Neither are those two (alleged) criminals effective very very soon.
Most of us don’t make in a lifetime what these guys get in a year. I have no pity for them.
The relevant numbers are in here:
Wetzel: Feds are the best hope to police sports betting’s wild west - ESPN
Athletics 1B Nick Kurtz and Braves C Drake Baldwin were named the Rookies of the Year.
I read somewhere that Clase and Ortiz were caught because of some internal MLB department that flagged odd betting activiity.
I would have to assume that this is an instance where AI is an actually useful tool for rooting this sort of thing out. Normally, bets should distribute themselves pretty evenly around the major bookies in fairly predictable ways; if, say, a prop bet on some pitcher’s first pitch being a ball suddenly sees weird activity, that’s the sort of thing AI bots could easily spot and set off red lights and klaxon alarms.
especially since they don’t have a lot of expensive players 
Judge and Ohtani are AL and NL MVPs.
And Skubal and Skenes are the Cy Young Award winners. Skenes was a unanimous pick.
As they should be.
If Cal Raleigh had been in the NL he probably would have snatched the MVP from Ohtani.
I wanted Raleigh to win, but mostly for anti-Yankee bias, and because I loved Raleigh’s narrative - but Judge simply had the better season (one of the best ever, frankly). I don’t envy the voters in the AL - that was a really hard choice.
Incredibly close. Two flipped votes and it would have been a tie.
In non-MLB news, the Bananaball league had its first ever expansion draft last night to start filling in the rosters for the 2 new teams. First pick off the board for the Indianapolis Clowns was former All Star and World Series champion, Jackie Bradley Jr.
The guy will be 36 next year, but that’s a really fun pick. I hope he’s able to add some real talent to the team and league.
Judge had a hell of a season but I’m not sure “one of the best ever” is a reasonable description. It wasn’t even HIS best season.
If you use WAR, it was his 3rd best season and tied for 72 overall. Top 100 probably does qualify for some standards of “one of the best ever”.
He has a pair of 10.8 WAR seasons, tied for 21st.
Babe Ruth of course dominated this, with 6 of the top 12.
So what qualifies as “one of the best ever”?
You know, I’ll walk that back - I think I was swapping out one of his other dominant seasons in my mind.
The Mariners resigned Josh Naylor for 5 years. Pending a physical, dollar amounts not disclosed.
Smart move unless the AAV is something absurd. I’m surprised they were able to lock up a 28 year-old for only five years.
Naylor’s a good player but he has limited positional options and a heavy first baseman isn’t a great long term bet.
I was surprised by his fielding this year. Maybe not a gold glove, but made some good plays. Solid.