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  1. #41
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    California
    Quote Originally Posted by Duke79UNLV77 View Post
    So, the Dodgers dumped Puig and Kemp to clear salary room for _____???
    Kershaw extension, Ryu qualifying offer, adding Pollock, adding Kelly, and trying to add Harper (the last one didn't pan out obviously, but apparently they offered him 4y/$172 or 5y/$210). They also appeared to be deep in discussions for Kluber, but that died down after Cleveland cleared some salary elsewhere. The Dodgers have been very active at the trade deadline the last few years, so they will probably roll with what they have for now and see what needs to be addressed mid-season after the onslaught of inevitable injuries.

  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by mkirsh View Post
    As for the merits of the Nats offer, I’m not sure how deferrals work. Do they take the nominal amount and spread it out over a longer time, or is there an inflation factor built in? Without an inflationary component the NPV would be much much worse with a deferred contract.
    Scherzer's contract with the Nats includes no interest, so it's just the nominal amount spread over twice as many years as the length of the contract. As you say, much lower NPV than the nominal amount of the contract. Bonilla's contract mentioned by Tappan Zee was at 8% annual interest. I haven't seen specifics of the Nats' offer to Harper - it's been reported the deferrals went all the way out to when Harper is 60, 34 years from now. That's so much longer than Scherzer's deal, it's hard to imagine they proposed it without including interest, but who knows. As mkirsh suggests, maybe they really weren't interested, so they proposed something that sounds good on the surface if you don't know the details, so they could try and convince their fans they gave it a real shot, but knew all along that it wouldn't be taken seriously.
    Demented and sad, but social, right?

  3. #43
    https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...aign=editorial

    I've been calling for a computer to call balls and strikes for years. It's frustrating watching playoff games where the ump clearly misses important calls multiple times throughout a game, when it is so easy to fix without delaying the game.

    As an alternative to the 3-batter minimum, I've favored not allowing a team in excess of one more pitcher than the number of runs another team scores in an inning.

    I wouldn't favor banning the shift. Just have guys learn to get easy base hits the other way.

    I wouldn't favor pushing the pitching mound back, and I'm not sure why they want to increase the size of the bases.

  4. #44
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    North of Durham
    Quote Originally Posted by Duke79UNLV77 View Post
    https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...aign=editorial

    I've been calling for a computer to call balls and strikes for years. It's frustrating watching playoff games where the ump clearly misses important calls multiple times throughout a game, when it is so easy to fix without delaying the game.

    As an alternative to the 3-batter minimum, I've favored not allowing a team in excess of one more pitcher than the number of runs another team scores in an inning.

    I wouldn't favor banning the shift. Just have guys learn to get easy base hits the other way.

    I wouldn't favor pushing the pitching mound back, and I'm not sure why they want to increase the size of the bases.
    I have mixed feelings about a robo ump. More accuracy would be great but in some ways it takes away from the game. Also, how does the robo ump (or regular ump for that matter) account for players who do deep crouches to attempt to adjust the size of their strike zone?

    I generally have not been a fan of the huge emphasis on analytics, so the constant pitching changes for matchups and the shifts frustrate me. But again, I do not want to overly regulate the game. As much as I don't like the shifts, I agree that batters need to learn to hit the other way. Regulating the number of pitching changes in some way would be good, though I'm not sure of the best way to do this.

    And along these lines, I do not think there should be any change to the fundamental nature of the field.

  5. #45
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Atlanta, GA
    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyNotCrazie View Post
    I have mixed feelings about a robo ump. More accuracy would be great but in some ways it takes away from the game. Also, how does the robo ump (or regular ump for that matter) account for players who do deep crouches to attempt to adjust the size of their strike zone?

    I generally have not been a fan of the huge emphasis on analytics, so the constant pitching changes for matchups and the shifts frustrate me. But again, I do not want to overly regulate the game. As much as I don't like the shifts, I agree that batters need to learn to hit the other way. Regulating the number of pitching changes in some way would be good, though I'm not sure of the best way to do this.

    And along these lines, I do not think there should be any change to the fundamental nature of the field.
    This would probably bring me back to the baseball fold:

  6. #46
    Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'

  7. #47
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!
    No comments on Harper campaigning for Jersey boy Mike Trout to come home to Philly in a couple years? My first instinct was to think, "how can they afford him if they are already paying Harper?" but then I realized the Phillies are simply willing to take their salary up to the Dodgers/Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs kind of level. Oh well.

    Baseball has a real salary problem. This is nothing new, but when we have teams that are willing to spend more than $200 mil competing with teams who are only willing to spend $60 mil, it really hampers the competitive nature of the game. No other sport operates that way. Football teams all spend about the same amount and basketball teams that spend less only do so as they tank for draft picks before picking up spending in a big way as they get to be more competitive. In baseball, there are many franchises that simply have no prayer of being good other than catching lightning in a bottle with young studs for a year or two.

    The Phillies are willing to spend $200 mil per season. The Braves are only willing to spend $110 mil per season (and the Braves were only 20th in the sport in terms of spending). How can these situations be competitive?

    -Jason "pitching changes, balls/strikes, and all that other stuff is one problem... but the anti-competitive nature of payrolls is a far bigger issue, I think" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  8. #48
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh
    Quote Originally Posted by MChambers View Post
    Somebody wrote that there are children not yet born who will throw batteries during the life of this contract.
    And, never forget this group of hooligans:

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/p...2bO/story.html

    "As Hochman put it: “The fans pelted Santa Claus with snowballs, because the 1968 Eagles stank like the sewers of Manayunk” — hey wait, that’s my old neighborhood — “because an incompetent coach named Joe Kuharich, who couldn’t win at Notre Dame, had been given a 15-year contract by the owner, Jerry Wolman. . . . The fans pelted Santa Claus with snowballs because they would have needed a bazooka to reach the owner’s box.”
    [redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.

  9. #49
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    About 150 feet in front of the Duke Chapel doors.
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    No comments on Harper campaigning for Jersey boy Mike Trout to come home to Philly in a couple years? My first instinct was to think, "how can they afford him if they are already paying Harper?" but then I realized the Phillies are simply willing to take their salary up to the Dodgers/Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs kind of level. Oh well.

    Baseball has a real salary problem. This is nothing new, but when we have teams that are willing to spend more than $200 mil competing with teams who are only willing to spend $60 mil, it really hampers the competitive nature of the game. No other sport operates that way. Football teams all spend about the same amount and basketball teams that spend less only do so as they tank for draft picks before picking up spending in a big way as they get to be more competitive. In baseball, there are many franchises that simply have no prayer of being good other than catching lightning in a bottle with young studs for a year or two.

    The Phillies are willing to spend $200 mil per season. The Braves are only willing to spend $110 mil per season (and the Braves were only 20th in the sport in terms of spending). How can these situations be competitive?

    -Jason "pitching changes, balls/strikes, and all that other stuff is one problem... but the anti-competitive nature of payrolls is a far bigger issue, I think" Evans
    I suspect that there's another looming revenue problem that may cause labor strife - the shift towards prioritizing younger talent and avoiding long, expensive contracts to veterans. That pattern means that the players, collectively, are getting a smaller share of MLB's revenue. Previously, rookies faced a future where they were locked in with one team for six+ years and only eligible for arbitration after three, but they could count on a big contract at that point and possibly an even bigger one after that if they had the talent and luck to have a 15+ year career. Now those 30-32 year olds looking for the big contract to carry them into retirement 8-10 years later aren't getting it, or aren't getting as much. I expect the MLBPA to react by pushing for earlier free agency and/or more aggressive arbitration. Players will demand more money earlier, since they will be unable to count on big money later.
    JBDuke

    Andre Dawkins: “People ask me if I can still shoot, and I ask them if they can still breathe. That’s kind of the same thing.”

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    No comments on Harper campaigning for Jersey boy Mike Trout to come home to Philly in a couple years? My first instinct was to think, "how can they afford him if they are already paying Harper?" but then I realized the Phillies are simply willing to take their salary up to the Dodgers/Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs kind of level. Oh well.

    Baseball has a real salary problem. This is nothing new, but when we have teams that are willing to spend more than $200 mil competing with teams who are only willing to spend $60 mil, it really hampers the competitive nature of the game. No other sport operates that way. Football teams all spend about the same amount and basketball teams that spend less only do so as they tank for draft picks before picking up spending in a big way as they get to be more competitive. In baseball, there are many franchises that simply have no prayer of being good other than catching lightning in a bottle with young studs for a year or two.

    The Phillies are willing to spend $200 mil per season. The Braves are only willing to spend $110 mil per season (and the Braves were only 20th in the sport in terms of spending). How can these situations be competitive?

    -Jason "pitching changes, balls/strikes, and all that other stuff is one problem... but the anti-competitive nature of payrolls is a far bigger issue, I think" Evans
    Well, my team hasn’t been able to buy a championship for 31 years, and it’s not for a lack of trying, so ...

  11. #51
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    No comments on Harper campaigning for Jersey boy Mike Trout to come home to Philly in a couple years? My first instinct was to think, "how can they afford him if they are already paying Harper?" but then I realized the Phillies are simply willing to take their salary up to the Dodgers/Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs kind of level. Oh well.

    Baseball has a real salary problem. This is nothing new, but when we have teams that are willing to spend more than $200 mil competing with teams who are only willing to spend $60 mil, it really hampers the competitive nature of the game. No other sport operates that way. Football teams all spend about the same amount and basketball teams that spend less only do so as they tank for draft picks before picking up spending in a big way as they get to be more competitive. In baseball, there are many franchises that simply have no prayer of being good other than catching lightning in a bottle with young studs for a year or two.

    The Phillies are willing to spend $200 mil per season. The Braves are only willing to spend $110 mil per season (and the Braves were only 20th in the sport in terms of spending). How can these situations be competitive?

    -Jason "pitching changes, balls/strikes, and all that other stuff is one problem... but the anti-competitive nature of payrolls is a far bigger issue, I think" Evans
    Baseball, of course, have always had the "haves and have-nots." It's the oldest professional sport in the US of A and there was no thought to leveling pay scales. And, of course, under the "reserve rule," you could keep a player forever.

    What prevents moves in this direction now -- and Jason knows more about TV than I ever will -- is that the home radio-TV contracts are huge and differ enormously from market to market and team to team. The current ownership paid for their franchises based in part on these revenue streams.

    Pro football grew up with small revenues, although a few teams had their own TV contracts -- we watched the woeful Redskins in the 1950's in South Carolina. As it turns out, the first national pro football TV contract was the AFL -- and they shared revenues equally. That was da bomb that broke the local TV monopoly. Pete Rozelle, the new NFL commission, worked hard to get TV for all teams and even got a bill passed by Congress in 1961 to help in doing so. Anyway, sharing a huge stream of TV revenue is the perfect lure to set meaningful salary caps.

    Back to baseball. The horror stories I remember was the "ownership tango" that went on from the '50s through the early '70s. This was the era of the 70 percent marginal income tax. Owners were using baseball franchises as tax shelters. They would buy a team, capitalize the purchase price (fair) and then define the purchase as player contracts, depreciating the capital value over the fairly short term of the player contracts. After 4-5 years the tax break had disappeared and the franchise got flipped. This is the scenario under which Hubert Humphrey's friend Bob Short and campaign treasurer bought the second-generation Washington Senators and, when revenues slipped, moved them to Texas for the 1972 season, leaving Washington without a ML team for 34 years (who's counting?).
    Sage Grouse

    ---------------------------------------
    'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013

  12. #52
    Pretty big rule changes coming - minor stuff this year, other than eliminating August trades, but next year:

    3-batter minimum (or reaching the end of the inning) for pitchers, other than for injury

    Maximum number of pitchers on the roster (actual number to be determined), with every player designated as a pitcher or position player as of their first day on the roster, not to be changed during the season. Non-pitchers can only pitch after the 9th inning or if you're winning or losing by at least 6 runs. (Also two-way players, but it sounds like they have to start as a pitcher until they have 20 innings pitched and 20 games started as a position player with 3 plate appearances, so you'd need them to pitch regularly for awhile before they qualified. Ohtani wouldn't have qualified last year until mid-May).

    Roster limit is increased to 26

    40 man roster limit in September is eliminated, and teams must carry 28 active players
    Demented and sad, but social, right?

  13. #53
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    No comments on Harper campaigning for Jersey boy Mike Trout to come home to Philly in a couple years?
    Maybe I spoke too soon. According to the twitter world, the Angels are about to sign Harper to a 12 year extension by giving him the New York Islanders.

    Wait, I may be wrong about that. They signed him to a 12 year deal worth $430 million... but seeing as that is what the Islanders are worth, what is the difference?

    -Jason "alternately, they could have just given Trout a 25% ownership stake in the team and paid him nothing... I wonder how he would have reacted to that offer?" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  14. #54
    The low level of minor league pay has been discussed on this board in the past. It's not quite Troutian levels, but the Blue Jays are increasing salaries throughout their minor leagues about 50% (depending on the level). Still not exactly big time wages, but it's a start.

    https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2019/03/17...by-50-percent/
    Demented and sad, but social, right?

  15. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by Blue in the Face View Post
    Pretty big rule changes coming - minor stuff this year, other than eliminating August trades, but next year:

    3-batter minimum (or reaching the end of the inning) for pitchers, other than for injury

    Maximum number of pitchers on the roster (actual number to be determined), with every player designated as a pitcher or position player as of their first day on the roster, not to be changed during the season. Non-pitchers can only pitch after the 9th inning or if you're winning or losing by at least 6 runs. (Also two-way players, but it sounds like they have to start as a pitcher until they have 20 innings pitched and 20 games started as a position player with 3 plate appearances, so you'd need them to pitch regularly for awhile before they qualified. Ohtani wouldn't have qualified last year until mid-May).

    Roster limit is increased to 26

    40 man roster limit in September is eliminated, and teams must carry 28 active players
    Just saw this as I came back to thinking about baseball after the long winter. And wow do I hate these proposed rules. No opinion on the last one, I guess, at this point, and I don't really care about the third one. But the first two are abominable.

    The first is a totally contrived overreaction to natural pendulum changes in the way the game's played. If we're concerned about the waste of time attached to switching pitchers every batter late in games, just eliminate on field warmup pitches, and don't allow the manager to stride out there and talk strategy during a commercial break. Any pitching change not completed in 40 seconds is an automatic ball or something.

    You can cover tactics on the bullpen phone, and if you haven't had time to get your reliever sufficient warmup, then don't bring him in. If the players start griping about warming up too many times without being brought into the game, that will eventually incentivize managers not to get them up unless they're serious about bringing them in. It will also give lie to the idea that these guys are so freaking fragile they need 8 minutes of short toss and 25 pitches off a mound to be ready to come into a game and pitch to live batters.

    And the second is (a) legislating Shohei Ohtani out of the game, and (b) completely unnecessary given the small variance in roster makeup throughout the league already. If some team's dumb enough, or crazy enough, to try to go with 10 position players and 16 pitchers, why shouldn't we let them? If they think they can take a reliever and get by with him in left field in a pinch, or believe their third baseman can act as a serviceable backup catcher, why do we have to stop them? If we really want to limit pitching changes and discourage short appearance pitcher use (and guys who are on a major league roster all season but only compiling 42 1/3 innings pitched or something), just reduce the roster size, not increase it.

    ....

    Separate topic, but did anyone watch the Ichiro leave his final game in Japan? Pretty good goosebump moment for baseball in March!

  16. #56
    Agree that the 3 batter minimum is ridiculous.

    What's the deal with the hard infield shift? Is forbidding that still on the table? Seems like tinkering with the actual mechanics of the game.
    Nothing incites bodily violence quicker than a Duke fan turning in your direction and saying 'scoreboard.'

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by Mal View Post
    Just saw this as I came back to thinking about baseball after the long winter. And wow do I hate these proposed rules.
    To clarify, these are not proposed, they're approved changes. (Other than the final determination of the maximum number of pitchers on the active roster).
    Demented and sad, but social, right?

  18. #58
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    St. Louis
    Quote Originally Posted by CrazyNotCrazie View Post
    I have mixed feelings about a robo ump. More accuracy would be great but in some ways it takes away from the game. Also, how does the robo ump (or regular ump for that matter) account for players who do deep crouches to attempt to adjust the size of their strike zone?

    I generally have not been a fan of the huge emphasis on analytics, so the constant pitching changes for matchups and the shifts frustrate me. But again, I do not want to overly regulate the game. As much as I don't like the shifts, I agree that batters need to learn to hit the other way. Regulating the number of pitching changes in some way would be good, though I'm not sure of the best way to do this.

    And along these lines, I do not think there should be any change to the fundamental nature of the field.
    In theory, the crouch itself shouldn't alter the strike zone, which is defined thus:

    The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of
    which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the
    hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from
    the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball.

    So it's defined as the batter's stance as he is prepared to swing. If you're in a big crouch (like Pete Rose used to do) but rise up as you are preparing to hit the ball, the strike zone is defined as the point you have risen to.

    I realize that this doesn't answer the how-does-the-robot-handle-it question, but I think there is a misconception about this generally. Also, I seem to recall that the rule used to refer to the batter's "normal stance" or some such, to get at the same issue.

  19. #59
    Quote Originally Posted by rasputin View Post
    ...

    The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of
    which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants ...
    Shouldn't all players therefore wear their pants really low to lower the top line/reduce the zone?

  20. #60
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh
    Quote Originally Posted by Reilly View Post
    Shouldn't all players therefore wear their pants really low to lower the top line/reduce the zone?
    Please, just say no...

    s-l300.jpg
    [redacted] them and the horses they rode in on.

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