Happy trails, Adrian Beltre. Announces his retirement, and will (and should) be a first-ballot HOFer, I think.
AB had a LOT of fun playing baseball. They should put Elvis Andrus trying to touch his head on his Cooperstown plaque.
As a Mariners fan, I went from really looking forward to the offseason to completely dreading it now. First we get the scandal that doesn’t seem to be going away, not we got fleeced by the Yankees and lost our best pitcher. Next year is going to be awesome!
Thanks for all the fun, Señor Beltré. The way he got better into his 30s is almost unique in the game.
And so the Yankees get Paxton from the Mariners for 3 minor leaguers. Screw the Yankees. And the Mariners should have traded them Cano.
I guess that it was inevitable that the biggest budget teams would also use that financial power to become the best run organizations but sometimes it takes the fun out of hating on them…
If it helps, the top prospect they traded off was Justus Sheffield, who New York only had because of the big contract they gave some guy named Andrew Miller before trading him.
Cashman has been an excellent GM for years. Yes the Yankees spend, but their talent evaluation, development, and front office decision making has also been quite good for his whole tenure.
And yeah, it burns my ass something fierce to say that. But it’s true.
I don’t mind as much when they trade for talent, and with their farm system they can do that now. But damn, and I saw today that the Yankees are trying to talk Harper into playing firstbase for them.
It is true, and it also burns my ass. But Cashman should be a first ballot HOFer in Cooperstown’s GM wing.
“When I said that, I forgot how much I like money.”
'I’ve always been the guy who does whatever he can to win for his team."
As long as it does’t require running out a ground ball, anyway.
After witnessing Machado in the postseason, I don’t want him on my team or any team I like. I can forgive the lazy parts – few players run out every ground ball, and you can make a case that they shouldn’t. But trying to injure Aguilar is freaking awful. Machado may be a good player, but he appears to be a shit person.
Yeah I think he means more the stepping on people’s ankles and dirty slides part of that.
Anyone else seeing what the Orioles are doing this offseason?
They’ve basically plundered Jeff Luhnow’s Astros front office for their GM and assistant GM positions to bring the Baltimore analytics operation into the 21st century. (And yeah, a lot of those guys did the same work for the Cardinals back in the day, before heading to Houston.)
It’s gonna be fascinating to see how what they do translates to a division like the AL East. But I’m rooting for them.
Good for them…we’ll see how it works out for them in 5 years or so. Changing the system doesn’t happen over one offseason.
Oh, absolutely. Luhnow took over in Houston after leaving St. Louis following the Cardinals memorable World Series win that year. He took a bunch of folks from the St. Louis analytics department with him.
And then Houston continued to absolutely suck for like 3 seasons before it all came together.
And Luhnow also had plenty of misses, too. Mark Appel with the first overall pick in 2013. Letting JD Martinez walk away without any compensation. Trading Mike Foltynewicz for Evan Gattis. Still though, strong front office, and it’ll be interesting to see how the folks who are joining the Orioles, like Sig Mejdal, can translate it.
Oakland unveiled their new ballpark today. Hopefully post-game fireworks technology will have improved enough by then to sufficiently entertain the hobbits that will live in it with flaming dragons.
As for the old park? It’s fittingly being converted into a giant toilet seat.
It’s a cool-looking stadium rendering…but there’s no batter’s eye. That may not fly.
Are those the cargo port cranes next to the stadium? If so, this could be a candidate for the “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” thread.
Having been there many times I can say that it is far from an inspiration.
It does have to be tough for Oakland to find two of their three major league sports teams leaving in the near future.
Yea, the three different drawings all show just open space where that should be. They will need to come up with something for that.