EPL THREAD - We need to start reccing these things up now that GDTs are back

G1GDT2

MLB Playoffs GDT - If you're still interested in baseball, there's Oak @ Det and SF @ CIN tonight. You can talk about it here.

Oakland A's @ Detroit Tigers - The Rangers Game Doesn't Start For Another Three Hours AL West Magic Number Countdown Watch Game Day Thread

If you’re looking for the worst player in baseball this season Francoeur and Young are the most obvious candidates and right now at least my vote would go to Frenchy. And he’s signed for $6.75 million next year

It also reminded me of Ron Washington and Dusty Baker. These two are oft-mocked for their clumsy in-game managing. They drive iconoclasts crazy with irrational moves: bunting at bad times, refusing to use their bullpen in a smart manner, and so on. Both are able to get the results necessary to keep their jobs. You could assume the Rangers and Reds are incompetent, leaving Washington and Baker’s employments as a symptom of systematic failure. But those are two of the best teams in the majors. If they know something about how to evaluate ballplayers, they probably know something about how to evaluate managers, too.

It’s enough to make you wonder how often we misinterpret managerial moves. When a manager plays the hot hand, is he doing so because he believes in the predictive power of a hot streak, or is he doing it because he knows his players believe in it? Alternatively, perhaps he thinks roles are phooey, but he also knows his relievers believe their preparation and rituals are the keys to their success.

The Astros’ win over the Reds generated the lowest rating, as far as can be determined, in the history of the team’s presence on Fox Sports Houston and its predecessor networks.

It generated – if that’s the word – a 0.05 rating, which means it was viewed by an average audience of 1,092 households. It only generated a measurable rating in four quarter-hour periods, and it was never viewed during any 15-minute period by more than 0.18 percent of the area’s 2.1 million TV households.

Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler: "He's a good hitter, I'll grant you that, but he might be the worst defensive second baseman in baseball. It's not only the errors he makes, but the plays he doesn't make that don't get called errors because he doesn't get to the ball. They should either stick him in left field or make him a DH."

There have been elite shortstop prospects in recent memory who have been equally devastating at the plate, such as Manny Machado, Hanley Ramirez and the Upton brothers, but they weren't in the same class as Profar defensively. He's the best all-around shortstop prospect since Alex Rodriguez, though I don't think you'll see Profar grow into that same kind of power and they're not particularly similar players.

Months after Luhnow tried to lure Keith Law from ESPN and hired Mike Fast from Baseball Prospectus, the new name being heard is Kevin Goldstein, also from Baseball Prospectus. (Luhnow called Goldstein "very well thought-of" while declining to say whether he's joining the Astros; Goldstein, known for extensive prospect reviews and clever, sometimes sassy tweets, responded "no comment" via a direct message on Twitter.)