well here’s one thought that sort of matches that idea
Maybe. But a future hall of famer who is declining daily is a different player than guys like Utley. Is he going to be happy being a bench bat? Supposedly one of the last straws with the Angels was being being benched. Maybe he will be a great mentor, but he’s also taking up a later spot while doing so.
Maybe the front office realized that the Dodgers weren’t hitting into enough double-plays.
I admit I LOLed.
Back in the day Mighty Casey struck out. Nowadays Mighty Albert just hits a softy to the shortstop. See, the Game has made Progress! 
Being released and having zero interest from any team willing to promise full time at bats can be a hell of a reality check.
Incidentally, that article’s drawing comparisons to the Dodgers acquiring Chase Utley and David Freese makes no sense; the Dodgers believed those men were still good ballplayers. Utley was off to a bad start in 2015, but he had been a perfectly good player just the year before. Freese could still hit when the Dodgers got him. There is very little reason to believe Pujols is still a major league player.
The idea of Pujols displacing MAx Muncy at first base and having Muncy move to second and displacing Gavin Lux strikes me as being utterly fucking bananas. Lux is playing dreadfully, but so is Pujols. Replacing a second baseman who cannot hit with a first baseman who also cannot hit is not a wonderful move, and they would be making their defense worse at BOTH positions.
If it doesn’t make sense on the field, then it has to make sense in the business office.
I admit to understanding rather little of how teams trade contracts, who owes what to who when, etc. And I know exactly zero of Pujol’s contract with LAA or about the details of the LAA / LAD deal.
Is there something about Pujols’ move to LAD where LAD gets some financial advantage that can be applied elsewhere? e.g. LAA pays all of Albert’s costs while LAD gets a corresponding credit against their salary cap and can spend the same money on other players to boot? Or something else equally queer?
It’s unclear to me what his dugout persona is nowadays versus what it was in his heyday. I have vague recollections of reading about him being a bit of a jerk of late. If so, that’s not an obvious win for LAD.
Some folks can grow into being good coaches, others not. Sometimes the early omens are more favorable than the final outcome and sometimes vice versa. I don’t recall him being very articulate, and if you can’t talk, you can’t coach. And this wasn’t just a matter of having limited English vs him being clear and eloquent in Spanish.
Color me still confused / unenlightened.
My understanding is that Pujols is only going to spell Muncy at first. He has no chance of displacing Muncy on a permanent basis. Muncy would then be able to let Lux and company rest periodically as well.
The Dodgers are paying the prorated league minimum, I think. It’s just a move for depth.
Another Mets game on ESPN but I found this new streaming service Vidgo for $10 a month for the first 2 months. There are a few shows, a very few, that I would watch so I’ll keep it through July, Mets/Yankess is July 4th. I’ve already had free trials of Fubo and I had Sling and Hulu for a while a couple of years ago so they were not options.
The Miami Marlins introduced some ugly uniforms trying to pay homage to Cubans.
Ya know, at least the teal Florida Marlins unis were pretty sharp looking and kinda matched with the aqua theme of the Miami Dolphins
Well, game 1 with the Dodgers Pujols gets his first RBI. Hopefully this keeps up.
Kevin Pillar suffered an awful HBP to the nose off of Jacob Webb. WARNING: Blood
This is the inevitable result of teams continuing to recruit for raw pitching speed, thinking they can teach control to all these knuckleheads chucking 100mph grenades all over the place.
To add more ridiculousness to an already-awful situation, the Braves’ manager had already been out to the mound once, so it wasn’t even clear if they would be allowed to pull Webb out. The umps let him come out anyway, which may have been illegal (I’m honestly not sure) but I doubt anyone will raise a stink over of it.
The Manfred administration really needs to get their shit together. I’m not inherently opposed to rule changes for the sake of pace-of-play, but all of this new shit seems poorly-conceived and internally contradictory, with little attention given to the consequences of new rules interacting with unusual situations.
Pitching needs to be reigned in. I don’t know if that means adjusting the mound, or limiting bullpens, or limiting pitcher changes, or a combination of things, but you can’t just make up new half-assed rules willy-nilly and stick 'em in the book with no thought given to how they will interact with the actual game. It’s time for a modern, deliberate, full-assed reassessment and recodification of the rulebook, done by non-morons.
These two paragraphs are contradictory. If the problem is teams trying to teach hurlers to pitch then no rule changes will help unless the rule is you can’t throw more than 100 mph.
While not the case with Pillar at lot of hitters crowd the plate and wear body armor (Pillar had an elbow guard on but I didn’t see anything else) I think that does more to cause HBPs since the pitcher can’t ceede half the plate to the hitter.
The at bat was ended when Pillar was hit, so I see no reason why a previous mound visit would play any role in whether the pitcher could be removed or not.
I don’t care if pulling him was against the rules or not. Webb was visibly shaken and there’s no way he could be expected to continue pitching. Best case is he manages to buckle down enough to get out of the inning. Worst case is that he’s wild and possibly hits someone else or at best winds up putting balls in the dirt or way outside. It was the right thing to do for both the Mets batters and for Webb.
I don’t think there’s a contradiction. Teams are being irresponsible in the way they are recruiting and training pitchers, as evidenced by HPB data over the past decade. (Granted, some of that is due to the Nimmos of the world, but that’s a separate problem.) It is also true that pitching in general has become a circus-freak act and it is time for things to be adjusted, just as they have been several times in the past.
My understanding of the new rules is obviously incomplete (because apparently nobody understands them.) I was just going by what Gary and Ron were talking about on the air. I suppose they may not fully understand the new rules either. 
In a late April game, Cardinals reliever Génesis Cabrera hit Bryce Harper in the face, then hit the next batter in the ribs, and couldn’t be removed before facing yet another batter, because of the three-batter minimum.
That was also a terrible situation exacerbated by poorly-conceived new rule. In Webb’s case, he had already seen three batters; the confusion was over the new mound visit rules.
Rules don’t exist in a vacuum. If they’re gonna introduce new stuff, they have to actually put some thought into what will happen when people actually play the game.
This kind of thing has been going on for years. Like when Conforto should have been out for leaning into a pitch but was walked because nobody understands the nuances of what plays can be replay-challenged or replay-reviewed. Or a couple years ago when the Cardinals won on a walk-off HR which should have been a ground-rule double because the Reds didn’t call for a challenge in time, so the umps just…left.
This is a professional sport. People need to know what the rules are. As with PoP, I’m not against replay, but the implementation has been sloppy and confusing. Nobody knows what’s going on, and the inevitable result is that ridiculous things happen and confusion reigns.
I terms of population and economics, Charlotte would probably be a slightly better choice, not just because of Charlotte itself but also because it’s in a population-rich region compared to Oregon. Charlotte could draw fans in the immediate Charlotte area but also in Raleigh-Durham, South Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, and even parts of Virginia. Of course this is now all probably Atlanta Braves territory, but some would probably change loyalties over time.
I wouldn’t be opposed to forcing a sale of the Mariners and moving them down to Portland, lol, with new ownership. The Northwest needs a good baseball team.
I don’t think pitchers are wilder, or pissier. It seems like a simple formula: home runs are up, pitching inside therefore is up too, which inevitably leads to more HBPs.
Except for the fact that home runs are down.