Thor’sLinks: Rainy Day Roundup

In theory, it shall rain in the Anaheim area all day today. The good news for that is that SoCal gets free water. The bad news is that SoCal is not great and retaining all that free stuff. Just go to your nearest river outlet and watch how much we give back to mother nature. The worst part is that those areas effected by recent fires are denuded hillsides, and that represents major flood and mud slide danger. So try and sty dry, and safe. And spend you day with us catching up on the news. K?

By the way, just to explain, THIS is why I have been running the series of cover photos for Links this week.

Have some California-Golden-Umbrellas-Are-An-Endangered-Species-HaloLinks:

A Little Bit Of Angels News

Just wondering. When do we learn what we get back from the Yankees for them claiming Bridwell?..........The Cubs picked up Ronald Torreyes, the guy the Yankees let go to make room for Bridwell...........

Alex Meyer is now officially adrift. I hate this kind of thing happening during the holiday season.........

Bleacher Report must have already given up on Billy Eppler this off season..........

But most definitely NOT USA Today. Yeah, we ARE the coolest. Come one home, Corbin..........

The saddest part of the off season for me is watching the FanGraphs charts and seeing that Mike Trout’s fWAR never moves any higher. Day after day after day.

Everywhere In Baseball

To measure just how jaded I have become, the Oakland Athletics are the League Champions of new stadium artistic renderings, having now come up with a completely different concept every couple of years - 2005, 2006, 2011/2012 and now the latest here, at Howard’s End Terminal (technically, these go back way farther than that. At least to 1995). It’s the ultimate P.T. Barnum trick: keep showing them pretty visions of what they could experience, so that they don’t have to spend time thinking about what they actually experience.....This latest one, set for opening in 2023, will have a retractable batter’s eye. And the A’s playing the Twins in the 2023 World Series.....And they totally ripped off my idea for a new Angels Stadium in Tustin, which would have turned the airbase into a Balboa Park like expanse with a new stadium at the corner of Red Hill and Barranca. That would have been “A ballpark within a park”. Not to mention my concept of using natural greenery to run over the center field area and out into the outer urban park are (mine was a live orange grove, that would double as the batter’s eye).........The capacity is estimated to be around 34,000, which would mean that they will run at about 57% capacity instead of the 41% they run now..........People who live up there and know better, though, are all aglow..........

Curtis Granderson outpointed Paul Goldschmidt and Mike Trout in the peer voting for MLBPA Man of the Year..........

Disappointing, but expected. The Player’s Union have extended the contract of Tony Clark to head things up for them through 2022. Clark is only recently waking up to how his constituency is getting roasted by the owners, and has been blaming them for his failure. So maybe he does better at the next CBA negotiations. Maybe. But it’s too late to claw back the failure of the recent past, not without sacrificing prior gains and/or blowing up baseball by holding his breath until he turns blue and calling for a strike. The players should have realized that Clark’s ineptitude over the past 4 years have parked them into a bad position, and spent this year recruiting a replacement chief. They did not. Here we are...........

Oh shit. Really? People are really now lobbying for Pete Rose now that MGM Resorts has contracted to be the official sports betting sponsor for MLB? That would be like Jung Ho Kang having his Pirates reputation expunged because the Rockies sold their stadium naming rights to Coors..........Meanwhile, somehow Las Vegas and Atlantic City have been running legal sports books for decades without the supervision of some ‘sports betting integrity group’. I should join their board of directors. It sounds like a cushy scam to add a new source of personal income..........But, more hilariously, pace of play is no longer an MLB problem, it’s the MLB solution. Really. Now how is that for some spin??...........

BVW just stole an important FO piece for the Mets, away from the Red Sox. Allard Baird is now VP of Scouting......BVW does have his issues, but damn if he isn’t working feverishly to exploit his insider knowledge and surround himself with brilliant talent..........And that brings us to one-time Halo Chili Davis, recently released by the Cubs as their hitting coach. The Mets might pick him up for that very role..........

Is it just me, or does it seem to you as well as if these guys who dive headlong into vintage baseball are our equivalent of Civil War reenactors (excuse me, ‘living historians’)? Baseball is great as it is. You want to play, just grab a bat and ball and some gloves and go play and have fun. Adding knickers and spats does not make one any funner...........

Pretend that Jeff Bezos loses 1/10% of his net worth and buys up all the FOX Regional Sports Networks. What would that mean for you and me? (Well, I am a Prime member, so maybe what we are concerned with is what it would mean for YOU!)..........Rob Manfred is right to be thinking about this outcome. Not only does it have immediate impact on his product reaching his audience, but those RSN’s have been a pretty big part or the overall revenue stream for his owners. I wonder, though, in that last link it states that MLB is considering the possibility of bidding for RSN’s themselves. In a way of thinking, that would mean that the Oakland A’s, as a co-owner of the RSN’s, would be paying a share of the balance of Arte Moreno’s RSN income from FOX Sports West. Odd..........

Hot Stove

Perhaps you did not like my Michael Brantley idea from yesterday? How about swapping the name of Brantley for the name of McCutchen? Small numbers and all, but once Cutch came over to the AL and was playing with the Yankees, he was producing at a clip that would yielded a 5.2bWAR over an entire season in our league..........

So, you are saying that a Madison Bumgarner would come cheap?..........And that would be assuming that the Giants are truly serious..........Whatever happens, don’t you dare think of MadBum as a ‘rental’. That would be wrongheaded of us..........

The Astros are the biggest rumor for Nathan Eovaldi now..........

The Duffle Bag

If Manfred wants to change the rules to make baseball more fun, I suggest that the team at bat score one automatic run every time they safely bunt for a base hit...........Yesterday it was Yadier Molina touring the world. Today it’s Francisco Cervelli..........(h/t reddit) Yankees/Red Sox in London next year will top out at list price of about $500 a ticket..........Kenley Jansen doing great post-surgery..........