biggentleben

I mentioned upthread the standings as of March 4. Thirty players have now been hit multiple times this spring, none are Astros. The team is now tied with four other clubs for 14th place among teams, with less than half the HBP as a team of the team leader currently (7 for the Astros to 15 for the Cardinals).

Except they're not hurt at all. They weren't in danger in the first place.

Needless to say, Manfred best be giving out equal suspensions to anyone headhunting any player to what he gives on any Astro or things will blow up! Especially if numbers remain as they are with no discernable difference in how teams are pitching to the Astros.

Just for reference, no Astro has been hit twice, but 14 MLB players so far this spring have been hit multiple times. Bregman and Altuve are the only two starters on the Astros to be hit. The other five are bench guys or non-roster invitees. Aledmys Diaz started the game he got hit, so he makes 3 HBP for Astros starters of the 7 total. Seven HBP ties the Astros with four other clubs for sixth place thus far early on, though parsing out the starters' ranks is more difficult without digging into each team's individual numbers.

To take my own post one step further, if you really wanted to pay minor league players better, take the skill of MLBAM and apply it to the burgeoning demand of MiLB broadcasts, which are currently done by MiLB after MLB refused to partner MLBAM with MiLB. You utilize the combined revenue generated from subscriptions and advertising on the system in a spread manner that is earmarked only for use on minor league expenditures. Someone just send in my nomination to replace Manfred, please. I don't want to seem arrogant in nominating myself!

Just FYI, one of the BP writers posted on Twitter that the Astros starters and hitters overall are being hit by pitches at roughly the 4th-highest and 6th-highest rate in spring. That swings each day, obviously, but while there is significant attention on each Astros HBP, there doesn't seem to be any more frequency for Houston hitters getting plunked over any other team at this point. We'll see how the regular season bears out, though.

The history of this is pretty fascinating. I've started doing some research into it, and there really weren't any worries about local television broadcasts (as long as they got MLB permission) until you saw WGN and TBS part of national cable television packages in the 1970s and 1980s as the service exploded across the country (Steinbrenner using the NY market to see YES generate the Yankees money hand over fist didn't seem to upset owners as it was seen still a regional network). I'm having trouble finding exactly when the first changes were made, but MLB owners voted to allow each team to negotiate their own local television deal in the midst of the CBA that ran from 1985-1989 in the midst of the heart of owner collusion as the 1990 CBA makes mention to the national television deal and local television deals being used in determining player shares of revenue. The 1997 CBA brought in the first revenue sharing, and the 2007 CBA centralized revenue sharing, both leaving local television deals to teams. As you mentioned, the internet revenue being split is a big thing as MLBAM is one of the most advanced groups out there in developing new broadcast technology for covering sports. However, the RSNs becoming a situation handled purely in New York with revenues split evenly would allow for incredible revenue advantages for nearly every single club as even the clubs with huge deals would have better coverage of their team without needing to spend the time/money to negotiate on their own.

I wrote about this when Sinclair bought the RSNs: http://videobaseballscout.com/starting-9-sinclair-broadcast-group-enters-mlb/ TL;DR - Sinclair is terrible and will be really, really bad for MLB fans. I mentioned in the piece that teams still retained streaming rights, and that is the leverage that the Cubs and Yankees used to create deals for their own networks after the buyouts (that the news all stated that YES was included with this is not entirely true as YES has independent negotiating ability that they were able to leverage their streaming rights to get from Sinclair, and thus you see the Prime deal). Teams operating their own streams for local fans is where this is likely headed, but it would require financial investment. Let's just say that I wouldn't blame YouTubeTV for this one bit. This is what Sinclair does. There have now been a half-dozen significant disputes with distributors for RSN contracts since Sinclair took over, leaving thousands with some amount of time where they were unable to see their favorite team. That's in 10 months. You really think things will get better with SBC the longer they own the RSNs?!

The author has given some tremendous interviews this offseason. I'm glad he's not shied away from the work he did putting that book together because it is a very well-written book that shows the effort he put into getting into the background of the analytics used by the team.

Spring cuts are absolutely brutal. Remember that players not on a major league deal and/or 40-man roster are not being paid for spring training just for the privilege in many situations to be cut. It's the walk-on environment of collegiate sports to a significant degree.

On the 40-man are AJ Minter, Grant Dayton, Tucker Davidson, Sean Newcomb (should he not make the rotation), Phil Pfeifer, and Will Smith as lefties with likely bullpen futures as their most-used role for 2020 for the Braves. The non-roster invitees in camp are Thomas Burrows, a hard-throwing lefty reliever who was injured much of 2019, Chris Nunn, who is a guy that was boosted by online videos of him working with Driveline-style workouts and reaching triple digits consistently, and Chris Rusin, a soft-tosser brought in for a different role in the bullpen. That's not even considering guys like Corbin Clouse, Tyler Matzek, or the potential use of Kyle Muller in the bullpen. Thielbar really filled a role that injuries created in the system toward the middle of 2019. Those players are now healthy, and while a player like Thielbar could always still be a midseason pickup, there was not a likely spot for him in Atlanta, so the Braves let him seek out an organization where he would have an opportunity. I guess I struggle to see why that automatically deems him damaged goods.

In conversation with a guy yesterday, he had a $10,000 bonus out of college as a third-day selection, but then he tracked his time while in short-season ball. He averaged 71 hours per week among practice time, pregame time, time at the game, travel time, etc. Even at the increased wage, that'd be $5.63 per hour. You say, "but he had a $10,000 bonus!" Sure, except that he applied that to the $20,000+ left in school loans because he was among the majority of college baseball players who play at less than 50% scholarship, even on the top teams in the country. The absolute elite among college baseball players are often receiving less than a full scholarship because their team does not have enough to give. To put some numbers to it, there are over 8,000 NCAA Division I college baseball players. The NCAA allows for less than 3,500 scholarships to be spread among those players at a rate of 11 2/3 per team. You want to address living wages for working families, which is an area that we aren't allowed to get into here, but why not both? Why choose between one bad situation to fight or another? Fight for the correction of both!

They have a host who are 22 and can do the same thing....

He's been accused by multiple, but the first to come forward did so to a reporter who wanted to make money off the information by selling it to someone. He then outed the young woman's face along with multiple social media handles when attempting to complain on Twitter that no one would purchase. The images are real, but apparently the young woman is now non-cooperative with any further investigation.

That name in Minnesota would mean Jose Berrios in Atlanta.

Thielbar took a team through a Driveline-type program and picked up things that allowed him to add a few more ticks to his own velocity. He was consistently mid-90s last year in Gwinnett, topping out at 98 from the left side.

You want to rip Fiers, rip him for multiple documented issues with underage girls in various locations around the league. There are some who did say something on that team and were still overrun. I do believe that expecting someone to walk away from their job is a bit altruistic from the outside looking in. It's one reason whistleblowers (an absolutely vital part of a capitalistic society) are farther and fewer between. Those who do whistleblow are exposed (nice job with that, MLB), which is supposed to be illegal, lambasted as traitors or snitches, and even face retribution, which a gangster-glorified society finds merited punishment.

I'm still working on my piece. My apologies for any confusion. I was Bobby's editor when he wrote that piece. Working at a local paper during high school basketball season keeps me crazy busy!

It goes back to Branch Rickey that the minor leagues had a view of a club being there for 2-4 guys. Everyone else on the team is there to play catch with those 2-4 guys.

Hey, I edited and published that article!

They do, and they have fought, but you can't get everything, and frankly, right now, the lead person in negotiations is so heavily on the side of the owners that it is accepted that "commissioner" is an ownership position. It is a league position. The owners own teams that are part of the league. The absolute removal of those lines under Selig has completely disenfranchised the players in negotiations, and people who enjoy ripping on players for terrible CBAs recently need to understand that they're walking into a situation akin to a middle school team preparing to take on an NFL squad.

Definitely not room. Most teams offer the equivalent of knock-off party subs and apple slices for players and will not allow outside food in minor league clubhouses. That said, weekly food allowance for 20 teams (in 2018) was less than $100 per month. Health insurance is only active while the player is rostered. For any player who is not on an active roster (extended spring training, fall workouts), As far as part-time jobs, any player will tell you that their offseason is now begun (if they are still under team control) with a binder of what the team expects the player to do over the course of the offseason. One player timed his workouts through the entire offseason and found his average day required him to put in 2-3 hours of exercise and skill workouts. On top of that, the hours put in during their time in the summer often eclipse 70-80 hours per week with time they're required to be at the ballpark, so during the summer, they're truly working a full-time job the way that golf pros at golf courses in cold-weather states earn their living, and most municipalities allow their golf pro to make money on golf lessons and merchandise/memberships/candy/etc. sold at the clubhouse as well as their salary during the peak season. I'm putting together an article on this and the Giants announcement on their housing allowances. I'll link that in here when I'm done. It's not a pleasant situation like so many want to paint it in order to debase the "minor leaguers getting low pay" argument - a counter stance I'll never, ever understand.

At some point, MLB will realize they have a major issue in Latin America with tainted supplements and even prescriptions that are sold to players during the offseason. It's led to an abundance of Latin players receiving PED suspensions. MLBPA attempted to make supplementation certification by the league part of the last CBA, but the owners wouldn't do it without the MLBPA footing the entire bill, and that led to the issue being dropped. I personally don't think certification will be effective, as there are way too many loopholes around it. The NFL has certification and sees players skirt around punishment due to using "certified" suppliers on legal diuretics. Ross Tucker had a discussion with a few former players last season that discussed how much better it would be with the NFL if the league actually was the source of supplements for players. Hard to claim any issue with supplements if the league had supplied them and can test the supply that you received. Instead, Latin America has significant issues with tainted supplements and prescriptions. However, continued efforts by MLBPA to work with MLB to put together a better system has consistently been put back on the MLBPA to pay for the system themselves. Once again, despite plenty of evidence of the league having an opportunity to work with the MLBPA to confront the PED issue, they'd rather hang players out to string them up for any issues and attempt to claim no knowledge. Meanwhile, players who say "I had no idea this was in anything I took" could be fully honest and are painted as pure liars over and over by a league actively avoiding ways to sort out the opportunity for tainted supplementation.

Washington is in the NL East, not Pittsburgh.

Downs and Wong both had huge finishes to their 2019. Downs was a legit first-round talent in his draft year and is a prospect in the 50-ish range. Wong has a very good chance of spending many years in the majors as a backup, especially in the era of 26-man rosters with his ability to handle positions other than behind the plate, where he's a very good defender. I'd say the Red Sox improved greatly for what they need in their system. Most don't recognize it, but the BoSox have a handful of Graterol types in their system already. Getting a guy like Downs is no easy find.