caulfield12

What moves (besides actually having a playoff contender) for individual players with Harper off the board that would actually excite a totally deflated/demoralized fanbase?

Right-hander Alex Hansen, ranked 10th in the organization, has been fighting shoulder issues. Eloy Jimenez had an array of minor injuries last season that might have — OK, probably didn’t — cost him a midseason call-up. chicagotribune.com

He really loves the sound of his own voice.

Gonzalez and Rutherford have a shot, too. Of Course, now we have three months of Basabe’s season wiped out...there’s pretty good odds one of those lefties or switch hitters make it.

I lived in Armenia/Quindio, about halfway between Cali and Medellin...finca (farm) and coffee/banana plantation territory. Perfect weather, almost, didn't need to have either a heater or air conditioner. Actually very close to the National Coffee Park, which is the Colombian idea of an amusement park without all the roller coasters, more cultural/historical. The Willy's Jeep was also mass produced there, still see many old ones in that area of the world. Also spent about 6 weeks in Cartagena...one of the hottest cities in the world during the daytime, but lots of fun at night. It's also a place where you learn fairly quickly that you can't give out money to all the street kids every day or you'll very quickly run out of money.

Well, I did live and work in Colombia for one year....went to quite a few of the professional league games in Cartagena and Barranquilla, even met with the Renteria Brothers a couple of time about their charity and working/cooperating with them.

Well, my wife always jokes that my Chinese is so bad after 7-8 years here that I am faking an a CIA agent under cover as a teacher. If it wasn't for my almost four-year old son and wanting him to learn Chinese as his first language (and then getting a better STEM education in elementary and maybe middle school)...I'd undoubtedly be back in the Quad Cities, where I have a house and car just sitting around.

Well, that's actually today in China time, lol...

https://www.mlb.com/news/kris-bryant-discusses-nolan-arenado-deal Kris Bryant on Nolan Arenado extension...

Giants and Harper/Boras apparently have now had their second official/formal meeting... https://www.mlb.com/news/giants-meet-bryce-harper-for-second-time

Greg, you simply have to go to MLB.com https://www.mlb.com/gameday/reds-vs-white-sox/2019/02/27/567250#game_state=final,lock_state=final,game_tab=videos,game=567250

The Dodgers have come up with three great discoveries like that in Turner, Taylor and Muncy. We hang our hats on Swarzak, Soria and Kahnle.

And you can probably cross half of those players off our list before we even get to next offseason for a large variety of reasons.

Justin? Jacob? Ted?

And Ohtani!

Fine, if we had a Buster. But I'm not conceding the point. That said, there's no point to argue it out any further without getting into apolitical debate about cultural identity/identity politics. And Machado has been back to visit family/relatives in the Dominican Republic on NUMEROUS occasions.

By descent, he is...if the answer was as cut and dried as you think, WHY WOULD HE PLAY ON THE DOMINICAN WBC TEAM AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY? Because ethnic identity is a much more complicated issue than you're making it out to be.

Okay, so Dominican-American ISN'T equal to Latin-American, got it...

This is the most idiotic thing I've heard today. Have you seen him play? Watch his homer from yesterday or today on the highlights at MLB.com. He's about the size of Alexei Ramirez (in terms of BMI), maybe another 10-15 pounds, albeit taller. If he was juicing, with that frame, he'd be at 210-215, not still in the 170's or low 180's. It's one of the reasons lots of scouts expect him to eventually end up at 3B, because of how much weight his father carried later in his career (although Tatis' dad was closer to 5'11"). In fact, Tatis was always viewed as a player who could be even better had he kept his weight down a bit.

I think one mistake was underestimating the impact his father had on his career...and how success in baseball often passes down from generation to generation. “It was very difficult for me to grow up without my father,” Tatis Sr. said. “It was very difficult because I loved to play baseball and I would have loved to have had my father around me. I think that’s why I take every day, every moment I can to be with my children.” That desire picked up steam when Tatis – with 113 major league home runs, albeit the blasts leaving the yard far less frequently – walked away from his career to focus on his son’s. That ultimately started with Fernando Jr. learning both Spanish and English in school from the time he was 4 years old. He’d picked up a bat much earlier in his life. “I always had a bat in my hand; One day I hit my grandma in the head when I was 3,” the younger Tatis said with a laugh. His father home for good from his career, the two spent hours in the cage and on diamonds. They worked on technique. Day after day after day, the two talked, lived and breathed baseball until the White Sox offered Tatis’ oldest son, just 16 at the time, an $825,000 signing bonus to start his professional career. “I’m not going to lie,” Fernando Tatis Jr. recalled. “It was kind of hard at times. Being a dad and a coach at the same time, sometimes we’d start arguing and bring it into the house because I didn’t want to work hard enough. I was growing up. I was maturing a little bit more. I learned a lot. “It was great in the end, but in the beginning it was not easy.” It’s not always easy today. The two talk about the cows, horses and sheep on their farm when Tatis Sr. phones from the Dominican Republic. They talk about how his younger brothers – Elijah, 15 (now 16 or 17), and Daniel, 11 (now 12 or 13) – are coming along in the game. The conversation without fail lands on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s latest swings. “I watch on my phone – every pitch, every inning, every at-bat,” the elder Tatis said. “If I see something wrong, something I don’t like, I call him right away.” With a laugh, Tatis Sr. added: “Sometimes he doesn’t want to hear it. That’s baseball, but we’ve got a very good relationship. I say, ‘I’ve got to tell you. It’s the only way you’re going to get better. There’s things you’re not doing right.’ “That’s the way it is and that’s what it’s going to be.” Of course, Fernando Tatis Jr. – the Padres’ chief return from the White Sox when ownership OK’d eating $27-31 million remaining on James Shields’ contract – is doing plenty right. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sd-sp-padres-fernando-tatis-jr-groomed-for-big-future-in-baseball-20170928-story.html

Apparently since mid-summer 2015 in America, lol...

One can pretty much guarantee that Bruce Freakin' Levine and Lozano have never interacted in their entire lives. If they did, it would be a "go-between" like Michael Cohen repping Trump and doing his dirty work.

Or we can refer to them as jackasses for messing up Erik Johnson and also dumping him in that trade...after all, he was supposedly the headliner. It wasn't bad enough after Shields had given up 10 or 11 runs the previous start and his own owner basically badmouthed him to the point where Preller had to dump him off the roster, they still got the Sox to pay roughly half of Shields' remaining contract dollars as well. Nifty trick if you can pull it off. PS: Lozano's understandably upset he wasn't representing all of Manny's friends and family...he could have made a fortune auctioning all of them off to the White Sox this offseason, taken his agent's commission, and then laughed all the way to the bank when Machado signed elswhere.

Well, it just goes to show how successful they are at playing the villains, when NOBODY is even thinking about the Cleveland Indians anymore....as they're supposed to be our REAL competition, not even the Cubbies. But why not also hate on the Cardinals or Braves, they're also confirmed cheaters in terms of front office tactics?

If you were a football, rugby or cricket player...sure I would. Manuel Arturo Machado is a Dominican-American professional baseball third baseman and shortstop for the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball. Okay, I'll rephrase then, to be politically correct and more accurate. We WOULD have had the greatest collection of Hispanic, Caribbean-born, Latino, ABDD (American Born Dominican Descent), hyphenated (fill in the blank country, like Luis Gonzalez with Mexican-American, or Carlos Rodon with Cuban-American), in the history of the modern game. LatinA would be female Hispanic players...btw.