MLB 2012

[Trippy]

WTF? The last time he won a playoff game he was playing for the As!

[Ingmar]

[ghost]

So what are the chances A Rod gets traded this offseason?

[Trippy]

Zero if he is to be believed. He said he's not willing to waive his no-trade clause.

[Malakili]

I know it was a disastrous playoffs for him, but the whole Yankees team was shit, it isn't like they would've won if only A Rod played better.  If you're going to have to eat that much money to make him go away, you may as well keep him around - just slip some HGH into his coffee 

[caladein]

Rodriguez had been wrong for some time now because of injury, but the rest of the Yankees offense was just a bad mix of Voros's Law (any ML hitter can do anything in 60 at-bats) and excellent starting pitching from the Tigers.

The Yankees front office is smart enough to know that and not do anything idiotic. Ownership? Not so sure .

[ghost]

Zero if he is to be believed. He said he's not willing to waive his no-trade clause.

Yeah, but that's a double edged sword.  He would be significantly affecting his ability to get a nice new contract if he's a dick and, consequent to that, has a super shitty year.  I'm sure his agent will bring that fact up to him. 

[Trippy]

His contract with the Yankees doesn't end till after the 2017 season.

[Malakili]

Zero if he is to be believed. He said he's not willing to waive his no-trade clause.

Yeah, but that's a double edged sword.  He would be significantly affecting his ability to get a nice new contract if he's a dick and, consequent to that, has a super shitty year.  I'm sure his agent will bring that fact up to him. 

I don't know how long he is going to be around(I mean, not retire), but he has the next 4 seasons at ~30 million a pop.  New contracts probably aren't on his mind.  If I were him, I'd collect the remaining cash wherever I wanted and then walk away.

[ghost]

His contract with the Yankees doesn't end till after the 2017 season.

I'm assuming he doesn't want to spend 5 years sitting the bench. 

[Trippy]

That just gives him more time to flirt with the fans in the stands

[ghost]

I suppose he could be ready to "hang it up", per se, but these guys have egos the size of their salaries.  My gut feeling is there is some serious attitude shit going on behind the scenes.  I'm also predicting that A Rod will have an OJ Simpson/Tiger Woods/Lance Armstrong type meltdown at some point.

[Teleku]

Those are all fairly different sorts of meltdowns.  I'm not sure if a Tiger Woods style meltdown is possible, considering he already got divorced for banging a bunch of random stripper/whores behind his wife's back (and has continued the practice without flinching).  He's also already admitted to using Steroids in the past.  So I guess that leaves him with murder?

Also, I called it.  Though hopefully I'll still be wrong and we'll win in game 7!   

[Malakili]

Those are all fairly different sorts of meltdowns.  I'm not sure if a Tiger Woods style meltdown is possible, considering he already got divorced for banging a bunch of random stripper/whores behind his wife's back (and has continued the practice without flinching).  He's also already admitted to using Steroids in the past.  So I guess that leaves him with murder?

Also, I called it.  Though hopefully I'll still be wrong and we'll win in game 7!   

Maybe he'll murder a stripper while roid raging - the meltdown trifecta.

[Ingmar]

His contract runs through age 42 and is far more than he would ever get for his age 36+ skill set. There's zero chance of any new contract of any kind in his future. Literally the only incentive there is for him to waive the no trade is if they find a situation he'd like better than the Yankees, which seems unlikely. They've made the playoffs like 7 or 8 years in a row.

[Sjofn]

I am so pleased for Vogelsong. 

Make it so I'm even more pleased tomorrow, Matt Cain!

[HaemishM]

The only team I see even remotely thinking about an A-Rod trade would be the Marlins because they've already shown questionable judgement when trading for Latino stars. It would purely be an attempt to keep up goodwill with the Latino community in Miami. That's an awful lot of money to swallow for a guy who got benched in an elimination game. Cashman came out and said they wouldn't consider moving Nunez from shortstop to 3rd, so if they got rid of him, they'd have to sign someone else (good luck) or move Jeter to third and hope he recovers from that injury. A-Rod's trade value is SHIT because his contract is insane AND his skills aren't even close to what the Yankees would want for him. I wouldn't trade him 1-for-1 with any of the 3rd basemen in the league for that contract.

The Cubs might need a 3rd basemen but would never trade for him and I would never want them to.

[Paelos]

Braves need a 3B, but we can't pay more than $7-8M a year for it.

[Ingmar]

Probably easier to move Prado to 3rd and find an outfielder. By 3B standards he's a plus offensive player.

[Paelos]

Probably easier to move Prado to 3rd and find an outfielder. By 3B standards he's a plus offensive player.

That's the plan right now. Prado is our best player by far. However, finding a LF hasn't proven easy for our team.

[Ingmar]

I'd rather have McCann, assuming he's healthy going forward, or Heyward (still only 22 this season), but Prado is a nice player in his prime.

[Paelos]

McCann has been a hitting disaster since the All-Star break 2011. I don't see that suddenly getting better off an arduous shoulder surgery recovery.

Heyward has huge upside. So does Freddie Freeman. I'd back Prado for the next 2 years though as a guy who just gets the job done with hitting.

[Ingmar]

My preference for McCann is a positional scarcity thing - the falloff to the typical catcher you can get is usually a lot bigger than the falloff to a typical 3B/OF type. If he can't get healthy though (it seems like his recent hitting problems stem mostly from injury) that's another matter.

EDIT - Oh yikes, 6 months of rehab. That's rough.

[Paelos]

I think it's already started with McCann to be honest. My biggest problem with him is that he's a defensive liability. His CS rate sucks.

[caladein]

Only Hunter Pence...

[Teleku]

Pence is great to have on the team entirely for his crazy eyes.

[Trippy]

That's funny, I was reading earlier today about the physics of a broken bat and what determines whether or not it breaks off towards the catcher or the pitcher. This is the same 5000 frames/sec camera technology used in the capture above.

http://webusers.npl.illinois.edu/~a-nathan/pob/HighSpeedClips.html

[Paelos]

Grats on knocking out the fucking Cards. I hate those guys.

[Ingmar]

[Sjofn]

I think you mean





Also, I totally agree Hunter Pence's crazy-ass eyes make him totally worth having on the team.

[HaemishM]

Grats on knocking out the fucking Cards. I hate those guys.

As a Cubs fan... THIS.

[Slayerik]

Tigers in 6.

[ghost]

Tigers in 6.

4   

[Paelos]

Depends. Tigers will almost certainly win games 1 and 2 due to pitching, time off, and the Giants general ability to completely fuck up the first two games.

After that? If the Giants hit at all they will even things up, and all bets are off.

I'll say Giants in 7.

[Ingmar]

I should point out the reason we have home field advantage is because we hit Verlander in the All Star Game. (Never mind that one of those guys isn't playing...)