Tiger337

I think they have impacts , but not tremendous impacts. If a manager does not have talented players, he can't make them win. That has been proven over and over throughout the history of the game as famous managers move from team to team.

The vast majority of professional athletes care a lot. They are very competitive people which is part how they became professional athletes.

I agree that Hinch know what he is doing, but I also think managers don't matter as much as fans think. It's the players.

Jace Laviolette? I'm sorry, but that name doesn't work.

It's been my fear along that this would happen. The next fear is that the recession runs its course early in his presidency and he takes credit fot it. He'll also take credit for fixing inflation even though it's already getting fixed now.

I doubt he even read it.

Personally, I have liked the higher rates because I was able to lock in some money in CDs for 3-5 years. This is money that I did not need right away but might need before retirement and I didn't want to put in stocks.. However, I see a lot of younger people not able to buy homes because of the high rates. That's not good for them or the economy.

That is what I had thought. However, they left it near zero for so long, I wasn't really sure whether that rule of thumb still held true.

This should have called the Sundry Baseball Detritus thread

I don't know where the rates should be. For regular middle class people (not big investors), high rates are good and bad - good because you can grow your savings in CDs or treasuries and not risk all your money in stocks. They are bad because it makes it hard to make big purchases like cars and houses. Those are things that most people care about, so for them it's a balance between the good and bad. Right now, I hear a lot of people complaining about the high rates. For the overall economy, I am not smart enough to know what the ideal level should be. They left it near zero for so long (to please people who don't need help) and then shot it way up to 5+ due to inflation. I don't know if the current rate is inherently bad but it seems going from 0 to 5+ is a big jump in a short time and now that all the Covid era stuff has calmed down it makes sense to moderate that jump a little bit. That is just my very amateur opinion.

yeah, I think he made it up and it is probably worse. Trying to impress MAGAs and Trump by saying he told his kid to shut the hell up is really messed up.

I just saw this for the first time today. It was a cartoon of political attacks in 2004. The real stuff we see today is much worse.

MLB TV is pretty good. The only thing I don't like is the bombardment of gambling commercials. I don't know if it's the same elsewhere.

So, we basically agree, but if you expect them to make the playoffs then it's not really an "evaluation year". You could say that every year is an evaluation year,but if you expect them to make the playoffs, it's not primarily an evaluation year. In my way of thinking, every year should be a competitive year except for occasional duds where you know they have no chance. If you have too many of those then your organization is failing.

He's another Tony Clark. You can tell by his body language that he doesn't care enough. And when he he does hit, he never does anything when it matters. Watch. He'll come up in September and start mashing now that they are out of it.

The Feds were slow to raise the rates. Now, they are being slow to lower them. Is Scott Harris in charge?

Every time I see a poll with Harris vs Trump and then Harris vs Trump vs Kennedy, etc., Harris does better on the poll with more than two candidates. It appears that Kennedy hurts Trump more than Harris.

That may have been the most embarrassing typo in forum history.

Career OPS+ Leaders Ruth 206 Williams 191 Charleston 184 Bonds 182 Gehrig 179 Stearnes 177 Hornsby 175 Trout 173 Mantle 172 That is legend territoty.

Pucket was a great player. Trump has been a completely different level of player.

There a lots of questiona marks with the line-up, but they were playing close to .500 ball with a garbage line-up for most of this season. Maybe Carpenter stays healthy all year. Maybe Jung, Malloy or Dingler will hit. Try out Meadows and Torkelson again. Vierling, Perez and Ibanez are coming back. I want them to try to be the team that breaks out and surprise everyone. Of course, they could not even try to win and sit around and lose 90+ games for the next three years until all of Harris's draft picks are ready, but I prefer that they try to do something.

I thought I would be able to find someone with similar numbers who did not make it, but there wasn't really anybody. The closest were Suzuki (who will make it next year), Manny Ramirez (PEDs), George VanHaltren (played mostly in 1800s).

Never mind first ballot, Stanton is not a Hall of Famer at this point. I agree with Chas that he'll need a few more good healthy years to get in and that seems unlikely given his age and injury history.

Trout is a first ballot Hall of Famer right now. The voters are more sophisticated than they were 20 years ago. They know he's one of the all-time greats. Kirby Pucket was a short career first ballot guy and he is not even close to Trout.