caulfield12

Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore and Cliff Lee for Bartolo Colon The Rangers' net when they dealt Tex to the Braves. The Royals had much less control remaining with Greinke and got back two All-Stars in Cain and Escobar. Etc. Not every trade has to work out like the Sabathia one to Mil or Halladay to the Phils... If there's so little confidence in this front office to execute a trade, sign a FA or develop a hitter effectively, why are they still gainfully employed?

Shark shut down the Blue Jays...so anything's possible.

Dunn and LaRoche...with Blowasavio benignly smiling in between. Throw in Jose Paniagua for good measure to rid the bad karma. Olt, Saladino, Sanchez, Micah, Thompson, Montas....boom! Holding Davidson and Erik in reserve for expected implosions.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Oct 15, 2015 -> 08:34 AM) On the bright side our playoff trio of Sale/Q/Rodon would easily best any of the other AL playoff rotations, and is at least on par if not better than the NL playoff rotations. And that will sell how many season tickets next year?

McEwing is LaRussa's favorite son, so by proxy. Cooper has a thirty year history with the organization in some capacity... Steverson, because Hahn and KW kept Ventura, so, if the manager's not at fault, how can the hitting coach be more to blame than Vince Coleman, for example? Besides, he did enjoy some success his first year and with selected minor league hitters (supposedly). Coleman never played for us but has ties to KW personally and LaRussa through the Cards.

But still lost house. Getting the score flip flopped doesn't help us beat the line. Although I suppose a few out there were betting over/under on total runs scored. Hard to predict with Cueto so inconsistent and a 4.76 ERA since joining KC.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Oct 13, 2015 -> 12:00 PM) Higher then I expected tbh. But we fell 28 spots. Big tumble. More at link: http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/13830149...t-losing-season Curious who were the four teams in professional sports with worse coaching? And that's with Don Cooper, supposedly one of the best pitching coaches in baseball. What does that say about the rest of the staff? Where were the Cubs, Royals, Twins, Tigers and Indians ranked in this coaching stat?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Oct 14, 2015 -> 11:27 PM) No he'll be ready for game 4. Why wouldn't he be starting game 3 on full rest next Tuesday?

The Royals already have something of a difficult decision. They can start Ventura on 3 day's rest, and they would be going back to back with that. On the other hand, he didn't pitch close to a full game in the (first) rain delay (in middle of the game) start. Volquez is the other option here. So it's an interesting decision. Cueto definitely won't go until game 3, and he's basically refusing to go on 3 days, so that means some combination of Volquez/Ventura in Games 1/2. http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/batvspitch/_...edinson-volquez .714 OPS against by the Blue Jays (active players), but only a .227 average. http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/batvspitch/_...yordano-ventura .693 OPS for Ventura against Toronto, .217 BAA. Game 1 starter would have to go on 3 day's rest on Tuesday (Game 4/October 20th) or they will have to start Medlen/Duffy/Guthrie/Chris Young instead. I'm not sure they can afford to do that if they're down 2-1 in the series. Finally, Cueto would be unavailable until a potentially-deciding Game 7, so the huge/pivotal Game 6 starter is a huge mystery as well for the Royals...

Meanwhile, the Royals are bringing in millions more in revenue each series they advance to refortify for one last go at it next season with Gordon, Hosmer and Moustakas all likely gone after 2016. On the other hand, Sal Perez's 5 year, $7 million contract is the biggest bargain in baseball, replacing Alexei Ramirez's deal quite awhile ago. I'm actually quite curious to see where Zobrist eventually ends up, and what kind of deal he signs. At age 34/35, is he more concerned with playing for a winner or getting a final, 3-4 year deal from the highest bidder? The Royals are going to eat Infante's deal, so they're definitely looking to improve at 2B. They're getting rid of Rios' $11 million ($1 million buyout), and Guthrie's $9 million, buyout ($3.5 million)...the biggest problem is still owing $18 million to Infante (basically more worthless than Danks and LaRoche at this point) and Jason Vargas, who will be coming back from a major injury at some point next year. Luckily for them, they have those favorable deals with Perez/Escobar as well as Wade Davis, Herrera and Kendrys Morales. Big decisions looming on Kris Medlen ($10 million option) and whether they want to pay Greg Holland to rehab from TJ for a year...they'll probably cut ties with Holland reallocate that money elsewhere.

At my international school in China (average SAT score's in the 2100 range), all of the students are doing physics and chemistry in middle school... Seeing the quality of work at that age level, there's almost no way that all but the best American students can compete in STEM subject areas against the Chinese and Indians (to a lesser extent). IT/Computer Science tends to be a bit harder to master, because of the language barriers, fwiw. I think nobody in the entire school got an A or 4 or 5 for A levels/AP. Just getting a 5/7 in IB Computer Science HL is a minor miracle. And, of course, those students tend to be more hungry/motivated and willing to work for less to get their foot in the door.

QUOTE (flavum @ Oct 14, 2015 -> 08:53 PM) I hope it's great baseball but without all of the bulls***. Probably going to be disappointed with that wish. The Rangers' announcers were super-pissed that their team (Chris Gimenez in particular) was getting involved in fighting with the Blue Jays when they were only down by 3 runs at that time. I guess shock with Andrus, Moreland (maybe the best 1B in the AL making that throw, but he babied/guidd it) and especially Bautista's swagger/bat flip. They were probably just shell-shocked and in disbelief.

Can't wait for the Lawrie drama to be rekindled, haha... Actually, the best way to get rich gambling is just do the opposite of whatever Greg predicts!!! Poor Gregster, these last few weeks with a $140 ticket, Hillary Clinton resuming her front runner status, Kansas football being a complete embarrassment to the Big 12, the Royals continuing to haunt him... I predict that in the next 48-72 hours, a Royals' fan with a souvenir flag flying from the window frame will intimidate Greg into rolling through another stop sign with their exuberance and devil-may-care attitude...OR, they will smash into his back-bumper and he'll be forced to get a rental car, which will only be 25-50% covered by insurance and will end up costing more than the original ticket for rolling the stop sign. All we would be missing would be some type of random gun crimes lost amid the celebrations taking place in KCK and the northeast section of KCMO.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...-181323651.html Apparently Schwarber's bomb last night landed resting on top of the scoreboard. Too good to make it up. They're going to leave it up there, enshrined in a protective glass casing until the end of the playoffs. The anti-Billy Goat, Bartman Ball, 1969 Mets, Leon Durham (1984), Bill Buckner (well, he mostly played for the Cubs, so the associative theory), the Brant Brown error in 1998, lost to the Giants in 1989 but nobody remembers because of the earthquake, etc.

Buddy Bell, Hahn, KW, Steverson, Robin, new bench coach, Vince Coleman... Can cross each of them out when they're no longer with the organization and only the bench coach is left standing. McEwing, if he doesn't end up taking another job, can probably stick him up there too.

Neshek and Keuchel perhaps too late...if they were going to bring Keuchel in, it should have been to face Rios where Hinch used Fiers instead. Hinch isn't going to come out of this series smelling likes roses. We'll see if Yost gets second-guessed not going to Herrera or Davis here and rolling with Cueto. Hard to argue with 16 in a row...but, on the other hand, you have the best bullpen in the majors. Tough call. Don't like bringing in Herrera with someone on base, and he's not as comfortable in the 8th as the 7th. I'd go with Davis if Cueto gets in trouble, but that's kind of an obvious call when he's had a sub 1 ERA or whatever for two consecutive seasons.

Cueto just earned $25 million back. Still down another $25 million for that 9+ ERA he had over a 4-5 start stretch there. At the very least, he's at least halfway redeemed/rehabilitated in the minds of KC fans now. If he would have imploded in this game, he would be as well liked as Javy V. by White Sox fans when he returned in the future....a cascade of boos. http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-colum...le39009429.html This homemade Cueto video looks hilarious...

Logically, you go Sale/Q/Rodon (three lefty aces)....until one of them is traded. Or you choose from Sale/Q/Eaton/Abreu...with Robertson and Rodon on the outside looking in for the moment. Or you could have Cabrera, Duke, Bonifacio, Beckham, Robertson, LaRoche and Shark and cross them out whenever they leave the organization. That Cubs' banner will be too big. Forgot to add Baez and Russell. Can't fit them all in.

I was referring to pre-steroids Bonds. Well, never mind. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/the-cubs-are-...-032206186.html It's starting. Passan basically arguing that the Cubs in the NLCS and World Series will be one of the first times in recent history baseball has gotten more attention in October than football, probably going back to the 2004 Red Sox championship...oxygen remaining for the White Sox in the media, critical and failing.

I was referring to pre-steroids Bonds. Well, never mind. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/the-cubs-are-...-032206186.html It's starting. Passan basically arguing that the Cubs in the NLCS and World Series will be one of the first times in recent history baseball has gotten more attention in October than football, probably going back to the 2004 Red Sox championship...oxygen remaining for the White Sox in the media, critical and failing.

The Ghost of White Sox Rios past has come back to haunt the Gregster this time. All those taunts for years and years...karma. Dunn's next movie production will probably garner him an Oscar nomination for Actor in a Supporting Role. I think they'll be very careful to protect Madson from getting any time in this one after the other night. It's going to be all Herrera and two innings of Davis if Herrera gives up ANYTHING in the 8th. Morales might be brought in to match up with a selected lefty.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Oct 14, 2015 -> 06:34 PM) Thank you. You proved my point. With different better players, the Sox got better results. The manager doesn't remotely f***ing matter. Not really...because Jennings was terrible, Petricka took a step or two back and the back end was bad. We spent a ton on Robertson and Duke and became merely below average. Wasn't exactly efficient allocation of resources.

Would be funny if Cueto sued the American League/Royals for lopping $25-50 million off his big FA contract... He's already blamed Sal Perez's positioning for having a five start stretch with a 9+ ERA, refused to pitch on three days' rest this series and blown off an important charity event with a lame excuse.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Oct 14, 2015 -> 06:14 PM) Was bad at shortstop initially. Then he was good at shortstop. Or it could be shifting him all over the field (see Beckham, Semien, Viciedo) wasn't helpful for him settling in and becoming comfortable at one position. 90% of it was confidence in knowing the position was his in 2009.

You're giving Ventura more credit than Hahn for Albers, Robertson, Duke and Jones' recovery/health? Also, it literally would have been impossible to be worse. And we still had a lot of blown saves.