Malike

If Zavala is going to be the next Juan Soto, he better be on the ML team this year and put up a 142 OPS+.

Rumors were they were asking for Westburg and it was a no go for Elias.

I'm pretty sure someone there said Thorpe might be better than Cease this year. Thorpe has like 30 innings at AA.

Chicago White Sox fan will be saying Zavala is equal to Basallo. They are going through the stages of denial over there about this being a great package.

They thought they were getting Cowser/Kjerstad and Mayo+. Lol, Clownshoes over there.

There will come a time when guys are going to have to learn to pitch at 90% effort, not max effort every pitch. I know the spin rates and velo are all the rage, but eventually, teams will run out of pitchers with guys throwing max effort every pitch of every start. Doesn't seem sustainable and something will have to give.

He's going to be a good one. The kid has swing-and-miss stuff in a real way. 3IP 6K's today against 1BB.

I feel like there is no way Mateo isn't on the team. I doubt they trade Mounty or Santandar at this stage of the spring, though, I'm sure they'd net something, probably unspectacular but it does open spots.

People would have been traded had there been a market for them. Nobody is giving up anything for O'Hearn, McKenna, or Mateo (who isn't going anywhere anyway).

Couldn't hurt, he has struck out in like 40% of his AB's this spring. ;)

For people who view sports as a "way out", baseball is low on the list. NCAA schools give far more scholarships to Football and Basketball players. Heck, there are many HBCU's who couldn't even fill their rosters out with black baseball players, and some had games where they had none start. Baseball is the most difficult of the big three sports, it requires toiling around in minor leagues for no pay for years and most will never make it to the big leagues. It's just not an attractive option if you don't absolutely love baseball, for anyone, not just black players. You can do all the marketing you want to kids, but when they try to hit a baseball and find out how hard it is, and that they'd rather be playing football or basketball, you lose kids to those sports, who are represented by "people of color" at 75% and 81% respectively. As a person with 2 bi-racial children myself, I've never once been asked Dad, can you buy me MLB the Show? My kids would love to watch hoop or football but would never sit through a baseball game and my son played football, basketball, and soccer and never had any interest standing around on a baseball field and in his case, it had nothing to do with money. He is 32 years old now, and still has zero interest in baseball, and none of his friends do either. I refuse to believe there is a nefarious plot to keep black kids out of baseball, it just happens to be the least attractive option for kids in the cities. For those poo-pooing the RBI program because of the budget, it has had millions of kids in the program and Nike provides team equipment, uniforms, field access and umpires at no cost. You can make everything free, but you can't make kids interested if they are not.

If only the MLB had something like the RBI program, you know, something that has over 300 programs in over 200 cities with more than 200,000 participants. Then maybe MLB could even provide college scholarships to the kids in the RBI program. Heck, why stop there, make a Jr. RBI program for younger kids. I wonder why they haven't invested in something like that.

There is no chance they DFA Mateo. McKenna, possibly and I'm sure Urias would have been gone if a team sniffed around him at all.

I mean, if he's racist for picking the best talent possible, then it is what it is. I'd imagine drafting using affirmative action and not talent, would likely lead to more 100 loss seasons.

This sounds good, but where do they go? If there were a market for them, they'd likely have been gone by now.

Yeah it goes live again on 3/26.

When the O's are playing a NY team, I scroll down to the country list and click the three dot menu next to United States and normally select St. Louis as my server. I use it on the PC, though, not my TV. If you have the browser window open before you connect I've noticed I need to close all browser windows then connect then reopen them. I'm not sure how the app works on a Roku or Fire stick, etc.

Really? I live in NY and NordVPN has never been defeated by anything like MLB.TV or Netflix, etc. They seem do a pretty nice job of spoofing those sites from showing as a VPN. I get MLB.TV for free from T-Mobile every year and have never had issues against NY teams with Nord. Never tried any other VPNs, though.

Reasonable.

You don't know who the better player is right now, let alone long term. You may have decided it in your head, but that doesn't make it a truth.

Appropriate of him, at least.

I saw that, I just found it curious that he made a direct comparison to wRC+ on two players in very different age groups and backgrounds.

How old was each player at the time? Is playing at Mississippi State in the SEC more preparation for a player than one who came out of High School? I sort of feel like Mayo is more impressive.

The way they hit, Verlander wouldn't have made a difference at all.

This is a bit disingenuous, he has 1M in incentives also. Mateo doubled his WAR last year too.