The players also proposed a rule that would penalize teams' draft position if the teams lose more than 90 games in two consecutive seasons. LOL. Strange world when you have to create disincentives to tanking.
I can confirm planned giveaways have zero effect on the roster. You'd be surprised how many pallets of obsolete past, present, and future giveaways are just sitting in a warehouse at MMP.
Baseball is not a timed game, It's 9 inning unless tied. I watch baseball for the tid-bits of strategy. If I have one pitcher I want to face only one batter that should be my choice. If you want a quicker game or fast action and high scoring go watch beer league slow pitch softball. For the record I'm ok with the pitch clock. I have been to several minor league games and it doesn't bother me one bit. Batters need to get in there and be ready to hit and pitcher need to be ready to make a pitch. I have only seen the pitch clock cost a pitcher or batter a ball or strike once. They could look at putting a clock on the managers making switches, give them a certain amount of time. The super slow walk out to the mound because incoming reliever was busy opening a new bag of sunflower seeds instead of being ready to go would eliminate some of the down time.
I’m not crazy about a 3 batter minimum, and for us baseball die hards all these little things don’t bother us But if I’m an owner of a billion dollar team, “if you don’t like it, beat it” probably isn’t the message I want to give young fans
I went to a game during the dark years, must have been 2011 or 2012. I was given two Jeff Kent bobbleheads. And I showed up in the third inning. Kent hadn't been on the team for like 8 years. Still have it on my shelf as part of my bobblehead collection. Probably under 10k in the stands. I've given up on the bobblehead games, you have to get there like 2 hours before they open the gates in order to get a bobblehead.
Translation: "We really were confident that we would be able to sign a free agent and then trade for a really good pitcher, but holly **** the price was higher than we expected and so we go with what we have until the market normalizes."
Think Astros thought it would be easier to unload contracts, but trade market has been fierce regarding taking on money.
Other than Reddick, which contracts would we want to unload? And unless we were planning to go after the two big dogs, unloading Reddick wouldn’t have a big affect on staying under the tax level
Changing the narrative a bit, what is everyone's thoughts on Derek Fisher this year? To me the kid looks like he has all the tools, and I just think this may be a breakout year for him.
Smith is out for a majority if not all of the season, surely they were not counting on being able to move him? They signed one of the best non Harper/Machado bats on the market this offseason. Do you think they wanted Harper and haven’t signed him because they couldn’t move Reddick and Yuli? Something like that would shock me, but other than that if you did move those two I don’t see who we sign that is better than Brantley who we already got I agree we likely wanted to trade for a pitcher this offseason, but I’d guess not doing so has been more about the price in prospects than the price in dollars
Where is there a spot for him though? He certainly has tools and guys like him can certainly figure it out at this point of his career But Springer, Brantley, Reddick, Tucker, Kemp, Jake all in front of him I’ve been thinking he would be a part of a deal this offseason, but not much has materialized
If a few of our 'superfluous' guys like Fisher/Reed... want to get a strong shot with another organization soon, they really need to come out of the gate strong this year.
Pitch clock, and unless the batter gets hit/knocked down/fouls a ball off his foot he stays with a foot in the box. The biggest change in game time b/t years ago and now is the dead time in-between pitches. I guess 3 batters for a reliever *in one inning* is ok, as long as they're not made to come out for a 2nd inning to get to that 3 Mound visit, limits on time and number...don't care, the new rules seemed to work last year DH in both leagues, and a roster of 26 is cool with me. Try that and see what happens for a couple of years. This is slightly outdated, but it explains where the extra ~30 minutes exists in a game: https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/game-length
