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Busy busy day! Let's get right to it. Dig some Links:
A Little Bit of Angels News
The biggest tactical play for the Angels yesterday was Billy Eppler picking up the option on Yunel Escobar.............You can bounce over to yesterday's thread if have not yet run out of wind, or just post brilliant new insights below..........
Mike Trout is a finalist for the AL MVP Award, sure, but the only other two candidates are Mookie Betts and Jose Altuve. No Josh Donaldson or Manny Machado (both long shots, for sure). No Zach Britton, either, by the way. What we don't know is how much David Ortiz has drawn down Bett's via Bahstun vote splitting. We will know eventually, though. My guess, counter to some, is that any such vote splitting is not going to be helpful to Trout anyway. Those split votes would be Betts-Ortiz-Trout or Ortiz-Betts-Trout. And the points fall off for 3rd place is too severe to make up for all the 2nd place votes that those two BoSux would draw...........(Special bonus: if you dig through it all, you will find Dusty Baker up for NL Manager of the Year.)
Getting bumpred up the food chain, Nate Horowitz takes over duties as LAA Director of Pro Scouting. Horowitz is one of the young gun stat-mavens that Dipoto brought from his days with the Diamondbacks..........
Albert Pujols is mixed up in the most tangent lawsuit I have come across in many a moon. It's a $7.5 million defamation suit. So, back in 2007 two cousins of Albert's were in a car that was trying to flee police in a car chase and ended up killing an innocent young man. One cousin, named WilfrEdo Pujols was driving and the other cousin, WilfrIdo Pujols, was the passenger. WilfrEdo was convicted and sentenced to serve 15 years. WilfrIdo was not charged. So back in that same year, the victim's distraught mother wrote an email to Albert wherein the mother described the Wilfs as having murdered her son. Albert responded sympathetically. Fast forward 7 years. The mother posted Albert's reply on Facebook. Imma gonna guess that this was because of the anniversary her son's death. WilfrIdo, now trying to work through an undistinguished minor league baseball career, now accuses Albert (AND his wife AND their foundation - deep pockets and all that) as having injured his chances at becoming a Big Star............
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Everywhere In Baseball
21 players throughout the South Korean pro baseball league are now in deep kimchi. They have their own Black Sox gambling scandal going full throat..........
I'll leave REAL player movement bits and pieces below. PRETEND bits and pieces speak more to roster and payroll strategy and longer-term franchise management, risks versus rewards, than they do to speak to guys shuffling around over the next couple of months. So, imagine for a second that teams had not been busy locking guys up. Who would have shown up on the FA market in the next few days?............
The GM Meetings have kicked off, officially as of noon yesterday. Somewhere, MLB employee Tony Reagins is most likely getting off a plane in Phoenix right about now...........
Our active CBA is a gonna expire soon. You would do well to know some of the history behind all of this. Just in case it gets a little testy soon............
Noah Syndergaard needs to be followed. More. His take on not making the list of finalists fo NL CYA is fresh for a ballplayer..........Hey, Noah, the competition is tough this year. I get it. But, then, you DO have a better than decent case..........
You love bunting, don't you? You know you do. This is why your season sucked even more this year..........
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Trade Winds
It's commonly the case that one team stands above all the others and does the most work, dominating the off-season activity. Sometimes, all that activity actually drives the market. The prediction here is that this year that team will be the White Sox. If that's true, then I will say that the team that drive the White Sox will have been the Cubs, from across town..........
The Yankees are chasing after Aroldis Chapman in a hurry. Hey, when you think about it, New Yorkers have already come to terms with his Domestic charges.........
The Philles extended a QO to Jeremy Hellickson. Clearly the Phillies think that Hellickson is returning to the form of his early years. And stays healthy...........Dan Haren, who never made more than $13 million in a season during his entire career, wishes that he was in the Phillies' rolodex..........
The larger list of dudes getting, and not getting, QO's is here. Most notably, Ian Desmond DID and Mike Napoli DID NOT............(I am assuming that we no longer care about the likes of Dexter Fowler and Mark Trumbo...........And the reason that the QO list is rather sparse this year has to do with basic math. That $17.2MM offer value skews the value prop on marginal players.............
Wait. What happened to all that sooper dooper depth of the Rangers? Everywhere but pitching?..............
Dexter Fowler will be going for gold, after all. $17 million is not enough for him. More than enough if I were GM, but I ain't..............
Oooh. What can dinosaurs do to ward off the asteroid? 60 millions of thought have gone into this one, and hte answer is pretty damned clear..........
The Duffle Bag
Whote Sox broadcaster Ken Harrelson, yeah, THAT White Sox broadcaster Ken Harrelson, is up for the Hall of Fame Ford Frick Award for excellence in broadcasting. They must have run out of names...........The NYT cover page that the Chicago Cubs ruined for all of us............Baseball, being a team sport, is not something that guarantees rewards for individualism. Even great individualism............Cubs fans might be swimming in indulgent euphoria, but the Cubs themselves are just fine taking a hose to it all............Hey, if that baseball thing doesn't work out for Tim Tebow, at least he kept his name in the papers long enough to stoke the fires of some sorry football fan base..........Some baseball careers simply refuse to die a death well-earned (I'm not talking the man here, folks. The career.)..........
I don't know your plan for tomorrow morning, but I've got mine..........
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