Bottom of the Top 50 has been scheduled for tomorrow. Because I never do these in nice clean numbers, it is 37-50 and sort of a jumbled mess of guys.

This Phillies reuniting Tucker Davidson and Bryse Wilson in the IronPigs rotation is almost certainly a fine depth move, but it feels very weird and uncomfortable.

It is always funny that the US hat/logo has not been updated for any level of competition and just continues to look like the generic logo from a video game.

Dislocated my collarbone diving for a volleyball as a camp counselor, then spent the next many weeks with my arm in a sling playing one armed against a bunch of 8 year olds

Cool to see the Flyers are still the Flyers, just falling for one of the classic move of making a good move and the doubling down to make it a bad move.

Because I have been caught up in so many other things I feel like I have not been playing enough games, and while I am aware of my backlog of video games, I am totally out of the loop on board games and have largely struggled to keep up with what is new and interesting.

There are still some red flags (7 BB 26 K), but Devin Saltiban has quietly been very good in Australia this winter. He has continued to move back to center field and in 30 games is hitting .333/.386/.570 with 12 doubles, 5 home runs, and 9 stolen bases.

I have long thought Randal Grichuk was an ideal fit, but we are sort of running out of time of Randal Grichuk actually still hitting lefties well enough for Randal Grichuk to be an ideal fit.

I am really basic, but it is probably best that I don't know how many hours of Age of Empires II I played

This will be Jorge Alfaro's 10th team (and potentially 9th he will play in a mlb/milb game for) and 17th professional season. He does not turn 33 until June.

List is going to start coming out this week, but here is the preview from my wife who always does the editing. "The lack of depth in the system is so clear by the just the caliber of players you feature in this tier. Several of these players wouldn't even make a list in other years."

The baseball rumor monger is essentially dying off as a journalist path. Teams/agents just aren't leaking things in a way that don't just sound like lies and the heyday of Twitter engagement is dead so there isn't really a reason to do it anymore. This is all probably a good thing overall.

I mostly have been distracting myself today by writing and while not really successful at distracting me, I have gotten a lot done

A couple of things here. Miller isn't ready now (or not assured to be ready). The skillset fits a bit better on the left side, but he probably could play second. There isn't a big Stott market either and Stott's glove makes his floor high. So you don't have a clean 2026 path.

My take on the Okamoto deal and the Phillies is that he isn’t good enough to commit to blocking Aidan Miller or deciding you are going to trade Aidan Miller. Alec Bohm at a one year commitment is just a placeholder.

Dominican Republic not getting Jhoan Duran and Cristopher Sanchez is probably good for the Phillies but bad for the WBC

The opt outs vs long term contract thing on Imai opens up a downside not being talked about. What if he takes 4-5 months to adjust and develop, you get months of mediocre results and the market and his reps don’t care about sample size and he opts out

The Astros earlier in the offseason traded two of their top 3 prospects for a pitcher unlikely to make the Pirates rotation

So Imai went to a pitching desperate team on a deal that indicates he didn’t have a market that believed in him

Also Happy New Year to my fellow central time people!

We went outside because we thought we heard fireworks. There weren’t any, but it was real fucking cold.

This is now 13 years living in Madison realizing that the rest of the world isn’t like Philly where there isn’t just a channel showing me the city fireworks (I don’t know if this is still true about Philly)

This isn’t really tiki, but it is rum forward while also clearly having a wine-y vanilla roundness. Sort of almost flavor wise a Manhattan distant cousin with the singular but complex flavor that is boozy but not burning

Here is the thing, I don't. I have publicly available information. I don't have detailed pitch shape and what the ball difference does to that. I don't know the competition level translations. It is totally different that me looking at Ranger Suarez.

This year feels like a smarter version of the Yasmany Tomas and Rusney Castillo sweepstakes where teams are ahead of the public at not being caught up with every foreign player will be good because previous ones were.

It’s a little maddening to see baseball writers who spent most of their careers lauding (and *advocating for*) the increased fungibility of pitchers now trying to take a line of moderation without *acknowledging their role in normalizing this*.

When you have the balance a ballot fall of people who cheated by removing some good vibes guys and adding a domestic abuser.

Not that this is a debate now, or has a high probability of mattering, but this is part of the reason why I went so crazy with the Cris Sanchez not getting an All-Star nod stuff. People count this shit over your career. It shouldn't, but it does.

So every New Year’s is just my chance to make fun cocktails (usually tiki) and first round of prep is done.

The column mentions dropping Utley like he got squeezed off due to not having enough votes, on a ballot where only 7 votes were made. It is like he forgot he voted for Utley last year, mailed in his ballot and then wrote the column.

Rob has a lot of good points about the actual roster. However my argument is simply that the last rebuild started in July 2012 or at worse winter 2014-2015. They didn’t make the postseason until 2022 and were unwatchable for much of it. Why would you want to voluntarily do that?

We built out our physical media this holiday

Meryl is the most ridiculous cat

I probably won’t see the new Avatar because I am burned out, but I find it amazing how people don’t see the wild appeal in a series that is low emotional effort action attached to an avant garde special effects tech demo.

New Payton Henry

Christ, it’s Latino John Lannan

My wife and I have once again got each other the same card

Greetings. the #Phillies car lost a teapot Zach McCambley studied away

If you want to hear someone talk about what I wrote about today with more expertise and a wider scope, this is what I riffed on today

I am once again asking what the hell is going on in the NL Central. The Pirates are better, but probably still mediocre. The Brewers are Brewers-ing. The Cardinals are blowing it up. Why aren't the Reds doing anything and why has the Cubs offseason just been signing ok relievers?

Sometimes a smart person says something that makes you go back and look at the data to reevaluate and recreate their work. In that case, here is a revisit on Jonathan Bowlan and why a team would have prioritized acquiring him.

This is actually a good thing to talk about because Hernandez did come up during research. The answer to the difference is simply fastball command, here are their 4-seam location heat maps. And for good measure, Mason Miller was the release trait and location comp.

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

Sometimes a smart person says something that makes you go back and look at the data to reevaluate and recreate their work. In that case, here is a revisit on Jonathan Bowlan and why a team would have prioritized acquiring him.

The luxury tax number is going to deter luxury spending for the Phillies. They are paying double on everything and that is going to make them not the most motivated team on the edges of the roster.

I don't understand this deal at all. Pop has an interesting arm, but he is out of options and the bullpen is already getting tight

Mets are getting rid of their core of guys who are 2 years older than you think they are in favor of guys like Jorge Polanco and Marcus Semien who are still old but have been around so long that you think they are older than they are

This is a thing that @seidler.bsky.social has talked about, but it really has become more easy to spot with the public (and if you have the team data) what players are coasting by on just not swinging, and we can also point to the data when they do swing that shows there is no hit tool.