The Rangers game on Friday vs Cleveland Guardians is on Apple TV. Here is a link for a 30 day free trial.
https://redeem.services.apple/roktappletv-amr-v2

WestTexasAg said:

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Tksymm7 said:

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Quincey P. Morris said:

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I think he's trying not to have to medically retire.

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Correct. He has back issues that he will live with the rest of his life. Those aren't going anywhere.

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That's sad. You can tell something isn't right.

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I don't think it's his back to be honest with you. I think he is massively in his own head about hitting and is not relaxed. Really think if they send him down for a month or two he will regain the contact hitter that he was.

Yeah I want to specify that I don't think he's dealing with a back flare-up right now or anything like that. I was just pointing out that he will deal with back related issues or injuries the rest of his career and his life because of the injuries he's had and the issues he had coming out of HS.

Tksymm7 said:

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Yeah I want to specify that I don't think he's dealing with a back flare-up right now or anything like that. I was just pointing out that he will deal with back related issues or injuries the rest of his career and his life because of the injuries he's had and the issues he had coming out of HS.

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Agreed. He will be a 100-120 games a season.

Jimtim1216 said:

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WestTexasAg said:

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Tksymm7 said:

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Quincey P. Morris said:

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I think he's trying not to have to medically retire.

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Correct. He has back issues that he will live with the rest of his life. Those aren't going anywhere.

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That's sad. You can tell something isn't right.

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I don't think it's his back to be honest with you. I think he is massively in his own head about hitting and is not relaxed. Really think if they send him down for a month or two he will regain the contact hitter that he was.

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I think it's both. Although the specific goal of the procedure (i.e. - nerve tissue ablation, scar tissue ablation, etc.) was never publicly reported, the vast majority of ablation procedures performed are to destroy the sensory nerves. Decreasing the pain makes it more comfortable but the pain is likely still present to some degree and the underlying cause (stress reaction) has not been corrected. The only thing that is going to fix a stress reaction is long term rest which would probably end his career. Love Evan Carter but I'm not optimistic about his chances of ever becoming an everyday, productive member of the batting lineup.

This is strictly just my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt lol, but I think injuries and his expedited development are the biggest reasons for his lack of success now.

Major injuries as a young, up and coming, top prospect are KILLER. You miss absolutely critical at-bats, reps, practice and time in the gym developing yourself physically. I think this has set Carter on the back foot in a major way.

So you have him already missing time, reps and the like because of injuries. Then in 2023 because of need you call him up, he plays extremely well, you think he can stick in the bigs because of XYZ and then he's hurt again.

Those two factors combined led to him not getting what I think is enough reps and development in the double A and triple A levels.

hawk1689 said:

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Owners wanting to control costs is also the free market. They are doing so on behalf of their customers, which is you and I. They understand that at some point, the customer base won't want to keep up with the rising cost of consumption.

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I don't really understand your point here. The owners have proposed a controlled market that forces high spending teams to spend less and low spending teams to spend more. Note the word "forces" here. I'm not sure how a compulsory capped system fits into a definition of a free market. Maybe we can argue their proposal would be good for baseball, but it is not debatable that their proposal is not a free market proposal.

One solution I was thinking about last night is what if the owners give up on the idea of a cap in exchange for one extra year of team control via arbitration. Right now teams get 7 (6 in some cases with super 2s). If we bump that to 8/7 I think what ends up happening is that you have even more young players that sign long term deals early that buy out arb and free agent years. The system itself is still uncapped but it becomes more favorable for teams trying to lock up their own home grown stars which I think is really one of the core concerns of fans.

We'd still have outlier free agents like Soto and Harper that get to free agency young enough to command mega deals on the open market, but a lot of free agents would end up being 32-33 year olds and command much shorter term deals that even small market teams could swing.

I think that as long as the negotiations are in good faith and don't become too heated, both sides could see the advantages of this solution. Witt, Rodriguez and Tatis have all signed mega deals early without testing free agency that got them huge guarantees of cash early in their careers mitigating the risk of their performance falling off in a contract year. But also nothing would stop a truly elite player from getting to free agency after 8/7 if they wanted, and compensation via arbitration has been pretty lucrative as well. For the owners they don't get a cap, but the players giving up 1 year of free agency is a big compromise that does help control costs.

The owners want a cap because the cost certainty makes their franchises more valuable. Parity is a talking point.

cmiller00 said:

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The owners want a cap because the cost certainty makes their franchises more valuable. Parity is a talking point.

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This is consistent with every professional sport. All owners, of every professional franchise in every single sport, want to make their franchises more valuable. I'm not quite sure why it seems to be such a much more awful thing when it's baseball owners.