I remember someone once commented on Angela Merkel's no-nonsense wardrobe and she looked them in the face and told them directly "I'm a public servant, not a fashion model."
I doubt it was mentioned again, certainly not by that dude.
Semien was maybe the best all-around player last season outside of Ohtani -- he's a big loss. But an offensive bounce back from Chapman could offset Semien's lost production.
I think the Jays think they can do for Kikuchi what they did for Ray. Kikuchi's max velo is pretty good -- we'll see.
MLB Network had Bryant slotted in at 1B, which makes sense with his injury history and the conditions at Coors putting more physical strain on position players.
Red Sox seem content to go at it with last year's over achieving team, so my hopes are not high for the season. And Chris Sale is already injured again. I'm starting to understand his reluctance to get vaccinated. The needle prick is likely to put him on the DL for 6 weeks.
Seriously? My needle prick gave me fever and pain for a day, and it was gone after I took ibuprofen. And I'm not a professional athlete at my physical peak.
Why does that guy get injured so much? His mechanics are on point.
In 2015, I bought a 2000 Toyota Camry with ~76,000 miles on it (it's very similar to the legendary 1999 Toyota Corolla; https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/hou/6565526716.html for those not familiar) fast-forward seven years, and It's only at ~112,000 miles. I nicknamed it "The Church Lady"
But what would that be for Tacoma with such low mileage?
Oh man, I could've written that Craigslist ad. I have a 1999 Toyota Camry, have owned it for almost eighteen years, put over 300K miles on it, and it runs like a dream. I bought it for college. My kids may learn to drive in it.
I think our pal was cheated. I've seen where these things arrive to your circular driveway in a light, romantic, dry, wind-free snow with a gigantic bow on top (in TWO colors!).
I bought a 2011 Ford Edge in 2020. It was just under 100,000 miles and two years later, even though we use it to pull out camper around all summer it's only at 105k miles.
Matthew Boyd is indeed dinger-prone, but one other significant knock on him is the flexor-tendon surgery he had in September. $5.2 million is pocket change at this point, but he's still probably a post All-Star break pitcher in a realistic scenario.
Is it... better, that Cashman was pretty straightforward about how they arbitraged Chapman's DV legal exposure to turn a bag of used balls into Gleyber Torres and then resigned him at market price not once but twice?
Nice read as always. Went well with my insomnia Corned Beef Carbonara. I really don't understand Schwarber and Bryant re the team who signed him. It has been the most entertaining signing period in a while though.
I make my own parsley sauce and cook my own corned beef. Then I steam my own cabbage. I use any leftover cabbage to make altkilt wat. Red sauce? Check Jonathan Swift. That's strictly for poached babies, which I don't even eat on St. Patrick's Day because children are horrible.
No one knows what goes on in the minds of most of the team owners. Does this make their fans think they're trying? Think this is juuuust good enough to make the expanded playoffs?
If I did the math right - bid IF - then the spread between what LA is paying Freddie and what ATL is paying Olson is $6m per year. With the lost dollar value of the potential cheap labor of the prospects that has to be close to a wash for Liberty Media and arguably they made the move in spite of and not because financial issues.
Right. But all that means it’s a baseball move, not a financial issue. It works or doesn’t based on on field performance rather than John Malone’s tax returns.
Could be, but Atlanta beat writers have been opining for a while that he wanted to return if only the club would go from 5 to 6 years on the deal. And the Dodgers' offer isn't exactly a Manny Machado or Bryce Harper like contract.
Dammit, I switched tabs to check a Freeman-Pujols comp, and the browser refreshed and ate my reply. At 6/$162MM, Olson might be a slightly better deal for the Braves long term, but you pay the franchise icon and eat the last year or two of the deal if it goes south. You're paying him through his age-37 season, not 44 like Pujols.
But this deal doesn't result in Liberty Media making more money. There is no showing that the choice between Olson at $22 without the prospects or Freeman at $27 with them is driven by any financial restrictions now or on future spending.
I've been hyper critical of Liberty Media since they acquired the Braves. I've criticized plenty of their choices that were driven by bottom line financials. But this one doesn't fit that mold.
Olson became a regular in 2018. Since then, the bWAR comparison:
2018 3.7 (Olson) vs. 4.8 (Freeman)
2019 4.8 vs. 4.0
2020 1.0 vs. 3.2
2021 5.8 vs. 4.5
OPS+ would tell the same basic story.
Olson is four+ years younger.
This seems to me to be a pre Messersmith / McNally straight baseball deal. It may or may not work. But it doesn't seem to be done to save John Malone and the shareholders of Liberty dollar one.
(P.S. the reported $111M in operating (pre tax, amortization, interest payment, etc.) profit already includes income from The Battery real estate projects so I think you are in error suggesting that there is other baseball adjacent revenues to be added.)
The bet seems to be that Olson at age 28 is better than, not equal to, Freeman at age 32. Seems like a solid bet to me. And one that gets better when it is 29 / 33 and from 30 / 34 on a landslide.
So just keeping Freddie isn't keeping MVP level performance going forward.
So yeah, I agree that it was a straight baseball deal - after this season, the salary differences are a rounding error. I’m just not sure that there’s enough of an edge to make it worth bypassing making Freddie a Brave For Life, and as stated, the package used to get Freeman could have been used to get help elsewhere.
Is the lede in Craig’s eventual obit the Handsome Manager rankings or the Dog Fister typo he himself mocks? Or maybe “father of Empress Anna the First, leader of the Global Armada & ruler of Long Chile.” I suspect the comment about Nightingale’s tweet was tongue in cheek.
The Blue Jays and Dodgers are must-see teams going into this coming season -- they are exciting and full of top talent.
I'd put the Mets, White Sox, Braves, and possibly, the Astros in the second tier, depending on whether Correa re-signs with them and Verlander comes back strong.
The Trout and Ohtani tandem could be as close as we'll get to the fun we saw during the steroid era.
I'm not renewing MLB.tv this year - partly to force me to not default to watching the Red Sox so much. I figure Atl / LA etc. will be the national games in Apple + and whoever else has rights this year. I will get the radio feed subscription though so I can fall asleep to west coast games.
Is it just me or does the Craigsters seem chipper this week?
Obviously the lockout is over and baseball is back, which automatically has improved the mood of most avid fans of the sport. And Craig has really been in need of a pick-me-up with the recent problems in his personal life.
But cynical Craig is good too. We might need some major MLB gambling related news to spice things up and cause Craig to write another scathing rant. He can once again write about how gambling is ruining professional sports and how US dystopia is right around the corner.
I saw that stupid tweet about dressing up for Congress at some point yesterday. Sadly I was in an all day in person meeting but the reply drafted in my head was something like "Hey buddy why don't you go to Kyiv and deliver him one of your extra suits. I'm sure you could afford a donation. But they'd have to let the pants way out around the balls to accommodate Zelenesky."
It’s reached the point where I’m openly rooting for the Red Sox to go 0-9 or 0-10 in Toronto this season, and miss the expanded postseason by a couple games, and I wonder if there’s a chapter in your book that covers spite-rooting against your favorite team because they’re a bunch of jackwagons who deserve failure.
Sale's already hurt, again. I'll be surprised if they get 20 starts from him this year. He's about as durable as your Grandma's Hummel collection. And yeah - I'm making a point to watch other teams more this year and the Red Sox less. They are sort of approaching Patriots / Belichick territory with me. One thing Craig's book did for me was allow me to feel better about wanting to watch Mookie and the Dodgers more.
Was it better when we didn't know what kind of jackwagons these guys were? Was it better to not know, and just root for them as the players they were on the field? Or is it better now, even if it drives us to spite-root against teams and players?
Honestly, I don't know. It's certainly become more complex, and I can't find myself rooting for these idiots--I'm not able to make that separation.
This also extends to *a lot* of people in my life, not just distant stars/celebs, including some family. Their behavior since the Orange Rectum was voted in, made worse by their behavior as a result of the pandemic has permanently changed my opinion of a lot of folks in my extended family and friends circle.
The extension they signed Sale to never made sense from Day 1. He was literally injured at the time they made it, and they knew they had Betts coming up.
One other notable thing related to the Zelensky address to Congress is the number of GOP congresspersons who post-speech chastised President Biden for not doing enough for Ukraine when these were the same legislators who either didn't vote to impeach Trump for extorting Ukraine and withholding aid and weapons or voted to acquit him. Whistleblower Alexander Vindman makes a good case that such lawmakers bear responsibility for the current war on Ukraine:
Man, the level of obliviousness needed not to realize that a battlefield CoC might wear vaguely military-looking garb, especially when he's been photographed repeatedly in camo flak jackets.
Clearly someone imagines himself as the kind of general who not only leads from the rear, but from so far in the rear that he can't even hear the artillery. 🙄
Superglueing Schiff's tweeting fingers together would be a kindness to him. Also his lips so he can't dictate that obliviousness to anyone else.
Happy Purim! Happy St. Patrick's Day! Happy March Madness! And Happy First Spring Training Games!
Small deal in Metsland: Chasen Shreve to a minor league deal, to compete for a bullpen spot.
So it's absolutely clear the Braves could have afforded Freeman. Clearly a case of cutting off your nose to save money on the face. Dodgers are gonna rake!
Remind me if I am ever invited to address Congress to show up in one of those tuxedo t-shirts, just to see the reaction.
Or spending a ton of money on athletic facilities because the rich alumni want a football team that doesn't suck?
I remember someone once commented on Angela Merkel's no-nonsense wardrobe and she looked them in the face and told them directly "I'm a public servant, not a fashion model."
I doubt it was mentioned again, certainly not by that dude.
Semien was maybe the best all-around player last season outside of Ohtani -- he's a big loss. But an offensive bounce back from Chapman could offset Semien's lost production.
I think the Jays think they can do for Kikuchi what they did for Ray. Kikuchi's max velo is pretty good -- we'll see.
MLB Network had Bryant slotted in at 1B, which makes sense with his injury history and the conditions at Coors putting more physical strain on position players.
Red Sox seem content to go at it with last year's over achieving team, so my hopes are not high for the season. And Chris Sale is already injured again. I'm starting to understand his reluctance to get vaccinated. The needle prick is likely to put him on the DL for 6 weeks.
Seriously? My needle prick gave me fever and pain for a day, and it was gone after I took ibuprofen. And I'm not a professional athlete at my physical peak.
Why does that guy get injured so much? His mechanics are on point.
The "new" truck is a 2012 Toyot ... man after my own heart.
In 2015, I bought a 2000 Toyota Camry with ~76,000 miles on it (it's very similar to the legendary 1999 Toyota Corolla; https://www.craigslist.org/about/best/hou/6565526716.html for those not familiar) fast-forward seven years, and It's only at ~112,000 miles. I nicknamed it "The Church Lady"
But what would that be for Tacoma with such low mileage?
From someone who lives in the same state as Paper, thank you!
Snowstorm? What's that?
Oh man, I could've written that Craigslist ad. I have a 1999 Toyota Camry, have owned it for almost eighteen years, put over 300K miles on it, and it runs like a dream. I bought it for college. My kids may learn to drive in it.
Shouldn’t something like a truck delivery require some sort of signature when it arrives? Just to make sure it got to the right location?
(Not to mention the noise issue of dropping off something that big in the middle of the night…)
And I hope you put all the pieces together to figure out why your dog was up at 3:33
My yappy little dog would’ve sensed the commotion on the driveway (despite being in deep slumber) and woken up the entire neighborhood
I think our pal was cheated. I've seen where these things arrive to your circular driveway in a light, romantic, dry, wind-free snow with a gigantic bow on top (in TWO colors!).
I bought a 2011 Ford Edge in 2020. It was just under 100,000 miles and two years later, even though we use it to pull out camper around all summer it's only at 105k miles.
Matthew Boyd is indeed dinger-prone, but one other significant knock on him is the flexor-tendon surgery he had in September. $5.2 million is pocket change at this point, but he's still probably a post All-Star break pitcher in a realistic scenario.
Do all the Yankees haters turn their attention to the Dodgers now?
Shouldn't we all love the large payroll teams?
so many quenstions ...
(personal note: if we are Covid neg we leave the U.K. tomorrow and I will return to entering the thread much later in the day. ty)
Maybe the Dodgers looked into Bauer's soul and saw goodness like a former US president did with a current mass murdered.
Is it... better, that Cashman was pretty straightforward about how they arbitraged Chapman's DV legal exposure to turn a bag of used balls into Gleyber Torres and then resigned him at market price not once but twice?
I hated the sequencing in 2016, but I understood it. Signing and resigning him was just gross.
Do you really think the violations re: international players is just the one club?
Absolutely not, I still hate the Yankees. They are at the top of my (our) baseball hate list.
Signed, Mets fans everywhere
Red Sox fans are right there with you.
Still? Which team has had a better record this century, and which team has only won one WS for the entirety of it?
I'm capable of hating multiple teams at the same time. You see, I'm from Philly. Want me to hate someone? Give me a name.
No, because the Yankees win the World Series and the Dodgers lose them. Yankees, 27 wins, 13 losses. Dodgers: 7 wins, 14 losses.
Nice read as always. Went well with my insomnia Corned Beef Carbonara. I really don't understand Schwarber and Bryant re the team who signed him. It has been the most entertaining signing period in a while though.
I initially read that as “Corned Beef Calcaterra“ - which I’m guessing is served with fava beans and a nice Chianti?
Corned Beef alla Calcaterra.
Definitely served in a red sauce.
I make my own parsley sauce and cook my own corned beef. Then I steam my own cabbage. I use any leftover cabbage to make altkilt wat. Red sauce? Check Jonathan Swift. That's strictly for poached babies, which I don't even eat on St. Patrick's Day because children are horrible.
"Corned Beef" Calcaterra was Craig's frat name
So what did they call him over at the sorority house?
Something with awe and reverence, if he was lucky.
Were you trying to prolong the insomnia?
No one knows what goes on in the minds of most of the team owners. Does this make their fans think they're trying? Think this is juuuust good enough to make the expanded playoffs?
If I did the math right - bid IF - then the spread between what LA is paying Freddie and what ATL is paying Olson is $6m per year. With the lost dollar value of the potential cheap labor of the prospects that has to be close to a wash for Liberty Media and arguably they made the move in spite of and not because financial issues.
Right. But all that means it’s a baseball move, not a financial issue. It works or doesn’t based on on field performance rather than John Malone’s tax returns.
Could be, but Atlanta beat writers have been opining for a while that he wanted to return if only the club would go from 5 to 6 years on the deal. And the Dodgers' offer isn't exactly a Manny Machado or Bryce Harper like contract.
Perhaps, but now he's only got a forty minute drive to Burrito King. I'd sign for that.
By the way, how long have Pico and Alvarado been out on patrol?
But he is no longer just down the road from the Big Chicken in Marietta. Win some, lose some.
Only a short walk from the stadium to Burrito King.
And now I will learn to spell Olson!
Dammit, I switched tabs to check a Freeman-Pujols comp, and the browser refreshed and ate my reply. At 6/$162MM, Olson might be a slightly better deal for the Braves long term, but you pay the franchise icon and eat the last year or two of the deal if it goes south. You're paying him through his age-37 season, not 44 like Pujols.
But this deal doesn't result in Liberty Media making more money. There is no showing that the choice between Olson at $22 without the prospects or Freeman at $27 with them is driven by any financial restrictions now or on future spending.
I've been hyper critical of Liberty Media since they acquired the Braves. I've criticized plenty of their choices that were driven by bottom line financials. But this one doesn't fit that mold.
Olson became a regular in 2018. Since then, the bWAR comparison:
2018 3.7 (Olson) vs. 4.8 (Freeman)
2019 4.8 vs. 4.0
2020 1.0 vs. 3.2
2021 5.8 vs. 4.5
OPS+ would tell the same basic story.
Olson is four+ years younger.
This seems to me to be a pre Messersmith / McNally straight baseball deal. It may or may not work. But it doesn't seem to be done to save John Malone and the shareholders of Liberty dollar one.
(P.S. the reported $111M in operating (pre tax, amortization, interest payment, etc.) profit already includes income from The Battery real estate projects so I think you are in error suggesting that there is other baseball adjacent revenues to be added.)
The bet seems to be that Olson at age 28 is better than, not equal to, Freeman at age 32. Seems like a solid bet to me. And one that gets better when it is 29 / 33 and from 30 / 34 on a landslide.
So just keeping Freddie isn't keeping MVP level performance going forward.
So yeah, I agree that it was a straight baseball deal - after this season, the salary differences are a rounding error. I’m just not sure that there’s enough of an edge to make it worth bypassing making Freddie a Brave For Life, and as stated, the package used to get Freeman could have been used to get help elsewhere.
FWIW I think the signing bonus being so front loaded in Olson's deal means that even this year with Olson's $15m salary makes the payout pretty close.
To be fair to Bob Nightengale, he did resend that tweet with the word "NEVER" added, which changes the meaning somewhat.
"Freddie Freeman may be gone from Atlanta, but he will NEVER be forgotten. His number should be retired one day with a glorious ceremony in Atlanta."
Curiously, Nightengale hasn't deleted the other tweet yet.
Is the lede in Craig’s eventual obit the Handsome Manager rankings or the Dog Fister typo he himself mocks? Or maybe “father of Empress Anna the First, leader of the Global Armada & ruler of Long Chile.” I suspect the comment about Nightingale’s tweet was tongue in cheek.
Craig's obit will be a parody of Loren Eiseley's: "I loved the net, but could not stay."
Yeah, Nightengale doesn't seem capable of "My name is Freddie Freeman, king of kings, look upon my works ye mighty and despair" level of reflection.
"Flags fly forever!"
"Not so fast, my friend!"--Percy Shelley
The Blue Jays and Dodgers are must-see teams going into this coming season -- they are exciting and full of top talent.
I'd put the Mets, White Sox, Braves, and possibly, the Astros in the second tier, depending on whether Correa re-signs with them and Verlander comes back strong.
The Trout and Ohtani tandem could be as close as we'll get to the fun we saw during the steroid era.
I'm not renewing MLB.tv this year - partly to force me to not default to watching the Red Sox so much. I figure Atl / LA etc. will be the national games in Apple + and whoever else has rights this year. I will get the radio feed subscription though so I can fall asleep to west coast games.
Craig: Thanks for staying up late or getting up early? I start my day with Calcaterra and ended it with
Posnanski!
Is it just me or does the Craigsters seem chipper this week?
Obviously the lockout is over and baseball is back, which automatically has improved the mood of most avid fans of the sport. And Craig has really been in need of a pick-me-up with the recent problems in his personal life.
But cynical Craig is good too. We might need some major MLB gambling related news to spice things up and cause Craig to write another scathing rant. He can once again write about how gambling is ruining professional sports and how US dystopia is right around the corner.
I saw that stupid tweet about dressing up for Congress at some point yesterday. Sadly I was in an all day in person meeting but the reply drafted in my head was something like "Hey buddy why don't you go to Kyiv and deliver him one of your extra suits. I'm sure you could afford a donation. But they'd have to let the pants way out around the balls to accommodate Zelenesky."
Bryant is chasing a titl……large contract ?
It’s reached the point where I’m openly rooting for the Red Sox to go 0-9 or 0-10 in Toronto this season, and miss the expanded postseason by a couple games, and I wonder if there’s a chapter in your book that covers spite-rooting against your favorite team because they’re a bunch of jackwagons who deserve failure.
Sale's already hurt, again. I'll be surprised if they get 20 starts from him this year. He's about as durable as your Grandma's Hummel collection. And yeah - I'm making a point to watch other teams more this year and the Red Sox less. They are sort of approaching Patriots / Belichick territory with me. One thing Craig's book did for me was allow me to feel better about wanting to watch Mookie and the Dodgers more.
Was it better when we didn't know what kind of jackwagons these guys were? Was it better to not know, and just root for them as the players they were on the field? Or is it better now, even if it drives us to spite-root against teams and players?
Honestly, I don't know. It's certainly become more complex, and I can't find myself rooting for these idiots--I'm not able to make that separation.
This also extends to *a lot* of people in my life, not just distant stars/celebs, including some family. Their behavior since the Orange Rectum was voted in, made worse by their behavior as a result of the pandemic has permanently changed my opinion of a lot of folks in my extended family and friends circle.
Which I don't get. He's their ace pitcher! They can't work on his mechanics or conditioning?
The extension they signed Sale to never made sense from Day 1. He was literally injured at the time they made it, and they knew they had Betts coming up.
One other notable thing related to the Zelensky address to Congress is the number of GOP congresspersons who post-speech chastised President Biden for not doing enough for Ukraine when these were the same legislators who either didn't vote to impeach Trump for extorting Ukraine and withholding aid and weapons or voted to acquit him. Whistleblower Alexander Vindman makes a good case that such lawmakers bear responsibility for the current war on Ukraine:
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2022/03/15/they-have-blood-their/
Are we still waiting for Republicans not to be pandering, hypocritical pieces of shit? Good luck with that. Like the song says:
One has no rules
Is not precise
One never acts
The same way twice
One spurns no device
Practicing the art of the possible....
Man, the level of obliviousness needed not to realize that a battlefield CoC might wear vaguely military-looking garb, especially when he's been photographed repeatedly in camo flak jackets.
Clearly someone imagines himself as the kind of general who not only leads from the rear, but from so far in the rear that he can't even hear the artillery. 🙄
Superglueing Schiff's tweeting fingers together would be a kindness to him. Also his lips so he can't dictate that obliviousness to anyone else.
They're hoping everyone forgets. The media appears to be going along with it.
The media is so universally awful now. It makes me want to vomit.
Happy Purim! Happy St. Patrick's Day! Happy March Madness! And Happy First Spring Training Games!
Small deal in Metsland: Chasen Shreve to a minor league deal, to compete for a bullpen spot.
So it's absolutely clear the Braves could have afforded Freeman. Clearly a case of cutting off your nose to save money on the face. Dodgers are gonna rake!
Remind me if I am ever invited to address Congress to show up in one of those tuxedo t-shirts, just to see the reaction.