John_Havok

Hard to say. He’s only 2 seasons from free agency and with another 2 seasons like his last 2….he’s looking at a pretty big payday. There’s only 2 scenarios where it makes sense to extend Teoscar, and that’s if both Vlad and Bo are already extended to team friendly extensions, or he himself signs one that’s quite team friendly. I can’t see the latter happening since his arbitration paydays are gonna take him towards 15ish million by then… assuming he keeps hitting like he has been. He might be the odd man out that they have to deal in return for younger guys that are cheaper in order to have the space to extend both Vlad and Bo. From a talent and defensive POV it’s a no brainer that you’d want to prioritize Vlad and Bo. With those 2 in the fold, you’ve got your core of Vlad, Bo, Berrios, Gausman and Springer in place through at least 2026. Even without extensions for those 2, that core is here until 2025.

I hope they don't take the high road either, I hope they verbally bitchslap every single self-righteous douchebag "writer" that didn't vote for them, and I hope they roast any and all current Hall of Famer players that boycott their induction (because you know there will be). Then I hope they take a syringe out and inject themselves with steroids on stage, drop the mic and flip the double bird to the world.

Bonds and Clemens both at 76.5% of HOF voting so far. Super early of course as there's still tons of ballots out there, but... Is this the year?

It's pretty simple actually. The injured player cannot physically return to play, but still is under contract for however many years. He stays on the 40 man roster in the offseason, and goes straight to the 60 day DL as soon as it opens, which opens up the roster spot for the club. The fact that he remains on the 40 in the offseason sucks a bit, since that's a spot they cant use to protect someone from the Rule 5 draft. When his contract is over, he retires. Technically he could have chosen to retire earlier and give up all that cash, but ... why give up all those millions when you don't have to?

It's hard to really see what changed, other than ever single one of his pitches got hit harder than previous years. There's some usage changes for sure, but spin rates were in line with previous year. Whiff rates on the cutter and change were way off though.

Albert Pujols.

Everyone knows you need bigtime major league manager experience to handle being a manager in New York. It's like, harder and s***. /sarcasm Pete would probably make a great manager.

This was just the minor league portion of the Rule V draft in case anyone was wondering. The major league portion cannot happen without a CBA, and that's where Spraker is eligible to be taken.

So much of the MIF conversation depends on Moreno and whether or not they feel he has a shot at sticking at 3b to start the year IMO. Assuming no service time related changes in the CBA... maybe they keep him down for a couple weeks to gain the extra year and worry about Super 2 later. That, of course, assumes he is truly ready for 3b. We don't know that at all. IF that's true and he is ready, that solves the MIF problem and Biggio will be the primary 2b with Espinal the jack of all trades backup. At this point I have very little confidence that Pearson/Stripling will be an adequate 5th man rotation option. Pearson's innings will be so limited even if he is effective, and Stripling just hasn't shown enough that he belongs in the rotation IMO. Yes, if Pearson throws to his talents, He and Strip could be a viable piggyback option for a while, but there's no way that could last all season. I'd be more comfortable signing Kikuchi as the 5, letting Pearson work his s*** out in AAA and be the first man up if needed. If he doesn't work his s*** out as a starter, then I think it's about time to cut bait and send him to the pen full time and see if he can be truly effective there throwing 100mph+ for 1 inning at a time.

Yeah but the trunks look like more muscular in the thighs, not starting with the wide hips like Vlad Sr and Jr

I have the top 2 reversed, I think the pitching is more important if only 1 spot is upgraded... but I have no doubts they are going to get both upgraded. In either case, upgrading MIF1, means MIF2 wont need upgrading since that would then be Espinal. Same with the pitching since a starter getting upgraded pushes one of the depth starter possibilities directly to the pen anyways. I think they're done with the pen for now except for the token minor league signings with ST invites that will happen after the union and owners quit jerking each other off.

Extrapolating the sexual prowess and # of partners of Vlad Sr, if that trend continues you could have an entire minor league system full of Vlad Guerrero the Vs .

Multiple 15 year old sons of the Vlad.... dude swung quite a heavy bat all over the field. This kid has a much leaner build. That thick lower half is notably absent.

Alternatively, Gurriel becomes trade fodder. His contract and obvious upside would be something many teams would be interested in trying to take advantage of. Not saying he SHOULD be traded, just that getting Suzuki would make him somewhat more expendable.

How so? Grichuk is a bench guy, why would be imperative to pay Suzuki more (his rumoured target is 4 years, 48 million) than Grichuk to ride the pine for 2/3rds of the season?

So basically a minor improvement on Gurriel offensively, but what about defense? I'd wager this guy would grade out better defensively than Gurriel

Yeah, I don't recall the specifics but his original deal was 7 years, 22 million with a guarantee he gets his release at the end of 2023. Kinda shows how service time manipulation is still such a problem when you can sign a guy for a 7 year contract, have it be 7 years later but the guy still hasn't accumulated 6 years of service time for your team, even having spent just 559 PAs in the minors.

Nah, Gurriel signed a special deal that says the Jays have to give him his release after 2023 so he is free to negotiate with every other team. So I guess it's still an ARB year, but the Jays have no control over whether it's with them or not unless they negotiate an extension first.

That's a very narrow lens you're looking through though. Look at it this way. Teams valuations have skyrockets in the past 25 years. Player's paychecks have also increased, but nowhere near the same rate. Owners are enjoying every benefit of their teams being worth billions of dollars, while players are still fighting to get a proportionate piece of that pie. Owner's will take every upside they can, but then when some form of revenue dries up, they expect that downswing to be shared by the players. Capitalists when the value rises, socialists when the value drops. There used to be tons of guys in their mid 30's that were still contributing to their team's successes and were also getting "rewarded" for their production and value from earlier in their career. With analytics (and the steroid era being gone), we don't see early to mid 30's guys getting massive paydays like they used to. Owners have realized they shouldn't be paying someone in their mid30s for something they did 5 years ago. So, while very few exceptions still exist, the money that used to go to the upper age bracket guys, gets floated... back.... to.... nobody. The owners aren't bound to pay the young stars anything more than their league minimums for the first 3 years, then slow incremental increases through arbitration until they become a free agent somewhere in the range of 30-32 for the most part, unless they offer long extensions that generally fall below market value because of risk hedging. Superstar players of course get to FA earlier, but the system isn't failing them to begin with. The truly elite will always get their high AAVs, now its just a matter of how long the deals will be. Another main point of the players is that all the revenue sharing that takes place from the massive media market teams that gets shared to the have-nots, doesn't seem to be being put back on the field. Markets like Tampa and many others don't seem to be able to increase payrolls, despite receiving 7 figures in revenue sharing every year. The Yankee's don't care about that really... yeah the owners there would likely prefer to not give away money to other teams because it's still money... but when they see those teams not using it against them... yeah, they're more cool with it than it would seem. It's the players union that is far more pissed off about the money not being spent than the Yankees are. Essentially, this current stoppage is all about the owners not wanting to inject all that money they are saving on older players into the younger players. They want to keep it and watch their franchise valuations keep ballooning. The players union wants that money to be put back into the rest of the players, whether it's through a floor/increased luxury tax threshold, earlier arbitration, free agency etc. All the stuff about the universal DH and some other things.. that's all the minor ******** they throw to the media to make the other side look like pedantic f***s. Also, consider that the relative labour "peace" between the two sides since 1994 is 100% due to the fact the players would NOT accept a salary cap. The owners wanted one back then with no floor, and the player's knew they had to strike and never bend on a straight cap. They didn't, there was no cap, and the owners knew that a salary cap was a non-starter ever since then.

Probably. For personalities like him, it's about the attention, not the money.

Master level trolling. The man is a savant.

Of course he will explain more. And the more he explains, the less it will make sense to anyone with a functional brain. The way the writer's cherry-pick who they vote for and don't because of morality clauses and how they apply them differently is nauseating. It shouldn't even be a consideration. All kinds of people in every walk of life are *******s and douchebags, but if you play a sport that has a hall of fame and your numbers warrant your inclusion, that it shouldn't matter if you told a reporter that his or her face looked like a 90 year old vagina, or bet on cockfights in a back alley in Singapore while getting a handjob from a trans midget with a lisp and didnt leave a tip. On field is what matters because it's NOT subjective. You have the numbers, or you don't.

Clemens was an *******, so,,..... duh, morality clause. AKA, the thing the writers tell themselves over and over again to exclude guys they don't like without proof of anything because one time they were declined for an interview so the player could go do a line of coke off strippers tits.

Exactly. I mean, any deal of course would be pending a physical, but the fact they didn't even want him at 18 and a half for 1 year speaks volumes.

Yup, It's fascinating to watch the mental gymnastics every year to justify "X thought process" for this guy and completely ignoring it for other guys.