Marte feels like a bit of a lost cause to me. Weak gloves don't generally get better.

especially when they have weak bats attached to them.

I hope you all had a good one, but damn do I hate Thanksgiving for the dead news cycle it brings.

Ryan Thibs started collecting HOF ballots.

That helps. Some interesting patterns in the first four ballots:

- Schilling 0/4
- Moose 0/4
- Walker 0/4
- Pudge 4/4

Bookmarking - https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?...E2Lu5P1f92OW8o

so Edgar is never getting in huh?

The person who only put 5 players on their ballot should have their eyeballs removed.

Chris Carter non-tendered after leading the NL in HRs

So Eric Thames signed a 3 year Major League contract.

Last 3 years in Korea he had an OPS of 1.170 with 124 HRs. Lol

OOTP'17 on the humble bundle this week, among others. https://www.humblebundle.com/tycoon-...nt=cta_button0

Braves and Mariners make a trade of minor leaguers.

Braves get the 2014 #6 overall pick C/OF Alex Jackson.

Mariners get two RHP Max Povse and Rob Whalen

Seems good for the Braves, who have pitching prospects to burn and a need at C, if Jackson can be converted back to that position. He played C in high school, but had played in the outfield for both of his two seasons at Low A.

I like Povse a lot. More than the Braves do, apparently.

I guess it's an ok trade but it makes me nervous. And I think all this "we have a surplus of pitching prospects" talk is pure bull****.

Think the Braves did this in part to clear a 40-man space.

remember that time hastings blamed you for ruining his rep in his retirement blog

Sure. I also remember him changing his story.

Edit to add: I didn't realize he'd just posted. Found the blog and addressed it in the thread. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Sure, but I'm not sure this is better than just waiving Whelan.

Just watched a half hour video of all his 2015 homeruns. I enjoyed it immensely.

If I didn't know who it was I would never guess. He now looks like a left handed Nellie Cruz.

He sure as **** sucked in his first go at MLB

Things should start to heat up now. New CBA has been agreed to and mostly finalized, and the winter meetings are just around the corner. There have been a few teams waiting to see what happens with the new CBA before going fully into their offseason plans.

Draft pick compensation is now tied to the overall contract a FA signs ($50MM+ total contract will result in compensation) and to the luxury tax (if the signing team is over the luxury tax total, they will give up a 2nd rounder, a 5th rounder, and $1MM international bonus pool money. If they're under the luxury tax cap, they give up a 3rd rounder. Players can not be given qualifying offers in consecutive offseasons. This begins NEXT offseason, so any draft pick compensation this year still applies (Fowler, Cespedes, Encarnacion, etc.)

Luxury tax cap will go up from $189MM to $218MM over the next 5 years.

Roster size remains 25/40.

International bonus pools will go up, but will have a hard cap instead of a soft cap and penalties.

Dip will be banned soon. Any existing players that dip will be allowed to use it for the rest of their careers, but new players can't/won't.

Revenue sharing is no longer tied to team performance (i.e. huge payroll teams that make the playoffs no longer pay more revenue to bad/small market teams than big payroll teams that don't perform as well).

Rather than reduce the schedule to 154 games, the season will start in the middle of the week (so a few days earlier) to try and get a couple extra offdays.

Possible exhibition games in Mexico and London, among others.

Looks like they've also eliminated the ridiculous WS home-field advantage being decided by the all-star game. Will go to the team with the best record.

Should we start a separate HOF voting thread, or just use this. Would really like to start the conversation.

I actually hate this for the next couple of years. There's no way a pythagorean 100-win team in the NL this year would have been better than a pythagorean 99-win team in the AL due to half the NL tanking. The All-star game thing was obviously a farce, but I'm not a fan of this solution.

Whoa...minimum DL stay is now ten games instead of 15

It's not perfect, but I'd say it's still better than it being decided in an exhibition game by guys not involved in the WS at all, or the old system, which was just to alternate years. Awarding it to the team with the better record has to have a higher success rate in picking the actual better team than basically coin-flipping for it.

How about just alternating every year?