2017-2018 Hot Stove

Welcoming @Angels star @Andrelton Simmons to @wembleystadium this evening! 👋#COYS pic.twitter.com/RAjstPx2bW

— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) January 31, 2018

andrelton to spurs

Chicago Cubs Co-Owner Todd Ricketts Named New RNC Finance Chairman

next GOP memo controversy will center on Kyle Schwarber

A most welcome development: MLB announces that all major-league ballparks will have protective netting extending to at least the far ends of both dugouts by Opening Day.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 1, 2018

last ballgame i went to with my kids we were on third base line. i brought my glove with me, which my kids thought was cool, but they didn't know it was so that i could stop the ball hitting their face if necessary. every LH batter and my ears pricked up like fuckin Scooby doo

from the head of the CAA agency

A rising tide... @MLB_PLAYERS pic.twitter.com/jwkoiiI0yt

— Brodie Van Wagenen (@bvanwagenen) February 2, 2018

perhaps the 1200 alpha males at the pinnacle of their profession should just physically beat the shit out of the 30 owners

Should happen across all professions tbh

^^

"Two men enter boardroom, only one leaves."

BULLPEN CARTS

https://www.sbnation.com/2018/2/2/16964690/mlb-bullpen-cart-return-2018

Good job Miami

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article198019154.html

we have the billionaires we deserve.

happy marlins 25th anniversary

Well gee he lost 140 million of his own money on the sale, what more does the greedy Miami public want?

Bartolo Colon: minor-league deal with Texas

...and now the rest of the dominoes will fall

lol

are you talking about pizza shops in the Dallas-Ft Worth region?

LOL

nice

Scott:

I’m getting pretty annoyed at the lack of free agent signings. Should I be blaming the owners/front offices for being greedy, or the players for negotiating a bad CBA? Also, the NBA guarantees the players a certain % of revenue (I think close to a 50-50 split). The players should really bargain hard for something similar.

Jeff Sullivan:
There’s blame to go all around, and don’t let the agents out of your sights. Agents haven’t kept up, by and large, with the changing game

They’re just not very good at negotiating realistically with teams, how they’re presently operating

I’d blame front offices the least — every single one of them wants the team to get better. Owners have far more to do with it

It’s not the Dodgers’ front office’s fault they’re trying to stay under the threshold. That’s on ownership

One angle that hasn't been mentioned that in think could be lurking in the background is the local TV rights money maybe shrinking with all the cable cutting.

i thought those numbers had been getting bigger recently?

Jeff Sullivan, again:

This isn’t collusion. This is teams being smart enough to react to the circumstances. It’s a huge, huge deal that certain big spenders are trying to stay under the tax. Now, whether they actually need to do that — that could be argued. But that’s the operating philosophy, and it’s having an effect. And then you have potential big spenders at the other end, with bad present rosters. What’s their incentive to, say, sign Jake Arrieta? What would he do for the Tigers?

Free agency has always been a bad investment, efficiency-wise. Money needs to find a way to get to players before they get to FA age. It’s more urgent now than ever.

And, of course, beneath all of this, money really needs to find a way to get to the minor leagues. Don’t overlook that those are the players in the most financial peril.

darwin barney also has a minor league deal with the rangers

i don't know enough about all this to shout collusion, and it probably isn't actual collusion, but even if there are logical reasons why no one's getting signed, it's a little suspicious that every single team arrived at those reasons at the exact same time

Cubs and Astros winning the World Series with teams built on young, controllable talent might have been a catalyst for this.

That Fangraphsesque baseball wisdom has spread universally across the industry, well... kind of about time?

i'd still think there'd be at least a couple of old-school teams going crazy on free agents, but who knows.

That's my thought too. I remember Posnanski arguing, quite convincingly, that nearly every single megabucks FA contract has been bad. I figured the fact that teams were continuing to do them spoke more about potential merchandise/ticket sales and GMs trying to keep their jobs than it did teams actually trying to find value in these guys. But it's still very weird that nothing's happened yet for *any* team...

todd frazier to the mets, finally

I think it's a weird perfect storm of events -- the luxury tax, next year's killer free agent class, the super teams being set for next year without needing to sign new guys, smarter front offices -- but it's not collusion.

The cable deals have been going up but they have possibly peaked and from one article i read the whole thing could collapse ugly because of cable chord cutting. ESPN's revenue is literally down a 1/3 or more.

Streaming is handled different, but the up front production costs are paid by TV and streaming on its own can't come close to make up the difference.

Its not just baseball, its the whole sport TV business.

final boss to the rangers

Seriously, would would be glad if their team acquired Jake Arrieta for a Boras type of salary?

apparently oh might have been the victim of some bad luck wrt peripherals/batted ball stuff last year. but i gotta say, watching him nearly every time he came out of the bullpen, his main issue seemed to be that the pitch he relies on heavily, a wipeout slider, had much less bite than it did in his outstanding 2016. as the year went on it just seemed to get worse as the hitters got the memo that they didn't have to fear the slider anymore. gotta love the final boss but i'd be skeptical about him having much success with the rangers unless he finds the slider again.

he could be a decent mini-boss

The capper for this offseason would be the Angels sending Ohtani to Triple-A to game his service-time clock

— Sam Miller (@SamMillerBB) February 7, 2018

We have acquired INF @DangeRussWilson from the Rangers in exchange for future considerations. Wilson is expected to be at camp in March.

🏈+⚾️ pic.twitter.com/NRyksQeQtl

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) February 7, 2018

the new market inefficiency: moonlighting nfl players

hehehe, PatsSox are "inflexible"

https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2018/2/7/16986150/red-sox-jd-martinez-free-agency-diamondbacks-staring-contest

players association is getting pissy(/otm!) with the retweets

https://twitter.com/MLB_PLAYERS

gettin' closer to Camp Unsigned!

https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2018/2/8/16992006/mlbpa-spring-training-camp-free-agency

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-cubs-might-be-a-problem-for-jake-arrieta/

jay jaffe to fangraphs

groovy

writer hot stove is sizzlin'

xpost
it's awful timing for arrieta. if he hit free agency a couple years ago, i'm sure he would have found at least one taker that would pay him $25M+ for 4 or more seasons. but as others have noted, front offices finally seem to have realized that those kinds of deals rarely work out well, even for players not showing warning signs of decline like arrieta. i'm thinking he'll eventually land somewhere for more like $20M AAV over 3 seasons?

i mean he's been noticeably worse each of the last two seasons. though he's still capable of excellence and pitched very well in the playoffs.

oh yeah, i phrased that in the most confusing way possible. i meant that Arrieta IS showing signs of decline. even his second half of 2017, when he got better results (2.28 ERA), came with warning signs (4.11 FIP, 4.30 xFIP)

o i c i misread sorry