Joe Lucia

7th in JAWS at 2B. Everyone else in the top 10 is in, along with 13, 14, 15, 19, 20. Slightly abbreviated career, and like Tabe said, the low BA probably mattered more than his great OBP. HOF discussions both entertain and enrage me.

Something similar happened to Bobby Grich being one and done. Don't think he's a Hall of Famer, but didn't he merit more than a sliver of discussion? Shit, same with Lou Whitaker, Moises Alou, and Kenny Lofton recently. They're not joke candidates like Jacque Jones and Mark Grudzielanek, but shit.

That trade is simply delectable. Like it for both sides, leaning towards the Twins.

Anyway, now that we've all revealed how we're beating the system... How's the game? I picked it up today as part of the Target sale and installed it along with a bunch of the DLC that came along with it, but I'm probably not going to start playing until next week.

I use Swagbucks and end up getting enough for a $25 Amazon GC typically every week. Haven't paid for anything since June!

Hoffman and Wagner are the first real modern closers to be on the ballot. Will be very interesting to see how they're treated. They're a bit helped because this is a baby soft first time class except Griffey, and four guys getting in last year helped clear some of the backlog. Shorter: I have no idea.

Brief history of my Garret Anderson hatred... The Braves needed a left fielder in 2009. They got bupkis from the entire outfield in 2008, were foolishly still committed to Francoeur in right for '09, and seemed content to push Jordan Schafer into center that season. They were clearly trying to contend after signing Lowe and trading for Vazquez. They had been tied to Griffey the entire winter, and late in February, he signed with Seattle. Whatever, Griffey would have sucked. Bobby Abreu was also an option that signed around the same time as Griffey that would have worked out fine. FWIW, I was big in the Adam Dunn camp because he was still good and was exactly what the lineup needed, defense be damned. Hell, they could have thrown him at first base since they were planning on rolling out Casey Kotchman that year, which ended as poorly as you'd expect. So after Griffey signed with Seattle, the FO essentially said that a prospect named Brandon Jones would be the left fielder. Cool , I liked Jones - he was a top 100 guy in 08 that was still only 25 and showed *some* promise between AAA and the majors that year. Not even a couple days after giving Jones their support, they signed Anderson to a major league deal despite the fact that he was 36, had no power, had no speed, was a mediocre defender who had been getting reps at DH over the recent years in Anaheim, and was a hollow batting average at that point. The explanations from the FO were the usual bullshit: professional hitter, veteran presence, all that nonsense. Of course, Anderson was awful. He didn't hit lefties, he didn't hit righties. His fielding was atrocious. Old man Cox jammed him into the 3-4-5 slots in the order constantly. The offense actually did get worse overall (like I adeptly predicted on Talking Chop when Anderson was signed) and the team finished third (again, like I predicted). Anderson was gone the next year and retired after coming off the bench for the Dodgers. The Braves engineered the disastrous Melky experiment in 2010, played an infielder in left in 11-12, then finally got a real left fielder in Justin Upton for 13-14...and the guy who logged the most innings in left this year was Jonny Gomes. Next season, it'll probably be Nick Swisher or Michael Bourn, both of whom may be outplayed by corpses with tomahawks across their chests in 2016. Brandon Jones never ended up doing anything in the majors...but we'll never know what could have been. They knew what the ceiling was for Anderson, and even if everything went right, there wouldn't have been much of a difference between him and Jones. Nothing really did go right with Anderson, and the Braves STILL don't have a franchise left fielder.

Hall of Fame ballot is out tonight. Garret Anderson is on it, and all of those vicious, negative feelings I had towards him during his career with the Braves are popping back up again. God, I fucking hated him.

The thing with Anderson has never been his ability, but his health. Dude is made of paper maiche. If I'm going to give him three years, am I sure I'm even going to get a total of 300 innings out of him?

Target's buy 2, get 1 free video game sale is back this week. Help.

The pitchers are in a good situation because of how strong the FA market is - plenty of teams need pitching, and those who strike out on the top tier guys could get desperate and back up the truck for the Anderson/Estrada guys. Same thing happened with Garza/Lohse/Ubaldo.

Suck it, Penn State.

Fister doesn't surprise me at all after the year he had, but Span? I think he'll end up doing very nice for himself this winter, probably something like 4/50. Pretty sure this is going to be the year where a player finally accepts the offer. With 20 players getting them including some middle of the road guys like Anderson, Estrada, Kennedy, and Murphy, it seems pretty likely.

The whole situation is an embarrassment to everyone involved. Most Braves fans I know are even throwing their hands up.

We're assuming the doc is happening, but Hock isn't the director and that the dude who initially reported it tied the two together erroneously

Execs....heh. I mean it's true, he's our CEO, but I've never thought of him as an "executive"

SEE: Washington Nationals, 2012 to 2013 or 2014 to 2015

Sure, and that's a fair point - I mean, Bobby Cox and John McGraw have losing records in the playoffs and no one holds that against them. Piniella, like Baker, had some great teams he couldn't get over the hump. It happens. But when it happens so frequently with one manager? Eh, I think it reflects a bit on them instead of just "shit happens". Back to Dusty for a minute. Even if you ignore the pennants, and winning percentage, and all that shit, he's won a total of three playoff series in his career. It's not like he's coming up "just short" in all of these other seasons. But hey, regular season success and flopping in the playoffs? I guess he really is a perfect successor to Johnson and Williams.

Yes? Winning a pennant = representing your league in the World Series. Piniella won the 1990 pennant and WS with the Reds, and never won another pennant again.

I wrote up a bunch of Dusty Baker shit last night, but here are the fun bullet points. -19-26 career playoff record, which is not good -Outside of his 2002/03 playoff runs, his career playoff record is 3-13 -One pennant, which he spectacularly fucked up. -Had FIVE MVP seasons on his teams (Bonds '93/'01/'02, Kent '00, Votto '10), missed the playoffs in two of those years, bounced in the NLDS in another two -Hasn't made it to the NLCS since 2003. -Hell, he's only won playoff series in 2002 and 2003. -Finished under .500 in six of his last eight seasons on the bench -The only managers to manage more games than him and have won one or zero pennants? Gene Mauch and Lou Piniella. Piniella is actually a decent enough comparison to Baker if you dig deep In short - he can maybe get you to the playoffs, but hasn't done a damn thing once he gets there. GOOD LUCK NATIONALS!

There's also the whole "Yoenis Cespedes really isn't that great of a player" thing, but hey, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

Because he's a Cubs fan. Negativity comes naturally.

They ARE doing two exhibition games this spring that I think are already sold out...

I don't disagree with that part of the argument at all. I also think he left the organization in a better place than it was when he was promoted, but that's another discussion.

I don't think it's fair to compare Anthopolous not doing anything at prior deadlines to what he did this year, if only because they had *no* shot from 2010-13 despite hovering around .500 because of how deep the AL East was. Records on July 31st... 2010: 54-50, 12.5 out, 4th place 2011: 55-53, 12 out, 4th place 2012: 51-52, 9 out, 5th place 2013: 50-57, 14 out, 5th place 2014: 60-50, 1.5 out, 2nd place 2015: 53-51, 6 out, 2nd place Yeah, they probably should have done something last year like they did this year, but the market *was* batshit insane and the cost for Price would've been a lot higher.