chasfh

When my wife and I took our civil rights trail/blues trail driving trip through the south a few years ago, I tried to find the Viola Liuzzo memorial marker along Alabama highway 8. Unsurprisingly, it's poorly marked and very difficult to find.

You will call me crazy, but I took a small chunk of savings and dipped it into a five-year CD paying 4.01%, which is that number I long felt would be the tipping point I'd need to go into them again. Also, the way I figure it, with with deflationary forces looming on the horizon, it's not a super risky move, and if by some chance CD rates shoot up to 6% or 8% or 10% or something like that, I can put another chunk of savings into that. I mean, where else am I gonna keep it? The bank paying 2-and-change?

Glad I got my nine-sixes when I did.

I with you on this. I wouldn't say it's impossible that he would ever spend big like leading teams do, but I also don't understand the position stipulating that since there's no evidence that he won't or wouldn't spend, that must mean he will spend, or probably will spend. Until he shows and proves, I'm not assuming that at all.

I would bet the payroll will be right around what it was last year, maybe a touch more to cover Jeimer's seven Ms. I don't see them doing much more than one-year placeholder deals, perhaps even a two-year for a starter like Andrew Heaney, someone who can control the strike zone even though we'd be taking a chance on his health.

I think you will get your wish in that Miggy will either be talked into stepping away with the money, which I think is a real long shot, or be spending the majority of the year on one of the ILs, I'm thinking probably the 60. I suppose another option is that he clocks in with another 400 or 450 plate appearances, but I think that's also a long shot.

I suppose it's a distinct possibility that Baby Doc is looking for a Tampa Bay situation: get to the playoffs, even World Series, on a regular basis without having to spend to acquire or keep players, for the personal purpose of establishing respectability as a baseball tycoon, which you can't achieve if you're averaging literally 98 losses a year. My time is starting to run out, and I have only so many reboots left to live through. Since there are no signs Baby Doc is gonna sell, I'm left to root for the idea that's wrong and he is gonna spend when the time comes.

Here's my prediction from the beginning of the thread, which I still stand by: I believe Drew Hutchison and Ali Sanchez are the only guys in this list already decided upon, and so far, I'm 1-for-2. Otherwise, do you agree with any of this?

This does not worry me in the least.

Some folks insist that the problem had to have been with the players (Jeimer, Schoop, et al.) because they hit decently in 2021 and collapsed in 2022, and we had Scott Coolbaugh here for both. To your point, a player doesn't need the hitting coach to step in and fix things when he's hitting well. The player needs the hitting coach to step in and help him when he's struggling. Apparently, Scott Coolbaugh was a fine hitting coach when he didn't have to actually coach.

Care to take another crack at this one? 😉

Granting your characterization of the up and down nature of his performance, even given that, Jeimer would have placed fourth among regular third baseman in wRC+ in 2020, and did place ninth among regular third basemen in 2021. I’m not yet willing to look at his ups and downs and say, his ups are only mirages and he’s only real when he’s down. Seems like wishful thinking to me. That a hitter is not worth keeping because he sometimes has down periods strikes me as setting the bar too high.

I guess I’m just not so willing to conclude that all these players we have on the roster are simply done done at young ages one year after they have good seasons. Jeimer done done at 28? Schoop done done at 30? Perhaps even Javy done done at 29? All of them, each one, unfixable? I’m just not there on these guys yet. A whole year is a long time to see them suck and it’s easy to conclude the worst. I guess I just need to see at least one more year from them to get on that bandwagon. Especially since they all had seasons as good as or better than Austin Meadows did in 2021 and no one here is writing him off. I think any or all of them could recover and have as good a year in 2023 that they had in 2021. Maybe Scott Harris doesn’t agree and he’s gonna let some or all of them all go, but for any of them he’s gives another chance to, I’m in for the ride.

I’m not so sure we need to fix shortstop. I think if things break better than average, Baez is within shouting distance of four wins, and if we can fix Schoop’s bat to where he’s within 90% wins of where he just was, he could maybe hit three wins. Not a prediction or guarantee but I do think it’s well within the scope of probability.

Nope. I’m out of that game for good. 😁

I subscribe to Pod Save America and the first one to three minutes are chocked with ads, so I set up my Overcast app to start already one minute into it. Then I may have to hit the 30--> button anywhere from one to four times to get to the midi tune intro.

And in some cases, if the service you use is paid for by you, you are both the customer and the product.

Is it because you were operating under the guise of mailing a check to Donald Trump? Slick ...

Shit, man, you’re gonna do that, might as well move them to London already …

MLB media retrogrades crowing how this game constitutes proof positive that baseball definitely doesn’t need ABS. 🙄 That said: I’m pretty sure they’re going to table full ABS in favor of a challenge system, which ain’t so bad in the clips I’ve seen of it at work.

Yeah, that why the slider time bars are so handy. If I had to press the 30 circle over and over, or worse, a 15 circle, that would be first-world tragic.

That’s kinda what I was thinking: we have not heard the last of Bolsinaro.

We civilians can learn all about that and more: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/tiktok-boom/

Cool. Please understand that your unqualified response drew a reasonable question on my part that you might have mistakenly concluded that I thought smobserved.com could be right and the cops wrong, enough that I felt I needed to clarify for you to disabuse you of that idea, if you had it. But you’ve confirmed that you understood my post, so we’re all good.

You may have misunderstood what I wrote. At no point did I suggest that smobserved.com was right. I never thought that for a second. I actually said they could both be wrong and both intentionally.