Longgone

Just getting something for an expiring asset.

Anyone who uses the term "liberal idiocy" is speaking with a closed mind.

All the other teams would have to collude against the Tigers for what you are saying to make sense. There just wasn't much of a market for those guys at that time. The return for Verlander was actually quite good, they haven't panned out, but that doesn't mean they weren't highly regarded prospects at the time.

How it works: if a player is perceived as valuable, teams will compete for his services and bid against each other.

Farmer is not quite back to himself, yet.

I think you generally muck things up when you react to perception, rather than reality.

Why? For what purpose? What would it change?

Exactly

He WAS really good. He's not right now because his slider and fastball have regressed, and his command isn't there, yet. Why? We don't know.

Not that much, it's mostly luck, but before you can make any assumptions regarding Candelario, you need to see if, in fact, he hits the ball harder from the right side, and pulls it more from the left, and if that difference offsets enough the advantage of switch hitting. And still the sample size is small and included a period in which he was recovering from injury.

Still a relatively small sample size, especially from the right side.

The difference in babip may entirely explain the difference in batting average.

Two things, first, only in your mind is kneeling for the anthem disrespectful, because it simply isn't. You don't get to dictate to others how they express their patriotism. Secondly, if you have no humanity or empathy for the plight of others, that's on you, no one else.

It's stuffed inside a pastry crust

That's the tricky part. If you're conditioned for 120, and just do it once, likely not. But if you do it repeatedly with only a couple of days rest in between?