Poll of the Day > Sports Discussion Topic #179: Baseball Season is in Full Swing-and-Miss

(+) Yeah! (+)

I understand the AL is better but damn... the NL should get lucky from time to time at least... its fucking baseball after all

Finally a run that wasn't scored via homer

Yeah it's insane that the NL loses so much

It's also crazy that the NL has been so bad in these games for as long as I can remember yet overall it's still tied. The AL will go out ahead today obviously but still crazy.

Did anyone catch the Josh Hader tweet saga lmao

In a group text one of my friends from high school said "Oh Elon Yes" instead of oh God yes.

They also used to start a group text for some event that I'm not going to go to because I live 3+ hours away, and then spam the group for days (sometimes over a week) with dumb banter/gifs. It was borderline torture. They did this with Facebook messenger too (I'd not check my phone for a couple hours and there would be 120 messages) but at least with fb you can mute/ leave the group

They have now switched to discord thankfully

Chewster posted...

Did anyone catch the Josh Hader tweet saga lmao

He did not have the best night in a couple ways

Chewster posted...

Did anyone catch the Josh Hader tweet saga lmao

Too bad. Just a few hours ago he was just a cool relief pitcher. Now he's going to become the governor of Wisconsin

That's a much better joke than all the "Red Sox are looking to trade for him" ones I saw. Those don't even really make sense, it would be more logical to say "Red Sox fans' new favorite player" or something

Oh and it looks like the Dodgers are going to get Machado. How do they still have assets to keep making all these big trades each year

Chewster posted...

Oh and it looks like the Dodgers are going to get Machado. How do they still have assets to keep making all these big trades each year

No salary cap. Infinitely deep pockets. I really wish the Braves still had Ted Turner

I was kind of enjoying the NL West race since it seemed wide open. Why'd it have to be the Dodgers getting him of all teams.

OhhhJa posted...

Chewster posted...

Oh and it looks like the Dodgers are going to get Machado. How do they still have assets to keep making all these big trades each year

No salary cap. Infinitely deep pockets. I really wish the Braves still had Ted Turner

It's a trade, involving players.

Ultima_Dragoon posted...

I was kind of enjoying the NL West race since it seemed wide open. Why'd it have to be the Dodgers getting him of all teams.

because fuck baseball

:(

Ultima_Dragoon posted...

I was kind of enjoying the NL West race since it seemed wide open. Why'd it have to be the Dodgers getting him of all teams.

Let's be real, our teams weren't going to catch them

D-Backs maybe

SpeeDLeemon posted...

OhhhJa posted...

Chewster posted...

Oh and it looks like the Dodgers are going to get Machado. How do they still have assets to keep making all these big trades each year

No salary cap. Infinitely deep pockets. I really wish the Braves still had Ted Turner

It's a trade, involving players.

Yeah but as of now it looks like it's probably mainly a prospect package with a big payout (obviously since a guy like Machado is gonna get paid big time). I see no mention of the Dodgers unloading any major payroll

He's only signed through the end of this year. There was never going to be major salary considerations in a trade for Machado this year and the prospect package isn't going to light the world on fire. Come back and complain when they sign him in the offseason if you want.

That being said I agree with the notion that it kind of sucks just because it was fun when the Dodgers seemed like they might not win the division. Fucking Max Muncy saving their season

It's only a matter of time before the Nats make a big deal and put themselves back out in front so that it ends up being the exact 3 division winners we expected. The WC is fairly interesting at least even though the Cards suck total ass

As a Braves fan, I fully expect the Nats to have a great second half and the Braves to have a typical atlanta collapse after getting everyone's hopes up

So it looks like Dustin May and Yusniel Diaz are going to the Orioles. Not gonna pretend I know anything about them but just reading a bit this seems like a pretty good haul for a Machado rental. Diaz is a Cuban as you can probably guess by the crazy name and like most other Cuban prospects apparently has great tools, but most interestingly he's got really good BB and K numbers in AA. Dustin May I don't see what the problem is with him just looking at the facts, he's shown great command in the minors and he's a power pitcher. FG still says his ceiling is a 3 or 4 but maybe that's just emblematic of how powerful pitchers have become.

What's worse than dirt in April? Dustin May.

Holy shit it finally happened. Kawaii Leonard to Raptors. DeMar DeRozan is a way better player to give up than Oladipo was, though as I understand Toronto seemed to want to get rid of him anyway, and Kawhi is also a better player than PG. Possibly a good trade (for both teams) but I can't see Kawhi sticking around, despite what happened with PG.

@Zeeky_Bomb

I can't see Popovich coaching for much longer

Josh Hader is going to receive sensitivity training for his tweets. Sports rocks

I shouldn't have said "finally" because there's already a bunch of chatter about how Kawhi hates the idea of playing for Toronto and now everybody is wondering if they'll trade him to LA. This whole thing is such a huge shitshow.

I get that players should be entitled to go where they want but they also have an obligation to play out their current contract with a team. Not like demanding a trade is totally unprecedented, but a team not wanting to trade to a conference rival isn't unheard of either. Both sides probably have valid reasons for how they acted but Kawhi comes out of this looking worse imo.

The Spurs made a good trade forwarding the drama onto Toronto, but if he ends up going to LA anyway, which is still looking like the case, they would have been better off trying to take away assets from the Lakers. Of course if Toronto sends him to the Lakers, the Spurs look like geniuses since the Lakers still lose some young guys, they don't give Kawhi his demands, and they end up with a win-now type of player instead of prospects.

I agree he should play. What did the Spurs even do to him that made him go so nuts

CaptainHammer posted...

Do you put shaving cream on your head? Not trying to make fun, this just sounds terrifying to me

I don't when I start with the electric razor but I do use shaving cream when I switch to the manual razor.
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Allegedly team doctors misdiagnosed his recovery/tried to rush him back; he had his own doctors who he trusted more that told him not to play. There's probably some truth to it but who really knows if the team doctors were really trying to rush him back or just made a mistake. At several points late in the season he was supposedly going to come back but it never materialized, so there's a lot of belief he might have been purposely holding out after he was 100%. The Spurs had a players-only meeting and Tony Parker said something about coming back sooner from a worse injury (not sure if it was in the meeting or at another point), which upset him.

He doesn't really talk much and most of the stuff you hear about him is through his people, like his uncle who doesn't really seem to know what the hell he's doing, so I don't really know what the fuck is actually going on. It would be interesting to see if he ever actually speaks out on his own. At this point I can't even picture when or if he'll show up to meet the Raptors organization

Yeah I was thinking it was a big risk if Toronto actually wants him to play for them because you can't guarantee he'll ever suit up if he doesn't want to. It's taking a holdout to the extreme. If he was on his rookie contract I would have more sympathy for him but since he re-signed at some point I feel like he oughta just play. But whatever. I don't have any sympathy for an NBA owner either.

According to this, it's basically a non-option for him to hold out:

https://uproxx.com/dimemag/kawhi-leonard-toronto-raptors-trade-refuse-play-sit-out-cba-rules-contract/2/

He'd lose all his salary and Toronto would still have control of him. I guess he could fake an injury the whole year? That would really tank his free agency value though, teams are going to want to see recent evidence that he's the same player. It would also be a further hit to his image. He's pretty much in a lose-lose situation but I think at this point he needs to just bear it for a year and get his people to shut the hell up so he can rehab his image.

Can you really fake an injury? I feel like there is probably something in every contract that would require you to be examined by team appointed doctors

Well this whole thing with the Spurs was basically started because of personal doctors vs. team doctors, so maybe, but I feel like it would be hard to fake it for a whole year

I just got a push notification from ESPN that Danica Patrick is hosting The ESPYs starting now. Time for all of us to watch it.

The Kawhi trade is weird at best. I can't help but think the way management went about the whole thing is going to hurt the Raptors the most long term. It should have been easy enough to be honest to DeMar, and let him know that you couldn't rule out trading him.

Anyways, the Raptors should probably flip him in a three-way trade immediately.
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I think there's some moratorium on when you can trade a player you just got in a trade. Of course the season is still like three months away so they can probably do it by then. I forgot what I saw but it might have been 60 days.

Though in that amount of time they probably should work on getting him to buy in just for one season, since "We're going to trade you the second we're allowed" isn't a good impression to make if they end up unable to find a trade partner.

If you're under contract to do a job, then do the job.

OhhhJa posted...

Can you really fake an injury?

I don't know. Let's ask Kawhi.

There are plenty of good reasons to stop doing your job but it's hard to imagine a legitimate beef Kawhi could have with the Raptors already.

Now there are already rumors he's warming to the idea of playing in Toronto. I don't know what to believe.

I was looking through some notes of mine and remembered that game testing job. It's been a while now since I've heard anything after several days of playing phone/email tag, so that might be over. All I found out was that it would pay $28-$32 an hour (which isn't bad), but still don't know what company it is

He had a meeting with Drake.
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Zeeky_Bomb posted...

He had a meeting with Drake.

This is so important

I laughed

Something I realized today is that LeBron has already played in the NBA for more seasons than Jordan, and still hasn't shown signs of slowing down. That's crazy. Then again, MJ came back at age 38 after missing three seasons and dropped 23/6/5. Also he still has more career points although LeBron will catch him next year. Basically, these dudes are both insanely good at basketball

No they aren't.

Let em try and hoop with the sports topic boys, we'll see how good they really are

Do you guys ever get contacted by recruiters on LinkedIn? Do you even have LinkedIn profiles?

It's always such a mixed reaction when I get these messages. Today I got one for a job that pays $60-70 an hour, which makes me feel like I must be doing something right, but it's obvious I'm woefully unqualified for it. And it's obvious these people either don't look at my profile or don't bother to change their form messages because they'll say "In case you're looking for a new role" but my headline literally says I'm looking for a new job

I'm not on LinkedIn but I have gotten some hilarious offers on indeed and shit. Kevin we see your weird resume but there's something about you. We want you to run this project for us in Omaha and we can pay you $120k.

I don't really enjoy it but I'm on there since I always read how it's "mandatory" to get a professional job nowadays. You aren't really missing much. It would probably useful if I could bring myself to cold-network with people, but everything about that seems so phony and transactional.

Sometimes I do get actual reasonable jobs sent to me, but it's almost always either out-of-state, or ends up being some company I already interviewed and got rejected with

Like have you ever had a friend that got into some pyramid scheme that they tried to rope you in? Isn't it awkward? That's what I feel like I'm doing when I try to "network" with a stranger

I've had that. I remember running into a dude I knew in high school about 2-3 years out, and he let me know that he had a 'business proposition' (which should set off alarms right there, but I was young and desperate for a job). Get to a coffee shop with this group of 4-5 people, and this dude starts talking about selling this self-help package. Really wish I had the confidence to just throw my hands up and leave after that, because I sat there for an hour.
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I like when they call it their own "business" or "company" but then they can't even give you a website. Any serious business has a website now, even if it's just a Facebook page or something

A new high and a new low in my esports career tonight, the first night I played Overwatch in around two weeks:

High: at the end of a match we won a kid on mic said "that was a great ult at the end Lucio"

Low: in the match before I accidentally used my ultimate at a bad time and said "whoops, pressed the wrong button" and a guy called me a dumbass