WeekEnd HaloLinks: One Month More

When we all come back from this weekend, it will be January 14th. While the Angels are always late to publicly announce ST reporting dates, know that we already know some teams will be having pitchers and catchers reporting as early as February 11th. That is one month from today.

So we are in the final lap of the off-season. So little time, so much left to get done. I expect it will all get done, too. Maybe not to everyone’s liking (mine included), but everything will get done that was going to get done anyway. And here is the thing: some destinies still hang in the balance. If you assume that 2018 as a chimera that Oakland will not see again, there is still s light possibility of the Angels being competitive for a playoff slot in 2019. As usual with me every year, I base my hopes on everything going right. Sure, it never does, but I leave that sour taste for the Augusts of the year. Right now it’s only January, and Billy Eppler has 4 weeks of rummaging his hand around the bottom of that hat, seeking rabbits.

Don’t burst my bubble. It’s the motivation I need to keep doing this.

For you? Content yourself with these Rose-Colored-HaloLinks:

A Little Bit Of Angels News

Baby steps. The big news yesterday is that Arte Moreno and the City of Anaheim agreed to a 12-month extension on his occupancy of Angels Stadium, keeping things in place through 2020 and allowing for time. This is as expected as sunrise. Anaheim got new leadership in the recent elections, something Arte was holding out for. He couldn’t strike a deal with the prior leadership and time was running out on his current lease, so he couldn’t possibly have has enough time to figure out how to go anywhere else. Anaheim is still in a very strong negotiating position, Arte still does not have a financial proxy to pay for a new stadium on his behalf, and the real estate around the current stadium is evaporating into competitive business pursuits every day. But long before I retire, we now know this saga will have a conclusion one way or the other............

Have some fun buzzing around the stadium..........

Everywhere In Baseball

Baseball is a great sport, but we do have our faults. In the already messy world of drafting kids into the MLB system, this part about medicals just keeps making things messier. The latest would be the Braves winning an arb case against 2018 draftee Carter Stewart. In short, the Braves drafted Carter out of High School, then ran him through a medical review of their own making, and rejected him. For that, they now get their pick back this June. I see no upside in this process for the players, and little downside for the franchises. That’s a power disparity on the grandest order. At a minimum, medical reviews should be independent, private, and binding............

The Yasmani Grandal deal has a lot of folks up in arms. But...Grandal chose not to be rich, to begin with. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing humorous can come of the story I am going to relate (sorry, Charlie!).....SportsIllustrated goes on a weak-assed rant claiming that this deal proves that MLB Free Agency is interminably broken. The author and/or editors may go back and change that article after I type this, but as of now there is not a single mention of Grandal rejecting a 4-year, $60 million deal and having any hand in how his market evolved.....Not to be outdone, here goes BeyondTheBoxScore with a similar gloom and doom. At least I cannot find the word “collusion” being bandied about.....Grant Brisbee does his always excellent disco moves on this story, spending a lot of time looking at the role Grandal’s post-season played and taking only a minor swipe at evil GM’s. But, alas, still no mention of Grandal walking away from $60 million.....At least Jeff Sullivan opens his mind to the possibility that Grandal, despite being a superlative addition to that small set of teams that actually need a catcher, sold himself short..........

Full Disclosure Time. Independent blogging is not without it’s warts. As I noted earlier this week, Kyler Murray looks more and more like he is going to choose the NFL, and the A’s are preparing themselves for that. In fact, the A’s are letting Murray attend the NFL combine. (Guys get hurt there, you know.) I knew that this would not make A’s fan happy. What I also knew, was that some A’s fans would go off the deep end, as if they were losing out on the next Ronald Acuna or some such. What I did not expect was that one party to off that deep end would be a peer...........

On the topic of Kyler Murray, here is one author giving the expected arguments in favor of Murray choosing to ride mid-western buses for the A’s. IMHO, although the author is acknowledging the football upsides, he is underselling them. 4 QB’s were taken in the Top 10 draft slots in 2018, and the average guaranteed money is $25.4 million for 5 years of work. 5 years from now Murray will only be 26 years old..........(Over in the sport of football, NFL folk are going kinda crazy at all this news.)..........

Brace yourselves. Arb decision time is nearing. And arbitrators care not one whit about any new-fangled Front Office financial wizardry. They may, in fact, accelerate the movement of money to youth as they award some pretty surprising pay increases..........

The San Francisco Giants have resold naming rights to their stadium, it now becoming Oracle Park. Larry Ellison kicking AT&T to the curb. For those not in corporate IT, Oracle is a big-assed company that provides software to host and manage databases. Your personal information included...........

Hot Stove

Deals are being done all over the place.

The Nationals are inking Brian Dozier, as the infield market starts to open up..........

Case in point would be the Mariners, who signed Tim Beckham............

The M’s also sign reliever Cory Gearrin..........

And the Mets (who were supposedly out of money as of just yesterday?) added Jed Lowrie..........

With Yasmani Grandal off the market, things are looking up for Derek Jeter. The Marlins are locked in deep discussions to move JT Realmuto now..........

I question some of the presumptions in this article at The Ringer. It concerns Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, the premise being that you cannot overpay either of these guys. First of all, it’s always possible to end up, when all is said and done, overpay for anybody. You just never know until you get there. Rationally, though, I have found that most of the time (“most”! I said “most”!!) what looks like an overpay on the front end ends up not looking so bad a the back end because AAV’s for similar production rise well enough on their own year over year. But beyond that, I would argue that most MLB teams could be classified as interested in either player...BUT...not as many teams have (A) a long-term need to upgrade that position by a significant degree, or (B) would find it wise to invest that large of their payroll on one particular player. The gory days (not a typo) of owner conceit where a Scott Boras could play with some billionaire’s emotions over his public toy are gone. It could very well be that Machado and Harper are locked up in intense negotiations with what turns out to be 50% of their actual market (but, yeah, wither the Yankees?)...........

FiveThirtyEight is still tracking FA signings and money over time (within the context of the Brewers doing very well to snag bargains). Here is my prediction: as soon as Harper and Machado sign, and their dollars get added to the charts, FiveThirtyEight will stop tracking and reporting this data for this off-season..........

The Duffle Bag

Good job, Kyle Schwarber. We need an MLB player to sponsor the 2nd and 3rd responders, too...........Sorry, ladies, but Tim Tebow has taken himself off your market..........Russell Wilson will do Spring Training with the Yankees, again. I say, why not? He access to gyms and trainers and hangs with pro athletes in a good climate and gets to play baseball, dammit!..........Noah Syndergaard: Instagram flirt..........