IheartLA

there are 83 qualified seasons over the last 10 years of 1bmen slugging .450 or less.   10 of them were able to achieve a WAR of 2 or more.  
Thaiss power has to develop or the odds of him having a successful career as a starting major league 1bman are slim to none.   Also bear in mind that the vast majority of the 10 seasons mentioned above came from guys who played top notch defense.  Which Thaiss does not at this point.  
If he has any chance at playing a position other than 1b, they should try him out.  

The jealousy is just plain gay. 

Why do fans always treat sports differently, people go to Coachella or a Led Zeppelin concert for entertainment. Same thing with a movie. But athletes always make too much money for sports fans.

To be fair Arte has always been about winning. Him messing around with Norris/Chavez's bonuses might make people think otherwise, but he's always been an owner that's willing to spend if he thought they were good. I feel like he's more a fan than other owners, that's why he takes it so personally when he invests a lot of faith and it doesn't come off. 

It's not just the old players. Heyward was 26 when he signed his massive deal and he has been terrible so far. His response has been that he isn't thinking about it and he has "earned" his money. Similar to Pujols. http://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/cubs/jason-heyward-predicts-he-will-be-mvp-2018-cubs
Looking at Heyward's page it's obvious he wasn't compensated fairly for his 5-7 WAR seasons he was putting up in arbitration years. As for big mega deals Posey, Kershaw, Arod's 1st deal, Votto, Scherzer, Freeman have all worked out ok. Even Cano was been pretty good value so far. 
Murphy/Donaldson will be entering their age 34 seasons when they hit FA. Dozier will be 32. They're probably looking at 3-4 year deals MAX. And these are basically the best players in the game.

Yea I don’t think that’s what’s happening. 

Show me your list of players that mailed it in?  
Also like I said you’re paying great players a lot less and average players more. 

And the owners chose to sign players like Pujols and Hamilton to those contracts knowing the risk. 

There are ways around that with revenue sharing and the luxury tax. If they were to incorporate a form of restricted free agency you could force buyers to financially compensate teams losing players as well.

But they aren't paying players what they deserve... How much does Andrelton Simmons deserve? How much does Krys Bryant deserve? How much does Shohei Ohtani deserve? How much does Vlad Jr. deserve?
Why do we talk about Pujols being overpaid but talk about what a great deal the Simmons contact is? Why don't we talk about how underpaid he is? Why do we talk about Hamilton eating up our payroll instead of talking about how screwing rookies allows owners to make billions.

This is true. But a luxury tax isn't part of a free market. It's part of this system. And as I've said, I don't think it's collusion. But the system is suppressing the value of these players. They have screwed themselves by agreeing to this system. I would be angry if I were them too. I just don't side with the owners here. They are making tons of money and let's not pretend that Arte has been better at owning a team than Pujols has been at playing 1st base the last 6 years. I'm not rooting for Arte to make more money at the expense of the players. I don't get excited when Loria turns his initial $10 million investment in MLB and turns it into over $1 billion because he got hundreds of millions from tax payers for owning a baseball team. The only reason we even care what players are paid is so that our team can sign more players. 

Thanks for the write up Scotty.  
Looking for guys who slug below .400 at A+/AA at age 22 and then go on to hit for more power later in there career.  It's few and far between.  
I think best case, Thaiss ends up similar to Matt Carpenter.  Realistically, I could see him being similar to Scott Hatteberg.  Maybe even some Steve Vogt in there as well.  

Same I absolutely love soccer, ever since 2010 world cup I have been hooked. It's honestly kind of boring to go back to American sports unless its the playoffs. BTW Chelsea is my favorite team, Hazard is beast :).

It is rare that I sit through an entire game now.  It is why I like hockey and soccer, games are 2-2.5 hours instead of 3-4 hours.  I have the same problem with the NFL, they have five minutes of commercials every five minutes of game.
I think limiting mound visits and having a pitch clock are a great start.  The idea of limiting pitching changes would definitely speed things up, but I am not sure I support it just because that totally changes the tradition of baseball.

Point is to keep the batter from stepping out of the box. Rather than enforcing it with something lame like awarding the pitcher a strike we can spice it up a bit and see what happens. 

When I watch old baseball games I’m blown away at how fast the game is.  Pitcher catch the ball on the mound from the catcher, step on the mound, get the sign and pitch.  Batters stay in the box and look to be ready to hit right away.  There’s none of the Weaver or Lackey walk around the mound, shake off the catcher, waive the catcher out to the mound.  There isn’t the Joe Torre semi jog out to the mound.  It’s like fast paced baseball that as a fan was pretty compelling.  If you don’t think there’s a problem with the pace of the game you haven’t seen how the game was once played.  It was a better paced more interesting game.

But black people are better athletes than white people. White people have the edge on waging war, colonization, and exploitation.

yep, remember letting Howie leave after a 5 WAR season and we were like one of Giavotella, Rutledge, Green, Featherston, Yarbrough will win the job and we'll save money. Look at how that turned out, ST meant nothing and we were stuck with a merry go round for 2B for 3+ years with Petit, Ryan, Jackson, Espinosa. We literally had something like 0 or <1 WAR TOTAL from 2015-17 at 2B.
Same thing with LF, we had Joyce, Navarro, Robertson, Nava, Gentry..so much replacement level production. Calhoun has been a top 10 RF before last year, he was top 10 in '14/'15 and #5 in '16. Our OF prospects are still in A ball, their development actually lines up well with Kole's contract. Let's wait till we have too many players like the Dodgers, Astros, Indians before we start thinking of shipping out our good players. Even then, all the top teams have stacked benches that can step right in for the starters, why can't we? Why do we need to contemplate using replacement level players for our bench when the Doyers have basically two full starting outfields, three starting level catchers, 7-8 starters w/ top prospects like Beuhler, Urias, Stewart, etc.

There are 30 MLB teams so a #1 would presumably be top 30 or so. Darvish was #17 in WAR among starters. That's very good. Verlander was #14, I'm sure many think of him as an ace. Greinke was #7, some people consider him a disappointment but he is still very good. Kershaw, Kluber, Sale, Scherzer are top 5 pitchers, if people constitute that as a #1 then there are only like 5-10 #1 starters in the game. Those are ridiculously high standards.
 

There are 30 MLB teams so a #1 would presumably be top 30 or so. Darvish was #17 in WAR among starters. That's very good. Verlander was #14, I'm sure many think of him as an ace. Greinke was #7, some people consider him a disappointment but he is still very good. Kershaw, Kluber, Sale, Scherzer are top 5 pitchers, if people constitute that as a #1 then there are only like 5-10 #1 starters in the game. Those are ridiculously high standards.
 

Trout is a special case only because he came up through the organization and has performed since day one.  He's also likely to be the greatest angel player ever.
And because of that I would do what it takes to keep him for life. Even if it means paying him top dollar for his older & unproductive seasons. 
Guys like CJ Wilson, Pujols, Hamilton had their prime years for other organizations and the angels paid them top dollar for what they did for other teams, only to end up being dead weight once the angels got them.  

Ehhh, I think owners and GMs have just figured out free agency, for most players, is a waste of money. It almost feels like if you are over 30 you very well might not have more than one or two productive years left in you.

I can see your point of view, but this is an Angels' forum, the video could be interesting to some. I came across it and was curious to see what others thought of it. 
I get it you hate me, but why defend Pujols, the dude sucks. The sooner he leaves the better. Eventually we will have to cross that bridge, no way we go through 4 more years of torture peacefully. 

then he needs to go on the DL-60 or be Fielder'ed. If something is enough to cripple you then you shouldn't be out there on the baseball field, Pujols will get his money either way. It's about winning baseball games.

I can see your point of view, but this is an Angels' forum, the video could be interesting to some. I came across it and was curious to see what others thought of it. 
I get it you hate me, but why defend Pujols, the dude sucks. The sooner he leaves the better. Eventually we will have to cross that bridge, no way we go through 4 more years of torture peacefully.