The Great Hambino

A healthy Austin Martin gets left off the roster for a fourth underwhelming option at 1B? I don't buy it

When I read the headline I thought he was talking about the club itself, not the players

Ephesians Prysock is a 1st ballot HOF name

That's a pretty damning indictment considering the bulk of their offseason spending - Bell and whatever portion of Caratini you'd like to allocate to 1B - was made with this position in mind

It's hard for me to say this first half can be considered more important than 2002. Right on the heels of narrowly avoiding contraction, the 02 team got off to a 20-11 start that jump-started fan interest with a fun team that led three straight division titles, even more fan interest, and ultimately the approval of Target Field by a very narrow margin. It's not hard to see an alternate reality where that team stumbles out of the gate, fan interest never fully recovers, the new stadium doesn't get pushed over the finish line, and the Twin Cities are currently jockeying to be an expansion target because the Twins left town So I'd call that more important than the fulfillment of Tom Pohlad's quixotic quest for fringe competitiveness. But that's just me.

I think there's one thing that's going to keep the owners from going to the mattresses over a salary cap in this round of negotiations: TV rights going to market. Baseball is at a crossroads in terms of how their product is distributed and consumed. The RSN model that has propped up revenues is on life support, if not effectively dead, and this next round of media rights will determine how they replace that revenue. Manfred's strategy has been to bundle local rights as much as possible and bring everything to market at the same time, which is why they've made every effort to have all existing media contracts end after the 2028 season. Bringing all those rights to market on the heels of a significant loss of games would be utterly catastrophic. There will be a whole lot of posturing and maybe a delay to the start of spring training, but they'd be crazy to torpedo their largest source of revenue to get a cap from the players. It wouldn't be worth it. Just ask the NHL how they liked putting their games on the Outdoor Life Network. I think the real salary cap battle will happen with the next round of CBA negotiations after this one.

Split squad games today and neither has a TV broadcast available? Harumph

Pro tip: be sure to lift with your knees when you're carrying a rotation

Realitire? Yeah, satireality is better

Clemens has an eephus with plus upside. Does that count?

These are really starting to blur the lines between satire and reality.

Certainly starting to look like "none of the above" is the likeliest closer. This bullpen screams closer by committee The plan must be to keep it all together with smoke and mirrors and bubble gum and duct tape in the first part of the year and hope a converted starter or two with upside can transition to high leverage roles by the end of the year. That's not a good plan if you're truly expecting to compete

I might be in the minority on this, but I like having a red home alternate option. Balances out the blue road alternate in the Rain Man part of my brain, plus I thought the red ones with the TC logo over the heart looked pretty good a few years ago. The M hats should be exiled to wherever they decided to stash Joe P, whether that's the offices of another business they want to run into the ground, some remote Caribbean island, or a utility closet at Breck. Those hats stink and they should be using the TC - which is unique, iconic, and good - full time. The cream Twin Cities alternates are great

You're not wrong. But changes to revenue sharing without an effective salary floor are also pointless. Otherwise you're just taking money from teams willing to spend and giving it to those that aren't wiling to spend with nothing keeping them from simply pocketing it. Can't imagine why the union would be opposed to that. They're all needed in tandem to achieve the desired effect.

It's also just an unsubstantiated claim made by the owner. We don't know what was actually offered, if anything. Just his claim that "we totally thought we had a 20% chance". Well I think there's an 87.625% chance he pulled that number out of thin air. There are no silver medals in free agent acquisition. If you're actually serious about getting him, you immediately pivot to your next option if it doesn't work out. It was Feb 4 when Valdez's signing was first reported. I'm sure they're TOTALLY IN ON plan B

It's because they're not trying to increase their endurance. They're trying to increase their velocity. They've decided that they're better off having starters go shorter but harder, then handing it off to a platoon of relievers that also are throwing harder and harder. Sort of how even the world record holder in the 400 meter dash couldn't hold a candle to a mediocre 4x100 relay. It's not as romantic or as aesthetically pleasing as seeing a Bob Gibson go the full 9 every time out, but it's coldly more effective against lineups where just about everyone is a legitimate threat to go deep. Bob and his friends didn't have to face that in their day. And if they came up today, they'd be throwing shorter and harder too. And before someone goes "BUT BUT MADDUX!!!", we're talking about someone with perhaps the greatest command of his pitches of all time. Unicorns don't disprove general trends. To me, it's the logical endpoint of the race against batters to neutralize each other's power. Players throw harder, swing harder, hit more homers, and strike out more often as a result. I do wonder if this cultural shift is a byproduct of the steroid era. Today's MLB pitchers were just starting their youth careers in the aftermath of that time period, and I wonder if the all-encompassing quest for velocity had permeated all levels of baseball instruction by then. Secondarily, I've gotta believe that these lab-designed breaking pitches (which are also incredibly effective) aren't necessarily the best things for elbow ligaments. But pretty much everyone has them now, so it's just next man up if someone goes down. What's the solution? The best I can come up with is reducing the size of pitching rosters (with fewer available relievers, starters would have to pace themselves as a necessity), but that could just as easily create more problems than it solves. It's also treating a symptom, not the disease. I don't know how that genie gets back into that bottle.

The union doesn't want to be broken by the owners, so they're proactively breaking themselves Bold strategy, Cotton

The Red Sox need starting pitching. They gave up real prospect capital for damaged goods with a FIP on the wrong side of 4.50 in Johan Oviedo while letting Giolito walk. Maybe that should tell us something

If I'm the Twins, I'd be interested in Littell only with the understanding that a spot in the rotation isn''t guaranteed. He could end up there through injuries/inefectiveness/a late-offseason trade of Ryan/Lopez/Ober, but his planned role would be that of swingman/long relief. If I'm Littell, I'm telling the Twins to pound sand and holding out for a rotation opportunity that will surely materialize elsewhere as spring training unfolds and injuries inevitably mount up somewhere. I don't know if they're allowed to bring in Giolito in a similar role since he hasn't pitched for the Twins before

I am The Great Hambino, and I approve this message! What's the worst that could happen, anyway?

If everything is elite, then nothing is elite Take note, PJ

I really think if they'd just let athletes get endorsements instead of digging their heels in against what was clearly a losing cause in the NCAA v Alston case, a lot of this would have been avoided. I mean, do you know how off you need to be to lose 9-0 in the Supreme Court these days? That opened up the floodgates. Now they can't enforce any of their rules because they don't hold up in court since the revenue-producing athletes are being recognized as employees by any reasonable interpretation of employment law. This will continue until they either start recognizing them as employees (it is technically a form of student work, after all) or they get an antitrust exemption from Congress

Exactly. It's not about the level of spend, it's asset allocation and roster construction. It's about understanding that dollars spent at an area of surplus - whether it's $2MM or $4MM or $10MM - are dollars not spent at an area of need. They need bullpen pieces or more than they need another mediocre left-handed corner outfielder that is best off being DH'd. And they had the easiest off-ramp for Larnach this season relative to their other similar pieces. He's also a symptom of their delusional belief that they are a competitive team and their misguided refusal to finish the rebuild that they started as they risk of the withering away of the trade value of their remaining valuable pieces that won't be here when they have a real chance to be competitive again.

I liked him when he was The Most Interesting Man In The World for Dos Equis

A team could definitely win a Super Bowl with Derek Carr as their backup QB Or maybe he's just long-windedly saying that he's not coming out of retirement