2013 MLB Regular Season running thread

The Mets have traded Marlon Byrd and John Buck to the Pirates, per Adam Rubin on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/AdamRubinESPN/status/372418075205070848

 

I'm from the Bay Area originally (Alameda) so 762 means something to me. I don't agree with you but I respect your opinion.

 

Is 762 one of those infernally-crowded California highways?

 

Tarheel, I don't know if I'd go so far as to agree with Dick that 762 means nothing. Maybe so. But I do know it doesn't mean anything good. Even here it isn't celebrated.

 

IS Sammy Sosa a Hall of Fame player if PEDs are irrelevant to the conversation? Is he better than Reggie Jackson? His numbers would indicate that. Is Reggie a borderline HOFer? More famous than an all time great? What about McGwire, his career OPS+ and SLG% are top 10 all time.

Selig and his daughter were some of the biggest beneficiaries of the PED era, as Commissioner following the strike, Cal, McGwire and Sosa made baseball more of the national past time than the were in the decade before the strike. And as owners of the Brewers benefited financially from PEDs. Wendy Selig got out a few years before the Mitchell report, so she sold at the right time.

 

As much as I want to say I despise cheating, in baseball its been mostly celebrated throughout history, EXCEPT when it has come to steroids. I believe its come from a misunderstanding of steroids. IIRC, steroids help you recover faster and hence facilitate muscle growth, but they do not fundamentally help you execute baseball skills any better. Now I have heard references to enhanced eyesight but have not seen any real support for that.

I hate that steroids seemingly gave birth to 50 hr phoenixes like Brady Anderson and Luis Gonzalez when it was a huge feat to hit 30 in the 70's and 80's. I hate that guys like Clemens and Gagne became studs (or maintained their studliness extraordinarily long).

But history does not allow you to pick and choose who to celebrate and who to ostracize. Spitballs (Gaylord Perry); scuffing of balls (Joe Niekro), stealing signs through use of stuff off the field, corked bats, use of amphetamines (Mays, Aaron, etc.) have all been used and then celebrated in the pursuit of greatness.

I think the great players who used steroids should be eligible for the HOF and then scrutinized within the context of that era; not just arbitrarily excluded from consideration.

 

Pirates add some much-needed offensive help, acquiring Marlon Byrd from the Mets along with catcher John Buck for minor league infielder Dilson Herrera and a player to be named.

Need to find a link, but ESPN supposedly had it first.

 

Signs of progress for the Astros:

5-5 in the last ten games. Even though they're 8-16 this month — actually below their season clip — their run differential of -21 this month isn't the worst in baseball. Hell, it's better than six teams in the MLB.

The team is hitting at an okay .258/.321/.426 clip, an improvement over the .240/.300/.386 they have put up.

Young pitchers like Cosart and Oberholtzer holding their own thus far.

But the bullpen is still atrocious and Matt Dominguez couldn't draw a walk with a 4-0 count.

 

This man has a brain and should get a Hall of Fame vote.

 

I used McGwire and Sosa as an example of two people who saved baseball in 1998 after the debacle of 1994. They are poster children of the Steroid Era. But the same hypocrites who lauded them as saviors in 1998 call them cheaters today. If you want to keep them out of the Hall of Fame because of Sosa's strikeouts and McGwire's batting average, that's fine. Just don't use steroids as a reason for them or any other player from that era. With that said, the best players of that era deserve to be in the Hall. That was my point.

 

Well, yes, they came upon new information. No one is bound to his 1998 snap evaluation. You want to argue in favor of PED users in the HOF, be my guest. But no one is a hypocrite solely because they altered their view when very vital new information became available.

 

Agreed. It is not hypocritical to change your mind upon learning new information. Now anybody who knew that McGwire and Sosa were juicing and praised them only to turn on them later? That would be a hypocrite.