The Great Hambino

I'm a big hall guy. To me, there is no small hall/big hall debate. That debate ended in the 70s when they allowed Frankie Frisch to put all his buddies in. Relative to other eras (especially the 20s and 30s), ballplayers from 1970 on are very underrepresented in the hall. So to me, I was a little surprised to struggle coming up with 10 yes votes from the ballot. I feel like most years I'm trying to decide who to leave off to keep it at 10. I guess the steroid backlog has mostly cleared out by now. I also draw my arbitrary line in the sand on steroids at the Mitchell Report. There is a fair argument to be made that, before then, steroid use wasn't technically cheating (can you break a rule that doesn't exist?) and was even embraced by MLB (chicks do, in fact, dig the long ball). So instead of saying Barry Bonds (for example) doesn't deserve to be in the hall, I say baseball deserves to have Barry Bonds in its hall. It's how I justify supporting Bonds and Clemens and not A-Rod and Manny. Anyway, off my soapbox and on to my list of 8: Ichiro (should be unanimous, but so should like 50+ other guys over the years) Sabathia Wagner Andruw Jones Utley Beltran Buehrle (the goalposts for starting pitchers are going to have to move along with starting pitcher usage) Pettitte (I've really waffled on him over time) Tough omissions: Bobby Abreu (truly borderline for me), Felix Hernandez (lacking the volume of Buehrle/Pettite) Bonus round (veterans/old timers/eras/whatever they call it now): Honestly, all but Garvey and Tommy John. But especially Tiant and Dick Allen. I hope the two Negro Leagues nominees get a fair examination - I know nothing about them, but the career summaries I've read sound really impressive.

They've struggled with these ever since they lost Scott Baker

Said "Yes" to people named Pohlad

The ESPN article on these moves says that part of St Peter's "strategic advisory" role will be helping the Pohlad's with the sale process, so perhaps Falvey will not have to worry about that.

Considering the Vikings have already traded away most of next year's draft (just a first, a fifth, and Cleveland's fifth remain), I'm fine with them letting it ride with what they have. 2025 was always the target for full-go competitiveness post-Kirk anyway Also, if you want to see something truly terrifying, check out the 2025 tab here

I have a dog by way of marriage (stepdog?) named Tippi. She's 50% Vizsla, 50% pit, and 100% idiot. But she's calm and gentle with our 2-year-old, so she's a lovable idiot.

I don't know how to get this data, but I would want to include in the results PAs where the batter put themselves in a 2 strike hole by failing to get a bunt down. It's a failure of process, even if not always a failure in result - though I'd have to imagine results would suffer as well

This Five Guys strategy works great ... in a world of perfect health. The Twins do not live in this world. Setting aside a pair of catchers, you have 11 position players for 8 spots. If you're devoting three of those spots to platoons (let's call them the Six Platooners), then you sure don't have much margin for injuries. If one of the Five Guys goes down, it's safe to assume whomever is getting the call from St Paul won't be trusted to fill their Five Guy role, so one of the Six Platooners (or the other catcher, which opens its own can of worms) have to be able to fulfill it. Roster limits require it. So it's bad news if none of the Six Platooners can handle a Five Guys role. Painting yourself into this corner is how you end up with a short bench, suboptimal bench options, and a team pinch-hitting OPS of .541. Not an ideal result for a team that pinch-hits like it's going out of style. In a sense, the Five Guys position player slots (great name btw Riverbrian) have something else in common with a starting rotation beyond the number of slots: you need at least 7 you trust in the role to really be secure. If you have seven "Five Guys", now you have some roster flexibility in the inevitable event a top hitter has to go on the shelf. So, whomever they have earmarked for a Six Platooners role in Plan A (no injuries) they need to: a]identify who they most trust to fill a Five Guys role, and b]GIVE THEM A CHANCE TO FACE SAME-SIDED PITCHING so they can be prepared when they need to step up into a more prominent role

I do wonder if there's going to be some surprisingly attainable players in free agency with half the league looking at reduced revenue and more teams seeing it coming in the near future. Not the Soto-tier of guys obviously, but some quality mid-tier players I think will be sitting there as spring training opens wondering why their market never materialized the way they thought it would. Could be some bargains to be had

I can say from personal experience that this is 100% accurate. Everything is a blur in the immediate aftermath; it wears on you over time, especially as would-be milestones pass by. All things considered, i think it's amazing he was able to play as well as he did in the early part of the season. So, yeah, I'd tender him. Setting aside everything above, you don't get rid of catchers when you have two viable Major League catchers in your system.

To non-tender AK, I think at least one of these things would need to be true: 1. There is a reliable in-house plan at 1B. Miranda? Larnach? Julien? Lewis? Severino? All potential options, but none are reliable or would require significant offseason work to be considered reliable. Unless Santana or a similar free agent is brought in before the tender deadline (which I don't expect to happen), then I don't think this is true. 2. The space is needed on the 40-man before Rule 5 guys need to be added. Others here know better than me on this subject, but the consensus seems to be that there's plenty of space on the 40-man as is. I don't think this is true. 3. There's no value to be squeezed from AK as a trade piece. The Twins aren't the only franchise that thinks they can fix someone else's broken toys at a discount. I don't think this is true. 4. The cost breaks the budget. Even with the Twins financially tying one arm behind their own backs, $1.8MM doesn't sink the budget. If they had to eat it all by moving on from him later, would that be ideal? No. Would it be cost prohibitive? Also no. So, I don't think this is true. So, I think he should be tendered an offer since there's no pressing reason not to at this time. This doesn't mean that they shouldn't be open to pivoting if things change, or that he should be part of the primary plan at first. But he's still a pretty cheap piece with some maneuverability. If they do lock down a plan at first that doesn't involve him, he can be traded. Even if they can't find a trade for him, his option allows for him to be stashed in the IL (either Injured List or International League) if/when a body is needed at first/DH

What is wrong with you? What kind of person does something like that? By that, I mean being friends with a Yankee fan

BRef says Freeman was 1 for 3 with a double coming into tonight against Cortes, FWIW

I think the graphic showed Ohtani 2-12 against him. Don't know if that makes it a good enough reason, but I guess it's a reason

Baseball is great

Where's his Lebron jersey? It must be in his fourth stepmom's laundry machine

Oh boy. We're talking about a player who over the last 4 years: - Slashed .231/.278/.396/.674 while playing mediocre corner outfield defense - Accumulated negative WAR - Was given up on by three different franchises (Cleveland even had to kick in cash for the right to be the ones to release the empty husk of Pablo Sandoval) - Was getting paid as much as $9MM/year for these accomplishments - Finished 2024 playing in the minors If you're arguing that this was the missing link between the Twins and playoff success ... I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree. That his replacements have stunk does not change the fact that he has also stunk in a much more expensive fashion.

Certainly not from 2017-2020 when Rosario's 5-for-23 with 6 strikeouts powered the Twins to an 0-6 postseason record

What seems to get lost in complaints about the Twins not replicating Eddie Rosario's production after he left is that, outside of getting on a heater in the 2021 playoffs, Eddie Rosario has also failed to replicate Eddie Rosario's production since he left.

One thing I hope that comes out of failure of RSNs in most markets is those markets developing a centralized DTC system that not only shares revenue but also forms a voting bloc to bring the teams with a viable RSN to the table in terms of revenue sharing. The Yankees/Dodgers/et. al. would have to play nice and work with the have-nots so they can present an equitable plan to the players.

Now that the matchup is set, who are y'all pulling for (other than the meteor, obvi)? I'm telling myself that I'm rooting for Ohtani and Betts, not the Dodgers. But I'm rooting for the Dodgers. Offensively, both led their leagues in homers, walks, and OPS (could've included runs too if not for those pesky D-Backs) Both pitchings staffs have middling-to-good (not great) league rankings in run prevention and baserunner prevention Gonna be a lot of runs scored this series

And the floor has to be an actual functioning floor, not the pathetic $100MM the owners proposed in the last round of CBA talks. That only affects a handful of teams, so what they were effectively offering was a cap with no floor. That's a nonstarter for the players, as it should be. Real revenue sharing has to come hand in hand with a real salary floor that actually disincentivizes teams from just pocketing their revenue sharing dollars. The owners can't have one without the other. With the widening revenue gap between the teams that have their own RSN and the teams that have to figure out how to make DTC work, I think the next CBA battle between those two groups of teams as much as between players and owners. The owners will have to get on the same page to effectively battle the players, which will be ... interesting

Now I get to wait and see which NL team I'll be holding my nose to root for in the World Series

Yeah, I could see it being the "value" option for fans that can't afford to come see their NFL team play the Raiders

And that very well may hold true facing direct threat of relocation. If I had to bet, I'd say Nashville Sox is more likely than a new Chicago stadium (unless MLB's expansion timeline is quicker than a Sox sale, but that's a discussion for another day). I'm just saying, historically, communities have blinked in the relocation staring contest. Chicago hasn't had to face that yet. But the main point is there's a much easier path to heavily-subsidized commercial real estate development with their franchise (wherever it may come from), which makes them more attractive to a potential buyer than the Twins