The reports on MLB Network today point back to Dave Roberts' interviews yesterday: Who wouldn't be interested in Cole but they won't be crazy. The Yankees payout would certainly qualify as crazy. Also, Cole didn't fit Friedman's MO: Cole doesn't have a history of injuries. Friedman's tenure with the Dodgers suggests he prefers free agents that are hurt all the time.
As a Dodgers fan I'd be fine with Bumgarner although I don't know if he will pitch better than Riyu over 162. The problem is that the Dodgers have one starter that I trust to get a W: Beuhler. That's it. Bumgarner is an October star. Really, unless something goes radically wrong during the season, the Dodgers should win the West again. That hasn't been the problem the past 5+ years. The problem is Kershaw has been viewed as the shutdown guy and he's just not that. Bumgarner is that.
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Get paid, Bruin, get paid.
Obviously disappointed he's not coming home to LA. I have a feeling that Friedman still isn't comfortable tossing out eye-watering numbers that the biggest free agents are now commanding. Even more concerning, the rumor from Rosenthal immediately after the Cole signing was that the Dodgers were now targeting Madison Bumgarner. I don't know if there's ever been a move that would infuriate both fanbases in a rivalry, but that could be one. He's hated by Dodger fans, who I'm sure would come to tolerate him if he pitched like the Bumgarner of old, but I doubt it would ever be a full embrace, there's just too much history with him and both teams.
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Reports that The Yankees sign Cole 9 years/$324 million. It's big. The past few years I've been anti- long-term contract but those posts have been about hitters. Although CC made it to the end of his contract, who knows if Cole makes it as a productive pitcher at that payrate for that time. But I'm fine with this. And I'm fine with the Strassburg deal. The mistake the Yankees made was taking on that Stanton contract. He barely played last year and the Yankees were fine. I can't expect a group of second-teamers to always do that, but Stanton signed that deal in Miami because he was going to be the face of the franchise and the Yankees took that contract after Stanton had what surely will be his career season. Home runs are not rare these days, so Stanton wasn't needed.
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RBI 19 might still be on Switch for cheap, like a fiver. It's an arcade-style game, not really realistic, but it's fun to play.
Gammons has always been a guy who says ten words when two would do, but the oncoming senility (as evidenced in some bizarre Twitter posts) has really taken its effect.
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MLB: The Show may be coming to Switch in a couple years! Also, Javy is next year's cover star. Hopefully baseball doesn't have the equivalent of the Madden curse.
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There was a really interesting segment on MLB Tonight last night about the Hader blown inning in the wild card game basically adding a huge amount of money to Stassbrug's new deal. Had the Brewers held that lead, the Nats would have been out. Strassburg would have had a very strong season and likely opted out because he had shown that he could log innings at a high level. But basically the rep was that he was soft since most years he's been hurt. Then Hader blows the inning and the outfielder makes a huge blunder. The Nats win and the rest is history. Strassburg has a dominant post-season and shows he could be the best number 1 pitching pick since the draft was started. In a time when elite starting pitching is hard to get, he added years and dollars to his contract. This wasn't a case of of a one-off success story getting mistakenly paid (e.g., most soon-to-be free agents who win a Super Bowl MVP), but this was a case where the playoffs allowed a player to show something new about himself.
Experts on MLB Network are predicting that this deal will push Cole's deal into 9 years and 285+. He's clearly an ace. And in general, I think he's better than Strassburg. But the risk on this deal (besides the years) is that Cole took a huge leap because of Houston's resources. Stassburg took a leap and is staying with the team where he took that leap. I don't get any sense that the Angels or Yankees have the pitching resources that Houston has. The Yankees *finally* figured out that Larry needed to go and hired a young hotshot from one of these pitching labs but they're way behind Houtson on that front. The Angels hired Callaway, who was a horrible manager, but certainly was an excellent pitching coach with Cleveland. But, again, they're also way behind Houston.
If Houston doesn't get hit hard with this cheating stuff, I'd look for them to sign Porcello and show him to be the next "hidden gem." Porcello won a Cy Young but he was the last one to win that award with writer's being seduced by win totals.
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He had the stroke more than ten years ago, but I hadn't heard of another diagnosis. He's clearly a shell of his former self, which is very sad.
Strasburg is 31 and has already had one Tommy John surgery. Seven years and USD 245 million is quite a bet by the Nationals, and makes the once fevered predictions of Cole getting 8/275 look a lot more possible.Last edited by ursus arctos; 10-12-2019, 17:08.
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I thought he had some specific diagnosis and wasn't even doing TV any more.
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Although the winter meetings are setting up 2020, a 2020 thread seems more relevant just before Spring training. The Nats have Strasburg back at a record signing (until Cole signs).
For longterm baseball fans who have paid attention to Peter Gammons' rise from columnist to TV expert, man he is very hard to watch on TV now. Old age is going to get us all if we're lucky enough to make it to old age. But it takes him forever to basically say nothing. The level of analysis of the current free agent market just falls flat when he's on a panel with Joel Serman and Dan Odowd.
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I don't know if this is the case of Eleven Sports in various countries but the US channel has rights for Australian baseball for folks who need their fix during the MLB off season.
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Originally posted by Flynnie View PostThat’s not happening but some Senators need to step in and say “It’s this or your antitrust exemption.”
http://media.graytvinc.com/documents...+the+House.pdf
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It's wrong of me to complain, given that I've never seen any of these teams. But I find this quite upsetting. It also feels a little counterproductive, given that baseball - more than anything else in the US - depends on both heritage and quirkiness.
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That’s not happening but some Senators need to step in and say “It’s this or your antitrust exemption.”
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Hope these teams tell the major leagues to go fuck themselves, get a TV deal with one of the streaming services, and form their own leagues. And prove more popular than MLB
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The teams might still exist as commercial entities, but the players are paid for and assigned by the MLB teams. So if they are no longer affiliated with MLB teams, they wouldn't have any players. They could try to carry on as independent teams if they could find a league to play in, but then they'd have to make enough money on their own to pay the players and find players willing to play for an unaffiliated team for whatever they can pay. There are some independent leagues that manage to survive, but it's tough and would probably be impossible in small markets like many of the ones here.
And, as I recall reading, MLB is hoping to poach some of the most successful independent teams - like the St. Paul Saints - and make them into affiliated teams, would would make it harder for those leagues to survive.
Some of these teams will probably turn into "summer wood bat" teams. There are leagues for college players to play in the summer to continue develop (and just to play). Unlike college, they use wood bats to help those players learn how to hit with them in preparation of maybe turning pro. But there are already a ton of those.
I would love to see a radical rethink of college baseball, so that they started later and played all summer. That would make it less of a regional thing.
A lot of politicians are pushing back on this, obviously, but I don't know what they can do.
MLB says its so they can pay minor leaguers more, but they could already afford to do that if they just weren't paying the major leaguers such outrageous sums.
I don't know what State College will do. They have a ~6,000 seat stadium that they share with Penn State, but Penn State rarely draws over 1,000 fans and only uses it for about 30 games. If they were better, they'd draw a few more, but many of the games are in the spring when it's still cold. Maybe Altoona will play some games here or maybe just move here. But Altoona is already the smallest city in the Eastern League. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the plan is to make them single-A.
Or maybe PSU will just give up, doze the stadium (which is barely ten years old), cut the 150-year-old baseball program and move on.
I doubt it will come to that, but there will be some people who argue that makes economic sense.
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Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View PostThis is very upsetting.
I don't know if I'll watch baseball ever again if this happens.
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Originally posted by ad hoc View PostWho can make a decision to just get rid of 42 teams? Isn't it up to the teams themselves?
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Who can make a decision to just get rid of 42 teams? Isn't it up to the teams themselves?
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This is very upsetting.
I don't know if I'll watch baseball ever again if this happens.
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The 42 minor league teams to be cut have been announced by the New York Times, not all of them from short season or rookie leagues either. From first glance nothing from AAA, but at least a couple from the next level down:
CALIFORNIA
Lancaster Jethawks
COLORADO
Rocky Mountain Vibes
Grand Junction Rockies
CONNECTICUT
(Norwich) Connecticut Tigers
FLORIDA
(Kissimmee) Florida Fire Frogs
Daytona Tortugas
IOWA
Quad Cities River Bandits
Burlington Bees
Clinton LumberKings
IDAHO
Idaho Falls Chukars
KENTUCKY
Lexington Legends
MASSACHUSETTS
Lowell Spinners
MARYLAND
Frederick Keys
Hagerstown Suns
MONTANA
Great Falls Voyagers
Missoula PaddleHeads
Billings Mustangs
NORTH CAROLINA
Burlington Royals
NEW YORK
Staten Island Yankees
Binghamton Rumble Ponies
Auburn Doubledays
Batavia Muckdogs
OHIO
Mahoning Valley Scrappers
OREGON
Salem-Keizer Volcanoes
PENNSYLVANIA
State College Spikes
Williamsport Crosscutters
Erie SeaWolves
TENNESSEE
Johnson City Cardinals
Kingsport Mets
Jackson Generals
Elizabethton Twins
Greeneville Reds
Chattanooga Lookouts
UTAH
Ogden Raptors
Orem Owlz
VIRGINIA
Bristol Pirates
Danville Braves
VERMONT
(Burlington) Vermont Lake Monsters
WASHINGTON
Tri-City Dust Devils
WEST VIRGINIA
(Charleston) West Virginia Power
Princeton Rays
Bluefield Blue Jays
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It's hard to see that the Astros would have stopped in the WS. But that Burke video doesn't add much since Barnes went out to the mound. No need to put down fingers at that point. They talked about the WS on MLB Now. Scott Braun brought up how hard the Astros hit Darvish but Eric Byrnes noted that it would be hard to pick up his pitches given Darvish's 5-pitch repertoire. Given how bad he was in that WS and in his first season+ with the Cubs, I probably would side with Darvish just sucking. I don't doubt, though, that the Astros were using tech during the WS as well. Darvish was bad, though; Kershaw was bad; and Jansen was bad. Maybe all three were victims of video sign stealing but the other two haven't been much better during the playoffs since 2017.
Maeda, on the other hand, has been lights out in the playoffs the past few years. So that whistle could mean something or it could just be Altuve being a true MVP player.
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Baseball Prospectus found a lot of at bats from 2017 with audible banging sounds:
https://www.baseballprospectus.com/n...led-delivered/
Before the seventh pitch of the year, you can hear a bang right before Jose Altuve watches a Felix Hernandez dive below the zone. They were stealing signs on literally the first day of the season. They didn’t just come up with this on a whim halfway through the year and see if it worked. The Astros entered 2017 with a plan in place to relay signs to their hitters.
While anonymous sources differed on whether or not the Astros used this system during their World Series run in 2017, one thing is very clear—this was not a one time thing. In fact, the blunt-object-to-hollow-plastic sound can be heard in almost every game I watched. To think a team would stop using this tactic right when the games matter the most would be ludicrous.
Reddit user ryanmuller1089 posted a video seemingly showing a whistle indicating Clayton Kershaw’s curveball was on the way during Game 5 of the World Series.
[URL]https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1194659705051910144[/URL]
Same whistle:
Last edited by Incandenza; 13-11-2019, 17:12.
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Don't know if you have access to Law360, UA, but if you do, this might be interesting for you
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