Look at Ray Ray Run

In a division as tight as the Central, 1 WAR could easily be the difference between a playoff spot.

People seriously underrating getting a late start. It has harmed pitchers repeatedly over the past many years. Late starts can derail seasons for a pitcher.

He is going to miss all of ST. this is one of those things that can just destroy a season. Getting an 8 week late start, and never finding your comfort or strength until the season nears a close. This is a huge loss for the Indians.

Yeah, and I hate making these things political in nature because they don't feel political to me. I am a former conservative - who still leans that way financially but I lean that way based on historical conservatism which I don't feel exists today the same way it did 20 years ago - who now is a moderate who has voted D more often of late. I don't really think there are a lot of politicians on either side of the aisle that care about you and me, sadly. Same to you; have a great time with the family this weekend - and the wife - and go Sox. The greatness of athletics is it brings people together from all walks of life based on a common bond that helps you to understand that we're not all that different - the messaging we have received just varies. The key to advancement is moving outside of your bubble and being open to changing our minds or beliefs when presented with reasonable discourse. We may not agree, but we can at least understand the position without anger and hostility. Decency still exists, despite the narrative that it is fleeting.

I was thinking he hurt himself chasing down Jose Altuve.

I just wanted to say, the discussion Lane and I had via PM's after this conversation was not only cordial, but it gives me hope for a lot of people. Messaging is huge in these discussions; lane isn't a bad person just because he feels the way he feels. In fact, due to the messaging given to those who disagree with many I understand completely why lane feels the way he does. The fact that he was not only willing to listen to my point, but even agree with my angle despite disagreeing with the premise prior to our discussion is why I love these conversations. The key to life isn't telling those who don't see things the way you do that they are idiots; the key is informing them that just because they benefited from things does not mean they didn't earn them through hard work; the point I made is that everyone should just have that same opportunity and sadly they still do not. Lane, great conversation and I really appreciated your thoughts and feelings on all of this. I understand the frustration of thinking people were saying you were handed something because you were white, or because of your parents, when you know you worked really hard to get where you are. I told lane about experiences I have witnessed my wife have - who is a native Colombian - and how it breaks my heart to see her judged for her accent, culture and etc. My wife is a brilliant woman - with an engineering degree - but she doesn't always get the same opportunities that I may get because of her cultural background. All I ask is for everyone to be on an even playing field, and for the fortunate ones among us to understand that not everyone had loving parents... or parents that could be home because they may have had to work two jobs to support their families. At the end of the day, we're all human beings, and we're frequently a product of our environments. I am hopeful we can get to a place where all kids feel supported and an equal opportunity to succeed; a place in which the environment for all is one of opportunity and not survival. Crime is higher in low income neighborhoods not because they are evil people, but because desperation breeds a survival instinct in humans and people do whatever they have to when survival is involved. I don't judge those from backgrounds that I can't understand, but if we support each other we can build up the bottom which greatly benefits the middle and the top. Good discussion all around, and I am immensely grateful for the cordial nature of this discussion. It shows me that we are all still capable of respectful conversation. Have a great weekend, fellas.

Big blow to the Cleveland #Indians: Ace Mike Clevinger was diagnosed with a partial tear of his left medial meniscus and will undergo arthroscopic surgery today. He will miss the start of the season.

This is just flat out wrong, but you're right; I'm not going to get into it with you any further after this. Insurance companies have driven up the cost of healthcare, not the other way around. They have also greatly driven up the costs of pharmaceuticals. Insurance companies make money hand over foot - this is a stone cold fact. They distribute some of those profits to the health care industry, so they don't give a damn about minimizing costs. This is exactly why I can pay the hospital in cash about 20% what the insurance company will pay them for the same service. It is a broken system and arguing otherwise is solely tied to your career in the industry that has become incredibly lucrative. Health care should not be capitalist driven system as it should be a basic human right. Doctors are still compensated plenty well in countries that have universal health care. And all driving up costs has done is forced the average joe to pay for services for people who can't afford it, while the insurance companies and health care industry profits. No one should go bankrupt because they got cancer or their children get sick and it's disturbing that anyone excuses that happening. Greece and etc went broke far for more reasons than you are insinuating too; as did Ireland. Their bailouts were not caused by the health card industry, they were caused by poor government management in all departments. Greece is subprime and it's not because of healthcare. The health and well being of a human being is never "too costly" and it's absurd to imply otherwise. There should be no price on the life of a human being.

This is pretty cool. I actually modeled a scoring system for the league I cited above - and the old geezers didn't want to change it - that I thought paired directly with the overall value of a player. Meaning the top players from both the position players and pitchers shared nearly identical points and it paired really well with offensive WAR and pitching WAR based on weighted categories and points. I'll try and dig it up; although I think Chisox prefers categories which is fine with me as well. As I said, the only thing I really love about the points system is the fantasy football type feel to the scoring that makes watching your guys more enjoyable than getting 1 win with a good ERA and some K's. If a pitcher throws a CGSO with 10k's, that should have a huge impact on your week because it's not a common occurrence . I even had perfect game and not hitter bonuses (5 points and 10 points bonus respectively). 3 homer bonuses; cycle bonuses and etc. From that angle, it was fun to root for big time performances from players. It was a bit gimmicky at times, but it's fun. I have found that 8 points for a save and -5 for a BS with -5 for a loss helped top of the line closers score with top of the line pitchers.

Miguel Sano was on there though. So it had that going for it.

And I have one good buddy from that league that is 100% interested in this league if we need to fill additional spots. More people from the forum the better though.

It's a weekly head to head matchup. So my team would play yours. My team scores 300 and you score 280 and I'm 1-0 and you're 0-1. Scores reset the next week, you set your rosters on monday before first game, and watch your guys to to work. Given the value of 2 step pitchers (guys throwing twice in a week) you see a lot of matchups coming down to sunday starts. As weird as it sounds, in this structure the people who know the league and matchups excel more. A 7 game bat who rakes against lefties and has 3 starter lefties projected against him may be more valuable than a 5 game star with lesser matchups. It makes you look at weeks at a time. Sitting a stud arm who throws a CGSO for a middling arm with 2 starts who flames out is always good fun. As I said, I am good with whatever you decide. It was just a concept that I find entertaining from a forum/interaction standpoint and the trading is a big part of the league because you're trading for matchups to outscore your opponents matchups, and you may have to give up more than youd like. If its daily, I'm good with that. Just want to assure that there are move limits and game/ip limits to limit volume players.

The benefit of the above is that rosters tend to be more set - people aren't playing the D2D match-ups as well which I like. Match-ups need to be assessed a week before. Another benefit is the scoring is up and down. You can go into a Sunday trailing by 100 and a big sunday wins you the week. This makes Sundays kind of like NFL Sunday. It's a really entertaining way of playing, but does take some getting used to. Also, because it's a H2H, you could have the most points and still miss the playoffs. We pay the top points team $1000 and then distribute the rest based on playoffs. One of the downsides is if someone gets hurt on Monday, they're in your lineup all week. That's just the luck of the draw to me though.

To describe how points leagues work, everything is assigned a value. Below is an example scoring - I use this in my long-time keeper league. Similar buy-in $500. This league is slanted towards pitching value as you can see below - position players have caught up recently though. This isn't the scoring system I'd say we use, but this is the jist of it. So a good week would be your team scoring 300 points. You only change your roster at the beginning of the week - so decisions like "Should I start Sale with 1 start or Reylo with 2 starts vs bad team" this week always happen. In my opinion, we give far too much for wins and losses and not enough for quality starts and etc in this league, but I've been doing it for 10 years so I have adjusted to that. In general the benefit of this system is it has a fantasy football type feel - when you're starter pitches, for example, he can get you 50ish points with a CGSO which can be 1/6 of your weekly total. So you end up watching your players a lot more because their AB's and starts are huge points. SCORING SYSTEM BATTING NAME SETTINGS 1B Singles 1 point 2B Doubles 2 points 3B Triples 3 points BB Walks (Batters) 1 point CS Caught Stealing -1 point HP Hit by Pitch 1 point HR Home Runs 4 points KO Strikeouts (Batter) -1 point R Runs 1 point RBI Runs Batted In 1 point SB Stolen Bases 2 points PITCHING NAME SETTINGS BBI Walks Issued (Pitchers) -1 point BS Blown Saves -5 points ER Earned Runs -1 point HA Hits Allowed -1 point HB Hit Batsmen -1 point INN Innings 2.5 points K Strikeouts (Pitcher) 1 point L Losses -5 points S Saves 8 points SO Shutouts 10 points W Wins 10 points

I'm a pretty big fan of weekly points leagues - because there's a lot of strategy around pitching and games played - but I am happy with whatever format is agreed upon. I will say I find points leagues in baseball - on a weekly basis - to be a ton of fun from a competitive and trash talking angle and it also greatly increases the amount of trades as teams trade to win a week by giving up assets for pitchers who may be starting twice and etc. I'm always up for added another unique league though. I am good with anything between 300-500. I think we might have more luck towards the lower end of the spectrum. If this is a good group of guys, and people feel like they could commit, we could consider a partial keeper format (3-5 keeps, based on round drafted with a 3 round reduction each additional year kept). I would also have 1 person interested in joining if we come up short.

It didn't help though... even though I never said it didn't help. Let's move on. I shouldn't be held accountable because I didn't actually play the game. Imagine the CEO of Wells Fargo saying he didn't personally register countless unapproved credit cards and accounts while he was in charge, it was the people who worked for him, so why should he be held accountable?

While I agree with your premise, it is really really difficult to ignore the strike out rate declines in their best hitters. The team had significant turnover, so using the raw K numbers between 2016 and 2017 does no good, but looking at the individuals who still remained we saw a lot of unprecedented K-rate declines that haven't been matched by 99% of other players as they improved in that area.

I can't emphasize this enough, but Manfred works for the owners. Manfred had no power to punish the players, and he wasn't going to turn around and invoke all those penalties on the people he represents. His job was to protect them, and he did everything in his power to blame those whom he did not represent (Beltran, Cora and other players and coaches). Manfred's job was not to expose the truth, it was to manage the PR disaster to the best of his abilities while handing down some perceived punishment that he could push out as being "the harshest of it's kind" via his MLB PR reporter mouthpieces. Manfred does not care about cleaning up the game and maintaining a sense of integrity; he cares about the public perception his owners receive from the backlash. This is why no one will even deny the buzzer thing; everyone using the catch phrase "not that I know of" which gives them plausible deniability (claiming they didn't personally due it) while not accusing any of their teammates of wrong doing. The fact that no one will release a hard denial might as well be as good of an indicator that it happened as anything else.

Jim Crane: "I don't think I should be held accountable." LOL; yeah, I run this organization but why the heck should I be accountable for what my team did!

"Our opinion is that this didn't impact the game." - Jim Crane "I didn't say it didn't impact the game." - Jim Crane 55 seconds later

Those who remain silent in the face of tyranny, in the name of conflict avoidance, are complicit in the further deterioration of individual liberties. Our problem isn't political, it is conversational; address the point, address the fact, and support the freedom and opportunities for all - do not demean those who don't agree or belittle those who believe differently; educate those with evidence and support. While all minds will not be changed in one day, the advancements of one man at a time has an impact on growth and development to which many can't fathom. I digress, but I just want to point out these aren't political discussions. These are discussions of compassion and support for those who may not have had as privileged and lucky of an upbringing as I. I personally did not cause the success of my mother and father, and the benefits I received from said success was luck - not choice - and therefore I will always be compassionate of those who were not born with such luck. I have love for all people, even those who may not see the world through the same lens as myself. If we cannot have sensible discussions, what do we really have left? I just wanted to point out that nothing about what I said was political. Politics are policy based; politics shall not be based on degrees of human decency and should have zero impact on the rights of equality and opportunity for all citizens.

Lol the usa spends more on defense than the next 8 highest spenders in the world combined. Yet it shares zero borders with hostiles, and has not used the military to protect itself/its peoples safety and lifestyle in 80 years.... if you want to pretend the cold war mattered then 40ish years. If you dont like helping out fellow Americans, you are welcome to relocate to one of many South American countries that allow the wealthy to live a life free of taxes benefiting the poor in gated communities away from societies less fortunate.

Obama killed more people with drone strikes than any President in history. Not sure what that has to do with trump. Drone strikes are heinous, I'm not sure why that's political to you. Foaming at the mouth for pointing out 15% of our tax contributions go to wars that benefit us (the average american) nada? There is no genuine response, sorry. I also didnt attack you personally or get upset so cool story. If you want to make this political, enjoy.

Also, your individualism is very convenient. You have no issues paying for roads you'll never use, bridges you'll never cross, research you'll never benefit from, education your children will never receive, teachers who will never lead your children, military technology that will never save you, and on and on. Your issues arise when another man personally benefits from your tax dollar. That's not individualism.

So again, you have zero problem spending endless money on the military machine... or on corporate bail outs (which took, at the time, a significantly higher percentage of your tax dollars)... I imagine you had no problem with the farmer bailouts either. But, heaven forbid some of your tax dollars goes to helping a kid with cancer or the less fortunate with life saving treatments? Or help a kid getting an inhaler or insulin... Let's all hope no one in your family ever falls to financial or healthcare ruin. I go to work everyday too, and I will have maxed out my SS contribution by 40 years old, and who cares? Life isnt all about me. Taxes are paid regardless and I'd much rather have my taxes go to support a better life for my fellow americans, than to support bombing and droneing brown people in the middle east. It seems from your posts you only help your neighbors if theres some benefit in it for you. Pretty sad. If 1 penny out of a dollar isnt worth it so that their life expectancy can be similar to yours, my goodness. And again, Medicare isnt a social benefit program and you'll be using medicare post 65 just like everyone else given that it's as good as private insurance. My folks use it and they did quite well for themselves.