I love him with the Russians. Those guys were spectacular together.
Kyle Seager is A) toast and B) a third baseman. He was awful last season and I'm confidence Nolan Gorman could put up better numbers if given the chance.
The Preds have goaltending, a potential Norris Trophy winner and Matt Duchene coming back from the dead, among other positives. I like their chances of making the bracket.
I like Schwarber. He's just not a fit here, in this ballpark, with a team that stresses fielding, with a team that should assemble hitters with fielding versatility to give Marmol the most opportunity to seek matchups.
Look, the owners lose big in work stoppages. The dynamic is never going to change. The players are the product. The players can't overplay their hand, true, but the owners really don't want to cause long-term damage to their business with a needless work stoppage after all the COVID setbacks. The owners are smart. At some point they will tell Manfred to make a deal and their baseball ops people to make the new CBA work.
True, but crushing the occasional onrushing skater on the blue line ala Scott Stevens can take some steam out of the opposing transition game. Bortuzzo was big on that when he first came here but, to your point, he has learned to really pick his spots and focus more on shot blocking, puck retrieval and outlet passing.
The glow of that Alabama win did not last. Martin has landed some good players not named Porter, but he also taken in a lot of guys who held the program back. An example: Would the Tigers have avoided their late-season fade last season had Martin landed a transfer point guard better than Drew Buggs? Just one more good player -- especially at that spot, especially with Xavier Pinson melting down -- could have really made a difference.
Yeah, this has to be a weird time. Maybe they can go back and review those advanced analytics that kept telling them that Matt Carpenter was hitting well. Maybe they will discover they were reading the chart upside down.
Many baseball fans are romantics and purists, so there was real resistance to juicing among them. Steroid abuse was a long big thing in football but there are not nearly has many purists among fans of that sport.
They could -- and the Rays could run a payroll on par with the neighborhood Del Taco.
This is the dilemma facing the school. The athletic department needs basketball revenue to pay the bills. It certainly can't lose money on the sport. Fans are not showing up in droves.
The team at the end of the year was different than the one at the beginning. Sosa and Nootbaar added life, O'Neill broke out and Bader got healthy. The Cardinals upgraded the bench on the fly last year. They finally subtracted the useless Matt Carpenter from that team and they will plug in either their emerging prospects or stopgap veterans who are likely to produce more than Carpenter did.
I'm guessing we will see some interesting batting order driven more by numbers than by seniority protections.
I must say, in the 40 years I've been in the business, the Tortorella Troll is the single more random annoyance.
We could see more of them.
If you are a team where the trainer is giving out amphetamines and the manager is winking are steroid abuse, then this is an accepted practice.
The more unlikely it is we'll won't see spring training, the more likely it is we'll see the Cardinals invest in a veteran hitter or two to buy Gorman and Yepez more time.
I can definitely see more relief depth coming for the reason you mention. And, again, with no spring training, what would the Cardinals know about Hicks? Wouldn't that force the team to jam another reliever or two on the 40-man roster.