Thor’sLinks: 2B...or not 2B

Josh’s retelling of RexFregosi’s tidbit about Jahmai Jones taking some balls at 2B was quite a hit yesterday....Jones himself walked it back. But not before folks such as Sam Dykstra of MiLB.com lost his marbles.

Taylor Blake Ward went souring for footage of Jones at 2B in high school. Instead he found this. That’s Reggie Bush quality shit right there. My immediate thought was that Roger Goodell has only to blame the dangers of his own sport as the reason he is never going to get to exploit that kind of gridiron excitement...........

Have some Rabble-Rousing-Spring-Training-Links:

A Little Bit of Angels News

GM Billy Eppler is fixing that reputation the 2018 Angels have for “thin depth”. This guy, who we got from the Rays for sending off C.J. Cron, has now been traded to the Yankees. And in return we get this guy, Jabari Blash. Read his transaction history here. He has a lot off ex-teams to seek revenge upon. At 6’5” and 235 pounds, this dude is an athlete. He can field.....He has power......But he is still new to MLB, with only 99 games to his credit. So I can’t find evidence off his running speed or his arm strength and his slash line is Mathis-esque still. Should be interesting..........

It’s time. We need to start focusing on the 2018 bullpen outlook...........

I am still trying to figure out what is a Colin Walsh?...........

The good news for us is that we don’t really need Zack Cozart to prosper at third base. We just need him to not be Yunel Escobar and we are a leg up on 2017..........

Trout Porn: You have already born witness to one of the greatest MLB careers ever recorded, and the kid is still young..........And compared to some popular contemporaries, Trout has made them look like, well, some lame-ass guy who is so old and bad at baseball that he really needs to stick to typing up morning coffee blogs ..........Finally, Ted Williams had perhaps the greatest 6-season run in MLB history. His 1941-1949 span was interrupted by WWII, but they are only counting the seasons played. I did some quick math and those years Williams totaled 59.7 bWAR. In Trout’s 6 seasons (ignoring his 40 games in 2011) Trout earned 54.5 bWAR. Two of those seasons were incomplete, missing about 61 total games, so Trout could have made a run to close the gap considerably. But, more importantly, Trout has his 5-7 peak seasons still ahead of him. Amazing..........

Quick hits: Tomorrow I want to see Ohtani behind the wheel, and Trout still gasping from fear..........Shohei has already been taught that MLB pitchers love to come hard inside, even when they have no control..........Cozart fixed his bat angle last year and crushed it. We have the ‘fixed’ Cozart..........The Angels used to host their Spring Training in Palm Springs. Wacky times..........I’m certain that Arte is proud to have paid C.J. Wilson tens of millions of dollars to properly rehab his health in order to compete in his subsequent career..........

Everywhere In Baseball

This is an absolutely dumb idea so bad it’s dead on arrival. Anybody who already knows how monumental it has been just to try and get MLB to put clocks on the field to get players to follow the rules that already exist knows that this will not happen in our lifetime. It reads more like some MLB execs coming up with a great way to make fools out of some MSM nincompoop, after 4 or 5 single malts and more than a few belly laughs. And Rich Eisen was just the guy to play the fool..........

Hmmm. Perhaps the most intriguing baseball thing you can read today, but only fully understand if you have a degree in accounting, would be this expose on baseball finances and player shares. If this article is accurate, and it presents compelling data points that it is close enough, things are not as bad for the players as I have been projecting the past year. And certainly not as bad as many in the MSM have been calling it this offseason...........

(h/t reddit) F/U MLB. Dropping PS3 just raised the price for your live streaming service since I would have to buy an entirely new library of games. Oh wait. I don’t play any of those games. And I also have Apple TV anyway..........

(another h/t to reddit) A huge mega compilation of reviews of the entire Spring Training experience. Spoiler Alert: not too many people have ever bothered to post reviews about Tempe Diablo..........

Tom Verducci is on a roll this week. Yesterday I blew him up on his pet injury metric since it is completely erroneous. Today I link to his solutions for pace of play. He starts with pitch clocks and robo umps. One thing that the players are cock-blocking and another thing that we know is currently technologically impractical. Then he makes some incredibly piss-poor suggestions. Flip the DH rule for interleague games, with teh DH in NL parks and no DH in Al parks. Also, no pitching changes mid-inning in the All-Star game. yeah, those should save HOURS of game time. Brilliant. how about review EVERYTHING. Because, I can only guess, he thinks that the review system is already the most effective way to get shorter games?? Finally, free tickets to kids. Because if the kids get in free they will have no justifiable reason to complain about how mush time they have to spend watching free stuff..........

Jon Gruden is right. What will Oakland have once the Raiders move out of town? They will be stuck with the A’s, who spent years trying to move out of town first...........

A very ugly reminder that Barry Bonds has a very ugly history..........

I didn’t know people considered Japan as the final stop in their baseball careers. I thought that was why we have the Giants............

Lawyers live in a twisted world, as the extension of netting in MLB stadiums proves out..........

Full disclosure: SBNation is pivoting away from online video..........

Hot Stove

Man, I wish we still had bonus pool money to spend on newly-minted Cuban Free Agent Julio Pablo Martinez. Bullshit. We gave all that money to Ohtani and Ohtani can keep it all! Jerry Dipoto, though, he might have some money lying around and Dipoto really knows how to spend it all on Latin prospects.........

I’m going to follow the Rays this year, just to spite all the union scribes in the nation..............

The Duffle Bag

This is just beautiful. I award Barry Enright 150 points in life..........Once upon a time we had Matt Welch write the LAA cover article in the BP annual. That was back when BP kept projecting Mike Trout to regress more than any other MLB player. Now we get the guy who covers the Dodgers. And it sounds like he didn’t even write about the Angels..........I agree with one of the commenters. Joe Maddon has rose-colored glasses. Rickey Henderson got caught stealing more than anybody in MLB history...........Update from yesterday. ALL MLB teams will wear Marjory Stoneman Douglas memorial caps this Friday, to be auctioned off afterwards. Whose cap sells for more, Trout or Ohtani?..........It won’t be as much fun trolling Mariners fans when the M’s are so good at trolling themselves.. Takes all the sport out of it........MLB is banishing the Mariners and the A’s to Japan for their joint MLB Opener in 2019..........Because the BBWAA has always been full of idiocy..........