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Random Thoughts and Baseball Observations

Is it really a surprise that Michael Pineda overthrew and hurt his shoulder two days after his manager threatened to send him to the minors despite good spring stats due to low velocity? It's one thing for the media to annoy players over that kind of thing, but his own manager? What did Girardi think was going to happen in Pineda's next start?

I've gotten some attention over my Justin-Morneau-for-$7-crickets-bids in AL LABR and AL Tout. More here and also here. And you can hear my rationale here. Make no mistake, I love the attention and traffic it generates, but the only thing I'd take issue with is that I have any particular affinity for Morneau per se. I just felt the market is typically risk averse - especially early in an auction - and would misprice him accordingly - which in my opinion it did.

There are two arguments I've seen against taking him, both of which I think are flawed: (1) That Morneau's projected stats - given how bad he was last year - aren't worth much. But he was clearly playing hurt and not just with a concussion - he had wrist and neck surgery this offseason. Is it really plausible that a 30-year old former MVP would be that bad barring injuries? And (2) That you can take a flyer on Morneau in a mixed league, but in an only league where you're stuck with a zero when he goes down, it's too risky. While it's true that if Morneau goes down, I'd have very little out of my first base slot, I don't see how that substantially reduces my chances of winning. Last year, I had a $26 Adam Dunn there, a $1 Chris Davis at CI and a $6 Brandon Inge at 3B and won the league. This year, I have a $1 Brandon Guyer at U. In a 12-team AL-only league, you're going to have some holes in your lineup. So Morneau gets hurt, I have one at 1B, and $253 to spend on the rest of my team. So what could go wrong is I lose $7 at auction - no big deal. What could go right is he earns $25 for $7. I don't know the precise odds of each happening, and he could certainly earn $10 or $15 or $20, also, but I felt pretty sure I had the right side of this deal by a fair margin.

As an Eric Hosmer owner in one league, I just wish he would stop killing it in spring training and please save some for the season.

Is there any reason Dee Gordon won't hit close to .300 and steal 50 bases this year? He had an 88 percent contact rate, might be the fastest player in the league and 79 percent of his batted balls were either line drives (23) or ground balls (56).

There needs to be a sponsor to put up $50 K (or more) in prizes for a major experts league, invite all the Tout/LABR winners and have them promote the crap out of it for the entire season. It seems right now there are prestigious free expert leagues and pay ones like NFBC for the public. But there should be a major expert league for pay. The payout should be $500 for 11th place, and scaled up to first which would be about half the pot. That way, even the guys in 11th and 12th would be fighting tooth and nail to move up a spot and keep the distribution of categories true for the entire league, a rarity even in expert leagues where losing owners prioritize other things. I think a big sponsor would get more than enough promotion to pay for the prize fund across all the competitors' sites and media outlets.

I love Twitter for a lot of things, but it's terrible as a source for player information. We learn that Pineda will be shut down for two weeks, but what else? Assuming inflammation subsides, what's the plan after that? What is the usual course with this kind of injury? What did the examining doctor say? What are the Yankees' plans in the meantime? Learning something in 140 characters has it's uses, but I'd much rather read a well-researched article with proper context. A little knowledge is often dangerous.

Apropos of nothing, my garage door won't close, and two companies I've called to come by and fix it gave me two-hour windows where the guy would show up, and neither did. One of them called an hour before the window and said he'd be by, the other didn't even bother doing that. The garage door is still stuck. Why do they even bother with the charade of running a business?

Players I was glad to see get drafted while I was waiting on the ones I wanted: Joey Votto, Nelson Cruz, Justin Verlander, Matt Holliday, Andrew McCutchen, Hunter Pence, Carlos Santana, Shin-Soo Choo, Paul Konerko, Ryan Zimmerman, Elvis Andrus, Jered Weaver, Michael Young, Adam Jones, Shane Victorino, Andre Ethier, Asdrubal Cabrera, C.J. Wilson, Alex Avila, James Shields, Craig Kimbrel, John Axford, Howie Kendrick, Cory Luebke, Ian Kennedy, Dan Hudson. I'm sure some will do very well, but I had no interest in any of them where they were falling in my drafts.