DrungoHazewood

Oh, right. He's basically Melvin Mora, if Melvin had tried to play with a 1900s fielding glove.

Doing nothing means he makes less than $1M for the next three years, then probably less than $5-8M for the next two. There's already a lot of cost control there unless he explodes on the league, which I think is fairly unlikely. Also, if Hays' ankle explodes anytime in the next few years you still owe him many $millions if he signs this deal.

I'd agree if the player you're signing is a 30-year-old free agent and the rates are $8M per win. We're talking about guys in their early-to-mid 20s signing for less than a 2016 vintage Yovani Gallardo deal. If players were free agents at 21 most long-term deals would be awesome. They only suck because you're paying big dollars for decline years.

For Hays the extension will be his early-to-mid 30s. By then won't we want to move on to someone younger and cheaper, and probably better? I'm certainly for locking up young players. But it has to be worth it because of a combination of quality and youth. Hays isn't established yet and he's almost 25.

Hays turns 25 in July of next year. He's played 41 MLB games. If you sign him to an 8-year contract he'll be 33 or 34 when it's over. Even with an out at six years he's going to be 31. His 21 games in the majors were way above what he'd done in the minors since 2017. $24M isn't a huge risk, but what's the advantage over going year to year? Do we really think that for his arb years (age, what... 29, 30, 31?) he's going to be so good that it makes $12M a year a huge bargain? I guess that could happen, but I also don't think that going year-to-year is a massive risk. And Mountcastle... as a DH/1B/LF he's really going to have to hit to be more than a 2-3 win player. Which is complicated by his microscopic walk rate, which will probably mean he's always OBP compromised.

Yes. Through most of the 1870s-80s the schedules were under 100 games, although increasing over time. By the late 1890s they'd gotten to 154ish, but were at 130 or so during the Orioles 1894-96 Championship run. Cap Anson's career is a pretty good proxy for schedule length in that era, since he was a everyday starter pretty much from 1871 through the end of his career in 1897. He first played 100 games in a season in 1884.

We're going to need some evidence here. Analysis that controls for other influences. I'm extremely skeptical about this comment.

There should be a penalty or disincentive for trading out action for commercial breaks and warm-ups. Baseball is the only sport I know of (well, maybe cricket) where you get unlimited time outs. I'm pretty sure without trying that hard the Red Sox could have an average game time of four hours without adding a single meaningful bit of action to the game. Maybe you like endless dead time and games that don't end until 11pm. I don't.

Yes you are, in the aggregate. If you look at average career values (or total values of all picks at each slot in history), each pick is a bit more valuable than the one following. Until you get into the 2nd, 3rd, etc rounds where the typical career values are so low that the average is lost in the noise floor. The difference between most picks isn't big, but it's there. And you have the advantage of picking higher in every round.

Even if you're right you will be substituting five minutes of commercials and talking about your 11th-best reliever warming up, for five minutes of baseball. That's a win.

But the individual #2, 3, 4, etc picks fail more often than the #1 in the aggregate. You're always better off picking higher.

It will be a positive thing for the rebuild if players like Akin, Mountcastle, Hayes establish themselves as solid major leaguers, and players like Means and Alberto prove their 2019 seasons weren't flukes.

The '18 Orioles traded Schoop, Machado, Gausman, Brach and they were a few percentage points better in the second half. The '19 Orioles traded Cashner and played significantly better the second half.

It'll be interesting to see how aggressive the MLBPA gets in pursuit of their goals. They want to stop the continual decline in percentage of revenues going their way, but they have to see the dicey situation with regards to cable cutting and declining attendance. How many people will cut their RSN subscription if there's a strike/lockout? How much bigger will the attendance hit be than in '94, and will it ever come back with all the fracturing of the entertainment market? The players could win the battle and lose the war. Nobody ever seems to blame the $billionaire owners, they take it out on the players, the majority of whom have to play multiple years after long periods in the minors to get to $1M in career earnings.

Just remember that you could come up with a fairly lengthy list of things that went wrong in '89, in '12, in '14. It doesn't take everything going right to have a good year, just a lot of things. Maybe not likely, but Mancini could miss 130 games with Dengue fever and they still win 68 games. I think the likely case is that they win 55-60 games. And it's not going to vary a whole lot around that because they don't have many players who could conceivably have a breakout. And Elias and team have shown they can find enough random talent to keep them out of the '62 Mets, '03 Tigers zone.

It's a real testament to the value of essentially unlimited resources.

I'm a gov't worker and I really have no plans to move anywhere, but my USAjobs profile lists pretty much all of Europe as potential destinations just in case an engineering billet ever pops up there.

Ain't nobody taking Rene Gonzalez' number.

You have to play 10 years to get in the baseball Hall. Is it 10 games for the NFL?

From age zero through 32 Cruz was worth 12 wins, which is the 523rd best mark of all time among 1B/RF/LF/DHs. Just below Dmitri Young, Hal Morris and Dan Gladden. Quite a few slots behind such luminaries as Aubrey Huff and Chris Davis. From age 35-38 Cruz was worth 16 wins, which is 10th all time at those positions. A few spots behind Roberto Clemente and just in front of Stan Musial and Paul Molitor. I guess if you saw that coming, good on you.

It is kind of hard to top awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Zero history of organized soccer, repressive government, limited tourist infrastructure that severely restricts sales of alcohol, it's 120 degrees when you normally hold the tournament so you had to blow up the entire soccer schedule for that year, and the new stadiums are/were basically built with indentured servants in horrific conditions and low pay, and the bribes were huge and all but in the open. It would be like holding the Super Bowl in Sudan in July because the despotic ruler gave Roger Goodell $100 million.

Yes, the Olympic selection process is squeaky clean.

Bo played baseball in high school, and for Auburn where he hit over .400 with a 1.300 OPS as a junior. Has Lamar ever play organized baseball?

One point of comparison: Michael Jordan had a lower OPS in AA than Richie Martin did in the majors.

So... lots and lots of bribes?