IggyPride00;1490782 wrote:ESPN has a story up on Todd Helton right now and how he will be likely retiring at the end of the year.

Talk about the poster child for the steroid era. His first 8 years he looked like a sure fire hall of famer piling up a .337% average with 251 career homers, 951 RBI's and 1535 hits, by the age of 31.

That was at the end of the 2004 season.

In the 9 seasons since then he has completely fallen off a cliff production wise. Average has dropped to .291, only 111 homers, 549 RBI's, and 1122 hits.

PED testing really started to kick in just as his power fell off a cliff in the midst of what looked like a HOF career.

Just seems kind of an odd coincidence. The way Jerry Crasnick laid out the numbers it is pretty stark about how the drop off was.

What's the verdict? Likely juicer, or just got old quick about 10 years ago.

Likely started juicing young with vets like Walker, Gallaraga, Castilla...Burks

Yeah the decimal point is wrong. WHIP .85.

Ironman92;1490788 wrote:Likely started juicing young with vets like Walker, Gallaraga, Castilla...Burks

That's kind of what I believe as well.

They have said Roids will take an average player and make them good, a good player and make them great, and then you have the Bonds of the world who went from a great player to the most dominant offensive force ever seen.

Helton seems to have fallen into that good player to great category as his numbers during the testing period are good, but nothing compared to the HOF level they were at when it was OK to juice.

It's hard to say really. For years the ballpark was a ridiculous factor (too lazy to check home/away splits)

The things Larry Walker did offensively threw a gigantic flag....but look at Helton's and they do as well. The whole damn Rockies team it seems.

Evan Longoria goes yard. Here's what it looked like hanging from the dome of the Trop.

Odd angle, looks like a pop up to 1B.

Holy Mike Napoli!

Ironman92;1490837 wrote:It's hard to say really. For years the ballpark was a ridiculous factor (too lazy to check home/away splits)

The things Larry Walker did offensively threw a gigantic flag....but look at Helton's and they do as well. The whole damn Rockies team it seems.

Rockies numbers went down when they stared to place the baseballs into the humidor so they didn't dry out.

"ESPN's Adam Rubin confirms that Matt Harvey has been diagnosed with a partially torn UCL in his elbow.
WFAN's Mike Francesca was the first to report the news. Harvey is going to rest for a bit before likely undergoing Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery. He can pretty much be ruled out until the start of the 2015 season. It's a brutal blow for the 24-year-old right-hander and severely damages the Mets' chances of competing in 2014."

Ouch.

Azubuike24;1491469 wrote:"ESPN's Adam Rubin confirms that Matt Harvey has been diagnosed with a partially torn UCL in his elbow.
WFAN's Mike Francesca was the first to report the news. Harvey is going to rest for a bit before likely undergoing Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery. He can pretty much be ruled out until the start of the 2015 season. It's a brutal blow for the 24-year-old right-hander and severely damages the Mets' chances of competing in 2014."

Ouch.

Damn! Just when it seems like the Mets are getting some good young pieces to build around, reality ensues...

I liked the skit he did on Fallon and he seems like a pretty cool dude. I feel bad for him but couldn't care less about what this does to the Mets.

What has changed in the way that pitchers are developed that a generation or 2 ago guys could start every 4th day with seemingly no pitch count with little issue, and now today's young pitchers by and large rarely make it to 25 without needing Tommy John when most of htem can't dream of sniffing 200 innings a season or more than a 100 pitches an outing?

It is bizarre.

There are obviously guys that don't have that problem, but it seems anymore guys arms are so insanely fragile even though sports medicine and proper training advances should have them more bullet proof than ever.

thavoice;1491319 wrote:Rockies numbers went down when they stared to place the baseballs into the humidor so they didn't dry out.

I know....but away splits for those players might show some likely use. If they all sucked on the road it was all the humidor.

IggyPride00;1491515 wrote:What has changed in the way that pitchers are developed that a generation or 2 ago guys could start every 4th day with seemingly no pitch count with little issue, and now today's young pitchers by and large rarely make it to 25 without needing Tommy John when most of htem can't dream of sniffing 200 innings a season or more than a 100 pitches an outing?

It is bizarre.

There are obviously guys that don't have that problem, but it seems anymore guys arms are so insanely fragile even though sports medicine and proper training advances should have them more bullet proof than ever.

Pitchers for the most part throw harder but Nolan, Carlton, Seaver and others sure make you wonder.

Azubuike24;1491469 wrote:"ESPN's Adam Rubin confirms that Matt Harvey has been diagnosed with a partially torn UCL in his elbow.
WFAN's Mike Francesca was the first to report the news. Harvey is going to rest for a bit before likely undergoing Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery. He can pretty much be ruled out until the start of the 2015 season. It's a brutal blow for the 24-year-old right-hander and severely damages the Mets' chances of competing in 2014."

Ouch.

That sucks.

Ironman92;1491524 wrote:Pitchers for the most part throw harder but Nolan, Carlton, Seaver and others sure make you wonder.

That and the guys who pitch in the big leagues have probably been pitching a shit ton of games since they were like 10 years old. The best kids now are playing in multiple leagues on top of going to tournaments every weekend. I doubt this is how it was in the good ol days. I could very well be wrong since I have no idea how it was. Just a guess.

Rotinaj;1491531 wrote:That and the guys who pitch in the big leagues have probably been pitching a shit ton of games since they were like 10 years old. The best kids now are playing in multiple leagues on top of going to tournaments every weekend. I doubt this is how it was in the good ol days. I could very well be wrong since I have no idea how it was. Just a guess.

I don't know.....I was nothing special but from age 8-18 I threw a shit ton and pretty much pitched everyday to my Dad from age 10-15.....and the only thing worth a shit on my body is that pitching arm.

Rotinaj;1491531 wrote:That and the guys who pitch in the big leagues have probably been pitching a **** ton of games since they were like 10 years old. The best kids now are playing in multiple leagues on top of going to tournaments every weekend. I doubt this is how it was in the good ol days. I could very well be wrong since I have no idea how it was. Just a guess.

Most of those kids from generations past were playing sandlot games daily with eachother in the neighborhood because there was no phone/internet/TV to keep them inside all day. At the very least they were out playing catch. It is hard to believe there ever was such a time, but there was a period where kids went out outside to play if they wanted to amuse themselves since there were no electronics to pass the time with.

Ironman92;1491539 wrote:I don't know.....I was nothing special but from age 8-18 I threw a shit ton and pretty much pitched everyday to my Dad from age 10-15.....and the only thing worth a shit on my body is that pitching arm.

Im pretty sure the velocity isn't added to this equation. And to your post iggy im 25 and did those exact things you're talking of so you can go ahead and erase any thoughts of only old timers played baseball outside as kids. Like I said, I could be wrong but its the only thing I can think of that makes sense. Its not because the old guys are just badasses or something like some people may want to think.

The Astros are on pace to rake in an estimated $99 million in operating income this season. That is nearly as much as the estimated operating income of the previous six World Series championship teams — combined.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2013/08/26/2013-houston-astros-baseballs-worst-team-is-most-profitable-in-history/

Jim Crane is a first class piece of shit that has no business owning a team.

He is from the Frank McCourt school of borrowing every nickel to buy the team he couldn't afford, and then strip mines the organization and lines his pockets with revenue while the product on the field is allowed to go to hell.

Jeffrey Loria is jealous somewhere as he used to have the market cornered on shady behavior like this.

MLB seems to have a bigger problem with these kind of owners than any of the other sports. It is a black mark on Bud's record.

^^

Crane doesn’t appear to be gouging fans for profit. Since becoming the owner, he has introduced fan-friendly policies like allowing food and drinks into the ballpark.
But he will likely use some of the cash flow to pay down the reported $275 million debt he took on when buying the team. He financed the purchase with a $220 million loan from Bank of America BAC -0.55% and assumed $55 million of debt from a previous loan with Major League Baseball, according to theSports Business Journal.

Doesn't seem all that bad to me...yet.

"I wouldn't say Sean Casey was slow....but he was a triple short of the cycle for his career"

Mitch Williams lol

One would think that today's pitchers are 'soft' compared to back in the day, and that guys get hurt so often, and early in their careers. Pitchers have always hurt themselves, and badly enough it ruined/ended their career's because of the lack of medical technology back then. We look at a Harvey, or Strasburg, big names etc who get hurt young and we wonder WTF. Well, back in the day that stuff happened too, and it just ended their careers. We wonder why it seems back in the day the big names didn't get injured like this. Those big names we all know about now are big names because they didn't get hurt and put up amazing numbers for a long time. I guarantee you that back in the day 'big names' suffered big time injuries but never became historic big names because they didn't have the the technology to fix them. Someone mentioned how kids play in all these tournaments, etc, nowadays. True but from my experiences in the last 10 years or so they are following a lot more pitch/inning counts than they did 20+ years ago. To a point I think pitch counts are as much of a hinderance as they are being helpful. While we ask our other athletes to run more, lift more to get their bodies ready we are asking less of the arms of the pitchers. Could the steady increase in 'babying' pitchers be leading to the perceived increase in arm injuries because they aren't being used as much?

Pirates acquire Marlon Byrd and John Buck.

Pathetic that the Reds not only didn't make a claim, but they didn't block Pittsburgh. Byrd's salary is only 700K this year. He would rank 3rd on the Reds in OPS.

Will the media question the front office for this? This is an asleep at the wheel move. You let a rival, with a better record, get a player who is a need for both teams.

Azubuike24;1492021 wrote:Pirates acquire Marlon Byrd and John Buck.

Pathetic that the Reds not only didn't make a claim, but they didn't block Pittsburgh. Byrd's salary is only 700K this year. He would rank 3rd on the Reds in OPS.

Will the media question the front office for this? This is an asleep at the wheel move. You let a rival, with a better record, get a player who is a need for both teams.

I'm thanking them (and everyone else) who didn't put a claim in! Potentially could be a great deal, as it shores up the weak RF spot at the expense of one A-level prospect in a deep farm system.

At the least, I'm hoping he'll be better than their last few "big" late-summer additions from the last two years.

1. Derrek Lee: Did really well except for missing about his first month with the Pirates in 2011 with an injury. When he came back, the collapse was too far into effect for any one man to end it.

2. Ryan Ludwick: Utterly sucked all of 2011; moving from SD to Pitt didn't help.

3. Wandy Rodriguez: Been a decent mid/back-end starter...when healthy. It's been a long time since he's been healthy. So long...and watching Locke going down the same August path Leake is for you is making me more and more sad he's not healthy.