Let it go 11 innings. if it's still a tie, suspend the game or just call it a tie. You get two points for a win and one for a tie like they used to do in hockey. With 11 innings there wouldn't be a lot of ties anyway.
They could be worse if none of the young hitters progress, Meadows is still unable to play, and the bullpen (which has been good the last two years) fails. I don't expect them to be worse, but it's not out of the question.
I think "playing for a winner" is often something players will say to make them sound good when they really want the money (which winning teams are more likely to offer).
No doubt 2023 looks like a lost year. I would have liked them to make more short-term improvements to their offense, but I understand Harris' caution. He hasn't been watching the train wreck for the last five years and is likely a lot more patient than us.
Maybe, but I am slightly more optimistic about the future of the franchise now than I was last year at this time. 2021 was good luck. 2022 was bad luck mostly due to injuries. I am cautiously optimistic that Harris will do better than Avila and I am encouraged by apparent steps forward by a number of prospects last year. Maybe players and agents see it differently, but I think they could sign players if they wanted to spend.
You are probabably right that they won't win any big lawsuit. More than likely, they'll just get screwed.
I agree that Twitter is useful. It's the trending topics section of Twitter I don't like.
SB, The Ohio fire is trending on Twitter. Don't go there expecting to find anything useful though.
It's a horrible situation. It sounds like many lives are going to be destroyed. I hope they sue for many millions and win.
One year 6.5 million for Chafin...with Arizona.
Apparently, he likes money better than living near his farm. Pretty good deal for the Diamondbacks given the cost of pitching this winter.
I just looked up Encarnacion and Kapler. Interestingly, they had almost identical stat lines in back to back years in AA:
1997 Encarnacion .323/.394/.560
1998 Kapler .322/.393/.583
They also ended up having pretty similar careers:
Encarnacion 97 OPS+ 8.6 WAR
Kapler 92 OPS+ 8.7 WAR
I was not a big Encarnacion fan. Players that can't draw walks have a hard time sustaining long term success. I was more of a fan of Kapler who, of course, fared no better.
Avila also traded players for guys he hoped would become good. We can hope that Harris is better at it. The deals they made this winter were actually closer to Randy Smith deals in th acquired players are closer to being finished products. We can also hope that Harris is better than Smith!
A couple of them could. I'm thinking Maton or Malloy. I wouldn't say it's likely they'll replace Candelario's production from 2021 when he was a 4 WAR player. Of course, what's important is whether they are better than the 2023 version of Candelaro.
You can do some of both. It's hard to have good offense and defense at every position and very few teams have done that. However, I think it's hard to win if you just go for offense and have poor defense at every position.