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2020 General MLB off-season


Mo Horn

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Eat shit and die, then, now, and forever:

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Pete Rose asked commissioner Rob Manfred on Wednesday morning to remove his name from Major League Baseball's ineligible list, which would allow the all-time hits leader to be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame.

In a petition sent to the MLB commissioner's office and obtained by ESPN, Rose and his lawyers argue that Manfred has recently opted not to punish players guilty of major game-changing rules infractions and, as a result, should end Rose's 30½-year ban for gambling on baseball while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

The lawyers say that Rose's lifetime ban is "vastly disproportionate" when compared with MLB's punishments of players who took performance-enhancing drugs and the players involved in the sign-stealing schemes by the 2017 Houston Astros.

"There cannot be one set of rules for Mr. Rose and another for everyone else," Rose's 20-page petition for reinstatement says. "No objective standard or categorization of the rules violations committed by Mr. Rose can distinguish his violations from those that have incurred substantially less severe penalties from Major League Baseball."

Rose also seeks a meeting with Manfred.

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"It has never been suggested, let alone established, that any of Mr. Rose's actions influenced the outcome of any game or the performance of any player," the petition reads. "Yet for the thirty-first year and counting, he continues to suffer a punishment vastly disproportionate to those who have done just that. Given the manner in which Major League Baseball has treated and continues to treat other egregious assaults on the integrity of the game, Mr. Rose's ongoing punishment is no longer justifiable as a proportional response to his transgressions."

 

Rose's lawyers pointed out that Manfred reinstated a player, Jenrry Mejia, who had been permanently banned from baseball after testing positive a third time for anabolic steroids.

"It's in the best interests of baseball to not have as its legacy that Pete Rose is being treated grossly differently than every other player in its history, with the exception of 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson and the Chicago Black Sox," said Rose's lawyer Mark Rosenbaum, a Los Angeles-based civil rights lawyer representing Rose pro bono. "I don't think there has been an athlete in any sport in history who has fallen more steeply and more of a distance for a longer period of time than Pete Rose has."

Rosenbaum added that Rose's permanent ban should end because "proportionality is the cornerstone of baseball, like it is in life. ... This is a country of second chances, and I don't think Pete Rose poses a threat to the integrity of the game."

Baseball has changed in other ways, too -- mainly its embrace of legalized gambling. In May 2018, the Supreme Court granted all 50 states the right to accept sports wagers legally, allowing Major League Baseball, like all major sports, to profit in multiple ways from legalized gambling.

"Yes, I reconfigured my life," Rose said during the Backstory interview. "I do no more illegal gambling. That's what I got in trouble for -- illegal gambling. I live in Las Vegas. If I want to make a bet on the football game or a basketball game ... I'm 78 years old. That's my enjoyment. That's my pleasure ... And I've reconfigured my life."

 

 

Edited by Beau Vine
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48 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Pete Rose asked commissioner Rob Manfred on Wednesday morning to remove his name from Major League Baseball's ineligible list, which would allow the all-time hits leader to be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame.

In a petition sent to the MLB commissioner's office and obtained by ESPN, Rose and his lawyers argue that Manfred has recently opted not to punish players guilty of major game-changing rules infractions and, as a result, should end Rose's 30½-year ban for gambling on baseball while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

The lawyers say that Rose's lifetime ban is "vastly disproportionate" when compared with MLB's punishments of players who took performance-enhancing drugs and the players involved in the sign-stealing schemes by the 2017 Houston Astros.

"There cannot be one set of rules for Mr. Rose and another for everyone else," Rose's 20-page petition for reinstatement says. "No objective standard or categorization of the rules violations committed by Mr. Rose can distinguish his violations from those that have incurred substantially less severe penalties from Major League Baseball."

Rose also seeks a meeting with Manfred.

Three to two says Pete Rose still doesn't get into the Hall of Fame.

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Same song, different verse for this guy. 

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Yankees left-hander James Paxton will be out of action for three to four months after undergoing a microscopic lumbar discectomy with removal of a peridiscal cyst on Wednesday.

In his first season in pinstripes, Paxton went 15-6 with a 3.82 ERA in 29 starts.

 

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Former Astros manager AJ Hinch isn't dismissing the idea that Houston's 2017 World Series championship has been tainted by the sign-stealing scandal that cost him his job.

"It's a fair question," Hinch said in an interview with MLB Network. "And I think everyone's going to have to draw their own conclusion."

https://es.pn/3bk2sLN

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Quite the collection of COF/DH-types Cle is piling up. 

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The Indians are reportedly closing in on a major league agreement with free-agent outfielder Domingo Santana, Paul Hoynes of cleveland.com relays. An announcement could take place sometime next week, but the deal’s pending a physical, according to Hoynes.

The Indians are in clear need of outfield help, but whether Santana will prove to be the solution is anyone’s guess. However, as recently as 2017 – a season he spent with the Brewers – Santana appeared to be a budding star. He slashed .278/.371/.505 with 30 home runs and 3.3 fWAR in 607 trips to the plate that year. Santana struggled the next season, though, and then the Brewers traded him to the Mariners in December 2018.

While Santana looked like an interesting pickup for rebuilding Seattle, he didn’t end up producing much in an M’s uniform. Although Santana’s season began well, a second-half elbow injury helped torpedo his numbers and limit him to an uninspiring .253/.329/.441 line with 21 homers in 507 PA. Worsening matters, Santana ranked as one of the game’s poorest outfielders, finishing with a minus-17 Ultimate Zone Rating and a minus-16.1 Ultimate Zone Rating. His combination of so-so offense and disastrous defense held him to a replacement-level WAR output.

To Santana’s credit, he was a good defender as recently as 2018 (plus-6 DRS, plus-2.7 UZR). He’s also still just 27, and the Indians or any other team that signs Santana will be able to control him via arbitration through 2021. The Mariners could have done the same, but they elected to non-tenderSantana in lieu of paying him a $4.4MM salary this year.

Should Santana join the Indians, he’d make for yet another flawed corner outfield possibility for the team. Aside from Jordan Luplow, whose solid production may have flown under the radar in 2019, there’s little in the way of clear answers for the club there. Franmil Reyes (perhaps like Santana) is probably better off as a designated hitter; Jake Bauers and Greg Allen offered subpar production last year; Tyler Naquin suffered a torn ACL in August and will miss some portion of 2020; and Bradley Zimmer barely played last season as a result of shoulder troubles.

 

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On Sept. 22, 2016, an intern in the Houston Astros organization showed general manager Jeff Luhnow a PowerPoint presentation that featured the latest creation by the team’s high-tech front office: an Excel-based application programmed with an algorithm that could decode the opposing catchers’ signs. It was called “Codebreaker.”

This was the beginning of what has turned into one of the biggest scandals in Major League Baseball history. Throughout the 2017 season and for part of 2018, Astros baseball operations employees and video room staffers used Codebreaker to illegally steal signs, which were then relayed to batters in real time. Another Astros employee referred to the system as the “dark arts.”

This previously undisclosed information about the origins and nature of the Astros’ cheating comes from both a letter MLB commissioner Rob Manfred sent to Luhnow on Jan. 2 that outlined the findings of a league investigation, as well as interviews with several people familiar with the matter.

Eleven days after Manfred’s letter, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, MLB announced that it had suspended Luhnow, as well as field manager A.J. Hinch, for the entire 2020 season. Hours later, the Astros fired both Luhnow and Hinch.

The existence of Codebreaker shows that it was the Astros front office that laid the groundwork for the team’s electronic sign-stealing schemes.

During MLB’s probe, Luhnow maintained that he had no knowledge of any of the Astros’ misconduct. However, Manfred wrote in his letter that “there is more than sufficient evidence to support a conclusion that you knew—and overwhelming evidence that you should have known—that the Astros maintained a sign-stealing program that violated MLB’s rules.”

But while the league collected evidence that showed Luhnow was aware of Codebreaker’s existence and capabilities, it couldn’t prove that he knew how it was used. In response to Manfred’s letter, Luhnow presented investigators with a binder with more than 170 pages that cast at least some doubt on the contents of the initial letter, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

These people described the situation as a “he said-he said” between Luhnow and Tom Koch-Weser, the team’s director of advance information, who sent two emails to Luhnow in 2017 that referenced “the system” and “our dark arts, sign-stealing department.”

Luhnow opened the emails, but told investigators he did not read to the bottom of them.

Complicating matters further, Koch-Weser’s responsibilities were reduced following the 2019 season, but before allegations of the Astros’ cheating became public in a November story in The Athletic.

MLB couldn’t decipher whose account was truthful. In his final findings, Manfred said that the investigation revealed that “Luhnow neither devised nor actively directed the efforts of the replay review room staff to decode signs in 2017 or 2018.”

Luhnow declined to comment through a spokesman. In a statement released last month, Luhnow said, “As the commissioner set out in his statement, I did not personally direct, oversee or engage in any misconduct.” The Astros did not provide comment on behalf of their employees. Koch-Weser did not respond to requests for comment.

The way Codebreaker worked was simple: Somebody would watch an in-game live feed and log the catcher’s signs into the spreadsheet, as well as the type of pitch that was actually thrown. With that information, Codebreaker determined how the signs corresponded with different pitches. Once decoded, that information would be communicated through intermediaries to a baserunner, who would relay them to the hitter.

Starting around June 2017, the system was embellished by Astros players. They started watching a live game feed on a monitor near the dugout and then would bang on a trash can to communicate the coming pitch to the batter. The “banging scheme” lasted through the 2017 World Series, which the Astros won over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Manfred said Luhnow was unaware of the banging scheme.

But everything started with Codebreaker, and the use of it to steal signs continued into 2018—not just at home, but also on the road.

Luhnow acknowledged to investigators that he recalled the intern’s PowerPoint slide about Codebreaker and even asked questions about how it worked. He said that he was under the impression that it would be used to legally decipher signs from previous game footage—not live in games.

The intern, Derek Vigoa, currently the Astros’ senior manager for team operations, told investigators that he presumed Luhnow knew it would be used in games because that was “where the value would be,” according to the letter. But he said he didn’t recall whether he explicitly told Luhnow that Codebreaker would be used during games.

 

Vigoa’s presentation wasn’t the only time Astros employees say Luhnow was informed about Codebreaker. Koch-Weser, the Astros’ director of advance information, said he discussed Codebreaker with Luhnow in one to three meetings after the 2016 season.

Koch-Weser told MLB that Luhnow would “giggle” at the title and appeared “excited” about it. Koch-Weser also said that Luhnow sometimes entered the Astros’ video room during road games and made comments such as, “You guys Codebreaking?”

Luhnow denied Koch-Weser’s accounts.

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Jeff Luhnow was suspended by MLB on Jan. 13. He was fired by the Astros hours later.

Photo: Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Other Astros employees told MLB’s investigators that they believed Luhnow knew about Codebreaker, but they provided no definitive proof. Matt Hogan, now the Astros’ manager of pro scouting analysis, told investigators there was no effort to hide the use of Codebreaker in front of Luhnow when he visited the video room. In fact, he told them, “it would have been something to show we were working and get validation of our work.” Luhnow denied seeing evidence of sign-stealing during those visits.

In October 2018, Luhnow met with Koch-Weser to discuss a potential contract extension. In preparation, Koch-Weser outlined his arguments for an extension in a Slack post that included the term “dark arts.” He wrote, in part: “Lastly, I know the secrets that made us a championship team, some of which he[’]d definitely feel a lot safer if they were kept in-house.” Koch-Weser told MLB investigators that during his meeting with Luhnow, he used either the term “dark arts” or “codebreaking” to tout his efforts. Luhnow denied that Koch-Weser referenced either of those things.

 

Koch-Weser also used the term “dark arts” in the Astros’ Advanced Scouting Department’s 2019 budget Excel spreadsheet. Luhnow acknowledged that he reviewed the document but denied reading the tab “dark arts” was written in and denied that any discussion of “dark arts” took place during the budget meeting.

In Manfred’s public report last month, he said that Luhnow received at least two emails that mentioned the Astros’ sign-stealing. His letter to Luhnow expanded upon the content of those emails.

One was sent by Koch-Weser on May 24, 2017, and was titled “Road Notes (April-May).” The five-page email included six underlined topic headings, with the fifth one called, “The System”—a reference to what Koch-Weser described to investigators as “all kind of covert operations,” including sign-stealing. Luhnow told investigators he didn’t read the full email because of its length, and that he was unfamiliar with the term “the system.” Two people familiar with the matter said it was generally known in the Astros front office that Luhnow expected his staff to put pertinent information in the first page of any email.

Luhnow responded to that email a day later: “These are great, thanks.” He wrote another email about three hours later. “How much of this stuff do you think [Hinch] is aware of?” Luhnow asked Koch-Weser.

On Aug. 26, 2017, in another “road notes,” Koch-Weser wrote: “The system: our dark arts, sign-stealing department has been less productive in the second half as the league has become aware of our reputation and now most clubs change their signs a dozen times per game.” He added that struggling teams like the Toronto Blue Jays and Oakland Athletics “seem not to care as much.”

Luhnow responded two weeks later.

“Tom, this type of write up is very helpful,” he wrote. “Seems like our baserunning is still pathetic. What the hell happened to our pitching this series? I mean that was historically bad…”

Nonetheless, Luhnow told investigators that he did not read the full email because of its length and that if he had, he would have followed up because the reference to “dark arts” sounded “nefarious” and “sinister.”

The evidence led Manfred to believe that Luhnow knew about that element of the Astros’ sign-stealing. In the last paragraph of Manfred’s letter, he wrote: “I intend to hold you accountable for the egregious rules violations that took place under your supervision…”

Luhnow was suspended by MLB for a year on Jan. 13. He was fired by the Astros hours later.

tl,dr -- Luhnow claims an intern is lying about him repeatedly and his emails are tl,dr, even though he responded to them.  Lying sack of shit.

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Shit, Roger Kahn died.  92, so no surprise, but still... I understand that Boys of Summer will always be his magnum opus, because it was so ground-breaking, but Good Enough to Dream is one of my favorite baseball books ever.  

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In this house, I have three different hardback copies of Roger Kahn’s “The Boys of Summer.” I also have one on my Kindle and one in my iBooks collection. And yet, not more than three or four weeks ago, I was in a used bookstore, and I saw a paperback copy of the book, and I thought to myself: “I should probably buy that.” And so I did.

I simply need that book around me at all times.

Roger Kahn died Thursday. He was 92. I never met him. I got a note from him once, a nice note, and as I wrote on Twitter, it was like getting a message from Olympus. A few years later, his book publisher, Mark Weinstein, asked me to write a blurb for Roger’s last book, “Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball.” It was like having Julius Erving ask me to endorse one of his dunks.

This is how I began that blurb:

“Roger Kahn’s classic, ‘The Boys of Summer,’ changed my life — that and ‘Catcher in the Rye’ were the two books that made me dream of becoming a writer.”

That line is absolutely true, and I wrote it in the hopes that it will sell a few extra copies of the book — that, after all, is what blurbs are for. But more than that, it was the message I wanted to get to Roger. “The Boys of Summer” might not be the best book I have read, just like “The Princess Bride” might not be the best movie I have seen and spaghetti and meatballs might not be the best meal I have had and Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” might not be the best song I have heard and chocolate cake might not be the best dessert I’ve eaten.

But it is, to me, the most perfect book, just as the rest are the most perfect examples of joy.

Roger Kahn was a longtime writer and author, not only of baseball. Through the years, he wrote eloquently about the poet Robert Frost, the violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz, the politician Eugene McCarthy and the writer John Lardner. He wrote about his son Roger Jr.’s struggle with heroin addiction and death by suicide. He wrote being Jewish in America, and he wrote about the roaring twenties when Jack Dempsey reigned, and he wrote a not-very-good novel version of his own troubled second marriage.

Baseball, though, is what brought out his writing soul. He wrote about the artistry of pitching. He wrote about the dreams of minor leaguers. He wrote about how Jackie Robinson changed everything. He also wrote a book with Pete Rose — “Pete Rose: My Story” — that he and Rose each came to regret for any number of reasons; that was not a particularly good match.

Mostly, he wrote “The Boys of Summer.” It was simply unlike any other sports book that had ever been written and, I would argue, unlike any sports book written since. The core idea came from his own unlikely and sudden rise from rabid Brooklyn Dodgers fan to Brooklyn Dodgers beat writer just as the team jelled into something magical and cursed. He was 24 years old when he was assigned to cover the Dodgers for the New York Herald.

And that team was inarguably wonderful — Jackie, Pee Wee, Preacher, Shotgun Shuba, Campy and the Duke. That team won pennants in ’52 and ’53. That team also lost the World Series both times to the inevitable New York Yankees.

In the first half of the book, Kahn writes about his own journey. “At a point in my life,” he begins, “when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams.”

In the second half of the book, Kahn went back to find them, those Boys of Summer, now 20 years older and trying to make their way in life.

When he first tried to sell “The Boys of Summer,” Kahn found no buyers. Who would want to buy a book about an old baseball team that wasn’t even good enough to win? And Kahn tried to explain to them that it was the fact those Dodgers did not win that made them so captivating.

“Their skills,” Roger wrote, “lifted everyman’s existence, a national team, with a country in thrall, irresistible and unable to beat the Yankees.”

But, beyond that, I’ve always believed that the book wasn’t about the Dodgers or winning or losing or any of that. Well, it was about those things, but it was about more. In between the journey and the return, he wrote the most beautiful and haunting part. He wrote about burying his father, Gordon Kahn.

More than anything, this was a book about fathers and sons and the space in between.

“Outside, the summer sun was taunting,” he wrote of that moment after he chose his father’s coffin. “I walked to the car, a lawyer at each elbow, wholly alone. The wrongness of things seized me. At the Parade Grounds, boys were throwing footballs. It was that season; baseball would come again. The team was broken up and with my father dead there was no one with whom I wanted to consider that tragedy, and because there was no one I recognized that the breaking of a team was not like greater tragedy: incompleteness, unspoken words, unmade music, withheld love, the failure ever to sum up or say good-bye.”

I cannot tell you how many times I have read that paragraph. And it hits me every single time.

Of course, I was hardly the only person of my generation to read “The Boys of Summer” and have it alter the course of my life.

One of the three (well, four if you count the paperback) copies of “The Boys of Summer” in this house is the original one, the one I first read. It is dog-eared and tattered and it has food stains everywhere. The spine has broken, the words on the cover faded long ago, and I believe there’s an entire section from the middle missing.

Yes, I often think about throwing it away — I do have other copies, after all — but so far I keep it because it reminds me of the first time I read it, the way the words rattled my brain and launched my own hopes. I see it, and I think about a poem that Kahn quotes in the book by Saigyō, a poem I committed to memory all those years ago and have never forgotten.

Did I ever dream

I should pass this way again

As an old man?

I have lived such a long time — 

Nakayama of the Night.

When I heard Roger died, for some reason, my mind immediately traveled to the chapter he wrote about George “Shotgun” Shuba, a relatively minor member of those Boys of Summer. Shuba was a good hitter who was famously (and self-consciously) sketchy in the field. This was 20 years after the Boys of Summer, they were both middle-aged men, and Kahn was praising Shuba for being such a natural hitter. Shuba was unimpressed by the analysis. “Ah,” he said, “you talk like a sportswriter.”

Then he took Kahn to the basement, where he had baseball bats filled with lead. He’d swing those heavy bats again and again, 600 times a night, 4,200 times a week, 47,200 swings every winter.

“You call that natural?” Shuba said.

“I wish I’d known this years ago,” Kahn said. “It would have helped my own hitting.”

“Aah,” Shuba said in the stuffy cellar. “Don’t let yourself think like that. The fastball is by the both of us. Leave it to the younger guys.”

 

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In the 45-year history of salary arbitration in baseball, no one on the players’ side could remember taking the action they did Thursday, shortly before the start of Joc Pederson’s hearing.

With an agreement reportedly in place for Pederson to be traded from the Dodgers to the Angels, the players’ union and the outfielder’s agents at Excel Sports Management filed a motion for the hearing to be delayed, contending that Pederson effectively was in limbo, a man without a team.

Major League Baseball already had rejected the union’s request. The three-person arbitration panel did the same. And thus began another odd chapter in an extraordinary week that started with two connected, captivating trade agreements and ended with the union again expressing public frustration over the way MLB treats its players.

Both the three-team blockbuster that would send star outfielder Mookie Betts to the Dodgers and a separate deal that would send Pederson to the Angels remained on hold Friday night. The trades are still alive, but likely will not be completed in their original, reported form due to concerns the Red Sox raised after viewing the medical records of Twins right-hander Brusdar Graterol, one of the two players they would receive for Betts and left-hander David Price.

The fallout from the impasse prompted union head Tony Clark to issue a scathing statement shortly after 5 p.m. ET on Friday. The statement included a reference to Pederson’s hearing, calling it a “perversion of the salary arbitration process.” Pederson, 27, lost his case, and his salary in 2020 will be the Dodgers’ proposed $7.75 million rather than his requested $9.5 million.

“The proposed trades between the Dodgers, Red Sox, Twins and Angels need to be resolved without further delay,” Clark said. “The events of this last week have unfairly put several players’ lives in a state of limbo. The unethical leaking of medical information as well as the perversion of the salary arbitration process serve as continued reminders that too often players are treated as commodities by those running the game.”

The collective-bargaining agreement says a hearing “may be postponed by the arbitration panel upon the application of either the Player or Club based upon a showing of substantial cause.” The uncertainty surrounding Pederson satisfied that requirement in the view of the union and his agents.

Instead, the Dodgers went to a hearing for the first time since winning a case against reliever Joe Beimel in 2007 and paying him $912,500. The team avoided arbitration by awarding multiyear extensions to two other current players, signing infielder Max Muncy for three years, $26 million on Thursday and utility man Chris Taylor for two years, $13.4 million on Friday.

MLB’s position on Pederson, backed by the arbitration panel, was that the hearing could proceed because the player had not yet been traded officially, and might never be. The league also was confident that the Dodgers would win their case against Pederson and perhaps feared establishing a precedent for delays would embolden other players to seek ways out of hearings in the future.

MLB and the union negotiate the arbitration schedule, with the hearings taking place between Feb. 1-20. The union offered multiple dates to reschedule Pederson’s case, but hearings generally are postponed only when a player and team are in agreement on a multi-year contract, pending a physical, sources said. An exception occurred in 2001, when Mariano Rivera’s agency fired his primary representative. Rivera, under new representation, then avoided arbitration by signing a four-year, $39.99 million deal.

A delay of four or five days would have been fairer to Pederson, his representatives contended, allowing time for the trade negotiations to resolve. If the deal had been completed during that time, the Angels might have reached a settlement with Pederson rather than make a case against a player they had just acquired. If the trade had fallen through, Pederson would simply have gone to a hearing with the Dodgers.

Instead, Pederson’s side ending up in the awkward position of trying to prove his value for a team that was in the process of trading him. The Dodgers used outside counsel to argue its case, a common practice among clubs. The absence of top Dodgers officials from the hearing in Phoenix was more unusual.

Which, to those on the players’ side, was the point.

The salary-arbitration process is designed for players and their employers to resolve their differences either through settlement or an arbitration panel’s decision. Pederson, though, was not clear on which team employed him, sources say. He already had received text messages from members of Dodgers management wishing him well with the Angels.

Then there was the actual case, in which the Dodgers, according to sources, argued that Pederson was a platoon player, and not worthy of his requested salary. Pederson, a left-handed hitter, has only 375 plate appearances against left-handers in his career, compared to 2,004 against righties. The Dodgers, after asking him and other members of their club to sacrifice playing time for the benefit of the team, effectively held it against him.

Another problem for Pederson’s representatives was that they could not make a case for how he might help the Angels going forward – a component that arbitrators take into account. Pederson likely would play a greater role for the Angels than he did with the Dodgers, replacing Kole Calhoun as the team’s primary right fielder, at least until the promotion of top prospect Jo Adell, and even filling in at first base. He also would bring winning pedigree as a past contributor to two World Series teams and five straight division champions. The Angels have not won a postseason game since 2009.

The process, those on the players’ side say, was prejudiced against Pederson, preventing him from effectively arguing his case. In their view, the postponement of the hearing was only sensible. MLB and the arbitration panel disagreed. And an unusual situation that might have resolved amicably only sparked another dispute between the two sides.

 

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I’m kinda with mlb on that one. Had the trade been a executed before the hearing, then give them a week to talk and negotiate. 
“he might get traded” or “he will probably be traded” isn’t sufficient. Trades fall through all the time. 

and, Tony Clark, baseball players are commodities. 

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8 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

I’m kinda with mlb on that one. Had the trade been a executed before the hearing, then give them a week to talk and negotiate. 
“he might get traded” or “he will probably be traded” isn’t sufficient. Trades fall through all the time. 

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Pederson, though, was not clear on which team employed him, sources say. He already had received text messages from members of Dodgers management wishing him well with the Angels.

 

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Already in the Astros thread, but this is too comical to hide there:

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A former MLB relief pitcher says the Houston Astros RUINED his career by cheating to get hits off him in 2017 ... and now, he's suing for a ton of cash.

The man behind the lawsuit is Mike Bolsinger, a former Toronto Blue Jays reliever, who says the 'Stros cost him a chance at an extended MLB career in a game in Houston on Aug. 4, 2017.

Bolsinger claims during the game, the Astros illegally stole signs off him and his catcher by filming them and relaying the pitches to batters via a "banging" sound from the dugout.

Bolsinger -- who gave up 4 hits, 3 walks and 4 earned runs in the .1 innings he pitched that game -- says as a result of his disastrous outing, the Jays cut him and no other MLB team wanted him.

The 32-year-old says he was forced to pitch in Japan the past two seasons ... calling the Aug. 4 appearance "the death knell" in his MLB career.

But now, that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has found the Astros DID, in fact, cheat during the 2017 season ... Bolsinger is looking for justice.

In his lawsuit, Mike says he wants the Astros to pay for the damages he suffered as a result of the outing.

Bolsinger also wants the 'Stros to give up all of their 2017 World Series post-season bonuses -- which he says are valued at $31 MILLION -- to charity.

Bolsinger, who's currently a free agent, says he's hoping to get back in the MLB now.

 

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Here’s an idea, mix the MLB playoffs with Survivor! 

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Imagine a team picking its playoff opponent. Think about Brian Cashman and the Yankees deciding whether to face the Red Sox or avoid them in the first round of the postseason. All on live TV.

Well, it is probably coming soon to the major leagues.

MLB is seriously weighing a move from five to seven playoff teams in each league beginning in 2022, The Post has learned.

In this concept, the team with the best record in each league would receive a bye to avoid the wild-card round and go directly to the Division Series. The two other division winners and the wild card with the next best record would each host all three games in a best-of-three wild-card round. So the bottom three wild cards would have no first-round home games.

The division winner with the second-best record in a league would then get the first pick of its opponent from those lower three wild cards, then the other division winner would pick, leaving the last two wild cards to play each other.

To use the AL last season as an example, the Astros with the best record would have received the bye. The Yankees, with the second-best record, would have had the choice to pick from among the Rays, Indians and Red Sox. Boston had the worst record of that group. Would the Yanks pick them or avoid the baggage of a series with their rival? It would create a ton of strategy and interest, and this is what MLB wants to sell. The Twins would then pick next as the other division winner, and then the A’s with the best wild-card record would play the team not chosen by the Yankees or Twins.

The plan is to have this all play out on a show on the Sunday night the regular season ends and have representatives picking teams on live TV — think the NCAA selection show, but just with the teams making the selections. The rights to that show is part of the enticement to potential TV partners.

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On 2/7/2020 at 8:15 PM, Beau Vine said:

Shit, Roger Kahn died.  92, so no surprise, but still... I understand that Boys of Summer will always be his magnum opus, because it was so ground-breaking, but Good Enough to Dream is one of my favorite baseball books ever.  

 

 

Somehow I completely missed this, so thank you for posting it.

 

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3 hours ago, TonyTexas said:

Manfred throws too much shit against the wall. Changes in the game should be glacial in implementation. 

I've told this on here before, and I still have trouble believing it, but less so now...

But several years ago, I was having lunch with my boy in MLB and asked him about being a player rep.  One of the things he said about it was that MLB was "always proposing crazy rule changes that they knew the players' association wouldn't accept."  I asked for an example and he said they wanted home runs that hit the foul pole to be worth more than one run.

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Another popular figure around here... 

Quote

The Dodgers have designated first baseman Tyler White and outfielder Kyle Garlick for assignment, Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register was among those to report. These moves come in the wake of Los Angeles’ acquisitions of Mookie Betts and David Price from Boston, leaving the Dodgers’ 40-man roster at capacity.

The 29-year-old White didn’t last long on the Dodgers’ 40-man. They acquired White last July from the Astros, with whom he was once a top-100 prospect. White posted a strong .276/.354/.533 line in 237 plate appearances in 2018, but he was unable to approach that production last year between Houston and Los Angeles. He combined for a .208/.308/.304 line in 279 trips to the plate, and injury issues helped limit White to a meager 26 PA as a Dodger.

 

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Once the teams clinch and the regular season ends, the plan gets congested:

  • The division winner with the second-best record would select its wild-card opponent from the three wild-card winners not hosting a series.

  • The division winner with the worst record would then choose its opponent from the remaining two wild-card teams.

  • The final matchup would pit the wild-card winner with the best record against the wild-card team not yet chosen.

All of the selections, sources said, would be unveiled live on television the Sunday night of the final regular-season games.

Currently, two teams from each league play a winner-take-all wild-card game, and the winner faces the team with the league's best record.

The appeal of the changes, according to the Post, is twofold. It could increase fan interest and could benefit MLB via a richer television-rights package.

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7 minutes ago, Hank Chinaski said:

This expanded playoff idea sucks ass. 

Shit, I wish they'd go back to two divisions per league, no interleague play or wild card teams. Fuck this 14 team playoff bullshit. 

Same.  They say baseball is always best when you're a kid but I still think that was far better.  Making the playoffs was really hard.  And the All-Star Game and World Series had more meaning.

/getoffmylawn

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1 hour ago, WBT said:

Same.  They say baseball is always best when you're a kid but I still think that was far better.  Making the playoffs was really hard.  And the All-Star Game and World Series had more meaning.

/getoffmylawn

Not old enough for that but nothing was wrong with the 1 team wild card to me but this idea sounds terrible. 

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