Other Baseball

FSN is showing a series this summer called Townball: Uniquely Minnesota. I watched the first episode and it was fantastic. Maybe it's just cuz I'm a Cobber (Concordia Moorhead) from Perham, but I thought it was fantastic. Many of the people interviewed on the show were either Cobbers of Yellowjackets (Chris Coste, Matt Bergstrom, Beau Wilmer, Bucky Burgau, the Stigman family)... and I remember playing townball at many of those fields shown. So I thought I would start a Forum thread on Townball. Here we can talk about two things: 1.) The FSN series episodes, and 2.) Your history with townball,teams played for, etc. Here is my playing town ball history: Age 12…

He was a top 10 draft pick of the Braves last year but didn’t sign due to injury concerns. He was projected to go in the first round again this year but instead elected to sign a deal in Japan. Interesting move

Go vote for our Twins!!! * I initially had some problems using Chrome, but it worked fine in IE.

Just noticed his stat line going through RP's in my fantasy leagues available players and was surprised when i saw his stats for the year so far. 11 innings, 22 k's and a 2.45 ERA. I do understand it's early in the year but it would have been nice to have a guy that can get some K's.

Good news for the Cron family. CJ’s younger brother will make his debut with the D-backs. I didn’t know of this until today. I’m also waiting for Taylor Rogers’ twin to be promoted sometime this year. Edit: I’m on my phone and can’t provide the link easily. I saw the article on mlb trade rumors.com.

https://deadspin.com/a-sneaky-hidden-ball-trick-sent-trine-to-the-d3-softbal-1834901784 This was obviously premeditated, planned, practiced, and pulled off to perfection at just the right moment. Teh awesome!

Interesting piece on an interesting player... Baseball can use guys like this I think... https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/reds-derek-dietrich-doing-everything-he-can-to-make-baseball-loosen-up/ar-AABGJGB?ocid=spartanntp

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-tigers-found-a-diamond-in-the-rough/ Nice article about Niko playing pretty well with Detroit.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/?post_type=cst_article&p=2469286 On Mother's Day, the Chicago Cubs introduced lactation pods for mom's. They will allow privacy to mom's and babies. A good idea!

I notice it every time I go to a game but never know why it happens. Starting around the 7th or 8th inning, security comes out between innings and lines the foul territory of either side of the diamond, facing the crowd. What's going on here?

I think someone should make me read this every time I'm feeling a little sorry for myself over some relatively minor trouble or another. I can't even imagine the pain of something like this. Ballplayers have lives outside of work, like the rest of us. https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/rich-hill-mlb-dodgers

I'm really gonna like this kid

We are having a debate on our forum on what the Cardinals should do with trying to re-sign Marcell Ozuna who will be a Free Agent at the end of the season. Remember Ozuna hit 37 HRs in 2017, but, had shoulder issues last year where he hit only 3 HRs in the first 2 months, but, hit 20 over the following 4 months. Was on DL after taking cortisone shots, but, recovered. Then in offseason had shoulder surgery and in Spring Training was put on a conditioning program to strengthen his muscles in shoulder. We are still seeing how his throwing is effected. He has 9 HRs now and is hitting powerful shots over the wall. What do you do if he hits 40 HRs or more? Try to re-s…

I saw a couple weeks ago that Nick Burdi was doing great with the Pirates. I know it has been a while since the Twins lost him in the Rule 5. But I also knew that he spent all of last year injured and couldn't remember how all the specifics of Rule 5 worked(I now know the answers). After seeing how amazing his numbers were I couldn't help but thinking: 1)Damn, it sucks that the Twins couldn't keep him around and 2)despite that I know why they left him unprotected. However, today I saw the following article on Sports Illustrated. https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/04/23/nick-burdi-injury-pirates-pitching-prospect No matter what team a kid plays for, that video made me a …

I have been to 41 MLB ballparks, but, only 3 MiLB parks. What are some of your favorites, worth going to? I've been to Davenport, Iowa's ballpark.

I was surprised to not see an Ichiro Suzuki thread to honor his legacy. Metrics probably do not do him much justice, but he was one of a kind. Certainly a first ballot HOFer. He is the embodiment of baseball, maybe not in modern terms with the 3 true outcomes. The man was a magician, he was phenomenom and a joy to watch on the field of play. Whether it be his unorthodox super successful batting approach, or his defense and cannon arm in the outfield. We were damn lucky to see this man take the field in MLB and I will certainly miss him. Ichiro Suzuki is of the baseball likes that we will never see again. His ending was one of fairy tales.

The Braves made 100 million, with a bad tv deal and a 130MM payroll......there is plenty of money for the actual players to get more..... https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-braves-profits-provide-glimpse-into-baseballs-books/

Earlier this week, I got to see my first baseball game of 2019. Due to the timing of the start of the season coinciding with a family vacation, that game was in Seoul, South Korea. I was hoping to see an LG Twins game, one of three teams that call Seoul home (along with the Kiwoom Heroes and Doosan Bears). But this game had the visiting NC Dinos from Changwon (near Busan) playing the Bears at Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul. Jamsil was built in the early 80s and hosted baseball events at the 1988 Olympics. The playing field is symmetrical: 100 meters (328 feet) down the lines, 120 meters to the gaps (394 feet) and 125 meters to dead center (410 feet). My wife, kids a…

Long, but interesing https://deadspin.com/the-inside-story-of-how-the-ricketts-family-schemed-and-1831879476

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/04/new-york-yankee-beat-ostrich-spaghetti-eating-contest/

Hey fellow TD readers: need some advise on how to get up to speed for Saturday’s auction draft after being away from participating for 10 years! 1.) Best site for player rank by position 2.) Best site to find sleepers 3.) Best place to find who is injured now and for how long 4,) Any advise at all for guy being out of game for a decade (which position is Joe Mauer playing now (

Are you hungry? So am I! Let's look at what we could potentially eat at ballparks around the country.

We had a thread for items around the baseball world that were worth sharing but not worth a thread of their own. Now that the 2018 season is over, I'll start this new one for the off-season.

According to many reports, including Ken Rosenthal, the White Sox are nearing a deal that would pay top prospect Eloy Jimenez $43 million over the next six years with two options that could bring the deal to about $75-77 million. Jimenez has not played in the big leagues yet. He is a Top 3 prospect in any national ranking. But the team is taking on a large majority of the risk here. He could be paid about $2 million through his first three years of service by going year to year. That means he'll be making approximately $41 million over his three arbitration seasons. That's not team-friendly. Where I think the team gets the value is with the team option years that…

Last Spring training game in Florida they decide to put a runner on 2nd in the 9th in a tie game to start inning. I hope they don't decide to ever implement this rule in the 9th or extra innings during regular season. You could pick runner off and have a 9 inning complete game with 26 outs. Would you lose a perfect game?

12 years $430 million.

I saw that the Angels were only going to accept electronic tickets on MLB ballpark app or tickets bought at their box office. Will this block stubhub? Other teams were considering doing this.

According to reports, it's for 6 years, $100M. It covers all his arbitration years, as well as the first two years of free agency. Really good deal for the Astros, and for Bregman, who goes from making 600k to multiple millions this year.

Its been 30 years since an investigation into Pete Rose's gambling on baseball was started. He finally admitted to betting on baseball in a book he made money off of. It looks like he bet on baseball as a manager and player. I like his signing baseballs, " I bet on baseball". It looks sad when he is by himself at table in Las Vegas signing autographs. He's nearing 80 years old who believes he should get voted into HOF?

In a move that that was inevitable but a long time coming, Fangraphs has now added catcher framing. They have multiple articles discussing the methodolgy and impact: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/war-update-catcher-framing/ https://blogs.fangraphs.com/fangraphs-pitch-framing/ Similar data was already available elsewhere, but if you like data it is nice to have it at Fangraphs where it is rolled into valuation metrics, and easily sortable and whatnot. The data does only start in 2008 with the advent of PITCHf/x, so it adds another big difference to pre and post 2008 data, but Fangraphs has always been about quantifying the best available current data, not necessarily b…