GregAlso

for those worrying about the prospect of prospects going back to the dogs 

Maeda and Stripling.... interesting idea.

Just now, TroutField said:

Ohtani-Stripling-Heaney-Bundy-Canning is a pretty solid rotation. I’m happy with it 

Tehran over here like...

7 minutes ago, angelinkc said:

Strapling,Joc, and Clevinger (keep Adell) would make a hell of an off season.

Rendon is over here like

He played 20 games there last year.

2B just aren’t worth that much on the market unless they hit a lot of bombs. Philadelphia and Baltimore both waived theirs and the Orioles second baseman was an all star. 

Interesting article in the Athletic today about all of this. Worth the read if you have a sub. Here’s a quote to think about. 
 

“Four of their returning hitters made remarkable improvements in their ability to lay off those pitches. Marwin González went, incredibly, from a 40-percent swing rate to just 10 percent … Carlos Correa improved from 27 percent to 15 percent … Jake Marisnick dropped from 30 percent to 13 percent … George Springer went from 18 percent to 12 percent. We’ll mention here that according to Tony Adams’ work at signstealingscandal.com, those four players were among the Astros who were at bat for the highest percentage of trash-can bangs that season. “

https://theathletic.com/1573075/2020/01/31/does-electronic-sign-stealing-work-the-astros-numbers-are-eye-popping/?amp

I feel like the teams that have fanfests, or that we hear about having them, are teams that have had winning records over the past couple of seasons or have won a title recently. I have heard about Houston, Cubs, Doggies, and Oakland fanfests. I wonder if that’s what all the teams with fanfests have in common, a recent Track record of winning? Hence none for us.

Sooo, Ausmus gets the Boston job then?

43 minutes ago, tdawg87 said:

Very first sentence:

You must not have continued reading after that. 
 

“Aside from Ohtani, I think you could make the argument that every pitcher in the Angels’ rotation is underrated.”

No org has made comments. Players from Dodgers and Yankees made comments. Dodger players made comments at their fanfest. They were both directly effected by the behavior in the playoffs so it makes sense they commented. But no organization has a made an official comment, not one, not even the Dodger or Yankee organizations. They were told they couldn’t. Players have made comments when they were at events where they were asked to comment. Get the facts straight. 

3 hours ago, zenmaster said:

Now would actually be the perfect time for the Astros to cheat again. Who would expect them to cheat again so quickly after all this?

This is the philosophy the 2018 Red Sox took. “Hey, they just caught us last year. They would t suspect us doing it again in 2018!”

The 2-way player rule isn’t to solve an old problem. It is to solve a new problem created by having 26 players on the active roster. When they expanded the rosters they expressly didn’t want the new player to be a pitcher. To make that happen they created the player designation. They expressly wanted the 26th man to be used for a position player. This then necessitated the two-way player rule. 

2 hours ago, RBM said:

Yeah Heyward getting ejected was what We were already discussing. It’s not good if the robot calls that pitch a strike.

Yeah, I realized it after I posted. The high strike on the other clips is also interesting. I think the easy solution is change the strike zone to if a ball is completely within the zone instead of if a ball touches the zone. I think that really solves most of the problem. 

They adjust it for each player based on his listed height from what I understand. They didn’t test in the minors yet but instead during the Arizona Fall League. They need to adjust the strike zone’s top and bottom because while they seemed very accurate there were some pitches called strikes that were just ridiculously hard to hit. They were either just at the top of the zone for only a part of their flight or just touching the bottom of the zone at the front of the plate and then dropping into the dirt. 
 

Here’s one player who didn’t like it 

More examples from AFL

9 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

What an awful read.  He seemed to spend more time condemning the whistleblower than owning up to the bs.   They might be better off not apologizing than following Keuchel's lead.

It really was awful. Yeah, if this is what they believe an apology is then they are probably better off not apologizing. What’s even worse is the comments that article got from Astros fans on twitter. Things like “you don’t have to apologize”, “look he apologized and everyone just piled on him”, and even telling the writer of the story that “he should go join the Yankees because of his terrible take in the story.” I mean the responses from some of them are equally pathetic. 

Imagine if we had signed this clown and he were doing this at an Angel event? I think he shoulda just kept his mouth shut. This is one right up there with Harvey Weinstein’s attempts at apologizing. “I mean it was consensual.” “Everyone was doing it.” Pathetic

Here’s is what is being billed as the first player apology. It is by Keuchel. It is a pathetic apology, more of a rationalization. The writer seems to screw up one of the quotes so maybe there is more there but it can’t be that much. Glad this dude isn’t our pitcher. 
 

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/astros/amp/First-Astros-player-apology-comes-from-former-15002535.php?__twitter_impression=true

Another interesting tidbit in here is about Adell. With all the talk about trading him here is what ZiPs think he will be in his prime. Hint: we don’t want to miss it for sure. 
 

“In terms of rest-of-career projections, ZiPS has Adell right around Aaron Judge, Christian Yelich, and Luis Robert, forecast to hit .270/.350/.500 with 30 homers a year in his prime.”

Just for some clarity about what these projections mean here’s a quote from the blog posted above. 
 

“With these projections suggesting a team with win totals in the high 80s...”

just saying this conservative projection of ZiPs still suggests we have the best team we’ve seen in Anaheim in years. So there’s that.

14 minutes ago, Lou said:

they had a fanfest? 

lol 

That’s where the comments above took place. A Fanfest just two days after that epic Twitter day. 

7 minutes ago, Lou said:

In that case, it shouldn't have asked "most" 

Yeah, this is my first poll and “Most” is what I meant!

edit: wait... that’s what it already said! Not sure the confusion. 

What’s the over/under for the number of interviews it takes before Bregman‘s canned response breaks him? “The Commissioner came out with a report. MLB did their report. The Astros did what they did. No further comment.”
 

After this week and then seeing some of what Altuve and Bregman said today I honestly think I hate Houston more than I do the Red Sox, whom I’ve hated for a long time. I used to hate Papelbon and disliked Pierzynski, but that all pales in comparison to what I’m feeling today. Here are some links to fuel your fire. 
 

right, it’s called consequences not adversity. 
 

Whaat?! louder than the trash cans?

Feel free to add more of this trash to the thread. We can may be have some good bulletin board material here. 

32 minutes ago, Stradling said:

You do have to wonder if there simply isn’t enough evidence other than hearsay to the buzzer rumors.  

Here are my thoughts:

Team mates are loyal to one another.  So getting them to rat on each other would be difficult.  The only names really brought up were Alex Cora and Beltran, both who are no longer with the organization.  

Players were offered immunity for information on the cheating scandal, but it seems that it is more the procedure of the cheating and not the players that were cheating.  

Now there are rumors of the buzzers, but if you can’t get anyone to actually admit anyone on the team was using them then how do you prove it?  Obviously the threat of being permanently banned holds some weight, but if no one speaks then it is all speculation or hearsay, whether it happened or not.  Which player has come out and said they know the Astros players were using them?  I have only heard the rumors from guys like Jomboy and incarcerated bob.  If an MLB player says they heard a rumor then they could start tracking down that rumor.  I am not sure I have read if guys like Bauer or Clevinger have heard from other players about buzzers. 

Oh and immunity only counts if you are being truthful.  So if they are caught in a lie, or if they leave out important details, like buzzers, then they can be punished, I’d assume.  

 

 

 

Bauer has tweeted about the buzzers since Jomboy’s tweet. He said he has heard this from a few players this happened too. MLB hasn’t done much investigation when players accused the Astros or Sox of cheating until it came out in the media. Only once the Athletic reported it did they do much serious investigation.
 

MLB’s investigators have no subpoena power and can force nobody to testify. This makes investigations very difficult. Furthermore if a player lies there is no real consequences unless MLB can fully prove it and levy a suspension that they can make hold up under MLBPA defense of the player. 
 

Now the issue of government involvement in this is murky at best. When they got involved over PEDs that made at least some sense since those were a controlled substance regulated by the government. So in some sense, the players were breaking federal law and the league wasn’t stopping it. In that situation government oversight could at least argued as being about people breaking the law and not being punished. In this situation no law is being broken, federal or state.
 

I don’t see what pretext the government could use to question the league about this. Even the exemption the league has doesn’t make sense as a pretext. I’d welcome the use of subpoena powers and making people testify under oath to get to the bottom of it (as if congress ever gets to the bottom of anything) but using those powers here seems to have no legal basis. It would be like a local city council investigating cheating at the private chess tournament in town. Not cool that people cheated but why are they investigating it.