankly I think all of that is true, that show did pull monster ratings, and since then his ratings have plummeted because he tussled the hair of a fascist on television.

Former White Sox farmhand Courtney Hawkins got himself a half page article in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday based on his performance in a Texas independent league.

In the 2000s they were fun to watch...because they completed a full rebuild in the late part of the 90s and then had one of the top systems in baseball that churned out talent for several years. Some of that talent they traded away, some of it they held, some of it busted, but that 10 years of being competitive came about because they started from a strong system. Once that strong system faded away into a memory, by the latter part of the 2000s, suddenly they were scrambling to pull off .500 teams, and they were clearly outgunned by other teams in their own division.

But of course, they also have a pitching need, so that could get tight if they decide they're taking on salary to fill that pitching staff.

They may not have chosen the right markets, but I certainly don't think we're talking about talent (esp pitching talent) being too diluted these days any more are we? I think the case is going towards expansion rather than contraction, and I'm probably ok with that in the mid-term future.

How far are they under the luxury tax line this year? They can't accidentally go over that line because they're trying to get out from under the multi-year repeat offender rules.

Most of the teams that were out of the playoffs 2 months in were out of the playoffs 0 months in.

If we don't get something of decent value back, there's not much reason to move him. If we're that desperate for money, he doesn't have to be tendered a contract next offseason.

If one were human, then ripping kids away from their parents and shipping them across the country and having them sleeping on the floor beneath plastic emergency blankets would be considered sub-human behavior, but it's pretty clear you're ok with that.

Yes I think there is an issue with the pace of this game and, along with the number of teams that start the year saying they can't keep up with the top few teams, those are the 2 things I think hurt baseball's watchability the most for me. It's gone up by about 20 minutes per game since the mid-oughts. These 3:15, 8.5 inning games really do seem to drag on a ton more than a 2:45 minute game.

Then continue to cut down the amount of time I'm waiting for each pitch.

If your whole argument is that tanking is the wrong term, fine, but it seems like there are way too many teams right now who are "Rebuilding" on the grounds that they look up at the Red Sox and Yankees and the couple teams that completed successful rebuilds and say "we have no chance at them even if we make the 2nd Wild Card, so why should we put all this effort into winning this year?" And the problem is, they're right to ask that question.

I don't think this family has nearly learned the lesson about how ugly this world can be. I think what we need to do is have armed individuals separate them forcibly from their parents, move both groups to isolated rooms, leave the kids contained in areas surrounded by metal interlock fencing for several days (Mrs. Huckabee-Sanders is ok with this as long as you don't call them cages), deny any requests by the parents for information on where their kids are, send those kids on a cross country flight or two, keep them detained for a period of weeks, and maybe let them speak to her again in a month or two. After all, which ugliness got your attention, all that, or this?

If the game was a whole lot of HR and strikeouts, but the games finished in 2:30, I'd be ok with that.

What's actually ironic is that the last playoff expansion may darn well have led to the increase in tanking. Yes there are more teams in the playoffs, but at the same time they made the advantage for winning your division bigger, and now teams that could win 85 games are asking if it's worth sacrificing the next year to go for that 2nd wild card where they'll likely get eliminated quickly and then have little to show for it in the end. If you bring the playoffs up to 12 teams, but the bottom 8 are even more convinced that they're going to get eliminated, then that doesn't solve the problem.

Edwin Jackson made himself an all star team with a good first half in Detroit. A guy who is just a thrower, but who has dominant stuff, can have weeks where he’s in a groove, but becoming an ace requires a totally different level of consistency that Rodon is a long way from convincing me he’s reached. If he’s healthy, a guy who just throws the ball and sees where it is going can absolutely be a mid rotation guy, but he has a ton of work to do to reach another level.