Other Baseball

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/11/white-sox-sign-yasmani-grandal.html

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28440015/report-red-sox-used-replay-room-steal-signs-2018-season Red Sox might be in a bit of trouble. Same with Cora, who was with Astros and Red Sox when these allegations occurred. This might get interesting.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/01/domingo-german-reportedly-facing-significant-suspension.html Keep it coming! 81 Game suspension.

I was reading the Cardinals unmoderated fan forum that has lots of trolls. Anyways, one troll pointed out that the GM doesn't continually work the roster. Well, he was flamed. There are only 7 players from the 2017 opening roster left on the Cardinals a turnover of 72%. The Cardinals haven't had a losing season since 2007, the only one in this century. Only 2 of the 7 had better years last year than 2017, Wong and Adam Wainwright. Molina is still the aging catcher. Fowler is an overpaid OFer that should never have been signed to 5 years. Jose Martinez can't field his position in OF and 1b. Matt Carpenter is down to 12 HRs and a .220 hitter in 2019. Carlos Mart…

Looking at Joey Votto who has a lifetime 60.2 WAR, 150 OPS+, a .421 OBP you would think your team is going to win a lot of games and is worth signing him to 10 year contract with $107 million more to be paid out. But, what did the Reds really get starting at age 28 with his emphasis on getting on base? From 2012 Votto averaged 80 runs and 68 RBIs per year despite getting on base 257 times and leading league in OBP several times. Sure his 162 game average is higher, but, this is starting at age 28. Other than himself he drives in 47 other runners a year since he averaged 21 Hrs a year. With that many times on base per year you would think he would score more? Makes m…

Given a $800K contract with an opportunity to win a spot in the starting rotation. Good for Kohl! Hope he makes the most out of it!

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/11/yankees-jacoby-ellsbury-salary-dispute-injury-boras-rumors.html I wonder how this affects their total toward the luxury tax limit. I'm happy that both the Yankees and Scott Boras will have to use resources to settle this matter. I wish them both the worst.

Per multiple reports, the Chicago White Sox and Edwin Encarnacion have agreed to a 1 year, $12 million deal. The White Sox have signed Grandal, Keuchel, Gio Gonzalez and now Encarnacion to their talented young prospects. They are a legit contender in the AL Central.

Saturday morning, the Tigers signed the right side of the Twins Opening Day infield. Jonathan Schooop signed for $6.1 million. CJ Cron signed for $6.1 million.

Twins still doing nothing.

What a shocking trade with only a few details out there so far. Delino DeShields & Emmanuel Clase are the only names out there so far as the return to Cleveland. There is supposed to be more included in the deal. Would have been great if Twins could have worked out a deal for Kluber.

What would you think it would take in trade for Arenado who could opt out in 2 years? The poor Rockies have trouble signing pitching, but, manage to find sluggers who can hit are rumored to be shopping Arenado. His lifetime OPS outside of Coors is .799 and batting average of .265. Great defensive player with several gold gloves.

According to Sherman and Martino, the Mets filed a grievance against Cespedes and stopped paying his 29mil salary last September. They’ve now come to an agreement for 10 mil guaranteed and 20 mil in incentives. Speculation by Jeff Todd that it has to do with his ranch incident last spring. Tons of links below... fascinating, I can’t think of another incident like this. https://mobile.twitter.com/Joelsherman1/status/1205629286755061761 https://mobile.twitter.com/Joelsherman1/status/1205607761054179328 https://mobile.twitter.com/martinonyc/status/1205597454550224896 https://mobile.twitter.com/timbhealey/status/1130565124052410368 https://www.mlbtraderumors.co…

On MLB Network, it was just announced that there are two new Hall of Famers, players union legend Marvin Miller and catcher Ted Simmons. The Modern Era ballot included players who played in the era from 1970-1987. Ten people were on the ballot. A group of 16 voted on them. Included in that group were Rod Carew (among 6 Hall of Famers) and Terry Ryan (among 6 executives). Four historians also were voters. Marvin Miller deserved this a long time ago for all he did to make the game better for the players. I admit not knowing as much about Ted Simmons as I should have. 21 seasons, .285/.348/.437 (.785) with 483 doubles, 248 homers. 8 All Star games. Pretty impressive…

Hawk Harrelson. That is all.

9 years - $324M

Details are coming out shortly.

Moderation note from John Bonnes: The below post is showing a tweet of an instagram post. It appears to be Sam Dyson's girlfriend accusing him on Instagram of domestic abuse involving her and their cat. This thread may (and probably should) evoke some strong emotions folks. Please be aware we'll be moderating this thread heavily. We remind you, there is a lot we don't know yet, and we ask that everyone think before they post and tread lightly. https://twitter.com/biaginger/status/1199326376903561216?s=19 The text in the Instagram post: > Long post I want to say a few things about this box. This was the first year I got this box. I am turning 12 soon and this was…

I am reading a study right now that 80% of top 100 pitching prospects bust. Only about 8% are considered "above average". Same study says top 100 position players have a bust rate around 65%. This needs to be considered with any trade. If we are giving away an established star we should be getting multiple top prospects to go along with it.

More and more women are getting job opportunities in front offices in baseball. But today the Cubs announced that they have hired Rachel Folden as the 4th coach of their Rookie League affiliate. From the tweet, she's got an incredible playing and coaching background. I don't know if she's the first woman to coach in the minor leagues. It's something we can research if anyone wants. But it is a nice step.

This winter, the annual election of hall of famers is happening in baseball land. Derek Jeter headlines the class. A person can pick up to 10 people on the ballot, and each player gets up to 10 years on the ballot, depending on if over 5% of people vote for them. Since some of the writers seem to have somewhat horrible ballots, I would like to see some of your guys’s ballots. Here’s mine: (In no particular order) 1. Derek Jeter A legend of the game, and one of the best hitters of our era. Absolute Lock. 2. Larry Walker 3. Andruw Jones 4. Scott Rolen These guys were extremely good defensive players, but also had very good bats. This is Walker’s last year on the ballot. I…

Jeff Passan announced that the Mariners have signed Evan White to a six-year, $24 million deal. White is 23. Spent most of 2019 in AA. He's a 1B. There are options that could bring the deal to $55 million. White is a back-end-of-the Top 100 type of prospect...

That pain you've felt in your wallet attending games over the last few years is real. And that is one reason people are staying away from the ballpark. Baseball Prospectus' Rob Arthur crunched the numbers and found that approximately 40% of baseball's attendance decline is due to increases in ticket pricing (link $$) over the last five years. For those without BP memberships or the tl:dr crowd, Arthur breaks down some of the key findings in a tweet thread. "A sad finding in this article is that the effect of rising ticket prices doesn't reduce attendance enough to offset the additional revenue they get from charging their remaining fanbase more $$$," Arthur tweets. "…

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/11/braves-sign-will-smith.html That would have been too rich for my blood. Braves are obviously pushing in for a run. EDIT: I guess it's technically $40-52 mill with the buyout

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28025583/union-chief-rebuke-gm-heats-baseball-cold-war-free-agency Atlanta's GM says outloud what he shouldn't have said and the union didn't like it. My guess is we're going to get a pretty long fight after this CBA expires.

Despite Gerrit Cole putting together one of the greatest pitching performances of the last decade, he was defeated in the BBWAA award voting system by a numerically inferior pitcher. Should the BBWAA do away with their awards to avoid being repeatedly embarrassed by a small group of journalists who are unable to use basic resources such as Fangraphs? I am interested in all opinions!

Just a general question as we pass time in the offseason. I've always been a fan of the pitch, and in this day of high velocity, I would think a knuckleballer would be a great contrast to 95+ MPH fastballs. Is this pitch even being taught anymore at the younger levels? For me as a kid, I could throw hard but couldn't figure out how to throw a curve ball well enough to get it over the plate. So I toyed with a knuckleball for years and that became my "off-speed" pitch when I was the mop up reliever.

Sorry for the long title as well as most likely posting it in the wrong forum for starters. I know this sounds like a dumb topic but how can GM's evaluate the free agent class if MLB has not informed teams if they will be playing with "Juiced Balls" like they did in 2019? Teams shouldn't be trying to chase free agent hitters only because of power. If anything pitchers in the free agent class could get hurt the most by the chance of "Juiced Balls" in 2020. There could be quite a few pitchers that had down years in 2019 that could turn into bargains depending on the 2020 baseballs.

He was a former MLB umpire. Passed away about a week ago. He retired about 10 years ago. He was just the fifth African American ump in MLB history. Cancer sucks.

I thought this was an informative article at ESPN: "Why did those World Series games last so long?" https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27977973/why-did-world-series-games-last-long They study Game 4, a 4-1 Astros win which took 4 hours, 3 minutes. 4-1 regular season games this year averaged only 2 hours, 55 minutes. Here's what they found made up the 68 minute difference: Personally, it would be nice to speed the regular season games by about ~20 minutes (pitch clock, stay in the box, not granting time) and reduce the baseline for postseason games -- and maybe cut even further into the #3 dawdling time.