MLB 2014 season thread

You wrote it a second time and left in the other typo? Not your best effort, JC.

 

He is trying to stack oop bingo by front-engineering the responses.

 

Full of fail today, OOP wins.

 

The Marlins pound Colon for two runs in the first. Suddenly, Miami looks like real contenders.

 

All organizations don't do it. The ones with the money don't have to play those games.

The cap (and more importantly, floor) are only part of my point. The other bit is the stupidity of the approach. The low revenue franchises are more likely to have smaller windows for success. That means they have to be more aggressive when they do build a contender. The Pirates are not doing that. They went the penny-pinching route in the offseason and they are doing it again with Polanco.

As I said before, the baseball people are the best they have had in Pittsburgh in a very long time, but it is the same old failure from the owners.

 

I think they made some decent D-list pickups for this season, but let's not get carried away.

 

oop, if keeping Polanco in the minors until June gets them another year or two without him leaving for a larger city, I think they'd be crazy to call him up at this minute.

 

They have four solid to really good pitchers in their rotation, too. And that fifth spot should soon be occupied by Andrew Heaney, the best southpaw prospect in baseball.

 

That assumes they will fail to hold on to him, which also would speak to the commitment of ownership.

I disagree and I stated the reason why. It is extremely difficult for a low revenue franchise to contend consistently. The goal should be to build a contender and do some real damage before the talent gets too expensive. That means being willing to be more aggressive financially when those windows of opportunity open. The team made the playoffs with a lot of young talent in key roles. Instead of building on that, the Pirates are taking the cheap route in every possible way.

That also leads into my second point. No way in hell one of the big boys would leave a guy like Polanco in the minors when the major-league team is falling that hard on its ass. Does anybody really believe they are keeping him down so he can learn a few more things?

 

That type of mentality can lead to teams like the Astros calling guys like George Springer up way too early and risking the possibility that they never develop because they were exposed too soon.

 

George Springer is almost 25. You can't leave him down forever.

Never bet on prospects who strike out a ton in the minors, even if their overall production is good. It almost always means holes in the swing that MLB pitchers will exploit.

 

There were plenty of questions before Springer was called up. Also, everybody knew the Astros were going nowhere. It is not a comparable situation.

In the case of Polanco, I believe this decision is all about money, not a question if the player is ready.