wrathofhahn

Calls are starting to come in to boycott MLB baseball. From Trump. To radio sports personalities. To politicians. https://www.newsweek.com/mlb-boycott-calls-grow-after-donald-trump-hits-out-over-all-star-game-1580840 For me I have no interest in baseball or giving any money to support the direction Manfred has taken MLB. Since the season has started I haven't watched a single game and it will be interesting to see what the numbers are for baseball since their fans tend to skew older and conservative. Going to war with the majority of your fanbase doesn't seem to be overly well thought out but we will see. You need ID to pick up your tickets. ID to receive the credit card to purchase the tickets. ID to purchase beer at the stadium. You need ID to get to the stadium in the form of a drivers license. The MLB has also came out in support of a vaccine card for attending games which you guess it is more ID (https://www.mlb.com/yankees/ballpark/health-and-safety/testing-requirements-faq) ID for voting? That is where they draw the line apparehently well they have theirs and I have mine. I'll won't be purchasing the MLB package and going to any games until they decide their business is baseball/sports instead of politics.

Not signing a DH is easily the biggest mistake of the off-season they aren't expensive and we literally were dead last in the AL All our eggs seem to be in Vaughn being able to step in day 1

You mean the 2.3 fWAR? And yes the nationals ballpark is one of the hardest to play defense and he can't cover the same ground as he used to. If he can put up a similar level of offense with even mediocre defense he'll be a bargain

Bottom line is we can find a quality DH at a very low figure so the waste of resources is malarky. Yermin was 27 last year and didn't get a shot and we had one of the worst DH situations in the league. Vaughn and Yermin are insurance if Schwarber or whomever we bring in either gets injured or isn't up to the job. Vaughn hasn't hit above A ball pencilling him at DH seems a bit nuts to me especially when the rest of the team is built to win now. People need to get over this mad scientist stuff we went through when we were rebuilding. We aren't in a position to put the season at risk for unproven players

Great move. Also lets not read too much into 40 games. He'll likely bounce back this year and is a massive upgrade at RF. Now we just have to find ourselves a DH and the lineup is pretty much set

I'd take him if he willing to backup and insurance against Madrigal but he will get a better offer elsewhere. Besides we still need to figure out our pitching and LF/DH.

Hed be useful as an extra infielder but down year notwithstanding he is gonna get starting offers. So zero interest

If he is playing well we keep Vaughn in the minor leagues to develop. It's a win win. I'd rather be in a position of keeping Vaughn longer then necessary in the minor leagues preserving extra service time then in a position where Vaughn struggles at the MLB level and not have another option at DH which is where we were last year with EE. Vaughn has yet to face any pitching above A ball. I know everyone is excited and I am to an extent too but lets see him face AA and AAA pitching first before anointing him ready to play at the MLB level next year.

I mean he was just non-tendered. He will likely be limited to AL clubs and maybe a handful of offers of those clubs who need a DH. We can offer him consistent playing time to start the year in a hitters friendly park and if he plays well we keep Vaughn in the minors. He may get a better offer then that I dunno but if it isn't acceptable move on to the next guy there will be other options

Do they? He played high A ball last year why are we so sure they plan on plugging him day 1 or in two weeks? I am not. Schwarber is likely gonna get a one year deal I am fine with giving Vaughn another year at AA and AAA you still have the option of calling him up if he is playing well and/or Schwarber struggles. What is clear is our internal options prior to Vaughn suck and we are about to lose our best DH last year which comically was our backup catcher. Fangraphs had our OPS collectively last year as .570 at the DH position

Eloy is being paid to play the field. I honestly don't know if he can be a fulltime LF that is on the coaching staff and FO if not then he probably shouldn't have been given that extension and if he can't then the conversation becomes finding a LF versus finding a DH. Moving Eloy doesn't solve our issue just create a new one and a good defensive LF who can hit will be many times more expensive then what Schwarber will be to DH. So we need to sort of figure that out and not waste money that could be spent elsewhere. I hope you are wrong Eloy is still 24 he can improve his defense we will see the other issue beyond how much we paid him is how he and his agent feels about it. Sure he is signed for 6 years but only 4 of that is guarnteed

Not to mention there will be whitesox players who are going to be arrested for DUI whether it be mary jane or another substance like alcohol. It's going to happen at some point heck it likely already has but just hasn't been reported on and if you look at other sports like the NFL where the media does a better job of tracking arrests it's the most common arrest or citation. I'd rather not be a position of having to explain why TLR DUI is somehow different then theirs but hey that is just me.

That doesn't make sense and if they traded for him they still could have worked out an extension if they wanted only with much more leverage.

Okay but he would have been traded then He at best will lget a similar offer

If memory serves didn't his knees get busted?

WAR is a misunderstood stat and is often used incorrectly by people who don't understand roster construction. Like our DH was the worst in the AL last year. The Blue Jays as an example created 55 runs (wRC) with their DH's (.816 OPS slightly lower then Schwabber splits). We created 14. For those against bringing in someone like Schwabber show me another position on the club where we can improve our wRC by 41 for 5.5M. If Eloy needs to be moved later to DH why are we pretending Schwabber would prevent that? He just was non-tendered why would anyone believe that he is somehow going to paid both in term and in money in a way that would block Eloy? Also Eloy is making serious money so lets make sure that he can't play the field before he moves to a fulltime DH.

TLR loves grinders unfortunately his SO numbers tell a different story

I am not defending TLR the person I am defending him against bullshit narratives concocted by people who clearly have an axe to grind for reasons they refuse to admit publicly. I for the record didn't want him hired either but he is here and I have moved on and so should everyone else.

Strongly disagree DH is one of the easiest and cheapest way to get offense onto your ballclub. The issue isn't bringing in a DH it's who we've brought into DH. To give an example say you have a SS who has a .730 OPS with ok defense you maybe have to pay them 5-7M. To bring in a SS like for example machado who will hit .820-.850 with ok defense you are looking at 30M. Our DH according to fangraphs hit .570 OPS last year. Lets say it was only .730 well to bump that up to what Schwarber 3 year split was .825 and he got nontendered at a 5M proj arb figure. It's lunacy to not have a good hitter at DH. You are sacrificing so much value that has to be made up elsewhere for much more of a premium. So no I don't want them to bring a scrub at DH. Next to pitching it's probably our number one need.

He'd DH

And keep making up shit to fuel your one man crusade. For the record I didn't want TLR hired either but it's pathetic to watch certain posters try to smear with him as a racist mainly because they don't like his politics and it's important to note for the context of the story Henderson and stewart directly refuted his comments. He also for the record had runs in with plenty of white players including Rolen, Ludwick, Kline, JD Drew, Rasmus, Reyes and Edmonds over benchings and playing time.

It must be nice to think you know everything when you really know nothing. I don't know if Gant "really meant" his apology or if he truly felt TLR difficulties with him were the result of racism. I just know what both said publicly and if this spat is your best evidence of racism in his 41 years as a manager and 12 years as a player then it shows you aren't a serious person.

He also apologized later. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gant-surrenders-in-war-of-words/ The reaching for a narrative by some members of this board is embarrassing.

That is one of the major issues but for me the issue that trumps that is culture. The game is different. He was known as a hard ass even the era he coached/managed in. His non-analytical approach to lineups is going to raise eyebrows as well as his focus on contact and old school managing. Sure he was a great manager but that was for that time it's a different era. It's also an open question how he handles the 162 game grind. I just don't see the fit he's a name but a name in the same way Phil Jackson was hired for the Knicks and I suspect he will fail for many of the same reasons

It's literally defamatory. I hope he takes this site to court the mods are completely out of control they are supposed to moderating garbage like this not posting it. I'll take it a step further there has been no evidence upto this point he is racist none. Not allowing showboating and holding players to a certain standard is not racist. Wanting Americans to respect the flag and anthem isn't racist. In fact he has been extremely hard on players like Rasmus shows he doesn't have two standards. You may disagree with his politics as does the mod but you don't get to smear someone as racist for it. He's been in the game for decades if he was legitimately racist it would have came out by now.