The Angels have signed Gabriel Davalillo.
The Dodgers landed Roki Sasaki but they also agreed to a four year deal with Tanner Scott. There had been rumors of a secret deal between the Dodgers and Sasaki, but MLB says it didn’t happen.
Chad Wallach got a minor league deal with the Rangers. Niko Goodrum got his minor league deal with the Padres. Carlos Estevez is drawing a great deal of interest now that Tanner Scott is off the board.
Former Angel Jeff Torborg passed away at the age of 83.
Not baseball related, but we owe an unquantifiable debt to the man in the picture above. Thanks to the work of Dr. King and others like him we went to integrated schools, have friends and family of different races.
We, as a nation, really need to remember and honor him far more than we do.
Without the efforts of Dr. King and numerous other activists I probably would never have been born.
And really, imagine a world without me. Horrifying. /s
Agreed. When I started teaching U.S. History (without a degree in it, mind you), I quickly realized that MLK stands as one of the top three most influential figures in our nation’s history—arguably, of course. What makes him so remarkable, in my opinion, is that he wasn’t a president or a general. He was a local pastor who preached peace and equality, yet his message helped transform an entire nation. That kind of influence, coming from such humble roots, is part of what makes his legacy so enduring.
Mark Cuban once said, “If someone offered you a job that paid $25 million or more per year to stand in Market Square and let the entire city of Pittsburgh yell at you, would you take that job? That job is owning the Pirates. Why would they sell?”.
Cuban made this comment in reference to the Pittsburgh Pirates and their owner, Bob Nutting. Cuban has said that Nutting and other owners won’t sell their teams because they make money regardless of the team’s performance.
Exactly. Which is why I started my CBA series last lockout with the need for a floor.
There’s zero reason for any team’s payroll to be lower than the amount of MLB and revenue sharing they receive in a given year.
So – the Dodgers basically have brought the issue of a salary cap to the forefront. Even Yankees fans are pissed off. Could the Dodgers purposefully be bringing the issue to the forefront with their over-the-top signings? By taking things to the extreme, the Dodgers have actually created unprecedented attention to and support for a salary cap.
Of course, the Union will never accept a cap without a massive fight. But even the Union must see how the Dodgers ridiculousness is terrible for baseball.
Yes just like they did in 1994?
I always though the 1994/95 strike was an attempt by owners to break the union.
Only after they cancelled the World Series and tried to start the 1995 season with Replacement players.
If there is a salary cap, the Doyers will still have an advantage in that they’ll have so much money that they’ll be able to run farm systems that outpace all other markets. Like they do now, I suppose.
It must say something about the current state of MLB pitching that Pivetta’s spectacular penchant for mediocrity was good for 9.2 WAR over four seasons. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/pivetni01.shtml
Or about “mediocrity.”
Blue Jays saved us from Santanders QO.
Lets gooooooo!!
Cohen’s turn to bring back Alonso and then we can collectively breathe a big sigh of relief.
Nick Pivetta is still out there, and since Trout and Rendon are still on the team we can’t really be rebuilding, so might as well sign him right?
I would shocked to see Arte sign a second SP. Feel confident that the Polar Bear will be the final bullet we need to dodge.
Also, Silent C has earned himself a long look this season. Silly to block him and the rest of the young pitchers in the pipeline
Feels like Pivetta will go back to the Red Sox. Who in the right mind would dish out a compensation pick…Perry on line 3
Bregman to the Dodgers, hopefully
Totally forgot about him, dang
HUGE! Of the 3 stooges (Santander, Alonso, Bregman), he was rated my worst
Anyone predicting a crazy move by Perry this week? All the hype about Dodgers does not amuse Arte who rightfully despises and is jealous of them. His big headline was the Kikuchi signing, and blue negated that attention couple of days later, getting the best FA pitcher on the market. Arte thinking I won’t let them make me irrelevant in the LA market. Ok’s Perry to make a big $ splash. Alonso to Angels 5yrs 35mil per.,Polar bear turns out to be the ICEE bear with a slushy cold bat. Nightmare
Evidently STL is getting really ansty about trading Arenado.
Cool, tell them for Rendon!
No. The “reported” offer to him was 2 X 25.
The “big splash” of the 2024-2025 offseason has already happened.
What Perry has left in his “bag of broken dreams” is dumpster diving on the Island of “Misfit Arms, Bats, and Gloves”.
I’m getting flashbacks to the Mo Vaughn debacle! Please Perry, don’t go here.
Enjoy the holiday everyone. Sadly, the Dodgers have made the outcome of the MLB season secondary with their recent moves. Barring anything bizarre happening, the Dodgers will be winning their division and in the WS from the NL. Not just in 2025 but likely until 2027. Yes, there is an 8-12 percent chance of chaos theory changing that —- but is a small margin like that why anyone watches baseball? And what happens if and when the Mets react by deciding to far outspend everyone else for second?
At least the Angels play in the AL.
The best laid plans of mice and salary-deferring GMs often go awry. Plus it will be fun rooting against them in 2025.
Yep. Hate watching baseball will be fun for a couple of years. Then a big chunk of people will get bored and go do something else.
I am almost certain there’s a contingent of baseball minds out there right now taking comfort in the fact that the Yankees used to win constantly for decades and baseball thrived.
Ignoring the fact that kids used to also enjoy rolling a hoop down the street with a stick… but you never see that now.
The fans should strike in 2026 so both sides get the message.
There’s many examples of the “best team on paper” not winning it all.
There’s minimal – if any examples of the worst team on paper winning it all.
I’m not sure how others feel, but having the best team on paper is a great place to start the season from. 🤣
2002 Angels picked by many to finish last in the AL West…
The angels can handle those bums. I’m not buying into their bs. They’re one ohtani injury away from being average.
Apparently the MLB is happy as a pig in shit with the idea that the Mets, Yankees, Doyers, Phillies and Red Sox will be very competitive with each other. There’s nothing wrong here cause the Central teams and Wild Card teams will still “make it” and have the chance to lose in two games to teams with a payroll three times bigger than theirs. They apparently think this is awesome and will captivate the nation because BIG NAMES COLIDE!
I am looking forward to doing a bunch of other stuff instead.
At this point I have no idea what fans in Detroit, Cincinnati, Tampa, Baltimore, Cleveland, St Louis, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Miami etc are supposed to do with themselves for the next fifteen years. I guess be the Washington Generals? Probably not even that, the Generals sometimes threaten to win but lose in the end. So that’s more the Angels, Blue Jays, Mariners, Astros, Rangers, Giants, Nationals, Cubs, Braves… the other teams are even more hopeless.
Who the fk is gonna pay billions of dollars to the owners to get an expansion/relocation team into this shit show? You can add in a salary floor to force dicks like Nutting to spend but if nothing prevents the Yankees from running up a 500M payroll with 30% of it deferred then who gives a shit?
I think if apathy starts showing in pretty huge markets like the secondary teams in Chicago/LA, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta then we may finally see the two shittiest constituencies in sports, the MLB Owners and MLBPA, finally see the light. But that will take years, and this is a group of people that decided to fk off and have a strike after the pandemic. I am still pissed at that and haven’t gone to an MLB game since.
These people all suck. I am very good at a lot of fun things. It won’t surprise me at all if neither myself, my brothers or our kids give more than a small shit about baseball in ten years and we’re all far more aware of UFC fighters, artists and musicians, NFL/NHL teams, maybe even (sigh) EPL “futball” teams. We all just have a lot of other shit we can do with our time than watch 162 three hour collections of gambling and skin condition drug ads in preparation for another New York v LA championship. In the winter we NEED sports to watch. In the summer we don’t.
So keep standing strong on that salary cap MLBPA. Don’t let the fact that half the MLB can’t even find anyone desperate to put your teams on TV anymore tell you anything. Gotta protect the “little guy” from “management” after all.
Right on, Gitcho! Baseball has totally missed the fact that the NFL is kicking their ass for one major reason – every team in the NFL (and their fans) knows that they are only a decent QB away from being a contender. It;s the parity, Stupid! The NFL formula of Salary control, lack of guaranteed pay and free agency has produced the most popular (and profitable) league of all. They’ve already sold their soul to the bookies, so why not follow the NFL down this road too.
AND…massive revenue sharing.
I believe the demise of baseball was predicted when the Yankees were running the table on free agents in the 80’s and 90’s.
Then we had the demise of the NBA in the era of Magic, Bird, LeBron shopping his services, and the players recruiting “super teams”.
We have the demise of college athletics due to NIL.
Finally, we have Part Duex of the demise of baseball due to the drunk and disorderly spending of the LAD.
The odds are that the MLB will set an attendance record in 2025.
I totally, 100% believe MLB, that there wasn’t a deal already in place for Sasaki to The Dodgers. Well, except I don’t believe a word of their “investigation”.
Per mlb.com
Nick Pivetta, SP
Best fit: Angels
Pivetta’s market has been complicated by a variety of factors, chief among them the Draft-pick compensation attached to him after he turned down the Red Sox’s one-year, $21.05 million qualifying offer. Although the right-hander has shown intriguing upside, the list of teams willing to give him a multiyear contract and forfeit one or more Draft picks to sign a pitcher who has never posted a sub-4.00 ERA in his eight-year career is likely short. We’ll go with the Angels, who have added Yusei Kikuchi and Kyle Hendricks in free agency this offseason but are still projected to have a bottom-10 rotation. As a team that was neither a Competitive Balance Tax payor nor a revenue-sharing recipient in 2024, the Halos would need to forfeit their second-highest pick in this year’s Draft (No. 46) and $500,000 from their international bonus pool to sign Pivetta, which isn’t overly steep.
Super hard pass on this idea. Pivetta isn’t a top of the rotation guy.
Not worth big bucks or losing draft capital.
Neither was Thor or Anderson
This reads like : “The Angels. The Angels are completely inept in their front office, so much so that they will give up a draft pick AND 500k of international signing bonus money just for a 5.00 era pitcher. “
How about Nooooooo.
Hope to plan a trip back to the Black Hills, South Dakota soon (Worth a visit, beautiful part of the country Spearfish Canyon, Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, Crazy Horse, lots worth seeing). Been there several times, always remember the men who carved Mount Rushmore had a baseball team and were huge baseball fans. When they hired guys they wanted them to be good at baseball….. that’s what Arte and Perry should do, sign more guys really good at baseball….not ditch diggers with 5.00 era’s.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/72905/meet-mount-rushmore-baseball-team
I’m headed to Cooperstown this summer. Can’t wait for this trip. Probably spend 2 or 3 days there then down to New York City to visit some of my wife’s relatives. Mount Rushmore is in my list. But the only other trip I have planned right now is Japan in about 3 1/2 or 4 years. I think I might try to learn conversational Japanese so when people try to converse with my wife, and she stares at them with a blank look, old Colonel Sanders looking white guy can converse with them and translate for my half Japanese wife! 😆 We were talking about this yesterday.
But I digress, I don’t want The Angels signing ANY free agent with a QO tied to them. 2025 WWW70WWWH!!!!!
Will you be meeting up with Rocky Raccoon?
Only if he’s reading a Gideon Bible.
