WeekEnd HaloLinks: Es Beisbol!

Ooh, hey, baseball! I totally had forgotten about the Caribbean Series. That starts today, with Venezuela taking on Cuba at 11AM PDT. To follow along, Ground Zero is here. At a minimum there shall be GameDay.

It’s like a free sampler before Spring Training. And I’ll take it!

Have some Hola-Mis-Amigos-de-Beisbol-Offseason-Links:

A Little Bit of Angels News

Now we’re talkin’. Instead of meandering around the league looking for the player to outperform Mike Trout in any upcoming season, and instead of chasing the latest hotshot incoming player and project them to inherit the Trout mantle as Game’s Greatest Player, the correct response is to realize that it would take THREE great players to match Trouty. For example, Giancarlo Stanton’s bat PLUS Billy Hamilton’s speed PLUS Kevin Keirmaier’s glove. Amazing............

And as if that was not good enough, have some pure Trout porn..........

Something for us to keep track of over the next couple of seasons would be any impact of extended netting in Anaheim on field level season ticket resale volumes and prices. Because never again will a young baseball fan get the chance to play catch with Rick Reichardt over the dugout before game start. But think of all the money they are going to save on baseballs not getting tossed into the stands above the dugouts every half inning...........

From reddit, another shot at the new video board in left field. To me, it looks like one of those giant display TV’s when you walk into Costco. So is the backlight going to burn out in 4 years?..........

I will never cease poking this particular festering sore on the reputation of Jerry Dipoto. Instead of this...we could have had this. And Pedro Martinez would know a thing or two about how to fear a hitter...........

Everywhere In Baseball

Erp. Commissioner Manfred had some bad pork yesterday. I don’t understand this walking back of the pitch clock thing. At all..........

FanGraphs must not have liked me dissing on Larry Walker yesterday..........

I am down with this guy’s wish list for 2018 on every point except...#8 (I want the answer to #6 to be the subject of #7), #15, #16 (Marlins fans have only themselves to blame for propping up that ongoing abuse) and #18 (because that team might be in the AL West, and it won’t be us)..........

The good news is that The Athletic is growing. That’s a healthy sign for sports content as the written word instead of the video pivot. I’m not trying to be a box score curmudgeon but not everything needs to be Sportscenter to be informative and enjoyable. We have to temper our enthusiasm, though. We have seen over-expansion before and we have to wait to see if The Atlantic is managing their growth correctly. The bad news, though is that this drives more content behind a pay wall. Someday I am going to have to take one for the team and subscribe..........Jeff Sullivan sees what’s happening, too..........

Starting at about 21:30 in this FG podcast (it goes to about the 48 minute mark), we pursue even further what turns out to be highly topical robo umpire discussions and the state of the art. We have already linked to a couple of articles that seem to be driving this conversation, but this one is still very helpful. It’s everything I have been stating for years now, and it was far worse when I first started and nobody wanted to believe me.........

By now you all know that super-stud prospect Mark Appel has flamed out. But read this article and ask yourself if Appel would not be an excellent reclamation project for a quality pitching coach and patient enough franchise? Is Charles Nagy good enough to fix him?..........

The Marlins, who have already proven to be the all-time masters of the fire sale, have now established new records for gutting that even they may find unbreakable..........

Hot Stove

The Brewers still have time to knock the crown off the head of Billy Eppler as King of the Off Season. If they can add Chris Archer, too, they could reasonably be faves in the NL Central...........

Scott Boras is a key driver in the slowness of transaction rates this Winter, but I think stating that he “...continues to hold up the MLB free-agent market” is a bridge too far. He is merely one ingredient. Whether he “blinks” or not will not change the quality of talent, nor the community of tankers, nor the inter-franchise trade market, nor the quality guys locked away from the market years ago, etc..........

Still confused here. I know this article came back yesterday because it was merely updated, but still. How is it that Yu Darvish is waiting on cash to come out of either of the very two teams who have been well documented to be committed to staying clear of the lux threshold so that they can reset their penalty fess in time for next Winter’s market? How much more do the Dodger and Yankees have to cull from their 2018 payroll AAV budget before they can afford the AAV of a Darvish deal? The author spends most of her time hammering this very point, so why is she carrying Darvish’s water? What is she hearing, and from whom?..........

The Duffle Bag

Do you need a job? Do you live in Seattle (or want to)? Do you really miss Jerry Dipoto? He’s hiring...........You can now own the San Diego Chicken head. It’s being auctioned off. If you don’t know what the hell I am talking about, you have yet to truly be born into a baseball life............Goose Gossage must have the nicest yard on his block, and clouds must fear passing overhead..........H/T UniWatch: some cool old video of baseball at Ebbets Field. Hey, somebody around here needs to help Dodgers fans keep their history in order..........The Red Sox? Attracting reptiles? Makes total sense...........Now I know how MLB drug testers spend all their time in the offseason, unable to ply their talents in foreign jurisdictions. They quintuple up on the locals..........