Da Mawshawn has options and probably doesn’t have a lot of trade value rn, so I’m not sure selling super low to solve a roster problem that will not be a problem the second Stanton suffers one of his semiannual major injuries is wise

If it was me answering that it’s Kilby but I assume for most mainstream media types it’s Jones

Are we allowed to post about sportsball again or are the scolds still out

We have an opening in my crazy fantasy league. The team, the Villagers, has some nice pieces. The league is incredibly fun. The only requirement for ownership is that you are active enough to set weekly lineups and respond to messages for trades. docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

I’m not sure whether this says more about Prime’s video quality or my TV’s upscaling but this actually looks better coming out of a DVD player that can almost legally drink than it did on streaming

oh nooooooooooo

Why would the Mets trade for probably washed Christian Walker on a contract they didn’t want to sign him for coming off a not washed season

This may not have been true three months ago but they literally just hired one of 2015’s smartest front offices wholesale (and they get whatever knowledge those folks have picked up in the last decade)

A frequent point I make in relation to the once every few months email or message I get suggesting I should be a MLB GM is that baseball is the only sport which essentially doesn’t have genuinely stupid teams. Even the dumbest teams now are way ahead of where the smartest teams were 15 years ago.

Montana???

the dumbest teams handing pitchers rolling player option contract is a fun way to screw up free agency

Not that it’s remotely going to manner but Day not calling his last timeout on 1st down and then letting them score on 2nd is the oddest clock management I’ve ever seen

People talk about sports here but at least in baseball it’s usually very stratified between pure shitposting (fun but not necessarily always what I’m looking to do) and scoldy stuff. When I start talking about deeper player/scouting analysis I either get crickets or yelled at for being “anti-labor”

I had a pretty good 2025 all told and I think it’s kinda important to celebrate that a lot of people are doing pretty well and still have wins and all of that *shrugs*

I said you're living my dreammmmmmmmmmmmm

@assbott.bsky.social why did you argue with Dave Meltzer that one time

the Instagram day trip guy did a day trip to Tokyo from NYC and I am watching this with my jaw dropping

This is not a David Wright post while also not not being a David Wright post but I’m fascinated by which 50 WAR players with injury marred careers become HOF causes celebre and which ones don’t

I can’t decide *why* I’m so bothered about viewing Jones’s DV conviction as an active demerit to his case but not a disqualifying one, but that seems to be the core position of a lot of my peers in my age cohort as they become HOF voters, and I’ll cop that it gives me major ick

Indicem centum et undecim optimorum candidatorum habemus

I haven’t seen a tank commander as efficient as Brady Cook since General Abrams

If you are a Hall of Fame voter who cares about domestic violence and doesn’t know that the guy who is about to get elected has a very public, widely reported DV conviction that happened while he was playing, that one is on you I fear

This remains the oddest part of HOF voting to me. I get not caring and voting for both. I get caring and voting for neither. I get not caring and thinking Jones is in on merit but not Vizquel. I do not get dropping Vizquel for recent allegations while voting for a guy with a very ugly DV conviction

finding a great travel deal is still such a wonderful thrill

Marisnick solid

and here I thought Baumann was a veteran lefty

I don’t actually know that this is going to work, but the Pirates absolutely should be going for it behind Skenes, and the systems in place incentivize teams in this band to do so in a way that I personally think is good

This is really just a recreation of something @seidler.bsky.social said. There is a lot you can learn while recreating the work of someone else. There is so much data out there that is hard to really be up on it all in the public space unless you are one of the half dozen analysts who breathes this

2025 has been a profoundly weird year in society and I’m not sure anything sums it up better than “the most successful concert tour of the year was Oasis reuniting to universal critical and cultural acclaim and with absolutely no drama”

all of the Very Extra things which make Harper unbearable in an April weeknight series will make him an incredible representative of the sport in the WBC

Watching fat old Philip Rivers carve up a good NFL defense while his dozen children and grandchildren cheer him on is the feel good moment of 2025 in sports

did people think one expensive year of probably washed Jeff McNeil was going to return a big prospect

The value teams are putting on players is becoming increasingly disconnected from any public facing model using baseball card type stat comps fed into a $/WAR paradigm

Fajardo is going to be in the next 10 on the 101, that’s a pretty nice return there

I was looking at fangraphs leaderboards earlier and the last guy with a contact rate close to Murakami this year to qualify for a batting title was 2022 Luke Voit. Fwiw he played in NPB this year, batted .300 with a 21.4 K% and ran the same swinging strike rate as Murakami

Ayup. Case in point - Yoshi Tsutsugo’s swstr% in his age-26 season in NPB was half that of Murakami’s last year, and yeah, we know how that went.

I don’t have time to rebut the “but Ohtani” part of Murakami discourse in an article so here’s some social media word vomit on how odd this comparison is: — you are comparing Ohtani’s age 22 season with Murakami’s age 25 season — Ohtani’s relevant whiff rates were still better

@mediumzee.bsky.social wrote a really good article last year positing that we should think of zcons as shelves. And it’s basically impossible to project Murakami’s MLB current zone contact ability right now to a shelf where basically any good hitters are www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

Murakami has clearly not had a major league hit tool in several years and most evaluators I talked to had basically no interest in him. The gambit is whether your hitting team can make whatever change gets him to a 30 grade hit ability.

I think he’s a top 50 guy but not much higher than that yet, and I think our list was correct about the order of their infielders

if you go on bref it will tell you he's extremely young for the level because it compares it to the average player age and AA contains a lot of org soldier types. 20 in AA is a good timeline but it is not exceedingly young in the way that would excuse four months of overly passive zone whiff

FROM THE DESK OF RICHARD G. STAFF WINNER OF THE CONTEMPORARY BASEBALL COMMENTARY AWARD: This story has my Complete and Total Endorsement!

my overall output this year was weaker and more sporadic than I'd have liked, but this is among the best commentaries on modern baseball I've ever written, and I'd submit is among the best commentaries on modern baseball written in 2025 that you will read www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article...

do the Orioles also get a time machine to bring 2021 back in this deal

WAKE UP SLEEPY STEARNS TRADES ARE HAPPENING

George Lombard is a good prospect because he is an actual shortstop with some offensive abilities, but he got repeatedly crushed to us in 101 sourcing, and a sub-80 zcon/passive approach/55 grade exit velos combo that flatlined at AA is flashing every hitting profile warning sign you can imagine

Anderson Brito is *really* good, very strange-in-a-good-way FB/CV shape combo

I think this point is worth expanding upon: Strahm was still very very good in 2025, but he's a 34-year-old extreme flyball pitcher with a fastball that is backing up very fast. "What he was last year" and "what he projects to be in 2026" may have very different answers

I am curious how long it is going to take public analysts to clock that the majority of teams are “overpaying” for diverse modeled arsenals with team control and no longer care about last year’s shiny FIP

my least favorite bit of these cycles is the "well meaning [liberal/leftist] not in the targeted group" immediately trying to absolve the famous person, often after their PR agent puts out a form apology