...

Except that pennies have been 97.5% zinc since 1982.

A few newspaper stories over the years, but no TV appearance since this one. Try to get on again before Minervini is using a walker.

You've aged 10 years. Minervini looks like he's aged 20+ years. You win.

N. Tesar. "Estimating Expected Runs Using a Markov Model for Baseball." I love it, a reference to Markov on a baseball board. I've been trading for 45+ years and trading/markets are the only sphere in which I've ever seen a reference to Markov, Markov chains/mathematics or anything at all to do with Markov. I found it all to be useless for trading purposes, but that's probably because markets are mainly a study in mass human psychology, and not random events in a game ("game" not referring to sports)-theory sort of sense. I read Tesar's paper. Thank you for that. Markovian mathematics clearly can be applied to baseball. I doubt the Marlins' FO will ever employ anyone who even knows what that is or means, never minds understands it. But they should.

Yup, sorry, I was mistakenly reading Hech's MLB debut age as current age. But, the point remains -- he's a relative young 'un, Furcal is ancient, fragile and gone soon, with a little luck. As for Twine and anyone else who may come along to compete for SS, the more the merrier.

Nah, not until Hech aggravates his current (or any) injury two or three times and the FO gets over him being "the SS of the future" and "likely perennial AS." Not likely, Hech is 23 and resilient. And a fixture. Furcal is 36 and apparently very, very fragile. And a temp. Hopefully soon to be shown the door. It's too bad -- he spent a year rehabbing from TJ when his problem wasn't really his arm, but his groin and legs. Maybe he'll be a pioneer of hami-replacement surgery and play till he's 50. For someone else. It'll be called RF surgery. :lol

Well, thanks. :lol It's only step one on the road to no more Furki. But, it's a step in the right direction.

Furcal 36 [gone after he's out another 2 months with his next hamstring or groin or whatever twitch, which is inevitable] OK. 7 or 8 hours after that comment "Furki" had himself a DL-worthy twitch. That didn't take long. Next, we find out whether it will take 2 months to get back. Then, perhaps we find out how long it will take them to give up on him. I wish him well, but I hope he never comes back.

Not sure how Ozuna has the time to adjust his grip on the ball in the split-second before he releases it but okay. Yeah, I agree that it's amazing and slightly incredible. But, if you're a pro ball player and all you do is handle baseballs all day long, year in and year out, it doesn't take more than a split-second to get the grip you want across whatever seams you want. A skill that can be worth some serious money as an OFer. Nothing like an incentive to get someone to be good at it.

I think we've had enough of 36 year-old starters. And relievers. And every other position. Dobbs 35 (36 in 2 weeks) [gone] Wigginton 36 (spring training) [gone] Wolf 39 [gone] Gregg 36 [soon to be gone if he keeps walking people or getting hit hard, which is sort of a given] Penney 36 [LOL] Furcal 36 [gone after he's out another 2 months with his next hamstring or groin or whatever twitch, which is inevitable] Tejada 40 [LOL] Marmol was a total failure at a mere 32. What are they doing? Recruiting for Century Village? Next thing you know, they'll sign Pavano out of the broadcast booth -- he's a spring chicken at only 38. Are they going to change the name to the Miami Geriatrics? Early in the year, we had the youngest roster in all of MLB. OK, fine, you can sign over-the-hill schlubs for depth, but to make it standard practice looking to add to the MLB roster?

Hmm. Original link works fine for me. Same one I used many months ago when commenting on the real contribution Rauch made to this team in the time he was here. Couldn't pitch worth a damn, but as an informal outfield throwing coach he was magic. Good thing Ozuna talked to him about throwing when he did, Rauch was only here for a month and a half. I wonder if Ozuna and/or the team/coaching staff has communicated this important little tidbit to the rest of the OFers. You would think/hope so. Pretty likely considering that the Marlins rank near the top in outfield assists. But, Tommy and Rich have never mentioned it. In any case, thank you Jon Rauch.

I credit Jon Rauch. Ozuna has always had a great arm, but he was throwing 200-250' sliders or sinkers that would wind up off-line or dive and bounce. Rauch is the guy who taught him how to throw it perfectly straight last year. As Ozuna said "I saw the difference right away. The ball went straight, straight, straight -- no movement." http://miamiherald.typepad.com/fish_bytes/2013/07/marcell-ozuna-credits-ex-marlins-reliever-jon-rauch-for-throwing-accuracy.html

Yeah, but now a steroid suspension is 50 games, so the appropriate bat-boy suspension would be 30 games. :lol Why does the FO insist on signing 36 year-olds? Surely there must be a few 29 or 30 or 31 year-olds around somewhere in the bargain-basement.

The pace we're on is about 83-79, which is not good enough. Even if a healthy Jose was worth 5 more wins (unlikely,) it's still not good enough, it took 90 wins to get a play-off spot last year. No reason to curse yourself, the rest of these guys have to step up big-time or they will fail this year. Next year. Assuming they sign Stanton, or at least still have him, 90+ wins.

By "serious" contention I mean proving the ability to win games more consistently than we have. Like, for instance, the 9 teams who have won MORE than 36 games to this point. Including the Marlins, there are 7 teams who have won only 36 games. We lose one lousy game and we become perhaps the 16th best record in MLB. Not exactly in "serious" contention, just average. It's gonna take a lot of 6-4 or better 10 game sets to get anywhere, one can't assume that ATL and WSH are going to be relative crap all year.

16-8? Possible, since the deadwood load is lighter and only 6 remaining games to the break are against winning teams. Time for a streak. They need a run of about 20-4 to really get anywhere and actually be in serious contention. Who knows? Anything can happen.

To some, he's forever a rookie, never mind all that arb stuff. :lol

Uh, huh. Whatever you say. Everyone knows that the guy who gets called on facts and has no response won, right? And ad hominems are always the mark of a great debater, right?

Blow things up? Sorry, Jimmy, Loria doesn't own the Phillies. :lol

Well, that's clear enough -- you have no argument to make, so you stomp your little foot and pile on the ad hominems. Carry on.

Unfairly maligned? Misunderstood? You realize that Loria is pretty much universally considered to be the worst owner in baseball, if not professional sports, right? And it isnt just me or deadspin. It is fans, owners, sports media. It is pretty much unanimous. But everyone is wrong I suppose. OK, I get it. You can't defend what you have claimed, you don't want to agree with me on anything, and you just want to propagate your standard BS with generalities that sound good to you. Unfortunately, it's not "pretty much unanimous" it's just you spouting the same old rubbish. I'll take that as a concession of the facts until I see another "fact" that you can be bothered to try to defend. Unlike your imaginary "mandate" to the Marlins.

Yeah, they kept it under raps but it boiled over on a flight back which I believe was from the White Sox series in June 2007. Cabrera was wearing a Che Guevara shirt coming off the plane. The team grabbed him and didn't let him get off the plane until he took it off. He refused saying he didn't care. Took about 2 hours and he finally took it off. Wow. A Che T-shirt? Disgusting. Never heard that before. Cabrera never struck me as being very bright, and certainly not educated, but that confirms it. A guy who knows he's going to make tens of millions of dollars playing baseball in a (relatively) free-market economy where, if he was otherwise here and had never picked up a baseball would be asking you if you want fries with that thinks that guys like Castro, Che and Chavez, all thugs and murderers (and in the case of Chavez, a murderer of his own countrymen) are heroes? The ignorance is astounding. Miggy needs a little, no make that a lot of Econ 101.

I see "..." is still living in his "Loria is amazing and unfairly persecuted" fantasy land. You really have to stop making stuff up as you go along. Not one time, EVER, have I said that Loria is "amazing" or used any other kind of superlative with regard to him. Unfairly maligned by people like you and Dead Spin who don't know whereof they speak? Absolutely. Repeatedly. Misunderstood by people with no knowledge of business or a major league budget? Absolutely. Repeatedly. "Persecuted"? I've never claimed that specifically, although I suppose it's basically true in a rhetorical sense. But, he hasn't been run out of town on a rail, he still owns the team and probably will for years. I'll leave that one to others. I notice you have no response to my previous post which demolished the last thing you made up prior to your current excursion into fantasy -- that there was "a well publicized mandate from MLB to the Florida Marlins to stop operating how they had been." I guess that's because your claim was false and there is no good response. That's OK. I understand that it's very hard to try to defend false statements. No problem, we might even agree on a few things. For instance, I admire Loria for two things: 1) Getting the damned stadium built after two decades of failure to get it done by a whole assortment of people, most of them with more money and influence than Loria. 2) Being smart enough to realize that payroll would cause losses sufficient to impair his ability to continue owning the team and then doing something about it in two cases -- '06-'07 and '12 -- no matter how distasteful it was to the fans, egged on by the venomous and mostly ignorant media. He's a realist and he's got the balls to do what needed to be done, no matter what anyone may think. Other than that, I have no love for the guy. He's obviously made some bad decisions -- not signing Cabrera in '04 or '05, not signing Stanton 2 years ago or last year being the obvious ones. I'm sure the list could go on and on. He's also made some good decisions. He spent in '03. He tried in '05 with Delgado. He signed Hanley and JJ. He refused to sign Uggla. (He also signed Nolasco, but that probably goes in the minus column.) He spent wildly in '12. Maybe that goes in the minus column too, but it did have its benefits. I think it's better that he seems to be leaving the baseball decisions to the baseball people. We'll see. The (TV) money to extend Stanton is there if he wants to blow most of it on him. Meanwhile, it would be nice if you would withdraw what is essentially your subscription to Dead Spin's baloney. It doesn't hold up under scrutiny. I'd prefer not to once again dig around in and rehash 5 or 6 year-old financials and voluminous footnotes, but I'm happy to do it if you want to get into the gory nitty-gritty details. It won't be fun for either of us, but I suspect that it'll be less fun for you when it's all said and done. My purpose would be to expose Dead Spin as the financial hacks that they are. Not too hard to do, considering that that's exactly what they are and that it's already been done.

Marmol? Really? Never noticed that. Didn't do a thing for his control. :lol But, there was that guy who gobbed on the ball in plain sight and thought it was perfectly OK to do so. Who was that, hmmm, let's see, search "marlins spitball" ...whattayuknow, there's our old and mostly useless friend, Alex Sanabia just last year, in one of the real high points of the season: Sanabia said Friday he spit on a baseball earlier in the week to get a better grip, not to get more movement on his pitches. He also repeated he didn't know it was illegal. "I didn't know. I was in my zone and just grooving. It's something you live and learn from. I didn't mean anything bad by it or I didn't mean to do anything more," Sanabia said. "It's something that showed up that way and people all of a sudden just create their own perception of." It's OK if you're grooving, man. Or, ah, OK, you know, uh, right, just look at the way it showed up and live and learn from it, man. Groove your zone and learn, it's only illegal if someone creates their own perception, you know? Where's the bong, man? We could call him up any minute, he signed a minor league deal with us this year. He's like Gregg, he won't go away and stay away. My question would be, no matter where you are originally from, is how in the f*ck can you not know that a spitball is illegal in MLB?

Splitter? Simplify life. Bring back the spitter. :lol