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Post by runner on Dec 30, 2022 20:00:29 GMT -5
Are we talking about the 26-year-old with 37 professional starts? I hope he works out, obviously, but I would pump mid-rotation talk in the immediate future. I have Henry Owens flashbacks.IMO Walter was already good enough for the majors when he was in AA last year. While they were both in AA he was better than Bello IMO. Bello took another step forward as the season progressed though. Pitchers that don't need to improve to help in the majors are a different category than someone like Owens that had a lot of potential but never got good enough.
Walter has his injury issue which is a big unknown. He could be toast for all I know.
Owens problem was always velocity. There's no way to develop it. Unless he was going to be the next Jamie Moyer (highly unlikely), he was never going to be a guy that ever succeeded. There hasn't been a guy who's risen in the farm system as fast as Walter since Mookie, and they're two completely different paths and examples. Ones a position player, another a pitcher. I'd enjoy the ride and see how he looks in spring training, but if he looks like the beginning of last year, the hype train should be in full force.
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ematz1423
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Post by ematz1423 on Dec 30, 2022 20:09:11 GMT -5
Walter was already good enough for the majors when he was in AA last year. While they were both in AA he was better than Bello IMO. Bello took another step forward as the season progressed though. Pitchers that don't need to improve to help in the majors are a different category than someone like Owens that had a lot of potential but never got good enough.
Walter has his injury issue which is a big unknown. He could be toast for all I know.
Owens problem was always velocity. There's no way to develop it. Unless he was going to be the next Jamie Moyer (highly unlikely), he was never going to be a guy that ever succeeded. There hasn't been a guy who's risen in the farm system as fast as Walter since Mookie, and they're two completely different paths and examples. Ones a position player, another a pitcher. I'd enjoy the ride and see how he looks in spring training, but if he looks like the beginning of last year, the hype train should be in full force. I mean I'm gonna jump on with Manfred and say let's please pump the brakes. Putting Walter and Mookie in the same sentence is kind of ridiculous. I think Walter is intriguing and with probably a good month or two of pitching in AAA he'll be knocking down the door to join the staff but yea let's slow down the hype train a little bit here.
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Post by kwodes on Dec 30, 2022 20:42:45 GMT -5
Are we sure that wacha is not coming back? Again, adds to the good pitching depth we already have which would allow more ammo to trade for a SS/2B/CF
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Post by runner on Dec 30, 2022 21:42:15 GMT -5
Owens problem was always velocity. There's no way to develop it. Unless he was going to be the next Jamie Moyer (highly unlikely), he was never going to be a guy that ever succeeded. There hasn't been a guy who's risen in the farm system as fast as Walter since Mookie, and they're two completely different paths and examples. Ones a position player, another a pitcher. I'd enjoy the ride and see how he looks in spring training, but if he looks like the beginning of last year, the hype train should be in full force. I mean I'm gonna jump on with Manfred and say let's please pump the brakes. Putting Walter and Mookie in the same sentence is kind of ridiculous. I think Walter is intriguing and with probably a good month or two of pitching in AAA he'll be knocking down the door to join the staff but yea let's slow down the hype train a little bit here. I said that from the start. The only thing that was comparable was the quick rise through the system. Nothing else. I said, if he shows the same stuff as the beginning of last year, then we should be hyped. That's a heck of a pitching prospect you have there.
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Post by julyanmorley on Dec 30, 2022 22:00:54 GMT -5
Aww, Nate wanted to come back and we offered him the best deal. Kluber is probably the one that ruined it with that team friendly deal
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ematz1423
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Post by ematz1423 on Dec 30, 2022 22:10:17 GMT -5
Aww, Nate wanted to come back and we offered him the best deal. Kluber is probably the one that ruined it with that team friendly deal I'm fine with getting Yoshida and Martin but if we could go back in time and swap Jansen for eovaldi I'd 100 percent do it. I don't even dislike Jansen or the deal overall but I think eovaldi is likely to be more valuable than Jansen and is just 2 million more guaranteed. That being said I don't really blame Bloom and the Sox for taking the deal in hand on jansen rather than waiting around for eovaldi since I did expect eovaldi to get a bigger guaranteed deal then he did.
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Post by runner on Dec 30, 2022 22:14:55 GMT -5
Aww, Nate wanted to come back and we offered him the best deal. Kluber is probably the one that ruined it with that team friendly deal I don't see why Nate deserves flack for that. I kind of blame Bloom for not holding his end of the bargain (he didn't need to, but didn't want to bring back the better pitcher because of a bargain, do I have that right?) Either way not that bothered by it, Eovaldi versus Kluber probably won't be a huge difference, but at some point Bloom has to chase better players versus better contracts.
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Post by grandsalami on Dec 30, 2022 22:21:13 GMT -5
Aww, Nate wanted to come back and we offered him the best deal. Kluber is probably the one that ruined it with that team friendly deal I don't see why Nate deserves flack for that. I kind of blame Bloom for not holding his end of the bargain (he didn't need to, but didn't want to bring back the better pitcher because of a bargain, do I have that right?) Either way not that bothered by it, Eovaldi versus Kluber probably won't be a huge difference, but at some point Bloom has to chase better players versus better contracts. His agent is the one who should be blamed. Not nate or bloom. He had that contract on the table for more than a month and his agent apparently shopped it without success. At w certain point the sox had to move on cant have nate holding up any other moves.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Dec 30, 2022 22:22:13 GMT -5
Aww, Nate wanted to come back and we offered him the best deal. Kluber is probably the one that ruined it with that team friendly deal As much as I love what Nate meant to the team in the broader picture, he's had only one season of more than 125 IP since 2016. And, as the old saw goes, he's not getting any younger. He was a workout god to the entire Sox staff and still only managed 20 starts last year. Thanks for the memories.
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Post by runner on Dec 30, 2022 22:29:44 GMT -5
I don't see why Nate deserves flack for that. I kind of blame Bloom for not holding his end of the bargain (he didn't need to, but didn't want to bring back the better pitcher because of a bargain, do I have that right?) Either way not that bothered by it, Eovaldi versus Kluber probably won't be a huge difference, but at some point Bloom has to chase better players versus better contracts. His agent is the one who should be blamed. Not nate or bloom. He had that contract on the table for more than a month and his agent apparently shopped it without success. At w certain point the sox had to move on cant have nate holding up any other moves. Kluber and Eovaldi signed less than 4 days apart from each other. Bloom made the conscious decision to move on for whatever reason he has right now. Seems like money and AAV would be my best guess.
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Post by manfred on Dec 30, 2022 22:30:14 GMT -5
Aww, Nate wanted to come back and we offered him the best deal. Kluber is probably the one that ruined it with that team friendly deal As much as I love what Nate meant to the team in the broader picture, he's had only one season of more than 125 IP since 2016. And, as the old saw goes, he's not getting any younger. He was a workout god to the entire Sox staff and still only managed 20 starts last year. Thanks for the memories. Yeah, that would be even better if he hadn’t made more starts total the last three years than his two possible replacements, Kluber and Paxton. I’m in favor of moving on from Nate, but isn’t like they chose yourh or durability in his place.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Dec 31, 2022 0:13:29 GMT -5
Walter was already good enough for the majors when he was in AA last year. While they were both in AA he was better than Bello IMO. Bello took another step forward as the season progressed though. Pitchers that don't need to improve to help in the majors are a different category than someone like Owens that had a lot of potential but never got good enough.
Walter has his injury issue which is a big unknown. He could be toast for all I know.
Owens problem was always velocity. There's no way to develop it. Unless he was going to be the next Jamie Moyer (highly unlikely), he was never going to be a guy that ever succeeded. There hasn't been a guy who's risen in the farm system as fast as Walter since Mookie, and they're two completely different paths and examples. Ones a position player, another a pitcher. I'd enjoy the ride and see how he looks in spring training, but if he looks like the beginning of last year, the hype train should be in full force. Wow, folks are mis-remembering Owens, and may well have no idea what happened to him. He’s the poster-child for “Sox of that era had no idea how to develop pitchers.”
He had a very promising rookie season. He debuted against the Yankees, gave up 2 hits, a walk, and a run to the first 7 batters, then got 12 guys in a row, 4 on K’s and 2 on popups. They sent him out for the 6th to face Chris Young and A-Rod for the 3rd time, and he gave up hits to both (and was charged with 2 inherited runs). After 2 starts he had a .607 OPS allowed and should have had a 1.80 ERA.
Start 3 he gave up 7 runs (3 HR) in the first 2.1 IP and then was unscored on through 6, ending up with 10 K’s and 1 BB. His 4th and 5th starts were .567 OPS, 1.38 ERA. Start 6, Yankees again, 7 ER in 1.2 IP.
Next 4 starts, .514 OPS, 1.61 ERA. His final start was the only one with nothing good, 7 ER in 4.1 IP.
He finished with average overall numbers over 63 IP, but 53.2 IP were fairly dominant and the other 9.1 were awful. That’s a guy with serious upside.
Admittedly, it would be cool if there were some important stat where he was in eye-opening company on the leaderboard for starters (minimum 60 IP), despite the awful stretches. Something like …
Chris Sale Max Scherzer Clayton Kershaw Henry Owens David Price.
Oh, that’s actually the contact percentage within the zone leaders.
You might well ask, how did he do that throwing just 90 mph? He had always fanned a lot of guys in the minors, so it wasn’t a fluke. But the answer is well-known; as a 6-6 guy he automatically gains some effective velo by releasing the ball closer to home, and he had a delivery that hid the ball. I bet his effective velo was about 95.
The next year he couldn’t throw strikes at all.
Now, there is an anecdotal thing about left-handed pitchers taking longer to get their mechanics down. Jamie Moyer had outlier very good seasons at ages 25 and 30 (the year that his BB% dropped a lot, permanently), but his prime years were 34 to 40. You know about Randy Johnson and that Dodger guy.
It makes perfect neuroscientific sense that lefties take longer to master procedural (“muscle”) memory, as evidenced by the fact that most people are right-handed. The two hemispheres of the brain do sensation and motor control the same way, but are otherwise very different. It makes sense that those differences have an impact on the shared duties. (The popular notions of what the hemispheres do are at best a huge dumbing-down, and I’m 20 years out of date wit the latest science, so I won’t go any deeper. at present.)
It's also very likely true that simple mechanics are easier to learn than funky ones. But I would guess that this is 10% of the of the learning curve length. The rest is your inherent ability to learn.
What did the Red Sox do after 2016? They had Owens abandon the mechanics he’s spent his whole life using, without yet mastering, and were a key component of his success, and had him try to learn a simpler delivery. Which is essentially sending him back in time to little league.
I hope I don’t have to explain why this was a criminally idiotic idea. And this is nor a second guess; when I heard they were planning to do this, I more or less barfed in my brain. To call whoever thought this up “clueless” would be an insult to clueless people. I’ve known sheep that could out-think them. I’ve worn shirts with a higher baseball IQ.
More seriously, all it takes to make this blunder is to have no sense at all as to how pitchers lean their mechanics and why some have mechanics that are more repeatable than others. That ignorance is obviously not defensible.
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Post by gerry on Dec 31, 2022 1:51:10 GMT -5
About Eric’s comment on Mr Owens. I only saw him in person twice. Once at ST and once in the AFL. On both occasions I was in close but at the latter I had fairly low seats behind home plate, below the scouts. He was truly intimidating with his size, wingspan and delivery. He dominated in a way that I could believe he was throwing everything at least mid- 90’s. Among the dozen or more pitchers I paid close attention to on those trips he was probably the one I would most not want to face. For what it’s worth, my clinical experience in medical centers tells me that Eric’s astute comments re body mechanics are not at all theoretical. Just spend time in a rehab unit. IMO Sports has had an unfortunate, ill-advised tradition of stuffing square pegs into round holes. I can see that being the case with Henry Owens. Medicine has advanced tremendously since then. I hope the Sox have have also advanced.
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Post by bosoxnation on Dec 31, 2022 4:48:15 GMT -5
As much as I love what Nate meant to the team in the broader picture, he's had only one season of more than 125 IP since 2016. And, as the old saw goes, he's not getting any younger. He was a workout god to the entire Sox staff and still only managed 20 starts last year. Thanks for the memories. Yeah, that would be even better if he hadn’t made more starts total the last three years than his two possible replacements, Kluber and Paxton. I’m in favor of moving on from Nate, but isn’t like they chose yourh or durability in his place. Kluber actually is pretty durable. They also might just want new blood, plus Kluber was cheaper and we have an option. If we have a few guys step up from the minors and he’s not needed we can let him walk or trade him and that’s extra value. We basically got Kluber and Paxton for the price of Eovaldi. I just hope JP can come back healthy because he’s filthy.
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Post by runner on Dec 31, 2022 5:00:33 GMT -5
I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole here. However, Owens was regularly sitting low 90's in his first brief year in Boston. By the time he reached his second year in Boston, he was regularly sitting in the high 80's with his fastball.
I can't speak of his minor league games. That's all I remember and I remember that wasn't going to cut it here or anywhere. He flamed out pretty quickly after he left Boston.
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Post by johnsilver52 on Dec 31, 2022 6:50:30 GMT -5
Sorry, but I can't fall for any of those major brain wave differences between RH/LH major sided people, other than each uses a different side of the brain more predominantly.. Nothing else.. That long post above reminds me more of the dribble coming from teachers in early elementary school, who would walk by desks and use a ruler to smack our hands when we would get caught using "the devils hand" to write with.
As a lefty.. All my life quite often get a chuckle when see off the wall nonsense like the above written about "us".
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Post by alexcorahomevideo on Dec 31, 2022 10:00:02 GMT -5
Yeah, that would be even better if he hadn’t made more starts total the last three years than his two possible replacements, Kluber and Paxton. I’m in favor of moving on from Nate, but isn’t like they chose yourh or durability in his place. Kluber actually is pretty durable. They also might just want new blood, plus Kluber was cheaper and we have an option. If we have a few guys step up from the minors and he’s not needed we can let him walk or trade him and that’s extra value. We basically got Kluber and Paxton for the price of Eovaldi. I just hope JP can come back healthy because he’s filthy. But there's also a solid chance that Eovaldi yields a better return than those two. You just hit on a big problem with this team. If we can get 2 players for the price of the guy, we just let go, and then the team should come out ahead and twice the chance of doing so. It's all in theory. Baseball is a game where you need stars, and you need to manage the margins accordingly in order to supplement those stars with key role players. I'm not saying that Eovaldi is even a star at this point, but I'd rather spend on him than two question marks in Kluber and Paxton. I think the Kluber signing was a steal if you call it what it really is. He's coming in to be a middle to the back end of the rotation. He's not a 2 anymore at this point in his career. Paxton is too injury prone to be counted on, but sure, his contract is really good too. I hope these moves work out but at some point they need to prioritize getting front line talent in this rotation as opposed to 5-7 solid/average/slightly below average starters.
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Post by Underwater Johnson on Dec 31, 2022 13:04:19 GMT -5
As much as I love what Nate meant to the team in the broader picture, he's had only one season of more than 125 IP since 2016. And, as the old saw goes, he's not getting any younger. He was a workout god to the entire Sox staff and still only managed 20 starts last year. Thanks for the memories. Yeah, that would be even better if he hadn’t made more starts total the last three years than his two possible replacements, Kluber and Paxton. I’m in favor of moving on from Nate, but isn’t like they chose yourh or durability in his place. I was more for Wacha than Kluber (maybe they'll get both?) but any pitcher in his 30s is a risk (one thing John Henry gets right). Obviously, you'd rather have a younger arm but if they're good enough for a big-league rotation, they're seldom available and not cheap, especially in FA (which is why it's hard to overestimate the value of the Pivetta trade).
Kluber and Eovaldi are actually relatively easy to compare, as they both broke into the bigs in 2011 although Kluber is four years older than Nate, having gone to college, which Nate skipped. Perhaps those innings thrown at Stetson have caught up with Kluber.
Since their respective debuts (Nate's at 21, Kluber's at 25), Kluber has had 6 seasons of 29+ starts, with 31 last year, while Nate has had 2 seasons of 29+ starts, with 20 last year. Kluber had five straight 200+ IP seasons from 2014-2018, so maybe he's spent -- but he bounced back from three years of poor health with 164 IP last season. Nate's health has been pretty spotty since late 2016, when he had TJ, with the one big year of 182.1 IP in 2021 followed by another partial season last year.
So Kluber has a much longer history of durability with a recent lull from which he may have emerged, while Nate has never really put together a run of health and costs much more. Both have worked through health issues and experienced reductions in velo but velo was never Kluber's bread and butter. I wonder whether the age adjustment might be harder for Nate as he no longer has 99 to show hitters, which Kluber never had.
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Post by incandenza on Dec 31, 2022 13:09:12 GMT -5
As much as I love what Nate meant to the team in the broader picture, he's had only one season of more than 125 IP since 2016. And, as the old saw goes, he's not getting any younger. He was a workout god to the entire Sox staff and still only managed 20 starts last year. Thanks for the memories. Yeah, that would be even better if he hadn’t made more starts total the last three years than his two possible replacements, Kluber and Paxton. I’m in favor of moving on from Nate, but isn’t like they chose yourh or durability in his place. Aren't Bello and Whitlock the youth they're choosing in his place?
If you're only talking about the free agent market, I think that's what they would have liked with Eflin (28) and Heaney (31), but what can you do if you give them the best offer and they turn it dow to play elsewhere?
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Post by manfred on Dec 31, 2022 13:16:04 GMT -5
Yeah, that would be even better if he hadn’t made more starts total the last three years than his two possible replacements, Kluber and Paxton. I’m in favor of moving on from Nate, but isn’t like they chose yourh or durability in his place. Aren't Bello and Whitlock the youth they're choosing in his place?
If you're only talking about the free agent market, I think that's what they would have liked with Eflin (28) and Heaney (31), but what can you do if you give them the best offer and they turn it dow to play elsewhere?
Maybe that is the youth, though they were here. The staff is still fronted by Sale, Kluber, and Paxton. Cross your fingers and buy some bubble wrap. The missed FAs is certainly another topic. One has to wonder about the next couple of years when you don’t keep your stars and are apparently not a desirable destination for FAs.
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Post by Guidas on Dec 31, 2022 13:16:36 GMT -5
Yeah, that would be even better if he hadn’t made more starts total the last three years than his two possible replacements, Kluber and Paxton. I’m in favor of moving on from Nate, but isn’t like they chose yourh or durability in his place. Aren't Bello and Whitlock the youth they're choosing in his place? If you're only talking about the free agent market, I think that's what they would have liked with Eflin (28) and Heaney (31), but what can you do if you give them the best offer and they turn it dow to play elsewhere?
Offer two million more. And these guys aren't even premium free agents. Imagine how much more they will have to offer top-shelf guys to come to Boston with no guarantee of winning and the fabulous "Millionaire's Tax*. *Which is supposed to go to "education or infrastructure," but the legislature reserves the right to steer the added revenues to what ever grift and graff they're currently running.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Dec 31, 2022 13:17:46 GMT -5
I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole here. However, Owens was regularly sitting low 90's in his first brief year in Boston. By the time he reached his second year in Boston, he was regularly sitting in the high 80's with his fastball. I can't speak of his minor league games. That's all I remember and I remember that wasn't going to cut it here or anywhere. He flamed out pretty quickly after he left Boston. It's what Eric said, they messed up his delivery and he was a different pitcher after. Nevermind with him it wasn't just velocity, yet the movement on his pitches which was very good. They took a young pitcher that was at worst a 4th/5th type pitcher and destroyed him. Way to destroy a top 50 prospect. You can't look at anything after the new delivery because he was never again the same pitcher.
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Post by incandenza on Dec 31, 2022 13:35:10 GMT -5
Aren't Bello and Whitlock the youth they're choosing in his place?
If you're only talking about the free agent market, I think that's what they would have liked with Eflin (28) and Heaney (31), but what can you do if you give them the best offer and they turn it dow to play elsewhere?
Maybe that is the youth, though they were here. The staff is still fronted by Sale, Kluber, and Paxton. Cross your fingers and buy some bubble wrap. The missed FAs is certainly another topic. One has to wonder about the next couple of years when you don’t keep your stars and are apparently not a desirable destination for FAs. "Fronted by" is doing some work here. By fangraphs depth charts the order from best projected ERA to worst is: Sale, Houck, Bello, Whitlock, Paxton, Kluber, Pivetta. By WAR it's Sale, Whitlock, Kluber, Bello, Pivetta, Paxton, Houck.
For ZiPS by WAR it's: Bello, Whitlock, Paxton, Pivetta, Sale, Houck. (Don't know what ZiPS has for Kluber.)
That's kind of semantic, but I guess my point is that they don't need Sale/Paxton/Kluber to be the 1-2-3 of a rotation. I think they need one of them to be good and one of them to be okay. I've thought for a long time that the 2023 team would ride or die on its young pitching. If Bello/Whitlock/Houck, et al. come through the team can be really good; if not then not.
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Post by jmei on Dec 31, 2022 14:06:29 GMT -5
Aren't Bello and Whitlock the youth they're choosing in his place? If you're only talking about the free agent market, I think that's what they would have liked with Eflin (28) and Heaney (31), but what can you do if you give them the best offer and they turn it dow to play elsewhere?
Offer two million more. And these guys aren't even premium free agents. Imagine how much more they will have to offer top-shelf guys to come to Boston with no guarantee of winning and the fabulous "Millionaire's Tax*. *Which is supposed to go to "education or infrastructure," but the legislature reserves the right to steer the added revenues to what ever grift and graff they're currently running. Please avoid the politics. You’ve been warned about this before.
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cdj
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Post by cdj on Dec 31, 2022 14:08:34 GMT -5
Aren't Bello and Whitlock the youth they're choosing in his place? If you're only talking about the free agent market, I think that's what they would have liked with Eflin (28) and Heaney (31), but what can you do if you give them the best offer and they turn it dow to play elsewhere?
Offer two million more. And these guys aren't even premium free agents. Imagine how much more they will have to offer top-shelf guys to come to Boston with no guarantee of winning and the fabulous "Millionaire's Tax*. *Which is supposed to go to "education or infrastructure," but the legislature reserves the right to steer the added revenues to what ever grift and graff they're currently running. Padres haven’t won anything ever and they have no issues with their taxes. It’s a weak excuse that ownership tried to push through the globe this week.
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