ashbury

Not so fast. John Angelos still must pass a physical before the transaction can be approved.

I'd pay more for a ticket to see the 76-year old musician, who I suspect still has more remaining in the tank than the soon-to-be 38-year old first baseman.

Worse, they are in the bottom 8 of MLB attendance. They make the sport weaker. They serve up the dog food, but the dogs aren't eating it.

Read the comments. Seattle made this trade because ownership is cheap. Nothing new under the sun.

Oops. I thought the Giants were on the hook. Never mind about that, then.

Wow! Good luck to Jorge in Seattle. He'll remain one of my favorite players. Those intense eyes at the plate! This amounts to the move I would have made. Our FO said they wanted need-for-need, but that seems hard to pair up. DeSclafani and Topa would have been a huge underpay for our guy. Prospects are fungible. You can trade prospects for need, as another step. And Gabriel Gonzalez seems to be a good get. Edit: big remaining question is the impact on the year's budget. Giants sent some money to the Mariners when that trade was made earlier, so will some of that come here?

Thanks, mate.

The player gives up on a speculative possibility of $100M+ career earnings like the big stars get, for a safety net of $28.6M and the potential of $50M+ in addition if that dream of $100M proved viable in terms of his performance. You'd have to be an extreme "bet on myself" player to turn down that offer, in the hopes of a quarter billion or whatever. The Tigers for their part guarantee themselves their choice of 9 years if he really pans out, those final years still well below market rate today (to guess nothing about what the market will be then) if he becomes and remains a star Presumably they really like his intangibles, and feel it's a good gamble on their part. In the very short term, the Tigers didn't cover 3B well in 2023, so he's their guy in 2024 and a possible long-term answer. If he busts, the Tigers are "handcuffed" by a mere $5M a year until the contract runs out. It's not a franchise-altering risk; nor does it get a FO fired if it goes totally bad. Worst case is barely worse than Randy Dobnak. Intriguing.

Derek Parks in 1986, as well?

Ugh. You want Jenkins to lead the league in striking out 5 different seasons?

Yeah, now I count six guys. 😀

I don't see that as data, so much as letting someone more qualified than myself do the scouting for me. 😀

I go back and forth on Billy Wagner. Baseball's a game for romantics. And the Hall of Fame is a hall of FAME. For me, the Hall can both recognize, and confer, fame as conditions dictate. In other words, I'm completely comfortable in throwing away some analytics, and indeed being downright inconsistent in who I want to call famous and deserving of fame, and who I don't. The post-season is one factor, helpful but not strictly necessary, that helps establish the fame needed for induction. Most players and most pitchers establish their greatness across a very large body of work. Relievers are a special breed: almost always failed starters, they establish their value in inherently small samples of work. If they do great in the regular season but then let their team down when the chips are down in the playoffs, that (for me) is a much bigger detraction to their HoF case than for other players. To the argument that the playoffs are different and the competition is just better, go look at Mariano Rivera's post-season stats. His makes for an easy Hall of Fame case. Few humans can rise to that level. But I'm not willing to give anyone a pass for not doing the job - they prepare their entire careers for those few moments, and they need to come through, again and again, to be considered the best of the best. There's no question Billy Wagner came through over and over and over again in the regular season. Still, the reduced workload of a closer makes me unwilling to complain if he never makes it in. Lots of players in the mythical Hall of Very Good have that kind of description. And Nathan's case is just a smidgen less strong than Wagner's, and then a few other relievers have cases just a smidgen less than than Nathan's. There starts to be a Harold Baines type of slippery slope. I go back and forth.

How about a nice game of chess?

Oh, you figured out our secret decoder ring, didn't you, Comrade?

Will, just sittin' on that log, livin' his best life.

Boush league signing. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha - I slay me.

I somehow feel as though the target of this satire maybe isn't actually Joe Mauer at all.

Holding his glove hand a certain way, to unlock more velocity or whatever, seems independent of whether he's starting or relieving. I'd still like to see him start (in both senses) at St Paul, and demonstrate he can dominate AAA batters (which he did not do in 2023) for a handful of games, and then come up when a rotation opening inevitably presents itself. Starters are too valuable. If it looks like more of the same, at age 26, then the reliever option remains open. Note that his 12 innings of relief in 2023 had results built on an absurdly low BABIP of .191 so don't expect the same stellar results in larger samples. (Louie's battle against Chapman in the Blue Jays postseason series was heart-pounding, and not in a good way.) Getting anything at all out of a 15th-round draft pick remains an achievement by itself, but that's in the past and it's not greedy to want more. Good starting is "more" than great relieving, if those indeed are our lucky choices.

I was expecting a minor-league contract and invite to Gallo as well. I guess the Nationals are so bereft, they decided he would make their squad anyway and offered him the major-league deal.

C'mon, he's Bubba! Clete Thomas got his moment in the Minnesota sun, Bubba deserves no less.

DaShawn is safely available if needed. I think the two are roughly equivalent as MLB-ready prospects, but they offer contrasting skill sets and I'm content with letting events sort themselves out, since both are profiling as 27th man types anyway.

The third/final segment was almost entirely about Rocco's views on leadership. I'd be interested in knowing your take on what he said.

An hour (minus ads) listening to Rocco. A nightmare for some, an education for a few, an insight for others. 😀

I'm just as prone to snarking about waiver-wire pickups as the next doofus, in fact I've done so already in this very thread and one last Saturday too. 😀 But I've taken a closer look and I think I see now the merit in this waiver claim. The analogy to Willi Castro looks apt, even though it's a much different set of skills. He might be a reluctant DFA for the FO if there comes a roster crunch. First, on the negative side: as a minor league prospect, the MLB.com scouting reports each year questioned his pitch recognition and plate discipline, and on defense questioned his routes and his arm. For a while he was super strikeout prone, but seems to have been able to reinvent himself to some degree in that regard in more recent minor league seasons. But on the positive side: like Castro, Bubba's not that old, and he likewise has minor league options remaining, so the choice won't be simply to either bring him north with the club or DFA him, if the FO still sort of likes him after seeing him in March and wants him in reserve at St Paul. Those old scouting reports thought he had potential to develop power (which has yet to happen) and liked his speed in the outfield (of course). Maybe most intriguingly, from an armchair scouting perspective, is that as a RH batter he was sort of decent (like Michael A Taylor was decent) against RH pitchers in his two short trials in the majors, but unlike our 2023 CFer he had absolutely terrible numbers (in very small sample size) against lefties. That's what served to make his overall numbers too weak to impress anyone. In the high minors he hit lefties just fine. Most hitters get a boost from chances against opposite-handed pitchers; there was no such Bubba Boost at Texas 2022-23. So there are a number of "IFs" to this pickup, and it's less than 50/50 everything comes up right. But if "bad luck" was at play when he batted against lefthanders, and if he can keep the strikeouts in check, and if he's just a late bloomer with a little home run power, and if he's improved in tracking down difficult fly balls, well, he could fill a position of need about as well as MAT did but without the salary outlay necessary to bring the latter back. He won't be ideal in CF because his arm appears to be so-so, but.... I can see it. I think I'm adopting Leslie Arnold Thompson as a rooting interest. i mean, c'mon, he's Bubba!