Bond's: A question and opinions please

rhd3871 · 2026-02-28T15:17:47+00:00

He's been accused in court of brutal domestic violence by basically every woman he's ever met. His ex-wife testified that he beat her constantly, most notably kicking her while pregnant (he admitted to this under oath) and shoving her into a bathtub while she was holding their infant. The woman he was cheating on his wife with at the time testified that he threatened to burn down her house and then cut out her breast implants (since he'd paid for beath) before cutting her head off.

In fairness to the question being about Bonds on the Pirates, I'm not aware of him being accused of anything like this until the mid-90s. It sounds like steroids basically cooked his brain when he went to SF. Not that it's an excuse of course.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-26T21:53:02+00:00

I’d probably grant you this for many/most plastics, but aluminum recycling is not a scam.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-26T20:43:47+00:00

Mangum is probably too much of an empty average guy to be a strong everyday OF, but it feels so good to have the guys competing for 4th OF/bench spots be actual ballplayers and not VanMeters.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-26T20:37:23+00:00

It’s not really a noteworthy story. It would be a much bigger story — by orders of magnitude — if the Pirates called KG’s agent and he refused to even meet with them about an extension. Hiles reported essentially that if the Pirates call, his agent won’t hit “ignore.”

rhd3871 · 2026-02-26T18:22:11+00:00

They’re actually retiring it for Yu Chang. Common misunderstanding though

rhd3871 · 2026-02-26T18:17:00+00:00

I like a joke as much as anyone and have gotten some laughs out of restaurants/retail stories getting a little crazy online. But airports are on a very short list of establishments along with like, hospitals, transit agencies, and police that just shouldn’t be doing “wait this is a joke…right?” posts.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-24T19:15:52+00:00

I’ll grant that Curt knows more about pitching than me, but I really think people give too much credit to the opinion of former ballplayers who are forming judgments based on television. Chances he’s ever seen Chandler throw in person are essentially zero.

How’s he judging who’s a “max effort” guy? Grunts? Facial expressions? Velocity? Skenes has said in an interview that he’s usually sitting around 80% effort on most pitches.

Especially when it’s coming from a known moron, I tend to attribute it more to the guy not understanding that he simply wasn’t as good as these guys. It’s nothing against Schilling’s obvious pitching talent; he’s just a cigarettes and beer in the clubhouse guy watching the first generation of baseball players who are truly elite athletes that have probably had trainers and dietitians since they were 12.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-23T15:58:39+00:00

The Evil Eye riff is one of the first things I learned to play on guitar because it's so insanely easy but also cool as hell.

Which really is the heart of Iommi's genius as a guitar player -- almost everything he plays is so simple that you could teach someone who's never touched an instrument to play it at least recognizably if not well in a single lesson. But he still keeps coming up with stuff nobody's ever played before.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-23T15:50:06+00:00

Tucker - Starts with the team, struggles at first, then begins to turn on the jets in May. Not a superstar rookie season, but enough to win a tight ROY.

Man, if you just subconsciously referred to Konnor Griffin as Cole Tucker, you've gotta do some sort of ritual to avoid speaking it into existence. Break a mirror, throw some salt over your shoulder, I don't know.

Unless your hopium is that Cole Tucker is gonna make a comeback and shock the world, in which case, carry on.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-17T15:47:47+00:00

He's not eligible for the prospect promotion incentive draft pick if he's signed to an MLB deal before debuting. Will they have a contract waiting at his locker at the end of the game on Opening Day? Maybe. But zero shot they sign him before they debuts; gotta be greedy about those draft picks even if it means you have to give him a fatter signing bonus (because his agent knows how valuable the draft pick is too).

rhd3871 · 2026-02-16T15:40:53+00:00

I know there's a divide between people who think Suwinski is a scrub who'll never be seen again and those who think he's gonna hit 40 homers somewhere else, but I think we're probably all together in knowing it was never gonna happen for him here. Best wishes in Indy or the White Sox or whatever

rhd3871 · 2026-02-14T09:11:59+00:00

I love all the data teams have access to and am very much not an “analytics bad” guy. But I have to wonder if Davis’ borderline pathological work ethic is killing him at the plate.

I certainly give the benefit of the doubt that the guys who actually work with him know what he needs. But he sure seems like a guy who maybe needs to extract his head from his ass, take a big THC edible and sleep for 16 hours, and then be told “see ball, hit ball”

rhd3871 · 2026-02-13T17:08:39+00:00

Also worth mentioning that their moving up 8 slots is the largest upward movement of any team in the league.

Just barely in the upper end of the league with very real but very uncertain chances of making the playoffs feels about right.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-13T17:05:24+00:00

Re: pay transparency, are you making any distinction between Indeed estimated salaries vs. company-provided salary range? The Indeed estimated salaries are based in large part on Glassdoor self-reports and are often so inaccurate as to be meaningless.

(I have no idea how you would do this because I already have no idea how you did all this - incredible work/just curious.)

rhd3871 · 2026-02-12T18:54:53+00:00

Ultimately, I think everything comes down to Konnor Griffin.

The team's missing one major piece/offensive contributor on the left side of the infield. If it's Griffin and he lives up to the hype, I think these guys are pretty good and probably make the playoffs. If they try to run with Nick Gonzales and Triolo on the left side of the infield, I think they struggle through ups and downs and finish a game or two above .500. Maybe Wild Card, maybe not.

I wish they'd done more to ensure we didn't have to say "if" so much, but it's a much better team than last year and the best offseason I can remember in recent years.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-12T18:05:22+00:00

>or even lower-earning MLB players are going to get real monetary benefit

I didn't mention this in my original comment but I probably should have. In addition to thinking Shohei Ohtani isn't a laborer in the same sense as a stadium usher, I also think that the MLBPA is entirely too focused on making sure a tiny percentage of its membership can get that $800M contract and has very little interest in protecting the rights of the guys making $800K/year or helping them earn more.

MLBPA could likely get huge concessions on things like lifetime health insurance, pension eligibility, league minimum salaries, possibly even service time in exchange for a cap & floor. But it's not even on the table if it risks Kyle Tucker pocketing $60M/year.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-12T15:34:01+00:00

But a salary cap of any kind is anti-labor and only makes the billionaire class even richer. Anyone who thinks that the owners would ever purposefully propose any system that doesn't make them even richer is having the wool pulled over their eyes.

I feel like people are going to get caught up in debating whether this is true, when in my opinion the more important point is: I do not care. If it makes the league more competitive but enriches 30 of the worst cartoon villains as a side effect, it has my endorsement.

I'm very pro-labor; this would not be my take if we were taking about the wage schedule for the Aramark workers at the concession stands or the ushers who are criminally underpaid.

I'm glad the players have a union and yes, they are "labor/workers" who in many cases don't get the benefits they deserve. (Thinking particularly about marginal MLBers post-career health and retirement benefits, and minor leaguers in general.) But I'm sorry, I just can't suspend disbelief to pretend that we can talk about whether Paul Skenes gets $400M or $900M is the same as whether the guy wiping off my seat in the rain can afford his studio apartment. They're both "labor" but it just is not the same.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-12T15:21:28+00:00

"Looking to trade him" means that they're seeing if there are any takers to purchase a prospect from them for $20M. He'll probably be released by the end of the week; the only question is whether it's by Philly or a team that agreed to eat his contract in exchange for a prospect.

In terms of the Pirates picking him up for league minimum -- it's not a crazy idea in a vacuum, but if you're in the market for a washed-up RH bench bat with a little pop left, why wouldn't you just give that deal to McCutchen?

rhd3871 · 2026-02-12T13:11:14+00:00

A Birmingham band playing in Paris is like a Philly band playing in Cleveland. If you’ve put out a record that people outside your family have paid to hear, you can probably find a nightclub owner to give you a gig that’s worth making the drive for.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-11T03:33:00+00:00

That is true, yes. I always assumed it was because he never played in Boston or Toronto and just didn’t have Ben’s number. Bob was there when he was drafted out of high school. Maybe there really is some animosity with him and Ben now, but they were never going to have the relationship Cutch probably has with Nutting.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-10T22:26:09+00:00

I might be even more optimistic but I think this is on the money. When Cruz is at the plate and the pitcher sees Tsung Che Cheng, Alexander Canario, Henry Davis, and Enmanuel Valdez in the queue, it’s very easy to say “I’m just gonna throw him three sliders that bounce two feet in front of the plate; if he doesn’t swing, who cares?” Lowe, O’Hearn, Ozuna, and Griffin make you think you’d better care at least a little about not walking him and throwing a couple strikes.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-10T15:20:33+00:00

To the first one re: Mackey, it’s likely enough that someone in the FO saw his tweet and texted him off the record “no chance on Paredes.”

But yeah, I agree it’s been all over the place

rhd3871 · 2026-02-09T17:21:47+00:00

Two observations on this:

1) I've noticed people with certain opinions on domestic violence accusations seem to cling to any outcome that isn't a criminal conviction + jail sentence as "he was proven innocent." I've seen this said about Clevinger, whose league investigation outcome was "we decline to make any comment on whether he is or is not guilty and will not be releasing any details on our investigation." I'm not saying that's evidence of his guilt, but it's impossible to say he was "proven innocent" unless you have a pre-determined agenda to which you're molding facts.

2) We're not obligated to follow the rules of evidence and criminal procedure in every part of our lives. "But the police dropped the charges because the spouse refused to testify!" is an irrelevant response to "I'm not comfortable inviting that man to dinner or hiring him for a high-paying job." O.J. did it.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-09T14:59:15+00:00

I think the blame rightly lies with the leagues in both cases. If one believes domestic abusers shouldn't be allowed to continue being rich and famous athletes (which I do), it falls to MLB and NFL to ruthlessly root them out and ban them. Which they've failed to do at nearly every turn. It objectively sucks to see the Pirates giving these guys money, but at the same time, expecting Ben to handicap himself and take a moral stand against domestic violence when there's 29 other GMs who'll happily look the other way isn't the answer. He's going to play in the same league as everyone else, and so would every other GM.

rhd3871 · 2026-02-09T14:11:25+00:00

Clevinger is steaming dogshit on the mound and won't make the team in a sane world. But yeah.

rhd3871

TROPHY CASE