I have NL ROY again. Which is fine - it fits my job, certainly - although I think it's funny that I've been sequestered from other votes.

No, I haven't. Overlong fantasy novels are generally not my thing. But the game, Tak, is good, especially for something that was designed out of someone else's fictional concept.

I don't know the correct answer for keeping him healthy, but I've noticed the last few starts that they've pushed him harder than I would have, and his stuff in his last three outings hasn't looked like it did in the previous three or four. Perhaps the answer is he will always be plagued by arm trouble and they should just get what they can out of him. I think they are also so short of starting pitching - aside from whatever you'd call Bundy, they have one effective starter healthy right now - that they may feel they have no choice.

For real as in going to hit 9 homers every 20 games, probably not. But I have ranked him I think four straight years on the top 100, once pointing out that if he could stay at catcher he'd have MVP upside. That appears to be happening now.

The amount of stat-line scouting on Smith the last few years was just comical. He was a young HS senior with a great swing, great feel to hit, and plus raw power. The Mets put him right into full-season ball, and he didn't put up huge numbers right away, so the fake-scouting started - but he was never overmatched, never really struggled, always made contact, and if you saw him or talked to folks who did you knew he was working on going the other way because his pull power wasn't resulting in HR. I could rant for a while but I've always thought he was at least an above average overall player at 1b and I still think that's what he'll be.

He's an easy target, especially since they're playing well but not playoff well. They're also a very young, very inexpensive team that is going to be highly competitive for several years to come.

Don't see it. I like Urias but his body type is nothing like Altuve's.

I thought it was a dubious claim and that his tools overall were too light for him to have any impact.

If you can run like that, you can play CF. And his routes have looked good so far.

I think that would be aggressive.

I think the problem is that there aren't just a few common cold viruses, but three species with over a hundred serotypes. You may have more distinct viruses in your nose in one infection than there have been primate species in the entire history of life on earth. So, between that and the fact that colds rarely kill, it's not going to be an efficient use of research time or money.

I think he has the three pitches to start. Saw him in Wilmington last year and while it's a little funky for the rotation I'd absolutely let him do it.

We've had to push it back a little with other stuff running on the site.

How many guys who throw that hard - okay, almost that hard - have lasted as starters? Syndergaard has. Strasburg didn't maintain his fastball although he's worked out very well. Eovaldi throws that hard and needs a whole new arm. So you can argue that Kopech has so few comparables that we don't know, or that the few comparables we have say he's at very high risk if he remains in the rotation. But I'd still rank him fairly aggressively even with the risk because it's an 80 fastball and he's athletic enough that I think he can improve in other areas to at least profile as a starter.

I think the hitters' issues are more the coaching staff - and I've mentioned that before - but with Berrios, look at all the pitching prospects who've come up this year and struggled out of the chute. It's not just him and not just the twins.

It's Vegas. Someone pointed out to me on Twitter that Nimmo's AAA stats were better than Seager's. The ballpark destroys any value in the stats.

You really think I just fell off the turnip truck?

Nope, org guys.

If the mandate from the owner is to build the best possible team around Trout, then no.

Gosh, I like both. A lot. Probably Contreras because he's the better athlete and I think will end up the better receiver, but Sanchez's bat is pretty special and he wouldn't be the wrong answer.

Right now I think it's Bryant or Seager.

Doubtful given how much harder pitchers throw today.

Given his hand strength 25 HR/season would not surprise me. I think overall he's developing into the player I thought he'd be (I mean, he's doing it NOW).

Absolutely none. I assume he will because it's in his financial interest to do so, but he could choose to stay home as long as he wants and I wouldn't question it.

You're in Vegas because the Mets' manager hates youth so much he watches the Little League World Series and boos the television.

The 7-year-old is the gating factor here - but I think there are plenty of good Euros that someone that age can handle. I always suggest Ticket to Ride to start. I think Splendor is simple and elegant enough for that age - the rules are 2 pages, which is a great sign.

Nope, ROY every year since but one (Manager). Never had an MVP vote.

I would answer that by asking how big league managers without any prior managing experience have fared overall.

Where does he play? He can hit some but I don't know at what position.

The one thing I wouldn't do is start changing the core product. That will just start an endless cycle of trying to predict consumer tastes. I think getting players out there more in marketing efforts and in the community is huge - MLB has long had trouble marketing its stars, and when it does so it often focuses too much on one or two players. Of all of the ideas Manfred floated recently about altering the game itself, the only one I liked was reducing pitching changes, because they create so much dead time and I'm not even sold that they're an effective strategy on the whole.

If you saw the VICE piece on what a disaster the Rio Olympics really were, you'd say he was right. Brazil would be better off if the games had never happened. I hope we never have another Olympics here in the US unless the IOC wants to pay to build everything.

That's a long way off to be focusing on his stats but I happen to think he is a future regular with a star ceiling because of his speed and athleticism.

Yes, it's up: http://klaw.me/2bDUtfQ

Yes, exactly. It's great to see, but I don't think it tells us anything about him we didn't already know. Dude can hit.

It doesn't matter. Terry won't play Conforto unless he can show a birth certificate that says he's 30.

I love these questions. Your mistake is that you assume that what the government (FDA) says is founded in science, when it's not. There is no scientific research supporting the position that consuming salt is harmful to people with normal blood pressure. The government (FDA and USDA, I believe) also claimed for years that a high fat diet was harmful in spite of evidence that it's sugar, not fat, behind our rising incidence of heart disease, obesity, and possibly (although it's very complicated) certain cancers.

When is hell scheduled to freeze over?

Doesn't work. It's an experimental (x) stat that has not panned out in reality. It doesn't predict what it was supposed to predict. Don't use it.

Russell's less flashy and more consistent. Baez does have the better arm. At a position that handles that many balls in play, I'd rather have the guy who's probably going to make more plays in total.

Oh yes, probably quite a few. Think of it this way: I rank 100 players in every draft class, but no draft that I can remember has produced even 40 big league regulars ... and that list always includes a few players taken beyond the fifth round. So right there you will have players I know and chose not to rank who ended up several grades better than I said or implied they would be.

I talked to two scouts who saw Quantrill in the last month, and based on that, I'd take him. But I have not seen Quantrill, ever, so I'm comparing scouts' reports on him to my own looks at Puk (too many).

I was asleep, so i didn't see it and don't know how he looked or if he was showing signs of fatigue. Given his injury history, I'd handle him fairly cautiously.

There's a disincentive to do so because a player who wins ROY gets paid more in arbitration.

What they said in their letter was generally positive. Unfortunately it appears that what they say and what they do are not quite the same thing; a former student body president at U of C had some things to say about this on Twitter last night that, if true, put the university in a very poor light on subjects like sexual assault.

Who's getting called up? I couldn't give you five prospects of any significance whom I think will be recalled next week who haven't already been up. Most of the guys who matter are up already. Teams aren't waiting till September for that, and we don't see many prospects recalled in September if they're not going to play regularly ... so teams just call them up whenever the opportunity arises, September or August or July or whenever that may be.

Nothing skinny about him. Picture a young CC Sabathia arm with a mid-20s CC Sabathia build. It's legit though - kid's got big velo and a potential hammer.

Plus he'd given up a run in June so the streak was basically accounting bullshit anyway.

It's the product of chance in the sense that the set of balls in play a fielder might get to field in a given year is totally beyond his control, and it will vary from year to year.

They only have three catchers on the 40-man. One is Rupp. One is Ellis, who isn't physically with the team yet. The third is Alfaro, so he gets the call.

Because it's not a list of who's done what in 2016 as if nothing before that ever happened. (Also, I thought about making a VP joke here but I figured I should just answer the question.)