Jobu

Shadenclaude

They're white guys. Does that help?

He's got Mike Trout saying to the press "We've got a lot of money freed up." No matter whose money it is, Arte and the Angels have made the luxury tax budget part of the narrative by refusing to exceed it even when the team is garbage. It's natural that fans respond and want that money spent "responsibly", even if their ideas about what that means are unrealistic. Personally, I hope Upton opts-in. And if he doesn't, I hope Eppler is engaged to the point that makes financial sense.

Or, maybe, after multiple off-seasons of being told we can only afford scrap heap replacement players because of Hamilton's contract, fans are gun-shy about immediately putting a majority of that salary back into another single player. Who is coming off a career year at age 30. It's also silly how willing everyone is to bid against themselves. Upton can't declare his intentions for a month and half this board has already dropped their drawers and bent over.

All 4 starting pitchers?

Also all the passwords.

Just send me all the posts in an Excel file. I'll figure it out.

And 2 before that, and then 3 before that, and then 6 before that. There seems to be a lot of rounding up of expectations, at least in terms of WAR.

Yeah, haha, idiots. So who's this 5 WAR player?

Juan Rivera was a beast

Just give me your login and I'll try it for you

I don't really understand his media vendetta. The few beat reporters seem pretty even handed, the columnists have plenty of other targets, and the national press rarely comes to town. Derek Jeter's ex-girlfriends get more scrutiny.

Doctors hate him!

Final roster spot by fan vote!

He was watching the Angels play baseball.

Regardless of your definition of contending, what would you expect Eppler to say?

So this works on the mobile site now?

Did you eat a lot of paint chips as a kid?

The flip side is that, on numerous occasions, the wild card team has been better than at least 1 division winner in the league. If you view it as a counterbalance for an unbalanced schedule that allows mediocre division winners to beat up on terrible teams, it makes some sense not to penalize the wild card winner. Not that I have issue with the current format, but it's always felt a little artificial to me - trying to force a dramatic finish that only happened rarely in the previous system. Yes, the Angels had a more meaningful September than expected, but that wasn't a function of their level of play, which has been narrowly orbiting .500 all season. It was more that everyone else was just so bad that they fell away from the pack, and the Twins weren't good enough to really run away with it. It's probably working in the NL, though.

Better than "tiggers"