Thursday Bantering: More on McGuire and other Jays stuff

So the Reese McGuire thing turned out to be much what I thought it would be. TMZ has the news if you really want to read it.

My question (well really it is question 17 on the list but let’s go with stuff that I can ask and stay well within site rules) how do you rent a car without tinted windows? I see that story linked above doesn’t mention the windows but another I read stand there was no tinting. Question 2: Why a mall parking lot? Question 3: For the next time I rent a car, how thoroughly do they clean the seats between rentals?

What he did was stupid, but it shouldn’t effect his career, other than he’ll hear some pretty colorful taunting in the future. As always, when you are a baseball player, don’t screw up in public.

This is the stuff I want to be seeing from spring training:

This is just sad:

It takes a fair amount of chutzpah to say that sign stealing didn’t give an advantage. I guess the question should be ‘well why did you do it then?’ Pretending you were cheating for some reason other than it gave you an advantage is just stupid.

Astros should maybe have this guy doing the press for them. Straight forward and honest.

The MLB announced some rule changes:

• All pitchers will have to face a minimum of 3 batters.
• There will be 26 man rosters. Teams will be limited to 13 pitchers.
• September rosters limited to 28 with 14 pitchers max.
• There are ‘two-way player’ designations. A player like Ohtani will not count as one of the 12 pitchers.
• Position players will only be allowed to pitch in extra innings or if a team is winning or losing by more than 6 runs (I can’t imagine position players have been pitching in any other sport).
• Pitchers will have to stay on the DL for 15 games. And pitchers option to the minors will have to stay for 15 days.
• Managers will now have 20 seconds to challenge a play instead of 30.

I hate the 3 batter thing. I like strategy and that’s taking away a strategy. And I worry that the changes to the pitcher DL and option times might lead to more injuries. Beyond that I don’t care much about the changes. I think we’ll see relievers throwing more than an inning more often in the future. I think that teams should be allowed to use their roster anyway they feel they want, I may hate having 9-man bullpens, but I think that should be up to the team.