Transmogrified Tiger

Given the amount they trusted him in CF last year and his 40 man spot, I would think that Velazquez has to be under consideration. Similarly, Mastrobuoni doesn't require a 40 man move.

Whichever team has the most pitchers arms explode/the worst pitching depth To that end, the Mets rotation is 3 guys 36 or older, a Japanese import that got less than expected, and the prayer that Quintana’s HR rate stays unsustainably low, with little hope for a SP stalwart on the farm. The negative long tail outcomes are really really bad.

Also I refuse to be bound to rules like “logical consistency” and “rational explanation” to justify hating Yelich

I mean, they don’t have a *bad* TV deal, that no one else has come close to the Dodgers in a decade is a reflection of that deal being an outlier more than a failure for everyone else.

No one is saying they can’t afford to spend more, the point you were quoting was that they do not have a huge unique revenue advantage compared to other teams. The Dodgers and Yankees are not run by philanthropists either, but they (and afaik they alone) have a big head start in revenue so they can get the same margins at higher payrolls.

I don't think this is true. At all. The Dodgers have an $100 million per year head start on every other team in the league via their tv deal, the Cubs are far from poor but they don’t have a structural advantage that approaches it. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-update-the-estimated-local-tv-revenue-for-mlb-teams/

When it comes to payroll specifically, my take is ownership is consistent(with one exception) at a level that makes building a great team possible even if I would never describe them as generous. It’s generally been my understanding that payroll is there up to the tax line if the front office wants to use it, and in the right circumstances they are willing to go into the tax. Since the Cubs don’t have one outlier revenue stream like the Dodgers or an overwhelming market size like the Yankees(plus the potential competitive penalties for exceeding the LT), I can understand that logic even if it’s not my absolute preference. Especially when basically every team(even mega market teams like the Yankees) are resetting their LT penalties every few years. As it relates to the last few seasons, that includes the one exception, which was that they were overly conservative with payroll during the 2020-2021 offseason. The main consequence of that was missed opportunity and the FO cutting bait with Schwarber a year before FA after his poor 2020. As for the rest of the 2016 core, that’s 100% a front office decision. Hoyer is very mindful about long term deals to guys in their 30s*(note that his 2 big FA splashes in charge have been 28 year olds Suzuki and Swanson), and the younger members of that core were players like Baez who they didn’t believe would age gracefully. Given the roster refresh needed as the 2016 core reached FA and the lack of impact talent in the farm system, it would have been a narrow path to spending back into a place of consistent contention, so while payroll didnt bottom out to 2012 levels, it was still dropped as a mostly front office decision(as proven by the investment in Suzuki, Stroman, Swanson, Taillon, etc the last two years). *I also appreciate that it’s probably not a coincidence that Ricketts hired/promoted an exec with Jed’s worldview, and that ownership probably wouldn’t hire a Preller or Dombrowski type to run the team. This doesn’t bother me but I can understand that it rankles others.

I also reject the premise that 15-20 seconds isn’t enough time to think along with the at bat, pitch sequencing, etc

Spring Training growing pains don’t detract from the clear benefit. I’m excited to watch games that don’t have time for a commercial between every pitch, it’s the pace of MLB everyone had growing up and it’s the pace of the amateur and sub-MLB pro level

Trying to imagine what the answer was supposed to be to that early ST softball question "How does Madrigal look at third base?" "Well Sahadev, I was in the first base dugout so I couldn't see him with as short as Nick is, but I can tell you that his throws across the diamond would have brought rain were we not in the gd desert. He did hit a few line drives against pitchers who haven't pitched in half a year though"

Bote's best bet for getting on the 26 man roster is probably to hit so undeniably well at Iowa that he's in line for a bench spot over the alternatives when there's injuries/bad performance. I'm not sure he has enough going for him that even a hot spring training and mass underperformance from the alternatives(there's what, six guys reasonably ahead of him?) could put him on the opening day roster.

Probably nothing, but I guess it's possible that the sunlight sensitivity was negatively affecting some elements of his concentration/fine motor control. I wouldn't put much stock into him getting a control bump from being able to see the target in hi def though.

PCA goes from 50 FV to 60(he's the last 60 on the list, which runs from 3 to 14), Wesneski goes from 40+ to 50, and the other two stay steady. Davis was a 55 and everyone on the list(which goes to 112) is at least a 50, so he's dropping at least one grade if not all the way to 45+ or 45. Caissie and Triantos were both 50s midseason so the same applies to them.

The way the new format makes the most sense is if you think of it as a compromise between what is likely a requirement of the new TV deal(which is a huge financial positive for the league) to have more postseason inventory, a lack of an ideal competitive structure due to the size of the league(unbalanced schedules devalue the supporters shield), and the league addressing small competitive imbalances to straddle those two. With that as a starting point, you can start to see the motivations. The 8/9 wild card motivates teams to finish higher up the table, and rewards teams that win their conference by getting an opponent on short rest. The best of 3 first round guarantees all playoff teams a home game, and makes it less likely that a single 90 minute bunker can create an upset between teams far apart in the standings(some will say 2 legs is better, but it has its own tiebreaker and first leg gameplay issues so IMO it's a wash). Not keeping the best of 3 after that round prevents the playoffs from becoming their own mini-season that drags on like can happen with the NBA and NHL. It's not the format I'd choose, but in a league with 29 teams and a partner that just gave you an enormous revenue boost in exchange for more playoff soccer, I think they did well to avoid some of the worst fears that could come with that.

I don't know if the specific cycle is determined, but it seems this is how basically every club operates. The Yankees reset in 2021, the Red Sox have done it a couple times over the past decade, the main exceptions at this point look like the Mets(though they may want to in a couple years if it's even possible) and the Dodgers(who had a weirdly austere offseason for not 100% being under the line).

Stone cold penalty for me. Arm away from the body in an unnatural spot and stops an attacking pass in the box. Unlucky given his proximity to the pass, but he didn't have to have his arm a foot away from his side and inches from the ground either.

I know next to nothing about football roster building, but to me the real galaxy brain/contrarian take is trade Fields, sign Lamar, and then trade down. Lamar has shown that elite level and is better than many(most?) future versions of Fields, his skillset is similar enough that you don't need to overhaul the playbook, and the Bears have too much cap space to spend efficiently so his cost over Fields matters less(especially given the cost-controlled draft haul from trading Fields + #1).

I hesitate to put too much weight behind this, but Spring Training may be a pretty decent bellwether for Bellinger(bellwethinger?). At a minimum, he's never had a strong spring(.830+ OPS, .225+ AVG) and not been an above average hitter(110+ wRC+) that season, so if the results are there in Mesa we should feel pretty good about the season.

If you're a T-Mobile user, they're giving users free MLS Season pass like they have done in the past for MLB.tv: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/t-mobile-is-giving-a-free-season-of-apples-mls-season-pass-to-all-its-customers/ Looks like it'll work the same way, on Tuesday you use their giveaway app and they have you tie the logins together.

If Britton is still needing to work out for teams at the start of pitchers and catchers, my guess he's gonna command a pretty light contract. He's thrown less than 50 pro innings since the start of the pandemic, less than 8 last year, and ended the year with shoulder problems. In that light I'm very interested if he can prove himself healthy(he seems like a great combo of upside, likely cost, and fit to cap off the bullpen/roster), but if he requires Fulmer money then I'm fine with passing(and I imagine the FO would too).

The announcement is a little light on specifics, but it looks like MiLB.tv is getting folded into MLB.tv, so if you have MLB.tv you'll be able to watch minor league games through that app/subscription too: https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-tv-has-new-feature-in-2023

There have definitely been fewer marathon games. LA and the Padres went 16 innings in 2021, but a CBS Sports article about this said that only 7 games have gone past 12 in the 3 seasons with the rule whereas 2019 alone had 37 games go past 12. So the rule's stated purpose is being fulfilled, just at the cost of surpassing the NBA's 'time-warp the basketball to half court because reasons' rule as the dumbest in sports. Love that 1% of games played having a couple extra innings shaved off is considered a success. Solving a problem that doesn't exist and doing it in the worst way.

I think with the big guys there’s just always some sort of contact (whether it’s on the big guy or a guy fouling the big guy), yes a foul is a foul, but if everything is called the game would basically come to a standstill. They can’t call everything, it’s like holding in football, they probably could call it on 80-90% of plays if they really wanted to. Is it right that not every foul is called, no, but get it somewhat. Building on this, I think guys like Edey and Kofi kinda break a ref's normal points of comparison. As you say, basketball has contact all the time, and the difference between good defense and a flagrant shove is often about how severe the contact is. I'm not a ref, but I imagine refs use the physical *reaction* to the contact as a big guide in understanding that severity. With Kofi and Edey, their size means they give out contact with significant reactions more often, and react to contact from others less than a smaller player would, which can create a dynamic where they're whistled more harshly and simultaneously not protected enough by whistles with the ball in their hand. You even saw this at the NBA level with certain freaks of nature, early career LeBron being one that sticks out in my mind.

This is interesting because I've seen discussion that the opposite is true of the SEC, where there's been a few 70 foul games and plenty of whistle-fests in general. Some of this is a stylistic/cultural thing(e.g. the B10 shoots better on the whole so you may have more SEC teams throwing athletes at the lane) but it's hard to tell given how small and varied the tournament sample size is.