No surprise - Alonso and Alvarez both easily win Rookie of the Year.
Absolutely. It’s no accident that 4 o the top 10 and 6 of the top 15 pitchers pitched in the world series.
And they probably need 2 starting pitchers to really make a run.
I’m just saying that there are other priorities that need to be addressed before they worry about upgrading 3B.
So I’m wondering who will outbid the Nationals.
Yeah, I’d agree - I don’t think the Nationals are dumb enough to overpay for Rendon. They chose not to overpay for Harper, and if I recall correctly, they still did okay in 2019.
Meanwhile, the Blue Jays, who are at least $100 million under what they could easily afford for 2020, apparently have no interest in signing any good pitchers. Christ almighty.
I think Rendon and Harper are apples and oranges. From all accounts, Harper sucked all the air out of the clubhouse whereas Rendon was a positive force among his teammates. I wouldn’t underestimate how important camaraderie was to the Nats’ success year. (Oh and Bryce strikes out twice as much as Anthony).
Winning the World Series… Bryce-less.
The Blue Jays are in rough shape. You have a bunch of really young guys and you’re hoping lightning strikes and you get a few stars out of them. Your strategy is clearly to hope that all your prospects pop at the same time so you end up with a strong young team all under team control or arbitration for a couple of years. Then with a winning record, you can afford to keep a few older guys that you can build into a playoff team and then you are in “win now” mode for a couple of years when you really have to make a push.
I think he grew up with everyone telling him he was the best and then he had that great year in 2015 and people were saying that he was the best player in all of baseball. He really thought he was the most important guy on the team. He always had been, why should it be any different now.
The fans loved him but he wasn’t good for the team It was like the rest of the team were supporting actors in the Bryce Harper show, no one else had any room to grow. It wasn’t deliberate on his part but the dynamics were just toxic and everyone underperformed except Harper.
After all is said and done the fact that he turned down a 4 year $180 million deal from the Dodgers (a real championship team), you know he’s not too full of himself. If he had a huge ego, he would have bet on himself and taken the 180 million 4 year deal from the Dodgers and then come back at 30 for Derek Jeter type money.
Instead he took 330 million over 13 years from a rebuilding team instead of 180 from a championship team or 300 million over 10 years from a real contender.
Is this true? I know that’s the reputation, but are there actual accounts of this?
So the 2017 world series MVP was some guy banging on a trash can?
Ok, so how big a scandal is this? On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being “everyone does it” to 10 being “you bribed an umpire”.
I’d put it at a 6, where it clearly violates the integrity of the game, but isn’t a banned for life type of deal.
This scandal did get me to learn about an incident from the 1950’s Yankees, where one of their pitchers would whistle if he caught a sign. The opposing pitcher was so pissed, he gave Mickey Mantle some chin music. When Yogi got up next he yelled “He may be whistling, but I ain’t listening!”
I don’t have a cite for you, but I watched about 60% of the Nats’ games both this summer and in 2018. The difference in the dugout atmosphere was blatantly obvious.
They should have the '17 championship revoked and forfeit Verlander and Greinke to the Nats. 
The team on the field is not good, but the organization is in good shape; there is very little dead money left on the books and very talented young hitters in the lineup. Compare this with teams with dead money or just without a lot of prospects; the Jays will produce some very good players, and have the dough to fill in the gaps.
If they’ll spend it. Rogers is weirdly cheap. The team is immensely rich and in a huge market that is extremely win-sensitive. They could spend like crazy if they wanted to and go get Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg and a few hitters, too.
Yogi also said: I really didn’t say everything I said. Coincidentally, that remark came in an interview after having just joined the Houston Astros coaching staff in 1986.
Here is a Jomboy Media vid (2 mins, 21 secs) highlighting an instance Houston cheating. Not the biggest scandal, but someone should get fined, at least. It’s practically institutionalized, which makes you wonder about the culture down there, factoring in other recent events.
Revoke the championship and forfeit Verlander to the team they cheated out of the Series. Send Greinke to the Padres. 
If you ask the Los Angeles Dodgers who lost two world series games in Houston by small enough margins that cheating probably mattered, it was a pretty big deal.
Is it as big as throwing the world series so bookies can make more money? The entire black sox team banned for life.
Is this as bad as betting on baseball? a la Pete Rose (who never bet against his own team) banned for life.
Is it as bad as taking steroids? Alex Rodriguez suspended for 211 games.
I don’t know what the appropriate punishment should be but you have to start with vacating their championship.
Everybody loves Yogi Berra.
Absolutely but a lot of that was not because of the additions to the Roster, like Parra rather than the removal of Harper form the roster. Harper was not a horrible teammate but he was acting awfully important for one of the youngest guys on the team. It sucks when you are a 30+ year old veteran and the young kid still in arbitration acts like it’s his team, and what’s worse, so do the managers and the fans.
Maybe things will be different in Philadelphia. I suspect with that huge contract, he will have trouble living up to expectations and there will be disappointment mixed in with the kudos.
Ultimately he is not a good fit with the Nationals.
If the owners knew (or with reasonable due diligence, should have known), then force the owners to sell the team at auction. Banning players and managers still makes cheating a risk/reward proposition where the risk is large but manageable. Fines are a very manageable risk reward situation. Forcing owners to sell their team at auction is like the death penalty, it will stop the cheating overnight.
They have way more gaps than dough right now unless some significant portion of those young players, (particularly the pitchers) mature pretty quickly. I suspect that they will wait a year before going all in unless they can pick someone up cheap.
Rogers?
Rogers Communications is the owner of the Blue Jays; they are one of the only teams left in MLB owned by a corporation, not principally an individual. They’re the largest tech conglomerate in Canada, making literal billions a year. They not only own the team, but own the cable sports empire their games are on. Rogers is, in all likelihood, the richest “owner” in MLB.
The Blue Jays, because of the way this stuff is divvied up, have a broadcast monopoly on the entirety of Canada, a media market roughly equivalent to the entire state of California, and which with the exception of a few little pockets is very, very Blue Jays-supporter-heavy. Imagine if the Dodgers were owned by a company that not only owned their own cable and wireless empire, but was given exclusive broadcast rights to all of California, and the Angels, Padres, Giants and A’s didn’t exist. That’s a gold mine.
Yeah, I wouldn’t die on the hill of Pete Rose not betting against his own team. Everything else he’s ever claimed was a lie. That’s the only one left unanswered. If Pete Rose told me his name was “Pete Rose” I’d start doing some research.
Anyway, no, cheating by stealing signs with electronic devices is not as bad as betting on baseball or throwing games for money. But it’s bad, and if this is proven, heads should roll.
The San Francisco Giants have hired Gabe Kapler to be their new manager.
To say this decision is inexplicable would be an understatement of the highest order. It’s utterly mystifying. It’s not just that Kapler did a mediocre job in Philadelphia, or that by all accounts the clubhouse was a toxic mess by the end of 2019; Kapler is literally right now in the midst of a story unfolding about how he didn’t report sexual misconduct while working for the Dodgers.
Of all the managerial candidates, that’s the guy the Giants picked. What the hell?
A signal like that lacks a bit in subtlety. Even the dumbest opponent should catch on quickly.
Not to rehash the Pete Rose stuff, but betting on your own team presents plenty of opportunities for abuse (for example if you overuse a top reliever because you have a lot of dough riding on a particular game).