TuesdoLinks: A Fortnight to Spring Delight

Well, this could get interesting. Don’t be surprised if, over the next few days, I get kicked off of SBN again. Five days after their last communication with me, and three days after I prompted them to respond to my most recent requests for information and assistance, VOX showed back up and reset my account. Not without first asking me, mind you. No, just by fiat.

In between, as you know, Josh brought in the aid of one of his managers who put me into a state that was close enough for me to figure out once I had a working phone. So I went to be Sunday night with a functional account and logon methodology, and woke up Monday morning with that changed on me by surprise.

Now, as it happens, the change they volunteered upon me was to take me out of their two-factor authentication completely while recognizing that they have some logic errors in their process work flows. For now I am fine. But at some point they will kick me back into the 2FA system and that is when things might not work (again) the way they think they have mastered. We will see, but I am the one who will be the first to know. You all will be the last. It’s the way it is.

Dig these Walking-Tightrope-Links:

A Little Bit of Angels News

Coming soon: Minor League Ball discusses the LAA farm. Currently taking input for consideration..........

Names in motion: Efren Navarro to the Cubs...........Brooks Pounders to the Rockies..........

Albert Pujols still works his butt off for charitable causes. St. Louis Missouri charitable causes included. How come I don’t see these kind of shout outs from SoCal twits?..........

Good on Vlad, home country hero. Until this past week. I did not know that Vlad would be only the 3rd player in history to come out of The Dominican Republic and make the Baseball Hall of Fame, AND that he is the very first position player to do so. That’s come cool beans, right there. No wonder the country is so hyped............

Gak! What used to be a quaint tradition where fans would show up to celebrate the trucks rolling away to Spring Training by clapping and waving goodbye has gotten way out of hand. Moving Day not only has turned into a giant marketing flea market & circus, but over the years we have sold official naming rights and added sponsors. Go enjoy your Old Dominion Freight Line Moving Day Event at Angel Stadium on Saturday, 10AM - 2PM..........

While you at the stadium, head over to the team store and pick up for yourself some Vlad HoF gear, which is now available. Or, as the link notes, those of you far away can use twitter to try and win one. All you have to do to win that t-shirt is make sure you follow these few, simple, rules. (I think that for Christmas fun, we should follow those rules down at the bottom there and ALL send a SASE to MLB Advanced Media just before Christmas this year, and request the name of the t-shirt winner. I think it would add to their lawyerly fun of having to stuff 1,000 envelopes and sending them back to us to fulfill their statutory duty.)...............

(Also, rather quaintly, the MLB Media Relations guru reached out to me late yesterday afternoon to excitedly promote the news that Shohei Ohtani was the #1 MLB Prospect! Good job, Amanda Rodriguez. Where were you 2 days ago when the rest of us were learning that?)

Everywhere In Baseball

Here is a bit of a follow-up to the article linked yesterday about Robo Umps. That article was written by Dave Kagan, and might have prompted this follow-up on Robo Umps over at Baseball Perspective. In fact, it is referenced by BP. The BP follow-on is an excellent 201-level conversation about the problems behind the technology. (Well, most of the problems anyway.) They come up with a nice conclusion: use 3 parallel methods with the 3rd still being a plate ump,. and 2 out of 3 wins the call. I kind of like that. I have a couple of comments, though. First, the comment section of the BP article is rife with people whining about the difference between a 0.1% Robo Ump accuracy and a 90% Human Ump accuracy. What needs to be pointed out is how fast we fans will ‘move the goalposts’ and start whining about that 0.1% inaccuracy once it becomes the norm. And what is not well-considered is when that 0.1% failure event is on a pitch that bounces it’s way to the plate called a strike, creating new doubts in the minds of observant fans. Second, I still find it crappy that technologists insist on a 2D zone. At least BP acknowledges that the real zone is 3D, but they dismiss it. I think it’s more important than that. For starters, even in their 2D zone I feel it needs to made public just exactly where that 2D plane is with respect to the plate. 0” in front? 10” in front? Where? After all, curveballs are not 100% illusion............

Hey, maybe things are still broken with my account. Buster Olney and I agree on something. Oh, wait. No we don’t. Tanking might not be new, but 20% of MLB tanking all at the same time certainly is..........

Say goodbye to Wahoo. No, not the tacos. Expect cap prices to rise dramatically due to demand from ignorant speculators. There is no way that the Cleveland Indians stop using the logo somewhere. It’s the same lesson we learned on these pages last year, concerning Del Taco and “Naugles” here in SoCal. Del Taco bought out the Naugles chain, swept into the back room all the Naugles trademark material, and then watched that trademark ownership slip into the hands of somebody else due to non-use. No way MLB and the Indians want to see somebody selling caps with that logo on it and making all the money.........

Now that the 2018 HoF voting has been announced, we can look into the future. For a guy like Edgar Martinez, who came very close, the future ballots can be especially meaningful. Coincidentally, Craig Edwards of FanGraphs and Jay Jaffe over at Sports Illustrated both chose to forecast 2018 through 2023. (Both expect Martinez to get in.) Ryan Fagan of The Sporting News can only be bothered with one year (and Martinez isn’t on Fagan’s radar)......Dayn Perry of CBSSports just wants to fix the voting process..........

Oh, hell to the you f*#@ing betcha!! Rob Manfred shutting down the idiocy of excessive catcher mound visits will be the very best thing he has done as Commissioner to date..........

Yesterday I linked to a photo of Bryce Harper’s excessive cupping. It’s a pseudo-science along the lines of energy ropes and copper bracelets. I suppose it’s possibly linked to ancient aliens. But it’s far from the only weird thing that the superstition-prone baseball community is a sucker for. Seriously, if I were into the business of snake oil, my first brick and mortar storefront would be directly across the street from some Spring Training facility..........

If some mucking up with the rules of the game is to be done, who should have the voice? The owners (represented by the MLB Front Office), the players, or (launch laugh track here) we fans? Sam Miller launches a discussion..............

Hot Stove

The Royals and A’s made the big swap of the day yesterday, returning Brandon Moss to Oakland and Jesse Hahn moving to Kansas City as the key parts to a multi-player and cash deal. Hmmm, now. If the Royals open up some roster space at 1B and DH, and they clear out some payroll overhead by losing Moss, it almost looks like they now have a capability to sign an Eric Hosmer...........

With what the Brewers did last week, the MSM is really hopeful that they finally get that easy column content to fill those quotas...........

The Duffle Bag

Mike Trout must spend an awful lot of Winter time watching sports on TV. And we know what he will be up to this weekend..........Love the Vlad of Fame..........I award 100 points to the Las Vegas Golden Knights of the NHL, for their new policy of autographs only for kids. How they plan to prevent greedy grownups from pimping out their kids for autographs, though, eludes me..........Having 800 channels was supposed to solve shit like this. A basketball game goes long and pisses off golf fans. So then the golf match then goes long and pisses off red carpet fashion fans..........Yeah, Aaron Nola actually is a pretty good pitcher. Welcome to the club, Mister Fan Of Star Slighted Yet Again. Have you been voting Trout for MVP?.............