Took me a second to connect the melody to the words.

Great work as always.

Not sure if this is anything but an Ms fan recently pointed out Josh Naylor is 21-for-23 in SB attempts this year despite having 3rd percentile sprint speed! I'm not well equipped to look into whether that's as bonkers an outlier as it sounds but you immediately came to mind.

I hate Fisher for so many reasons already. Now I can add “used the phrase ‘one of the most unique’” to the list.

Congratulations on your recent success.

6-game samples are the best samples.

Yes. they have. June 6. Yanks won 9-6. Also they’ve only played each other 6 times.

2 things I believe:

1) people should like what they like.

2) Marvel adults and Star Wars adults are Disney adults.

YouTube video by eshutdown Danny Kaye - Hans Christian Andersen

youtu.be/fXi3bjKowJU?...

All I can think about after seeing this.

Sorry for the intrusion on a post about your upcoming book but is there any chance you sell signed copies of the Baseball Talmud? Id love to get my hands on one for my baseball-obsessed nephew.

A lot of “gifted” 90s kids ended up going down that rabbit hole too, even though they should have been more resistant to it. I chalk it up to being unable to grapple with the fact that their intelligence alone wasn’t enough to give them the life they expected/were told was their due.

Great point. We probably shouldn’t talk about anything that isn’t literally the most important problem facing humanity.

I’ve personally heard players talk about how they feel like fantasy sports and online gambling cause fans to dehumanize them. I’ve never asked any about how they feel about this term. You should go for it.

It is indeed. And some of those idioms come from a crappy place.

Dehumanizing language is shitty in any job.

The metrics disagree on Williamson a bit. OAA has him exactly average, but DRS loves him and thinks he's saved 8 runs above average. Even if you used the most optimistic appraisal of Williamson's defense & the most pessimistic view of Geno's it's a massive upgrade (a hair under 2 WAR over the ROS).

The team just replaced its worst hitter with literally Geno Freaking Suarez. Whatever the state of the pitching, the team's odds just improved. It's better to be better.

FWIW Griffin doesn't need to be added to the 40-man until 2029 since he was 18 when he signed.

Hard disagree. Teams have shown they value that 7th year of service time very highly. Very few teams have chased the extra draft pick carrot and one of the most prominent exceptions (AZ with Carroll) gamed that too, keeping him down longer the previous year to preserve his 2023 rookie eligibility.

Also, consider the absolute extremes. If a team's so damn good at developing youth that their 26 best players are all guys with 0-3 years of service time, that team would literally be unable to field its best roster.

Like, would you really be shocked if you heard Bob Nutting say in 2 years "well, we'd love to call Konnor Griffin up to start the year but because of the floor and our other commitments, we have to spend at least $4 million on that position so we simply can't.

There already is a salary floor. It's league minimum X 26.

The question is whether there should be a separate salary floor mandating that teams pay a certain amount above that floor. That seems silly and like it creates more opportunity for gamesmanship.

Also the MLBPA negotiating committee, made up mostly of very wealthy players, recommended against taking the owners' latest offer. The MLBPA's rank and file members overruled them in the vote.

The MLBPA negotiated the owners up on both points, adding $20m per season to the league's initial offer for the pre-arb bonus pool and $40-80k per season more than the owners offered to raise the league minimum.

My point is that people who say they have no sympathy for millionaire players misunderstand the negotiations. The MLBPA isn't fighting to restructure Juan Soto's contract, it's negotiating terms for the majority of its members who have iffy job security and who haven't earned generational wealth.

Not saying the MLBPA is perfect but your narrative lets owners off the hook completely for their role in making sure they still have access to a pool of (relatively) cheap talent.

The owners have absolutely kept salaries for young players low. The league minimum salary and pre-arbitration bonus pool were two of the biggest sticking points in the last CBA negotiations. In both instances the owners and players started off far apart.

Oh I know you get it. I just wanted to say it.

4) the Rays are better at implementing the Rays' model than the Mariners are.

think it’s actually much better policy to raise the floor by raising that league minimum. Narrow the gap between younger players and veterans, and teams won’t be as incentivized to tank/stockpile youth. Create an arbitrary floor could disincentivize a team playing its best players.

This is the piece most owner apologists miss. Aside for issues like retirement benefits CBA negotiations pretty much by definition aren’t about the guys who are already on long-term contracts, those “overpaid” athletes fans like to gripe about. Because those guys already have, you know, contracts.