glory

Expansion is inevitable.

I can buy Tellez as a league average MLB hitter, but no way on McKinney. Tellez at least has some friendly statcast numbers. McKinney does nothing well.

Agreed. The current format + unbalanced schedule has been unfair for years. This year it seems more ridiculous because while they don't have a choice other than to have the teams closest to each other in region play each other, the fact remains that the Jays and the White Sox are going to fight for the same WC spot despite having completely different schedules. It's unfair in a normal situation, but in this situation it's amplified. The only way the unbalanced approach would make sense is if they added 2 expansion teams, went back to 2 divisions per league, and eliminated interleague play. Then you can have a schedule that trends towards playing your own division more often, but without making schedules for teams fighting for the same playoff spots be so different in difficulty.

Maybe "very little chance" is premature considering we don't know the entire list of who is sitting out yet, and a 60 game season means a hot start by a .500ish team (which is where the Jays probably fall talent wise in 2020) can put them right in the thick of it. Plus "spring training/summer camp" is a joke leading up to the season, so who knows how players will even perform if there is a season. I just see the Jays as more of a 2021-22 team, and the new 2020 schedule is not in our favor. If there was expanded playoffs like there should have been, then it would have been way more fun.

This wouldn't be the worst outcome at this rate. The Jays have very little chance of making the playoffs without an expanded format, it's only 60 games, and Rob Manfred overseeing health/safety for a major sport during a pandemic sounds like a really, really bad idea. We are seeing that in execution already, and it hasn't even been a week. Only issue of a lost season from a Jays standpoint is we would lose a year of Vlad and Biggio if no season is played or season is cut short. But whatever, can't worry about what we can't control. I want baseball back as much as anyone, but it doesn't sound all that promising right now.

That schedule looks brutal, but not unexpected given the regional setup. Of course starting in the Trop is just a sick joke from MLB, for a multitude of reasons.

Apparently a few teams have cancelled their workouts due to not getting test results back yet (Nats, Astros, A's). Rob Manfred probably saving a few bucks somehow in the testing protocol.

I can't believe Felix is only 34. Feels like he's been in the league since the 90's.

Those 'plenty of players across the league' are likely all the players who have already gotten their life changing contracts.

Davidi mentioned anyone with Covid can’t board the plane so looks like anyone who is on the way or already there is safe for now.

I haven’t heard about there actually being any spring training games. Maybe there will be, but that would involve more travel since teams are reporting to their home ballparks. I’d imagine ST will be simulated games. First two weeks of the season will basically be bullpens galore.

From Blue Jays MLB page: Make your own assumptions here.

In a normal situation you might be right, but this is not a normal situation. We have no idea what Covid will do to baseball in college, the minors, or the Majors over the next 12 months. Martin may wait until the very end to sign, but he's signing. Boras has no real leverage, but he also has no reason to sign right away, so it's a waiting game.

Bryce was hyped as baseball's LeBron. No way Tork is on that level of prospect.

I agree with this. Black culture has blended into pop culture and it has been that way for many years now. If baseball were 20% black (for example), the league’s marketability would increase dramatically. So I agree spending money to improve in this area will come with benefits. However, I don’t think you can underestimate the marketing aspect of this. A few weeks ago MLB’s Youtube channel posted a concert by Dropkick Murphy. Apologies to any of their fans who are reading this, but if MLB thinks that’s going to appeal to a young demo, they are out of their damn minds. MLB needs to feel trendy. They need to market their black athletes so that black kids can see them on their TVs/phones. Mookie Betts prior to the pandemic was going to get a contract north of $350m. Tell a black family that you could be under 6 feet and potentially make over $400 million in your career without the risk of CTE, and it would have an impact. Even knowing who Mookie is would make an impact.

I agree with the points being made here. The NBA and NFL present a much greater chance of being paid right away than MLB does, the latter being more of a long term play (and no guarantee you'll play in the majors long enough to ever truly cash out). It's also easier to toil in the minors for years if you grew up in an upper middle class or better family, so combine that with the cost it takes to play baseball as a youth compared to just buying a basketball/football and going to a park, and those factors definitely contribute to the drop in black players over the years. I think marketing the game/players better will help a lot though. If black kids see Judge, Betts, and others marketed on social media like crazy, and suddenly it becomes cool to play baseball again, then you might see more kids pursue it. Either way, I don't think baseball has a race issue when it comes to players. It's the marketing of the sport that needs work. If anything, the racial breakdown in MLB is likely superior to any other sport in North America. It just has seen a decline in African Americans over the past 30 years, something they are at least trying to remedy, which is more than any other sport would do to improve a demographic.

Yeah I think it's way too simplistic to say "fewer black players in MLB = racism". There are a whole bunch of factors involved, including just the general decline in popularity in the sport among youth today. I hope for the sake of the sport that the % of black players increase over time, as some of the greatest players who ever lived were black, and in the future you want to the Kyler Murray's to choose baseball over CTE. However, it is going to require a lot of work from MLB, not just the RBI program but also making baseball more accessible period. Every black person in America needs to know who Mookie Betts is. Or Aaron Judge. or Tim Anderson. And so on. If young black kids see black athletes playing baseball on TV, it becomes a lot easier to attract them to the sport. MLB can't even market Mike Trout, so it's not a race issue with them, it's more about not having a clue how to market the sport or its players. I remember reading that over 30% of MLB is Hispanic, and it is ~50% in the minors. That % is likely going to grow beyond any other race looking at the minor league trends (fewer draft rounds in the future will certainly add to that likelihood). Without looking it up, I'm pretty sure MLB has more Asian players than any other US sports league. I don't think it's fair to lump baseball in with hockey as a "white" sport. It's actually ignorant to do so.

Holding Pearson back for 2 months is a debatable point. Holding him back for one start is not. It’s one start in a 60 game season. Losing a year of service for that would be damn near negligent. With that said, I hope the Jays are done gaming the system in a typical season. They waited to get an extra year of Vlad, now one of those years will be 60 games (if it happens) and another might be locked out (2022). Bring talent up when they are ready. Whatever happens after that, you deal with it.

Jays starting season 0-3 confirmed.

I think we are at a point where someone testing positive, especially before the season starts, is being considered more of a formality. Every sports league is expecting a bunch of positives. The real test will be whether they can prevent as many positive tests during the season.

For the MLB to have approximately the same positive % as the NBA, they'd have to have around 95 players, give or take, test positive (out of 1800). The NBA figure is actually a lot lower than I was expecting, so maybe there's some hope with the MLB number as well.