Indians Had Interest In Starling Marte The Indians’ offseason has largely been dominated by the specter of cutting payroll (such as the Corey Kluber trade to the Rangers or the persistent trade rumors around Francisco Lindor) rather than major acquisitions, the team’s signing of Cesar Hernandez notwithstanding. However, it seems as though the Tribe at…
DetailsMinor MLB Transactions: 2/1/20 We’ll use this post to keep track of today’s minor moves around baseball… The Angels have signed right-handed pitcher Michael Kohn to a minor league deal, reports Maria Torres of the Los Angeles Times. He won’t get an invite to Major League Spring Training, but he’ll return to the organization with which he…
DetailsTwins “Close To Deal” With Jhoulys Chacin The Twins are nearing an agreement to sign free-agent right-hander Jhoulys Chacin, according to Jon Heyman of MLB Network. Further details aren’t yet known, but it’s presumably a minor league contract for Chacin. More to come. Source: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/02/twins-close-to-deal-with-jhoulys-chacin.html
DetailsThe evidence that could doom Red Sox in cheating scandal What did the 2018 Red Sox slug, and where did they slug it? Those champion Sawx remain under investigation by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred for illegal sign-stealing — the very crime of which their immediate predecessors, the 2017 Astros, have been convicted. Alex Cora, the…
DetailsWhere have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? I ended my previous post with the teaser that neither the 1961 Topps “Baseball Thrills” subset nor its 2010 reboot, much less its 1959 precursor, included what I had grown up understanding to be the most incredible baseball feat of them all. Rather than imagine the Topps intern assigned…
DetailsOT – Catch-All Pop Culture Extravaganza (February 2020) With half a decade in the rearview mirror since Pono’s arrival, however, there may be another, more valuable take on its creator to consider. Neil Young’s insistence that hardcore music fans would be willing to pay extra for a high-definition digital music experience looks less outmoded in…
DetailsRockies owner Dick Monfort: Colorado will win franchise-record 94 games in 2020 he Rockies owner, addressing the crowd gathered at the Island Grove Event Center, compared the club’s 78-win flop in 2008 — which was wedged between a World Series appearance in 2007 and another playoff appearance in 2009 — to what happened in 2019.…
DetailsWhen His Hydraulics Failed and Mighty Casey Did Strike Out: Sports Science Fiction People spend years or decades of their lives, training and hoping for a chance to run a specific distance a few hundredths of a second faster than everyone else, to vault a centimetre or two higher. Is this monumentally impressive or embarassingly…
DetailsRockies Notes: Monfort, Murphy, Hilliard The Rockies lost 91 games in 2019, and they haven’t signed a single major league free agent, but Chairman and CEO Dick Monfort predicts a 94-win season in Colorado, per The Denver Post’s Kyle Newman. That would be a franchise high for the Rockies, who thrice have won 90 games…
DetailsWest Notes: Diamondbacks, Marte, Marte, Mariners, Lewis, Kikuchi The Arizona Diamondbacks have put together one of the more intriguing rosters as we approach spring camp, and they’ve done so while maintaining flexibility. The Starling Marte acquisition, for instance, secures center field as GM Mike Hazen had hoped – secondarily allowing star Ketel Marte to stay…
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