Jake

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ May 22, 2014 -> 01:28 PM) I'm not a big fan of Hector the pitcher, but he does seem to be a good guy. I think this move is to stop his arb clock. It's because the Angels know he doesn't do well in the pen and that he's already had his development borderline ruined by being a relief pitcher instead of starting

If the only reason they are working towards something, especially learning, is for the recognition at the end, we've already failed them

QUOTE (Andy the Clown @ May 22, 2014 -> 01:39 PM) Davidson hasn't looked like a future regular for the past year and a half. How do you figure? Was it the 117 wRC+ (a league adjusted stat) in AAA? The 108 wRC+ in MLB? Maybe the .308/.341/.564 line in spring training this year? Was the 17% K rate in that stretch too high? The first time you could make a half decent argument that he looked like a non-regular would have been a couple weeks into his stint at Charlotte

Conor has been great and there's no reason to be moving heaven and earth to get him moved. He's clearly solid at 3B, but not remarkable. Maybe not above average. I don't have much beyond hearsay/Baseball America subscription to base this on, but it seems Davidson is probably a similar defender at 3B. They at least have similar ceilings as defensive players. And we have to start this off by acknowledging two things: -Davidson has put himself in a position where has something to prove in AAA again before we bother thinking about making space for him in the MLB lineup. He wouldn't have had to set the world on fire to be a constant source of speculation all season, but his bad start has demanded that he now really get hot before we think about this Gillaspie/Davidson situation very seriously. -Gillaspie has proven a lot more than Davidson, but still, he hasn't proven s***. I don't think anybody would be surprised if he started to regress towards the average to slightly below average offensive player that we saw most of last season. Gillaspie is very much a "solid" guy at the plate, but his ceiling is relatively low and he doesn't have a prototypical corner IF bat. With all that in mind, let's assume everything works out. Can either of them play a different position? Probably. Before the season, I was lobbying hard to get Gillaspie some reps at 2B. A left-handed bat like him would become lots more valuable if you could play him around the diamond, especially considering that he's never going to be a guy that starts 150+ games due to his struggles vs lefties. You have to think that just about anybody could learn LF, too. Same goes for Davidson in terms of LF. I think he's a decent enough athlete to maybe learn 2B. If Davidson and Gillaspie are on the same team, Davidson is almost certainly going to get starts at 3B against lefties. It's a matter of where he is against righties. Maybe rotate guys into the DH role? Maybe Davidson goes to LF? Does Micah Johnson turn into a guy incapable of playing IF, going to OF? Then you have inevitable injuries and such that could make these decisions simpler. QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ May 22, 2014 -> 11:49 AM) In what world is Johnson a better prospect the Semien? That's crazy talk. I don't yet agree that Johnson's a better prospect, but it's getting really close. It's looking more like Micah can cut it defensively, which was really up in the air before the season. Also, before the season, it looked rather unclear whether Micah was going to hit well in AA. He hadn't really done that well after his call-up to A+ last season. Now we can see that his bat is ready for AAA, if not ready to dominate AAA. The only thing about Micah's stock that has dropped this season is he has lost his touch stealing bases. I'm not sure if that's going to take care of itself or not. I also don't know the cause, though his efficiency went way down last season after moving out of A-. Luckily his bat is starting to look like he can be more than just a fast guy who gets on base adequately. Marcus has been a little disappointing in MLB this season and lacks any of the exciting tools that Johnson has (though we might say Johnson's only plus tool is his speed, which he's not using - either way, Semien doesn't appear to be the same caliber of athlete). On the other hand, we've seen in the MiLB that Marcus has "plus" plate recognition, can swipe a bag, and has more than a little power. Even as he struggles, he appears competent. He looks good at both 2B and 3B and he's the only infielder in the near-MLB-ready organization short of Alexei that is likely to have the chops to play SS on a regular basis defensively. Maybe Carlos Sanchez, but again he's a guy whose bat isn't going to force us into doing anything with him. It's close at this point, between the two. It's a good problem. Alexei has added to the "problem" since Marcus looked like a SS of the future. I still think Marcus should go to MiLB to get regular at-bats, but Mark Parent said in an interview that he thinks he'll learn more by being with the big league club. We'll see.

If you're worried about the long-term health of Abreu, you don't want a DH that can't play first

It was only a matter of time before Davidson got back to normal. As is not too unusual, a guy who didn't deserve to get sent down took it hard when it happened

I would say conventional statistics vastly overrated Michael Bourn and sabermetrics showed exactly how bad of a deal he was as a free agent. Aging veteran who wasn't a league average offensive player and whose value was predicated solely on his legs. Unfortunately, he had a high batting average and was fast, the former of which is especially overrated

I'd hate for an Abreu move to DH to push Viciedo off the team if we decide we can't tolerate his outfield D

In his defense, he is walking a bunch

Pretty sure he's safe here

QUOTE (JohnCangelosi @ May 20, 2014 -> 10:25 PM) Exactly. And the announcers completely missed it. The ball was right down the middle of the plate. Almost couldn't be more center cut. It was obviously not the pitch Flowers thought it was. Knowing Belisario, I'm guessing Ronald is the one who forgot which sign he had

90% chance that passed ball was Belisario's fault

Flowers has to be one of the first full-time players to go 2 for 4 on May 20th and have his BABIP go down

When tenure at the HS level has problems, which it does not always have, it is because too often tenure is given out as if it is automatic so long as you work a given amount of years. If you give a sub-par educator tenure, they probably will get worse after they get it. They certainly won't get any better. The other issue can be feckless administrators who are afraid to go after a tenured teacher who isn't doing their job. Tenure doesn't protect you from not doing your job. To add to the things Tex mentioned, I've lived in a school district that cut corners everywhere it could. Without tenure, every single decent educator would have been fired for entry-level replacements and I have absolutely no doubt about that. The only thing that could have saved them would have been small town politics, and it isn't like that's a good thing. Public education is not a free market for a reason - free markets have more than educational quality in mind and they certainly don't operate with the intent to deliver a great education to as many people as possible without regard to those people's income. Unfortunately in Illinois, the situation I described above happened in a different way. Local school districts trying to save money were able to give educators incentives to retire early, knowing the state foots the bill for their pensions. That's a situation where it made no sense that local districts would be spending someone else's money.

ALEXEIII!!!!!!!1!1!1!!!!ONE!!!!!

Indiana totally folded down the stretch, even if LBJ punched George Hill in the face earlier

LMAO at that mega-flop by LBJ

"The media" kissed Palin's ass for a much longer time than she deserved. I'm sure they've given her some unfair criticism, but nothing is more absurd than this brain damage BS

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 20, 2014 -> 04:50 PM) We didn't draft Scottie. He was a draft day deal for olden polynice. The main question is whether it was our drafting accumen or trading accumen that made that deal a winner

My top would look something like this, I think: 1. Micah Johnson 2. Courtney Hawkins 3. Matt Davidson 4. Tim Anderson 5. Tyler Danish 6. Trayce Thompson 7. Chris Beck 8. Rangel Ravelo 9. Trey Michalczewski 10. Carlos Sanchez

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ May 20, 2014 -> 09:01 AM) The Bulls traded for Scottie Pippen. The Bulls would be trading for Carmelo Anthony or Kevin Love. #lifefacts We drafted Scottie. The weirdness that is the NBA draft makes every trade of picks on draft day into a trade of players

I've never seen professional journalists act like such big babies. Put on a f***ing coat on your way into the stadium and shut the f*** up. New Orleans is a s***hole anyway

Yeah, I think the obvious question is not so much whether he can sustain statistics exactly like these over the long haul, but rather which ones will change. The saber way tends to assume that K/BB stays the same, in which case the outlook is bleak for Abreu. However, we have good reason to be skeptical of the stability of the K/BB rates of a player with such unique circumstances, in such little time, and partially influenced by injury.

Your diet is going to explain 75% of your results and pretty much 100% of your weight loss results. Exercise, though, is going to affect the way the weight is lost - even the most basic of exercises will help you preserve muscle mass and cause you to lose more "bad" weight than otherwise

We're still working with too small of sample sizes. Abreu essentially jumped AA and AAA right into the majors. That K rate and BB rate are going to do some fluctuation. For a while, it looked like it was going to be 8-9 BB% and 19 K%. He's going to probably look both worse and better before things start to normalize and it will be a perfectly valid expectation that those peripherals improve next season whereas they typically stay pretty static.