Jake

Chris Sale hasn't been mishandled by Robin Ventura or anybody else.

Beware of equating BABIP with luck. The better you hit, the higher your BABIP will be. The batted ball statistics are helpful in this regard, but variables still exist. It's clear Flowers has made changes to his swing and approach that would increase his BABIP. Of course, he has also been rather lucky. It's no coincidence that those other "lucky" player were really good baseball players, though - you make your own luck, as they say.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 28, 2014 -> 06:15 PM) I trust TMZ just about as much as any other source right now. It's not that the source was TMZ, it was that they were the only source and they weren't even discussing how they came across the tape. My journalistic senses start tingling when we have no freaking clue how to verify the veracity of the claims - but again, it appears this is legit, which is why we'll see Silver take action tomorrow, presumably.

The reason Silver didn't drop the hammer is because you don't want to be wrong about this stuff. When this story dropped, you had the word of TMZ and that was it. It is beginning to look more and more likely that it was indeed him, and in this case I don't think it matters how the recordings were procured.

I'd say we'll be thinking very big or very small. No "Carl Everett" sized moves. It would not blow my mind if Adam Dunn could bring in a nice haul, though, which would qualify as a decent-sized move. If we are really in contention though, it would be hard to justify dealing him and it very likely could be the reason we would lose the division if that were the case. Then again, maybe Andy Wilkins or somebody will catch fire and we'll want to use them as a DH

Yeah, Illinois people tend to be pretty pessimistic. Illinois is easily the best place to live of all the surrounding states, at least, and the funny thing is that most of the people who say Illinois is one of the worst places would also say that they'd never live in those surrounding states (or the South).

Yeah, making fun of quite possibly the dumbest pine tar user in the world that happens to play for your rival is just not a big deal. It does not presume that the preferred team has never done anything wrong.

He reminds me of Nick Blackburn. We have no fifth starter right now, so there's no reason not to keep him around, even when Sale is back

I think this would be a year too soon to trade Alexei unless we start seeing something a lot different from Semien

We have, for the next turn in the rotation: Q-Danks-Rienzo-Carroll Options for spot 5: Axelrod Surkamp Noesi? Webb? Petricka? FWIW, Chris Beck has been dreadful in AA and is almost definitely not an option

The thing that kind of boggles my mind here is that we still will need to call someone up to pitch. It's an odd time to Johnson to AAA - right as we dumped another starter, lost our ace to injury, and had a fill-in fall completely flat and get sent down. We almost have to call up Axe now.

I would have suspected DL before AAA. Big surprise, not sure what's going on with that. Robin even said it - he's not throwing hard, he's not throwing the curve he used to. Seems like injury to me

VPN won't hurt, either, when it comes to hiding yourself from your ISP. VPN won't handle the cookies, in which case you have Disconnect. Honestly, I'd use Disconnect, Adblock Edge (Firefox)/Adblock (Chrome), and some kind of cookie management. In Firefox, I use BetterPrivacy which self-destructs my cookies periodically and in Chrome I instruct it to erase cookies when I exit browser (along with not accepting third party cookies).

I would send Jordan Danks down.

How is everyone overlooking Nate Jones in this conversation? He was a total non-prospect.

I was only cautiously optimistic about Abreu going in - thinking he would just look okay for a year or maybe even two. I'm going to be really disappointed if he doesn't have a great year, now.

There are several solid indicators that this isn't smoke and mirrors. In the past, his hot streaks just involved him doing the same old stuff, but a lot better. This year, he is quantifiably more patient and making better/more contact. It reinforces what I see in the eye test, which is a guy who is up there making quick adjustments within at-bats. Against Scherzer yesterday, there was an AB where he goes FB away, FB away, and then slider away. Viciedo takes an awful cut at the slider. Next pitch is an inside heater and Tank rips into LF for a base hit. As if Tank handling an inside pitch isn't remarkable enough, it came in a pitch sequence that should have left him extremely vulnerable to a swing and miss or broken bat in that spot.

QUOTE (ChiSoxJon @ Apr 24, 2014 -> 09:48 PM) Didn't like this deal when it happened, his stats aren't helping his cause now, total bust (hopefully not), couldn't hit Zach f***in Stewart last week, I've loved Reed since his days in Kanny where I saw his velocity in action, much rather have extended instead of deal him for this bum, hopefully he proves me wrong It's early. He's hit very well at every level.

That AAU team is one tweak of a knee away from McBob being the second best guy

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 24, 2014 -> 10:02 PM) At OSU he was considered the "also" player in the deal. Crazy. I remember thinking that he was totally overrated due to the presence of Oden and an overall good team. He's turned into a really, really good pro though it will probably always be lost due to the strength of the PG position in the NBA

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 24, 2014 -> 09:57 PM) Maybe 1000 times the player Maybe 10000 times the player

Gillaspie should go to the DL, Semien starts ED at 3B. In the future, he's going to be either 2B or SS. He may very well field well enough to be a SS. Micah Johnson is far from a sure thing and his ability to be an infielder is completely up in the air.

QUOTE (BFirebird @ Apr 24, 2014 -> 12:42 PM) Sad part is that Farmer and DJ defended the plays saying they have no problem him going for it with 2 outs. Didn't see the play, but if he didn't go for it, would it have only been a single? I think he was getting a 2B either way. I think Tank is better than Garcia out there. It's especially sad because Tank's downfalls tend to be approach-related (like not cutting that ball off because he was too aggressive, throwing to the wrong base, things like that) while Garcia's bad play seemed to concern his abilities (can't read a fly ball)

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Apr 24, 2014 -> 12:19 PM) Come on man, it makes total sense and you know it. The guy gives back the points he is making, and then some. We all see it. His effort is terrible, and the team needs full effort to succeed. You cant have him in there in the last quarter giving points away because his defense is so terrible that other players have to cover his ass. Is that different than the rest of the game? We saw this blow up in our face in the last game where it didn't matter how good or bad Taj Gibson is because he and the rest of the team was absolutely gassed in OT. Likewise, as with any other player, you occasionally play a guy despite knowing he isn't generally better because he might happen to play better for a stretch of time. It's like Nate Robinson. Generally, he'll lose you points, but if you are quick enough with the trigger, you can put him out there and let him win you some games when he gets going

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04...,40.581,-90.984 Map of who dominates each and every inch of the USA in terms of MLB fandom