Can a team of Shohei Ohtanis take over baseball? He might take over the United States.
Here’s a retrospective about when Nolan Ryan was traded to the Angels.
Not only did the Angels sign Dillon Thomas, they signed Ryan Aguilar.
It’s official. The Mets hired Buck Showalter.
The Athletics might stay in Oakland after all. Oakland is trying. The Athletics are also closing in on Mark Kotsay as manager.
Guardians catching prospect Andres Melendez passed away suddenly at the age of 20.
I liked all the moves right after baseball ended, but the dec meetings were always something cool to look forward to every season. I hope these discussions happen soon and get resolved quickly. I have high hopes for this season.
The Winter Meetings were definitely an off season highlight.
Except for Del Taco Tony, who would get there whenever.
Ultimately Reagins’ lackadaisical attitude towards that year’s winter meetings allowed us to miss out on a bust of a contract for Carl Crawford. So…thanks Tony…I guess?
Austin Riley $4M a year 24 yrs old
WAR 6.1!! .303 avg 33hr’s 107rbi’s………… 💪  💪  💪  💪  👈 
Anthony Rendon $35M! a year 32 yrs old
WAR 0.0 WTF!!! 6hr’s .240 😫 
Bad scouting happened!!!
I hope Marine Layer doesn’t see this!!! 😆  😫 
In your case, bad parenting happened.
Dude – seriously- who hurt you?
He just wants to show us how incredibly clever and insightful he is.
Unfortunately for him, he’s failing badly.
Troll be trollin
Big Pill Popper leads the Hall of Fame voting
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=F2E5D8FC5199DFAF!39939&ithint=file,xlsx&authkey=!AK9u16pmWGGlQsI
They might as well put in the rest.
If they elect Ortiz (on a first ballot no less) I might agree. But, on a ‘positive’ note, Bonds hasn’t gained a net vote yet (Clemons gained one), so this doesn’t necessarily indicate much of a change.
Ortiz makes the least sense as the first obvious, proven cheater.
You can argue that Bonds and Clemens proved they were great without steroids. You can say A-rod’s superb defense wasn’t helped by steroids.
But Ortiz was a one trick pony whose only trick was undoubtedly largely aided by steroids. He should be the poster child for why steroids are bad. You can’t take any of his numbers at face value and he likely kept an honest competitor from getting an MLB gig.
We certainly agree. I am surprised that Ortiz is faring better with the 43 people (of more than 300+) that have cast a ballot than ARod or even Bonds/Clemons.
I have two ‘explanations’ – he never admitted it (so plausible deniability?) and he played on a number of Boston playoff teams. That’s it.
He’s always gotten a free pass. Cute nickname, big smile, and played on ESPN’s favorite team so they never mentioned the confirmed and obvious cheating (kind of like they treat Brady ha ha).
It sucks. This will be a black eye on the Hall.
I have read explanations for voting for him *because* he got better as he got older!
Ahhhhh …. The great sage Vernon Wells’ quote rings true every day ….
This is ridiculous . Just because we get buttercupped all the time doesn’t mean we’re prone to complete meltdowns. Right?
https://twitter.com/zachleft/status/1472051343531536384
Bahstan should be a close second the MFY.
Kicking off Christmas week this morning is fun styff, so here is where we will begin. Starting pitching is one starter shy still but maybe PTP believes like the box load of GM’s prior to him that we have enough to find the winning combo? If that be the case them, they will move on to SS and they could stay away from the bidding war for Correa along with Story and reconsider bring back Simmons on a 2 year deal to plug in some leather. That would work in our favor. Cheap signing with good defense.
Want to fool around and pretend we pick up Byant for RF and jettison Adell for a starter say Gray or Castillo? We then have an alternative with the lineup slotting Trout in the the #1 hole with his high OBP, followed by Bryant then Shohei and Redon and Walsh. Then Marsh, Catcher, Simba and Fletcher. Now that is a combo of speed, so pop, and leather making that a strong group.
GrammaBaseball has tested positive positive for Covid, e-mailed us Saturday evening and I go in today for my test. With these events the whole family pulled the plug on Christmas gathering for the second year in a row. I don’t know if I have it though.
Do not have all my shopping finished so I will purchase Gift Cards this year. Gramma has already taken care of a lot as confirmed by the Amazon and UPS trucks arriving daily.
Have yourself a Merry and Great Monday. Adios Amigos.
Sorry to hear about your canceled Christmas plans with your family. It sucks – Groundhog Day, Covid = rinse repeat rinse repeat on and on. On the other hand I always enjoy your Angels posts.
Totally sucks Grandpa. Hope you’re negative (ie not positive). If it’s any consolation, this new variant is everywhere. I know sooo many people who have tested positive in the last 5 days. And that’s before the gathering. Stay healthy.
According to Moderna, a triple, with the last shot being a 100 mg dose is the best protection. Since I’m old and immunocompromised, my dose was early and at the 100 mg level, so I’m very grateful, Even so, we are thinking about drastically curtailing our modest Christmas plans based on the new data. Stay safe, everyone. Complete your vaccinations.
Yeah I don’t know what to believe anymore. I will say that many of the people I know who have gotten it recently had been boostered. However, all of them had very minor disease and recovered within three or four days. The timing is awful but if this turns out to be a highly contagious strain that only produces mild disease, we may be on the road to getting past this pandemic
Some interesting numbers are starting to come out that are making me hopeful/thinking your last line is correct.
Again, that’s a business news site not political news so I’m a little more inclined to believe it.
I’m being extremely cautious in my optimism as the information is still very preliminary. However, most pandemics do end with a mutation to a highly contagious but far less virulent strain. Hopefully that is what we are seeing and we can just get a yearly booster and move on with our lives.
Same here. It is small sample size city at this time but I’ve been looking/hoping for that less killer strain for quite a while now and I’d love for this to be it.
I read a lot and based on what I read this new one is far more highly contagious than Delta but less severe, and everyone I know who’s had a breakthrough case more or less calls it a nasty two day flu, for what that’s worth.
Best of luck Grandpa. Bummer about no gathering.
Sorry to hear about the Covid. Stay safe and I hope you wife recovers quickly and completely.
Good luck, Grandpa. I caught it last July (post-vax, but pre-booster — obviously). I’m also high risk, and I’m crediting the vaccine (Pfizer in my case) for keeping my symptoms to nothing more than a bad cold. I suspect that without the vaccine, I’d have been hospitalized.
Sorry to hear you got it, but glad it wasn’t too severe.
Same with me. Had the first shot and the booster (Moderna), but caught Covid last month. Felt like a bad head cold with a nagging cough. I don’t want to think about what would have happened without the vaccine.
Best wishes for Grammie and the family.
The important part out of the way, I do like the idea of adding another plus bat to the lineup. I think we saw at the end of last year how quickly a deep lineup can turn into a shallow one.
Adding Bryant or even Pederson while adding a significant rotation piece would be dynamic IMO. Even great players like Trout and Ohtani are going to have slumps to go along with bumps and bruises. The more talent you can add on each side of the ball the better.
I agree. The length of the lineup is important, the feeling no matter who you’re facing, there’s another great hitter on deck, not Luis Rengifo.
or Simba.
My problem with both Bryant and Petersen is basically where to put them. How deep is that bench, with Upton already penciled in there? So, unless we have traded Adell or Marsh, I don’t see room for those particular pieces. A power bat with IF flexibility would be the best bet – but I find it more likely that, if we add any positions players (again barring a trade scenario), it is to add a SS and push Rengifo/Velasquez/Wade back to AAA or at least the bench. We need a backup catcher too (unless that is meant to be Ward).
You have to trade one of Marsh or Adell for a quality arm. In my off season piece, I traded Adell. Let’s say we package him with Detmers and get Gray or Mahle.
Rotation: Thor, Ohtani, Gray/Mahle, Sandoval, Suarez, Lorenzen
Lineup: Marsh, Trout, Ohtani, Rendon, Bryant/Joc, Walsh, Stassi, SS, Fletcher.
Obviously Joc has some pretty bad platoon splits so Taylor Ward would need to platoon with him. But that lineup is sick enough to carry a glove first SS and still wreak havoc.
I can follow the logic of this. It depends on them making a trade – and if they rather choose a ‘sign a FA starter’ route, then I don’t see any extra OF coming, especially at the cost of Bryant. Arte might pay out some money, but I find it highly unlikely to trade Adell and then still sign a 23M FA OF to replace Upton (like it or not).
One might get better value paying Corey Dickerson, if you want a good splits with Taylor Ward. The problem with other options (overpaying Joc Pederson despite a league average bat last year (outside the postseason) are that their splits are better against lefties (Pederson, McCutcheon). And to be fair, Ward doesn’t have bad splits, so he is perfectly capable of manning the 4th OF spot (5th if we don’t trade Adell) off the bench.
Yeah, my off season piece was written before $21 million was spent on Thor.
In one scenario I ran Joc plus Gray was about that same $21 million. Joc crushes righties but would sit vs. lefties, Gray is the type of dependable arm I really wanted.
Well, that checks out for Joc only if you look at career numbers. In 2020 it was the reverse (for some reason) and last year he more or less was equally league average (102 vs 97 tOPS+). Hard to know what to predict from Joc, but I don’t see that, during the regular season, he is really crushing anyone at any time.
Joc seams to have streaks where he gets hot for a week or two, then you don’t hear much about him the rest of the season. Kind of like Upton
To follow up on Upton, both in 2020 and 2021 he had much better numbers against lefties. If anyone needs situational playing time, it may be Upton.