Sousy

That's certainly one way to avoid anyone claiming him on waivers.

I completely agree with the idea that it's nearly impossible to know who the top AAA teams might be - or where they will end up - from the beginning of a season to the end. That being said, if you're thinking specifically of the AAA-East Midwest Division (St. Paul Saints), I was impressed last year with how much young talent that Omaha (Kansas City) and Toledo (Detroit) fielded from start to finish last year. I'd expect that trend to continue, but it hasn't paid huge dividends for KC / Detroit as of yet. I watched a lot of Iowa Cubs games last year. Any talent that was _close_ to the majors was called up after the trade deadline when the Cubs did some liquidation sales. There was a lot of terrible baseball going in the last half of the year.

Man, Kelly's Pub. I haven't been there in a loooong time. The funny thing: my first job out of college I worked in downtown Minneapolis as a consultant and spent a bit of time around some of the various technology user group / networking types of things. At some point working around the area I met (and chatted with briefly) John Bonnes. It wasn't until years later I listened to my first episodes of Gleeman and the Geek and thought "why do I know that laugh...?."

The Bonnes quote feels a bit like undetected sarcasm.

Law's statement is certainly accurate - and he dropped his opinion of Lewis simply because we haven't seen him play ball since 2019. This year going into the season will certainly be a down year in terms of prospects because the top draftees from 2016-2018 mostly saw enough MLB time to have graduated (Kirilloff, Larnach, Rooker) or haven't played (Lewis). There's a lot of guys in the pitching pipeline that need to show some rapid progress over the course of the season.

That seems to be generally true. We've seen the social media posts from players in the offseason; they're usually going back to wherever home is and not staying in the Twin Cities. The one exception (maybe?) might be Buxton - when he signed he mentioned wanting to stay in Minnesota while kids were in school, go fishing and all of that. I presume that means he was considering making his permanent residence in the Twin Cities somewhere.

Sure… but wouldn’t the building need to be unnaturally large?

IMO, that's the right attitude to have. The Hall of Fame is a tourist attraction first, something fun to talk about and debate about second. There's no fixed criteria for "this and that guy should be in against this and that other guy" - it's all going to be who the writers admire or abhor or who the players (through the veterans committee) respect or do not. The problem with Bonds and Clemens is that many writers who are still personally involved in the careers of these two men just can't put a positive vote in place for either of them. Some writers can put a vote in place and justify it based on strict baseball production, another sizable group can't look away from the off-field disasters that they both carry around. (PEDs, abuse, underage girls.) I can argue either way with the various groups of writers, but I also can't say that any of them are wrong in their vote justification. (Just like there aren't enough that are going to write glowing things about Curt Schilling in 2022.) Maybe in decades to come the veterans committee will look at things differently - but they also might not.

FWIW, another comment about video games: in my limited sample size, MLB: The Show is quite frankly the best sports video game on the market. My youngest is absolutely enthralled by the way they mix arcade like quality with simulation style play.

I certainly think that MLB could use more voices in a national booth that are both engaging and educational about the nuances of the modern game. Thinking of the football parallel, John Madden also came at a time when football broadcasts themselves were changing. Football television has always been more 'national' than baseball has - it's on once a week and a national broadcast team decides (well, especially at that point) what goes on the air and what doesn't. Madden and Summerall were certainly two broadcasters that signified a must-watch football game. In that sense, viewers tuning in to watch the game were just as interested in the play and analysis of the play as they were the players. (The Vikings fan tuning in to an Oakland Raiders game probably wasn't as familiar with the players, but could still appreciate / be entertained by a particular blocking strategy - BOOM.) Baseball broadcasts are different. We tend to watch our teams (there are usually a lot of games running every day at the same time through the season), get to know the players and be just as interested in their stories as much as we are in the intricacies of the slower speed of a baseball game. When those things are gone, the broadcasts seem much, much different. (e.g. how frustrated people get watching an ESPN televised game vs. Dick Bremer on BSN.) I think having a national broadcast try to follow more of a "football" model would be fantastic - a broadcast where the 'analyst' is there to break down the particular hows-and-whys of technique and why certain things happen on the field the way that they do. (e.g. why does a team shift like crazy against Max Kepler?) It seems most analytics in baseball focus on the fun graphics like an exit velocity, launch angle and those flight path diagrams without explaining how a manager / scout would care about those particular stats rather than just looking at the admittedly cool pictures.

I guess I view the use of 'analytics' and 'baseball saavy' in a different way. Analytics (statistics) is the definitive method for describing things as they are. A baseball player will have a particular game history, or a particular set of data that can be used to describe how they play baseball in the past and right now. I think of good baseball saavy as a way of determining what a player can be given the player's past and present. Maybe a certain player has a lower wOBA than another, but a good scout should be able to look at the two players and evaluate what a potential upside of a particular player might be. (Would a change in technique change things entirely for the player? Does the player have a personality and ability to adapt?) To put this another way, I view analytics for player evaluation and player development as related - but that latter skill requires a bit more intuition ("saavy") on how well a player can adapt and/or be coached into using analytics to improve their game.

I certainly don't think OF depth is the biggest issue the roster faces in the offseason. Just off the top of my head, people the org has that have been at least playing some outfield at AA/AAA/MLB: Larnach (hope the offseason has him working on breaking balls) Kirilloff (seems to be a good fit at 1B, too - but will probably be platooning there with Sano) Rooker (not at great defensive OF, needs some hitting work) Celestino (called up from AA unexpectedly, gained a lot of useful experience and grew in AAA) Miranda (IIRC, the Saints had him trying some OF - might be a slot there given where corner infield depth is as well) Martin (been playing some CF in AA this year since being acquired.) Cave (ahem) Those are at least the guys I can name off the top of my head that should be immediately available if needed - and there is not (as of yet) a starting LF penciled in to the MLB lineup if Buxton / Kepler are locks for CF/RF.

Every labor dispute will involve marketing a particular case to the public - Manfred's letter here isn't much different. Where I don't see the players being able to make any traction (I'm struggling to see how this actually does improve competitive balance) is in changes to the revenue sharing system. Those rules weren't just players-vs-owners, there was a lot of owners-vs-owners in getting to any kind of agreement on splitting the MLB pie in the first place.

Agreed, and that's the tricky thing about these negotiations. There's going to be an obvious difference in financial desire between the 'superstar' type of players that want earlier FA to demand higher value contracts, then the low-to-mid-tier players that simply want a way to earn more during their currently artificially limited playing careers. (i.e. Max Scherzer might want a faster path to big contracts, Tyler Duffey might want a path to be somewhat better paid and have his career not artificially ended by arbitration.)

The other thing that should be looming over all of this is that at this point in 2021, no one knows what the income from the main revenue driver (television) is going to look like by the next CBA agreement. Manfred has talked pretty openly about not being particularly invested in Sinclair as an RSN partner and MLB looking to take a bit more control of it's own destiny when it comes to streaming and direct-to-consumer marketing. It seems that making that switch is going to come with an immediate financial penalty with the hope of greater growth - but it's a pretty big unknown when the league / teams are making a break from the older carriage agreements. When you add the slow recovery from 2020, the financial picture is even less clear. That's not to say that players shouldn't demand a share that is equal to the value that they provide - but so far most of the reporting I've read seems to make the old arguments that reflect what the financial environment was, not what it likely will be. * * This is also why I'm wary of players asking for changes to revenue sharing. Given how ugly the owner vs. owner thing was in implementing the current system in the first place, there is no way on earth that any owner is going to even consider tinkering with revenue sharing in the face of uncertainty.

Sometimes you go looking for the next developmental prospect to fill the minor league roster, sometimes you just need a Rob Whalen to fill a few weeknight innings in St. Paul.

We'd also miss out on the Josh Donaldson double-shoulder-shrug stretch when walking into the box before every pitch.

The 1994 strike was a disaster at that particular time - in a year like this one where baseball game viewing / attendance was already down from the shortened 2020 season missing games would be even worse. There are a lot of negotiating stances in public that will have to be dropped pretty quickly. I know the players have talked about changes in revenue sharing, but in a league going through recovery mode and facing the potential to lose revenue from the old cable television RSN model, bringing in a topic that will pit owners against one another is not a path to quick resolution of anything. There's good reason for players to be angry, for owners to be recalcitrant, but this year doesn't seem like the time to dig the trenches.

That's what I gathered from the Strib and a few random 'reminder' Tweets. The Twins claimed him off waivers but didn't offer him a major league contract - so from what I understand: 1. The Twins obviously like something about him - as did the Cubs when they picked him in a Rule 5 draft. The Twins, however, don't want to use a 40-man spot for him. 2. Megill has the option to choose free agency if he so desires. With an expiring CBA and a dead winter coming on, he can choose the Twins minor league offer (assuming the Twins are making an offer plus an invitation to spring training as a chance to prove himself, make the 'big club') or walk to see what other options are out there after a new CBA is in place. He's in a bind of choosing a contract or not having a baseball paycheck for a few months if he wants to be open to MLB contracts. 3. This move cost the Twins nothing. If he signs a minor league contract, great - but if he decides to walk from the Twins, that's fine too.

The Mason City - Clear Lake market also has BSN offered as part of basic cable packages through Mediacom (at least). In the Des Moines metro (home to both the Iowa Wild and the Iowa Wolves - minor league affiliates of major league Minnesota teams) we get Marquee (Cubs) and Bally Sports MIdwest, so we get all the Cubs / Cardinals (occasionally Royals) games. Nothing else, though.

If you're in Iowa, though, there is only a small sliver of the state that can actually get BSN outside of DirecTV satellite services. I live in an area that is blacked out, but my only options are: * Go through the rigamarole of signing up for a satellite (not streaming!) service just for BSN, mounting a satellite dish, etc., etc. to deal with the additional headache of finding a way to get channels the Mrs. is interested in that are not on DirecTV. * Use MLB.tv and a VPN on a computer / FireStick (current solution). * Pirate. I wonder how much of that is true throughout the Twins blackout territory.

That would negate a good chunk of the value Buxton brings as an elite center fielder. As much as we can be in awe of what he can do on offense, it's shocking how big of a difference having Buxton in center field makes on defense. (Even down to pitching strategy.)

Sign Marcus Foligno to a journeyman contract. Anyone who pitches Buxton hard and inside should brace for getting their ass kicked.

According to reporting, it was the Twins offering the no trade clause that sealed the deal - nothing else about the offer apparently was a significant change in terms of guaranteed money / incentives. Buxton wanted the team to invest in him as a player - not as an asset to be traded. This kind of deal is certainly that investment. The thing I really like about this contract is that there is a lot of mutual benefit here: if Buxton maxes the thing out, the Twins are obviously reaping huge benefits in terms of winning games and fan interest.