Jesus, it’s a fabric roof and MLB has more money than God. How hard can this be?
Oh and Luis Gil and Paul Skenes win ROY. No surprises. The Gil vote was close but he was a good choice. Skenes won by a wider margin but Jackson Merrill did get 7 first place votes. I think Skenes was the right choice but Merrill had a strong case.
I’m not looking forward to Skenes shredding his arm in the near future but it’ll happen.
The NL had a hell of a rookie class; Shota Imanaga went 15-3 with a 2.91 ERA and barely got on any of the ballots.
As a Cub fan, I think Imanaga’s vote total is a travesty. I didn’t expect him to win, but I expected more votes.
Not surprisingly, the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal and the Braves’ Chris Sale won the Cy Young awards; Skubal was a unanimous choice, and Sale was the first choice on 26 out of 30 ballots.
Both pitchers won their league’s Triple Crown for the season (wins, ERA, strikeouts). For Sale, it was also a comeback season, as he’d been battling injuries since 2019.
Not a lot of mystery in this year’s awards. ETA: MVPs are awarded tonight. I think maybe - just throwing a guess out there - Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge will win. You know, just a wild stab.
This is gonna be bad for me (in a good way). I listen to every game on the radio, because that’s all I’ve ever been able to do. So for 2-3 hours every night all summer, I’m hella productive around the house. I keep a list of stuff to complete during baseball season.
This summer I was at my mom’s house for 2 months while she recuperated from surgery, and I had access to her cable TV where I could catch the games. I was able to sync up the TV with my radio and that was it. I was done. I spend 2-3 hours each night sitting on the couch. I couldn’t look away!!
Even when I got home, the first couple games I literally sat on my couch and listened to the games, sans TV. Finally I got back in to the swing of radio and chores but it was a hard transition to come back!
Anyway, I’d definitely spend $200 a summer to have access to the games on my TV. Blackouts are such a bummer.
I bet a lot of people will finally “cut the cord” if baseball becomes streamable!
Anything that wrests control of Dodger games from Spectrum. I refuse to do business with them, so have been unable to watch many Dodger games this last decade.
Luckily, the Dodgers radio feed is excellent. That and Gameday have gotten me through.
Did you look at the other contenders? It was a loaded year for NL rookies.
Yeah, I did. As I said, I didn’t expect Imanaga to win. I just thought he’d receive more than just 4 votes.
To the surprise of nobody, Aaron Judge is the American League MVP.
Unanimous vote. Bobby Witt, Jr. was second, Soto third.
And, Ohtani is the NL MVP. Like Judge, a unanimous choice.
He’s the first MVP who was a full-time DH in his MVP season (though only because he didn’t pitch this year, while recovering from Tommy John surgery). He’s the second player ever to win the MVP in both leagues, joining Frank Robinson in that distinction.
Ohtani has won the MVP unanimously all three times he’s won it. Pretty certainly a Hall of Famer now if he just lasts three more seasons.
Aaron Judge becomes HOF eligible just by playing next year and I’d say he’s pretty much a lock too.
Judge is signed for seven more years, and nine for Ohtani. I wonder what kind of numbers they’ll be putting up as 38 year-olds. It will be interesting to see how long Ohtani can keep pitching…his elbow is shaky, but Eovaldi is still playing after multiple Tommy John surgeries.
It will help Judge’s durability if he is able to move out of center. They are still looking at Dominguez are their long term solution.
One thing that will really hurt the Yankees is if the Soto negotiations go too long. If it gets drawn out it’s hard to strategize at the other positions. 2 out of 3 outfielders are free agents.
The Kansas City Royals have acquired IF Jonathan India and OF Joey Wiener from the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for RHP Brady Singer.
ESPN’s headline on the trade was “Reds land Singer from Royals for India, Wiemer”, implying that the Reds got the better of the deal.
Singer seems to be a serviceable if unspectacular starter, and the Royals picked up some needed offense in the deal, so it doesn’t appear particularly one-sided.
Indeed. India will be the Royals’ new leadoff man, presumably batting just ahead of this season’s batting champ, Bobby Witt, Jr.
I just saw this about Witt this year:
Witt had 709 plate appearances this season. In 433 of those appearances, he came up with the bases empty. That is the most PAs with nobody on base since FanGraph started charting the category in 2002.
Even so, Witt still had 109 ribbies this season.
(Note that this stat does not include the first PA of a game.)
MLB has modified Tampa Bay’s schedule for 2025. The Rays will play 47 or their first 59 games at “home,” and then 69 of their last 103 on the road.
(“Home” in parentheses since they’re playing at Steinbrenner Field next season)
In other words: over half of their home games will be in April and May, before it gets too disgustingly swampy in Tampa.
So are there minor league games played during the summer in the Tampa area? Or are those stadiums primarily for spring training?