I’d love to see it, along with a complete old-time fan experience - no loud music or scoreboard displays, maybe a small band playing “Tessie, I Love You Madly”.
Fat chance.
Didn’t the Cubs do a retro day maybe 10-20 years ago where they turned off the PA system and had guys with megaphones making the announcements?
Dodgers reacquired catcher Russell Martin, with the Blue Jays eating most of his salary in exchange for a couple of minor leaguers. Guess the front office got tired of looking for a over-priced catcher and have decided to platoon Barnes and Martin until the prospects develop. Martin is coming off a crappy year, but is motivated and can play 3rd, 2nd and outfield as well as catch. If Seager comes back strong, I think we have a good team. Again.
Interesting that a Rockie has more homers away than home. All the other splits are bad of course. The BB split is extra odd to me, but maybe he’s less patient on the road? It’s a weird stat line.
That’s a hell of a platoon when they both hit righthanded.
Martin isn’t as bad a player as the .194 average would suggest, but the Dodgers are acting very strangely for a team with a shot at a World Series. Barnes/Martin is a potentially atrocious catching combo, but maybe the Dodgers have reason to think the 2017 Barnes is more real than the 2018 version.
They don’t. I think the front office is betting big on the prospects developing quickly. Barnes will get dumped the minute somebody has a good month in AAA. Either that or they are banking on some decent talent becoming available around the All-Star break.
J.P. Realmuto is still out there. Just sayin’.
As long as the Marlins keep demanding Bellinger, that deal is dead. Now, I can see the Dodgers flipping Martin and a few prospects Miami’s way, but not someone of Bellinger’s abilities. If Miami wants a first baseman, send them Freese.
Another ex-Yankees pitcher makes the news, for the wrong reasons.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/01/15/john-wetteland-arrested-child-sex-abuse-charges-yankees-rangers
After last year’s Marlins fire sale of maybe the best outfield in baseball in 2017, can you blame the Dodgers for holding out? Eventually Team Jeter will sell Realmuto for a bag of baseballs.
And not even new ones, old BP ones. And he’ll pay the shipping AND the handling…
I have no idea how reliable this guy is, but:
Report: Phillies have visions of signing Harper, Keuchel, Kimbrel
Wow. Just. Wow.
Well, I had visions of being in a polyamorous marriage with Zooey Deschanel and Scarlett Johansson.
I’m still holding out hope for that, but I’m starting to think that the odds are getting worse everyday.
From an ESPN article about how lower echelon baseball stars are irked that Machado and Harper aren’t signed to big deals yet:
*"It’s not just veteran free agents ages 30 and up who are still looking for fair contracts. Now it’s the younger stars of the game…
On his Instagram account, San Francisco Giants third baseman Evan Longoria also expressed his dismay over the situation and urged the players to “stand strong for what we believe we are worth.”
“You work for that moment in your career,” (Kris) Bryant said. “You feel like every team should want you. For them to not have that, it could be disheartening for them. … It’s not about the greed. They’ve put in the work to warrant contracts that are worthy of it.”*
The reporter doesn’t question the idea that owners are being “unfair”, though it’s probably hard for most fans to believe that (for example) Harper getting an 8-year deal for $240 million would be horribly unfair since he deserves 10 years at $325 million.
I could understand this apparent feeling of brotherhood back in the 1950s when reporters’ salaries weren’t that different from those of average ballplayers, and both stood in opposition to bosses who paid them as little as they could get away with.
But now that it’s multimillionaire players squaring off against mega-million or billion-dollar owners, it’s hard for me to comprehend the worker brotherhood angle.
Not that baseball players shouldn’t go for the highest salaries they can get (I’m fine with greed), but I’m not terribly sympathetic to the whining about “unfairness”.
*note that Kris Bryant made about $10.9 million dollars in 2018, and Longoria is in the middle of a deal that pays him an average annual salary of $16,666,667 through 2023.
The evidence is clear; long term deals to hitters usually fail. It is perfectly rational to not hand them out.
Evan Longoria is 33 years old, and last year he hit .244 with sixteen home runs, the worst year of his career. He isn’t going to get BETTER. His contract is Example A of why they’re dumb.
I believe it stems from the inherent unfairness of some aspects of the CBA. In particular the six years of team control, particularly the non-arbitration years. The expectation (which had worked OK in the not-too-distant past) was that a star player would get paid “below market value” during those 6 years and then cash in on a big deal after that - getting overpaid somewhat. Teams have wised up, and are not paying over-market prices for mid-career (let alone end-career) players. So now players get paid below-market for the first 6 years or so (sometimes longer if they sign a contract after one or two seasons to buy out their arbitration years, trading upside on their first post-arbitration salary for guaranteed millions now) without the mega-deal at the end of that period.
I actually think this could lead to some pretty bad labor strife when the next CBA comes up as the current-generation players that are getting squeezed by this system hold out for early free agency or a player-friendly modification to the arbitration system (and removal of the Qualifying Offer).
It also does’t help that the rules for drafted players are so much different than international players.
I’m sure the players (and writers, of course) are well aware of the data and trends here: MLB Spent Less On Player Salaries Despite Record Revenues In 2018. Teams have been working very hard to stay under the luxury tax thresholds, and that has certainly impacted what players are getting paid.
The structure is definitely warped. It would be a lot of logical sense to have free agency start earlier.
That said, look; of course the owners will do everything they can to cut costs. And as long as they do it legally (e.g. no collusion) of course they should, just as the players should do whatever they can to get big paychecks.
Where the problem lies is that what’s good for the sport’s revenue prospects does not align with either the pure self-interest of either the players or owners.
Because big money deals make big headlines and get clicks. It’s pure self-interest by the reporters.
The thing is, sportswriters didn’t used to identify with the players. Players once upon a time were almost always cast as greedy jerks.
I don’t think there’s any one reason this changed, but would suggest it may be a combination of:
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Owners used to be legitimately more of a breed of struggling businessmen than they are now. Back in the day, running a profitable MLB team wasn’t easy. Now, most teams are insanely rich, often owned by corporate ownership that is richer still. It’s hard to sympathize - or hell, identify in any way at all - with Crane Capital, Rogers Communications, or Incapital LLC, and MLB is way, way richer than it once was.
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The notion that higher salaries results in higher ticket prices, which is economically illiterate and totally backward of the truth, used to prevail, but sportswriters are wise to that nonsense now.
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The players, obscenely rich though they may be, have at least always been clear and upfront; they want to be paid market value. Bitching about making millions instead of more millions may seem vulgar, and IS vulgar, but they’re honest about it. The owners have been, by far, the dishonest partner, not only in the old school bullshit about how they were on the fans’ side, but they’re the ones who engaged in the collusion scandals, threatening to contract teams, and who’ve held cities for ransom to build them stadiums, and
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The 1994 cancellation is generally blamed on the owners, and rightly so.
Anyone been to a Colorado Rockies game? I’ve been talking with a friend of mine in Denver who isn’t much of a baseball fan, but wants to go with me since I can explain the sport to him. Are tickets reasonable, I usually use Stubhub for baseball tickets. Any particularly good parts of the ballpark to sit in? I usually prefer sitting on the the 3rd base line , but I can sit anywhere. Any other tips? We will be using public transit or Uber, we both enjoy good beer.