2011/12 MLB Offseason Thread - Page 3

Beltran to Cardinals? Makes sense.

 

And damn, the A's are really committed to tanking 2011, trading Gio Gonzalez to the Nats for prospects.

I think the loss of Albert might be offset by the return of Wainright, a full season of Craig and a possibly healthy Furcal and the addition of Beltran.  Add a significantly weakened division and the Cards might repeat in the central.

 

And how dare you question the genius of Billy Beane?  Was there a book written about YOUR general manager?*

 

 

*But yeah, he is probably the biggest fraud in sports.  Why would you trade a pretty solid young pitcher who you control for a few years for prospects?  Prospects who he will trade away in three years in order to obtain more prospects.  I mean Jesus, you eventually have to TRY to win games; its not ALL about accumulating prospects.

As I understand, the A's are getting a new stadium, and they want to pack it with their millions of 21 year old minor leaguers. There are worse strategies, I suppose.

The A's are really nowhere close to getting a new stadium. They want to go to San Jose but the Giants aren't letting that happen without a lot of lawyers getting involved. The A's are desperate to get out of Oakland and I guess trading away all their established major leaguers is some sort of ploy to lower their attendance, which is anemic to begin with, and force MLB to find them a new home.

The A's traded their third all-star pitcher this offseason to the Red Sox.  Apparently his upcoming 3 million dollar salary was just too much to pay,

 

Goddamn, somebody PLEASE contract this team.  It is an embarrassment to the league.

The clubhouse will be better on the North side next year. Volstad's not going to help the Cubs win anything though. He'll eat innings and get non-tendered at the end of the year.

 

Zambrano and Guillen should be entertaining. At least watching from the outside.

I'd hate to be a Cubs fan right now. 

 

Theo is making all of the right moves (if only he could find somebody for Soriano) but its going to take a few years to rebuild their awful farm system.  With exactly one good, homegrown young player (Castro), there is going to be some pretty bad baseball on the northside for the next few years.

Wow wow wow.  Montero for Pineda.  As a Yankee fan I'm torn.  In a lot of ways this is exactly what the Yanks need...a young stud pitcher.  But Montero probably hits 30 homers a year for the next 10 years.  I will maintain that last year it was the Yankees offense that let them down in the playoffs, not the pitching.  But a rotation that starts with CC, Pineda, Nova and Kuroda is infinately better than what they had last year, not to mention the kids they have coming up thru the minors. 

Maybe Montero could turn into Jay Buhner 2.0. 

Good God, I am dating myself with that reference.

Baby Cecil is coming home! So shocked.

With V-Mart out for the season this just renewed my hopes. We got Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder. My head is swimming.

It is, and there may come a time when Mike Illitch regrets this purchase. It ain't my money and the cap in baseball is soft, so I can't lament the contract too much.

Great to see the little 12 yr old that used to hit home runs out of Tiger Stadium back in the D.

214 million?  Wouldn't it have been cheaper just to give him Detroit?

That is a vicious 3-4 combo but the Tigers have a bunch of questionable players in the lineup.  If Jackson and Young can bounce back, if Avilla and Peralta can repeat the same types of seasons as last and if Boesch can continue to develop correctly, the Tigers could probably match up with the Yanks, Angels, Rangers and Sox.  If not, Prince and Miggy are going to get a BUNCH of walks.

A's sign Cespedes.

 

Good thing Billy Beane loves walks because that's all Cespedes will do: he has absolutely ZERO protection in that lineup.

 

 

Pretty touching tribute to Gary Carter at the Habs game.

 

http://deadspin.com/5886411/heres-the-canadiens-gary-carter-tribute-that-didnt-air-in-the-united-states

Braun is un-suspended.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/baseball/mlb/02/23/braun.suspension.ap/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t11_a2

What's harder: hitting for the Triple Crown or overturning a PED suspension?

Next time, you best bring KRYPTONITE, Major League Baseball.

I got a fantasy baseball league that I need four more players to fill. Its a weekly head-to-head league with an auction draft. Draft is Sunday, March 18, at 3:00 pm CT.

 

If you want in, let me know your email. If you play fantasy football with me, you get first crack. Otherwise, first four get in.

 

It'll be interesting to see how Braun is treated once the season starts.

 

Looking at the known facts, there is scientifically no reason to believe that his test was invalid. None.

 

After seeing numerous players be vilified over the years for rumors of PED usage when nobody cared, it would be hypocritical for Braun to not be torn to shreds. 

It depends if they like you or not. Andy Pettitte being the poster boy for "he was just trying to be competitive" while Roger Clemens is one of the poster boys of "dirty, rotten cheaters".

 

I'll say this, as someone who works with environmental samples, you can't argue "the test was valid" and "handling doesn't matter" at the same time. That's bad science. That doesn't mean that Braun didn't take something, whether PED, Herpes medicine, tainted supplement, etc., only that the process matters. Players have a very high standard, there's been at least one case where a player has gotten suspended due to a legal supplement being tainted at the manufacturer, and MLB has to be held to a very high standard too so that false positives aren't a result. "Comfirmation bias" is a very real phenomenom.

 

The process was followed correctly. There were three "tamper-proof" seals that were never broken. The sample was stored in a cool place. Their policy is to not leave samples at a FedEx office for 2 days when you can instead keep it in the custody of the paid health professional.

 

Apparently, Braun's lawyers convinced the arbitrator that because a FedEx was open, the tester failed in not taking the sample there immediately. But FedEx doesn't ship on Saturday afternoon. Or Sunday. So Braun's team convinced the arbitrator that leaving the sample in FedEx's back room for 2 days was preferable to keeping it with the professional you trusted to take the sample in the first place. That's goofy.

 

It'd be interesting to see what the arbitrator based the decision on, because there's been nothing presented by either side that puts the process in doubt.

There are so few "facts" that are actually known that I don't see how we can definitively say what actually happened, other than there was a delay in shipping. A "cool place" can mean a refrigerator, a cooler in the garage, or a tupperware container in a basement. I'd argue that you'd potentially get a different result from the same sample depending on which "cool place" was actually used.

 

If for no other reason, this is a good example of why locking down handling procedures is important. The "what to do with a sample collected on a weekend" problem is certainly something that could have and should have been foreseen. You always want to get a sample to a lab as soon as possible.

 

The arbitrator will never release his decision publicly. This isn't a court of law or a public record. There is no public record of what the case actually was. We're all relying on hearsay. And, let's face it, sports journalism is notoriously unreliable as far as this goes.

The collector released a detailed statement of his actions. He said he kept the samples (with three levels of tamper-proof sealing) in a container in his basement. Of the three samples stored there, apparently only Braun's magically fained testosterone. 

 

I've heard multiple scientists say that it's not possible to artificially dope a urine sample by getting it a little too warm. It's pee, not nitroglycerin. They just don't want it cooked or frozen before it gets tested.

 

Braun's only potential theory is that the collector is a master chemist and forger with an unknown axe to grind.

And honestly, this is where Braun should be crucified.  He was born with enough god given talent to play a game for a living, and quite likely decided to take a shortcut to get even better at the game (and once again proved that these drugs work).

 

All he has to say is that he's glad to put this behind him and he has no idea why the test results were high.  If he wants to continue saying that he never took PEDs, great.  But as soon as he starts pointing the blame at the collector?  That's BS.  From everything we've seen or heard the collector followed procedure as it was given to him, he has a spotless track record, he has gone to school to gain the knowledge needed to do his job.  Braun is so desperate to try to deflect that he's pissing all over this guy who really doesn't appear to deserve it.  Braun quite literally has zero evidence of tampering, but he's still smearing this poor guy with supposition.

 

See, what I've heard, and I realize that it's hard to separate fact from rumors, is that there was more than one sample with issues, although Braun's was the only one that failed.

 

And the Dodgers go to...Magic Johnson.

Dude, what has happened to all of the closers?  Its like the Madden curse has decided to take out an entire position in an entirely different sport.