hen3ry

Same here. I have to be starving to buy food at captive audience prices, whether that's the ballpark or the theme park. Just the way it is. It's not that hard to remember to eat before the game or wait till afterwards.

Well the "fundamental" sound is the collective groan or cheer (depending home or away) of the crowd as a baserunner is nailed by a good 15 feet after being given the go sign

Hits 9 Sac 0

alright, burn that trash can.

well that didn't take long, did it?

Yeah, this is small sample size syndrome and selective memory. That said, he is doing all you could have asked of him and more. Fairly solid defense (one bad throw the other day but even that was on a tough play), not striking out, getting on base, and then not being an idiot when he gets on. Overall, not being the offensive black hole which 2b could have ended up as this year. Nothing wrong with having an Ecks type there.

Tampa Bay Management is not responsible for broken windshields.

A thought occurs. Isn't KC covered by the google fiber? If so that makes them the only city to have both a Major League Baseball team and a legit high speed internet system (by global standards). Just sayin...

And can we reduce the quota to zero?

NL and AL stats for voting are separate, no? In which case Harper and Trout aren't directly comparable in the vote. They're the two best all around outfielders in the game. I certainly would vote for Harper to play - and Trout too. Even a slightly slumping Trout (or Harper) is better than a streaking average outfielder. Calhoun would deserve to play if he were an infielder with his stats. As an outfielder however he's solid but not an all star.

Good. Seriously had some concerns that Quin there was jinxing us to a 13-12 defeat. xD

One laugher does not a good team make. And it's not over yet...

Other than trout, no one on the offensive side of the ball is ASG worthy. So the votes sound right to me.

Obama signing a stand alone repeal of Obamacare into law. The Marlboro Man running a full marathon. Richard Dawkins becoming a Cardinal (Roman Catholic version. Although I suppose St. Louis version is almost as unlikely)

He was the worst possible. From there if you get just a little worse than that you fall out the bottom and scroll all the way up to great. I think that's how it works any way.

There's actually a team worse than us? You buried the lede.

watch how it dies.

Let's play 23!

We're sure facing a lot of pitchers named Cy and Nolan these days.

Yeah college is very different from pro ball. Aluminum bats for one big difference. As for Green, he's faster than Cron, more versatile with the glove and equal in power (zero). So it's a smart move long overdue, but yeah I doubt this is the spark plug we're missing.

In 2015 war was beginning...

FIFY

Pitching usually wins championships. I'd rather see some kids flail than pay through the nose for more failed wannabe sluggers pulling it into the shift every time. I'm not saying you totally give up on 2015, but let's face it, if we get in, it'll be through the wild card route. At which point pitching is what wins. If we make any deals, I'd want those deals focused on what will help us in 2016. In the mean time let's see what some kids can do.

Yup. In gameday yesterday, I linked to this blog: http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/77104490/mlb-best-hitters-vs-teams-babe-ruth-barry-bonds-mark-mcgwire

We're kinda rehashing ancient territory, but Pujols was more about marketing than it was about baseball tactics. Pujols already had a ticket to Cooperstown punched just based on his career with the Cards - he can destroy it (ala Bonds or Rose) by doing something truly boneheaded, but he won't destroy it merely by becoming an average-ish to aging player with the Halos. That's, in fact, the point. Arte probably expected a bit more production early in Pujols contract, but he was really making a statement: "This team is not the Clippers." The problem is, we ARE the Clippers - Even when we're a better team than the other team in town, we don't have the following or respect, because we don't have the decades of history - and we will never have those extra decades of history. But Arte saw a chance to take LA while that idiot from Boston was running things into the ground up at Chavez Ravine. And really, that was a once-a-century (at best) chance to flip-flop the Angels' and Dodgers' relative fates. So he went for it, full throttle. He signed the absolute best player in the game at that moment (who also, incidently, happened to be Latino). And then went on a media blitz. Arte was counting on a couple things that seemed more reasonable than not at the time; * McCourt would hold on for several more years, sinking the Dodgers further into mediocrity. * Pujols had at least one more MVP-level type year in him, then maybe 3 more years of significantly-above-average play left in him. The back end of the contract would be whatever you could get, icing on the cake. Turns out both of those assumptions flopped. We got Pujols not at the peak, but at the cliff's edge, and McCourt bowed out relatively quickly. But that was the thinking, and really it almost did work. But now the team is stuck with the worst case out of the scenario - the entire contract turned out to be the back end, and then the rushed catch-up to patch that turned out to be even worse (thanks, Hambone). The money under the cap just isn't there for anything now other than a youth movement, and those are often agonizingly slow - but can still be pretty rewarding, look at Houston now, after all.