Rob Manfred's crusade to change baseball rules continues.

His latest pitches (no pun intended): increase the strike zone, and eliminate the 4-pitch intentional walk.

100p in favor of eliminating the 4-pitch intentional walk

Agreed. Just let the guy take first. Bigger strike zone sounds like a fun to further suppress run scoring

Trumbo and Davis can both play RF/DH so why not 3

4 guys in the lineup with 40+ HR potential would be something

Same here. They need to eliminate the fat-ass umpires having to walk 60 feet and back to the plate over a dozen times a game.. that'll shave off 20 minutes easy....

Getting rid of useless pitches for intentional walks is a great idea but making the strike zone bigger seems like a really bad idea.

Feels like the latter is meant to combat batters who constantly hover inside the zone but a better idea might be to not award a free base if they get hit as a result. Just call it a strike zone violation and make it worth a strike regardless of the count.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/fantasy/dc/

Which means for like the 6th straight year the morons that think they know so much about baseball will be WRONG. AGAIN.
71 wins in 2012...oops they won 93
74 wins in 2013..oops they won 85
77 wins in 2014...oops they win 96
78 wins in 2015..the closest miss they won 81
72 wins in 2016..oops they won 89

Recent signings:

Royals sign Jason Hammel to a 2-year, $16 mil. deal. He's obviously got some big shoes to fill.

Yankees sign Chris Carter. 1-year, $3 mil.

Mike Napoli returns to the Rangers for his 3rd tour of duty. 1-year, $10 mil.

Droford calling others wrong for thinking they know so much. Lol.

Im figuring the Orioles are about the same 89 win team they were last year. Lets see who is closer on the wins..

For crying out loud they're predicting Manny to only hit 25 home runs. Ill eat my damn Orioles hat and post the video of it if he only hits 25 homers. He should have 25 by July.

Except they're likely playing above their talent level and are absolutely playing above their runs scored v runs against.

Maybe a homer like yourself thinks they're an 89 win team. But when someone who isn't inherently bias looks at their roster objectively, it's hard to see them being a better than average team when they're gonna likely stink on outfield defense and have a paltry pitching staff.

I'd be hard pressed to say they're better than the Yankees right now.

MLB considering another idea for making games go faster with this time targeting extra inning games.

According to Joe Torre, the idea on paper is to prevent extra innings from dragging on too long to the point managers need to use utility players as pitchers. Also to prevent extra inning games from getting too boring because of the slower pace.

Torre stop fuckin with the game you Yankee piece of shit! Fuck you! What runners are put on? What if they are the best hitters. Why would they just be on base. Fuck you!

Yeah this is dumb. It's a solution to a problem that's seemingly not to common.

They should just make extra innings sudden death. If the away team scores first fuck the home team.

Leadoff hitter goes to 2nd. Id assume the idea is two sacrifices to score a run however if I managed id walk the next guy to setup a double plsy. Would probably happen 98% of the time.

You idiot. Adding base runners only increases the chances of scoring.

Instead of a 3-3 game ending 4-3 in the 12th, with these new rules the games would end 12-11 in the 17th and take twice as long with all the pitching changes. Theonly way it would work is if it was sudden death, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Chatter around the net is that Jeff Loria has a "handshake agreement" to sell the Marlins. A New York based real estate developer is the buyer and the price tag, $1.6 billion dollars.

Link to MLB Trade Rumors article. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/0...agreement.html

No way the Marlins are worth that much money. Would put them inside the Top 10 and close to the Top 5 for valuable franchises if that was true.

Brand spankin' new stadium can always do the trick. And, sorta gotta blame Giancarlo Stanton. Gotta pay $325 million over the course of his deal.

They could very well be worth that much. New stadium, tv rights deal, revenue sharing plus whatever revenue they generate on their own, etc.

Loria is a shit bag so thank God he's leaving. Feel bad for the people of Miami.

Only thought it was odd since Forbes and others have their value at around $675 million. Doesn't mean they can only be sold for that amount but thought it felt a bit strange anyone would want to an extra billion on top for them.

Them actually being worth $1.6 billion would put them around 7th for all of MLB and not around 29th.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...teams-in-2010/

If Montreal had a decent stadium that didn't have a questionable roof, there's no doubt in my mind that Marlins would have been gone long ago....

I'm all for the extra innings rule. I hate when games go past 9. Bleh.

If you walk to setup double play you could theoretically pick off the lead runner first on a ground ball. You could also get the middle runner out but that opens up an opportunity for a sac fly if you don't turn the double plsy. I just wouldn't want the other team to get s shot at scoring a run without a hit. If they get a hit then whatever.

Teams do a variation of this all the time in extra innings anyway when a team gets 2 on no out..they'll walk them loaded to get the force at home and then turn a double plsy. Seem to remember that working for the Orioles recently.

The problem with that is usually in extras if the reliever puts 2 on, they have to switch pitchers after the walk, resulting in more time....that's what kills the time in my eyes (especially in the playoffs) when you have more than 1 pitching change per half inning....

Could have been like the Twins and really fight MLB's attempt to relocate them. Rember them and the Expos were the teams MLB tried to move since both had similar problems but MLB didn't expect how much of a fight the Twins would give which is why they got to stay.

Orioles got Gabriel Ynoa from the Mets and apparently think he could be a starter. You know ah..

Illitch nooooo

RIP :(

Died the day after pizza day..hmm

The Jays' recent success in Canada has sparked a baseball interest in all of Canada. 5 years ago you wouldn't see anyone wearing Jays merch, whereas nowadays there are people wearing hats and shirts all over. Several bus loads of people from Quebec make the 6 hour drive to essentially all Jays home games, not to mention the busloads that head down to Boston as well.

I honestly believe part of it (maybe 15-25%) is that the Jays Merch isn't fucking hideous anymore. Very conservative, effective throwback style.

Your merch has to be appealing to sell IMO. Obviously the rest is the team itself being marketable, but man the Jersies from mid 90s onwards were hideous until the recent throwback incarnation back to the early 90s.

What Dale said. You don't see a ton of the contemporary Padres stuff here in San Diego. But the 90s blue and orange and especially the brown are huge sellers here.

Which is why it pisses me off that the teams refuses to go to those colors even as the official team colors.

Ok. Update to the potential Marlins sale. Y'all gonna love this.

Joshua Kushner is the preliminary buyer. He's the son of Charles Kushner, who served time in federal prison for white collar stuff. The younger brother of Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump's husband and the son-in-law of El Presidente himself, Donald Trump.

Supposedly, Charles & Jared have no hands in this. Which would make it a bit easier for owners to approve him.

Dodgers re-sign Chase Utley to a 1-year deal.

The Braves' quest to fill their new stadium with butts & stars continues. They're set to acquire Brandon Phillips from the Reds. Who else is involved in the trade is unknown, but Phillips has agreed to waive his no-trade clause and do some tweaks in his contract for this to happen.

Apparently the Reds are getting back non prospects and eating all but $1mil of the salary. Great move for Atlanta, while Cincy comes out with virtually nothing for one of their franchise players.

Why did Atlanta even need a new stadium?