Well, Major League Baseball does, inasmuch as they awarded him the Rookie of the Year Award, too. You’ll have to take it up with them. The definitions aren’t set by me.
Judge is having a better year so far than Suzuki OR Lynn, granting than he’s a very different player from Ichiro.
But we can get a bit carried away here. There is a really good chance that this half season is the best Aaron Judge will ever be. He is playing at about as high a level as a player can play; 10 WAR a season is pretty much unsustainable except by the truly greatest players who’ve ever played. If he CAN keep playing this well, the chances of him keeping it up for longer than a few seasons are, well, pretty tiny. How many players have been this good for, say, three straight years? Post integration it’s a really tiny number - Willie Mays was this good for awhile, as was Bonds, Mickey Mantle, and now Mike Trout and that’s all I can find.
I think it’s fair to say that it is much, much likelier Aaron Judge will regress from “historically dominant hitter” rather than continue it, because that is the natural order of things.
Now… who knows, right? Maybe Aaron Judge will Gretzkify the numbers, break baseball, and hit 85 home runs next year. I’m not betting my life against it. But if you think about it, almost all the true super-great hitters were in the major leagues well before the age of 24. This may simply be Judge’s peak.
Aaron Judge has had a great half and he’s a really likeable guy (especially considering he’s a Yankee), but I don’t think he’s *this *good. He wasn’t this good in minor league ball. He came up with a bit of hype, but I don’t think anyone was comparing him to Bonds or Mays or even Bryce Harper (who, by the way, is younger than Judge). That said, he’s been a lot of fun to watch.
They discussed this last night. IIRC, he spent a significant part of the off season adjusting. They talked quite a bit about how much calmer his body is at the plate he is this year.
So, he can adjust, but I’m not sure about the ‘few weeks’ part.
Trade of the year just announced: Cubs get Jose Quintana in exchange for prospect Eloy Jimenez. Extremely rare to see a major trade between the two Chicago clubs. The Cubs beef up their woeful pitching so far this season.
I would totally get behind $10 Tuesday if I didn’t think the owners would jack up parking and concessions to balance it out. Teams that currently offer $15-20 SRO tickets in the teens are selling a fantastic deal already.
I think they’re all great conversations to have. And to dedicate just one Tuesday a month to $10 Tuesday shouldn’t be that big of a burden on a team - and if it’s a decree from the MLB front office, you can prevent price gouging elsewhere. It would bring more fans to the stadium, and as an MLB-endorsed event, you get national marketing on the idea. Now - my question is how do you implement it? You can’t do the first Tuesday of the month - because that eliminate half the stadiums each time you do it. First Tuesday game of the month? What if that’s the 3rd or even 4th Tuesday of the month - does that become hard to draw attention to?
Right after Theo said the Cubs will stand pat and they just need to play better. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. Quintana is having a little bit of a down year, but his K/9 is the highest of his career so far.
I wonder how much angst we should have about the average MLB fan being 53 years old. What was the average MLB fan age 10 years ago or 20 years ago?
But, good for ARod for trying to think outside the box without changing the way the game is played. His ideas aren’t bad, and I trust MLB to implement technology in a meaningful way based on the MLB Network being awesome.
Too bad Panda didn’t work out for Boston, but yeah almost everyone thought it was a terrible signing at the time. Honestly, he wasn’t even *that *good in SF.
The Bonilla contract is an interesting one, and everyone thinks of it as a bad one. The Mets owed him $5.9M in 2000 but negotiated a deal to pay him $1.19M every year from 2011 to 2035. So yes, the Mets will make their final payment to Bonilla 18 years from now! And over that time they’ll have paid him almost $30M. But if they’d have invested that $5.9M with 7% returns, they’d have made much more than $30M over that time. As it was, the Mets’ owners invested with Bernie Madoff.
And what a lot of people don’t realize is that the Mets have a similar deal with Darryl Strawberry. They’re paying him $1.4M from 2004 - 2033. And that’s deferred payment on $700k that they owed him as part of a team option in 1990!
ETA: Meant to post this in the Sandoval thread because someone mentioned Bobby Bo’s contract, but it works here, too.
There are no day games today for the first gameday after the all star break. Is that on purpose or just random since the Cubs are away? The Cubs play all their Friday home games during the day, but I figured mid July would be an excellent time for a Friday day game for at least a few teams.
The Dodgers are off to a great second-half start. Sweep of the Marlins, Wood upping his record to 11 - 0, and then Bellinger becoming the first rookie in franchise history to hit for the cycle.
The Yankees and Red Sox wrapped up a hell of a weekend. Played 16 innings on Saturday and 18 on Sunday (in 2 games). Talk about depleted bullpens with neither team getting today off.
You have to be pretty happy with Price last night. In his six previous starts against the Yankees, his ERA was 8.31. I had high hopes for that night game.
Price has generally been better than I expected so far this year. Actually, he’s been quite good. Last season it looked like he had lost so much on his fastball that he might be cooked. I’m not sure what his velocity has been this year, but the results are good.