Around Baseball 2017

[Abomination]

Am I the only one that finds it ridiculous that JD Martinez is gonna get as big of a contract as he is? Atrocious base runner. Atrocious defender. Career BABIP of .341 with a 25.2 K% and a 8 BB%. As soon as his contact/power diminishes he'll become a pumpkin.

 

Maybe I'll be wrong like I was with the Matt Holliday/Cardinals contract, but JDM seems like a landmine waiting to happen.

 

What he's asking for and what he gets may be very, very different.

[BTS]

Am I the only one that finds it ridiculous that JD Martinez is gonna get as big of a contract as he is? Atrocious base runner. Atrocious defender. Career BABIP of .341 with a 25.2 K% and a 8 BB%. As soon as his contact/power diminishes he'll become a pumpkin.

 

Maybe I'll be wrong like I was with the Matt Holliday/Cardinals contract, but JDM seems like a landmine waiting to happen.

 

I haven't felt this strongly about not signing an ageing one-dimensional bat since Nelson Cruz was on the market.

[Laika]

I haven't felt this strongly about not signing an ageing one-dimensional bat since Nelson Cruz was on the market.

 

Geezer power Nelson Cruz would have been sick

[Ray]

What he's asking for and what he gets may be very, very different.

 

I think he's going to get overpaid regardless. He's not going to get $210M, but good chance he gets around $150M, which is still too much for him.

[Jimcanuck]

Hopefully Shatkins is just driving up the price Dumbrowski will pay

[Brownie19]

I haven't felt this strongly about not signing an ageing one-dimensional bat since Nelson Cruz was on the market.

 

[Cleveland Steamer]

I'd 100% prefer Donaldson over JD Martinez.

[TheHurl]

With respect to the Hall of Fame we have spent a lot of time on this board s***ing on the BBWAA (although we've acknowledged they are getting better). Well it is possible that the BBWAA is trying to do the right thing and it is actually the Hall committee itself which has been trying to control things. Now Joe Morgan had to stick his amphetamine popping head into things and Jeff Passan (who I don't really like) wrote a beautiful response.

 

https://sports.yahoo.com/giving-hall-fame-vote-joe-morgans-letter-144738128.html

 

My favourite quote in the whole thing...

 

There’s now an active campaign by the Hall against particular players. One Hall of Famer, who says he has the backing of plenty more, is smearing players on this year’s ballot to the group of people expected to render fair and reasoned judgments. That’s not guidance. It’s the Hall telling voters what it expects.

 

Followed by one of the shame's in all this...people who understand it might not vote this year.

 

My ballot will arrive this week. I will not fill it out. I will not participate in this charade where the shepherds charged with telling the story of baseball want to avoid telling the ugly parts. I will not even though players like Edgar Martinez really could use my vote. Sorry, Edgar. Blame Joe Morgan’s sanctimony for this one.

[Brownie19]

Holy f*** - as if I need another reason to hate Joe Morgan. What a piece of s***.

[John_Havok]

Holy f*** - as if I need another reason to hate Joe Morgan. What a piece of s***.

 

The height of hypocrisy. It's pretty astounding

[Abomination]

The height of hypocrisy. It's pretty astounding

 

He may not be self aware enough to even realize it.

[John_Havok]

He may not be self aware enough to even realize it.

 

Or he is, and is just outright lying to make he and his peers seem more heroic than they are.

 

The whole thing is a joke. The Hall of Fame is meant to represent the history of baseball with the game's best players as its main exhibit.

 

You can't just erase 20 years of that history because you don't like what it looks like, especially given that every generation prior to that, including his, and probably he himself.. also cheated, just differently and with next to 0 media coverage to blow it incredibly out of proportion in an age of outrage and social media.

 

The part I hate the most is that they're totally okay with bud Selig being inducted, when he was guilty of actually stealing money from players.

[glory]

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/11/dodgers-release-jose-miguel-fernandez.html

 

No idea who this guy is but I'm going to go ahead and predict Atkins signs him to a minor league deal. Good numbers in the minors in 2017 and can apparently play a bunch of positions.

[Abomination]

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/11/dodgers-release-jose-miguel-fernandez.html

 

No idea who this guy is but I'm going to go ahead and predict Atkins signs him to a minor league deal. Good numbers in the minors in 2017 and can apparently play a bunch of positions.

 

I wonder what the real reason for him being released is?

[glory]

I wonder what the real reason for him being released is?

 

Yeah if it's not injury related I'd be surprised. He has some pretty decent projections. If he can play the infield even a little bit, he'll have value.

[Dick_Pole]

With respect to the Hall of Fame we have spent a lot of time on this board s***ing on the BBWAA (although we've acknowledged they are getting better). Well it is possible that the BBWAA is trying to do the right thing and it is actually the Hall committee itself which has been trying to control things. Now Joe Morgan had to stick his amphetamine popping head into things and Jeff Passan (who I don't really like) wrote a beautiful response.

 

https://sports.yahoo.com/giving-hall-fame-vote-joe-morgans-letter-144738128.html

 

My favourite quote in the whole thing...

 

 

 

Followed by one of the shame's in all this...people who understand it might not vote this year.

 

I love the comment section too. About 80-90% in favour of keeping the "cheaters" out and those comments are getting about 75% thumbs up. Who are these baseball fans with such a stick up their ass? I mean, are there really that many 60+ year olds who have now figured out how to access the internet?

[KingKat]

Jeff Passan (who I don't really like) wrote a beautiful response.

 

I don't generally share Passan's opinions either but I do think his actual writing is well above the norm for baseball writers.

[Brownie19]

I love the comment section too. About 80-90% in favour of keeping the "cheaters" out and those comments are getting about 75% thumbs up. Who are these baseball fans with such a stick up their ass? I mean, are there really that many 60+ year olds who have now figured out how to access the internet?

 

I hate to say it, but the majority of baseball fans are pretty ignorant on the matter. I suspect the vast majority give it 5 seconds worth of thought - go "cheating bad" and then wave their first and write their comments.

[Brownie19]

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/11/dodgers-release-jose-miguel-fernandez.html

 

No idea who this guy is but I'm going to go ahead and predict Atkins signs him to a minor league deal. Good numbers in the minors in 2017 and can apparently play a bunch of positions.

 

This is from Rotoworld

"Fernandez was signed for a $200,000 bonus out of Cuba last January and went on to bat .306/.367/.496 with 16 home runs and 65 RBI in 93 games between Double-A Tulsa and Triple-A Oklahoma City, but he basically disappeared in late July. There are no stats on the record for him after July 29. We'd guess there's a lot more to the story here, but the Dodgers haven't released any details."

 

It's not often you release a player simply because he went MIA. I mean...if we could find him - it looks like the guy can hit!

[KingKat]

I love the comment section too. About 80-90% in favour of keeping the "cheaters" out and those comments are getting about 75% thumbs up. Who are these baseball fans with such a stick up their ass? I mean, are there really that many 60+ year olds who have now figured out how to access the internet?

 

The average baseball viewer is 53. The median baseball viewer is 55. That, not steroids, is the current baseball crisis.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/baseballs-trouble-with-the-youth-curve--and-what-that-means-for-the-game/2015/04/05/2da36dca-d7e8-11e4-8103-fa84725dbf9d_story.html?utm_term=.f0a13f735e00

[Krylian]

The average baseball viewer is 53. The median baseball viewer is 55. That, not steroids, is the current baseball crisis.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/baseballs-trouble-with-the-youth-curve--and-what-that-means-for-the-game/2015/04/05/2da36dca-d7e8-11e4-8103-fa84725dbf9d_story.html?utm_term=.f0a13f735e00

 

Football and basketball are the "cool" sports...there's more emotion shown in those sports and kids love drama...not class.

 

If you want to market to kids you have to change the perception and make baseball cooler. The product is great...that's not the problem. People do all kinds of stupid things just because it's the thing to do.

[P2F]

Football and basketball are the "cool" sports...there's more emotion shown in those sports and kids love drama...not class.

 

If you want to market to kids you have to change the perception and make baseball cooler. The product is great...that's not the problem. People do all kinds of stupid things just because it's the thing to do.

 

Most casuals don't even know that Mike Trout is the best player in the sport today, let alone possibly the greatest of all-time. MLB does such a horrible job of marketing the game.

[KingKat]

The lack of recognition outside baseball for Trout is an embarrassment. It's true that he's a pretty generic looking guy who plays on a s***** unpopular team that plays the majority of it's game too late for the Eastern audience, especially the young audience but none of that justifies his relative obscurity. He has some good sponsorship deals. It's a shame that neither Subway or Nike has built a strong marketing campaign around him because that would probably have more impact than anything MLB does. I wish he were with Gatorade because if he were they could relaunch the "If I could be like Mike" campaign with Trout instead of Jordan like in this fan video.

 

[TheHurl]

I love the comment section too. About 80-90% in favour of keeping the "cheaters" out and those comments are getting about 75% thumbs up. Who are these baseball fans with such a stick up their ass? I mean, are there really that many 60+ year olds who have now figured out how to access the internet?

 

Don't know if you were following during the steroid witch hunt but young and old alike were calling it a black mark on the America's game. They brought in parents who told stories of how steroids effected their children (Taylor Hooten's parents were positioned very prominently in the trial, knowing now that their son likely was suffering from depression from CTE, rather than steroid use). Drugs=bad...it has been driven into North American's minds for generations now.

[glory]

That's why Manfred probably wants the juiced balls and bat flips to continue. The outrage over Bautista in 2015 was the best thing to happen to baseball because it indirectly exposed the "old white man's game" section of baseball that needs to die out in order for the sport to grow. The Yankees being young and good, while annoying to Jays fans, is probably good for the game as well since they can market a NY star a lot easier.

 

It will be interesting to see how the major sports line up 10-20 years from now. Right now football and basketball have the leg up, but football has declined and concussions might force the next generation to choose other spots in high school and college. Manfred needs to stop fiddling around with time clocks and automatic IBB's, and focus on marketing the sport and its players a lot better.

[Brownie19]

I find it increasingly hard to enjoy an NFL or NBA game. Maybe I'm just getting old.

 

To be honest, I rarely get engaged in a MLB game (I mean pitch after pitch for 9 innings) unless it's the playoffs. Baseball is just the perfect sport to have playing the in background as I do all my adult stuff.

[BTS]

I don’t mean to be callous, but does MLBTR need a post every time a player with some MLB experience dies? I mean, who actually cares about Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez beyond a ‘yeah, it’s a shame when people die youngish’.

[bendera3]

I don’t mean to be callous, but does MLBTR need a post every time a player with some MLB experience dies? I mean, who actually cares about Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez beyond a ‘yeah, it’s a shame when people die youngish’.

 

I don't mind it as they post every nobody-you've-heard-of signing a minor league contract too. It's the baseball circle of life.

[Spanky__99]

I don't mind it as they post every nobody-you've-heard-of signing a minor league contract too. It's the baseball circle of life.

 

It's not like he was a nobody at the time he signed, as soon as I seen it I knew who he was.

[bendera3]

It's not like he was a nobody at the time he signed, as soon as I seen it I knew who he was.

 

I did too. I meant if they are going to report that someone who played for the Twins minor league affiliate signed a minor league contract with the Marlins, I feel like a death of a former major league player is news too.