No chance. They're not going to sacrifice a year of control for two (mostly) meaningless weeks of Tucker - UNLESS.... he's the no-doubt best LF option we have AND every other option is significantly worse. And even then, I'm sot sure they'd do it. This team won 101 games last year with Peacock and Fiers picking up significant starts across all of June & July. They can get by with Marwin, et al (non-KT) filling in at 1B and LF.
Davis, Reed or White are gonna get that last spot. I can't see any scenario they don't. Davis and White both provide some positional flexibility as well. With Bregman being able to play SS and 2B, I could see either one of them replacing Marwin if he gets hurt, or leaves, as a potential backup infielder. Neither guy was terrible by any stretch last season. Reed provides no such flexibility, so he was gonna have to out hit them, and he hasn't exactly bathed himself in glory so far.
Neil Walker is still available and hits about as well as Yuli. If he comes cheap, I could see him as an option. Astros would likely need to move a catcher though...which would open up an extra roster spot.
Good point regarding position flexibility. Just watched Reed bat. He looked lost and mentally somewhere else to my eyes. Some veteran needs to sit him down and help him get his head back in the game.
‘Championship tower’ sounds so dumb. Whatever happened to good ole banners? Ones in the dome looked great. Drape new ones where our smorgasbord of retired numbers are, and do a retired numbers exhibit elsewhere in the stadium.
I know those community banners bring in some money for Crane but my god they are so distracting. If those were somewhere else that would be a perfect place for an actual banner, instead of a little pennant on a light pole.
I'm glad Justin isn't shy about making public statements about this issue. There should be transparency about how the baseballs are manufactured, and the minor league balls should be the same as major league balls so that teams and players can make easy comparisons and projections about hitting performance between major and minor leagues. And for Christ's sake, can we please start making all the baseballs *in the USA* instead of places like China and Costa Rica? Besides the economic benefit to the community(ies) in America where the ball manufacturing facilities are located, this would make quality assurance and product testing easier. When the balls are manufactured overseas, it's really difficult to prevent the contractor from cutting corners in terms of materials and production processes and that can lead to balls with undesired flight characteristics.
The issue Justin talks about is also relevant to the accuracy of Steamer/ZiPS projections because, as far as I can tell, those systems are not taking the effects of the juiced ball into account. For athletes who played in the 2015 season and before, their hitting stats based on the old (unjuiced) balls are being used to predict what they will do this year, which belongs to the Juiced Ball Era. This is probably one of the reasons why Marisnick, Marwin, and others beat their 2017 Steamer projections by such a long shot. Also, you have minor leaguers who are using balls which fly several feet less far than the major league juiced balls on the average outfield fly. It's one reason why you can have a hitter like JD Davis who hits 1 HR per ~18 plate appearances in AA/AAA and then matches or even improves on that HR rate in the majors, in spite of facing hitters with better control and more deceptive pitches. Any projections system that tries to predict rookie players' major league hitting performance based solely on minor league stats is probably going to underestimate the ISO and SLG numbers for guys who hit a lot of fly balls and line drives. That can lead to a significant underestimation of their WAR and wRC+ numbers.
If Manfred would order just this one change, my opinion of him would be much changed, and for the better. In any case, on some day that President Trump feels like he's out of topics to tweet about, he could congratulate MLB on bringing baseball manufacturing back to the USA.
I am pretty sure it is true. Too many Matt Olson's and Rhys Hoskins' that against better pitching see spikes in homer/FB.
I googled it. The differences (as stated by baseball players who have used both) appears to be that the minor league ball has higher stitches. Rules say that they should be the same. Why is the baseball used in the minor leagues different from the one used in the major leagues? Rule 3.01 of the Official Baseball Rules contains the specifications for legal balls. All balls used in organized baseball, at any level, must comply. Several manufacturers make balls that comply with the spec. But Rawlings pays a sponsorship fee to both Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball for the right to advertise its products as the Official Balls of Major or Minor League Baseball.
I can't remember where I read it. Somewhere last year. But the article stated Minor League balls are made in China and Major League balls are made in Costa Rica. The two factories are using slightly different materials and the machines that stitch the balls are calibrated slightly differently, resulting in a higher or lower seam height. Also I believe they found the fiber used for the seams is slightly different between the two places. If it's made of a soft cotton, for example, that is probably good for pitchers. But if the factory is using a synthetic polyester or acrylic fiber, it could be more abrasive and lead to the types of blisters that Cueto and other pitchers complained about. I know to many fans this seems like a ridiculously technical and insignificant issue. But if I'm a club owner and I'm paying tens of millions of dollars a year to my pitching staff, I would be very unhappy if I have to pay even one of them to sit on the DL because a cheap "made in China" or "made in Costa Rica" baseball cut their fingers up when they tried to throw the ball with high velocity and spin rate (which is what I ask them to do). If there were a way to seek compensation from Rawlings for the loss of my pitcher's services, I'd want to get it.
We X-Rayed Some MLB Baseballs. Here’s What We Found. On 6,105 occasions last season, a major leaguer walked to the plate and hammered a baseball over the outfield wall. The 2017 season broke the home run record that was set in 2000 — the peak of the steroid era — when players hit 5,693 homers, and it built upon the remarkable 5,610 that were hit in 2016. It was a stunning display of power that played out in every MLB park almost every night. And with spring training underway in Florida and Arizona, MLB’s power surge is showing no sign of letting up. But while we now know what caused the spike in home runs at the turn of the century — even if we didn’t at the time — the reason for the most recent flurry of long balls remains an unsolved mystery. Any number of factors might have contributed to the home run surge, including bigger, stronger players or a new emphasis on hitting fly balls. But none of those possibilities looms larger than the ball itself. MLB and its commissioner, Rob Manfred, have repeatedly denied rumors that the ball has been altered in any way — or “juiced” — to generate more homers. But a large and growing body of research shows that, beginning in the middle of the 2015 season, the MLB baseball began to fly further. And new research commissioned by “ESPN Sport Science,” a show that breaks down the science of sports suggests that MLB baseballs used after the 2015 All-Star Game were subtly but consistently different than older baseballs. The research, performed by the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and Kent State University’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, reveals changes in the density and chemical composition of the baseball’s core — and provides our first glimpse inside the newer baseballs.
