MLB 2018 regular season thread

Just relaying the opinion of scouts:
All spring, your teammates were telling anyone who would listen: You should see Ohtani in batting practice. It’s special. And I scoffed, having seen dozens of guys who put on a BP show only to shrink during games.

 

Nothing like a fluky, unsustainable 7-5 start to make a team's beat writers start to believe they're better off without the best prospect in baseball:

 

Kenley Janson was a catcher in the low minors

 

What is that from?

 

The other faux pas was the headline: “The verdict is in on Shohei Ohtani’s bat and it’s not good.” If I replace “verdict” with “early report,” it sounds plenty more reasonable. Still wrong, but at least more fair.
No scout wrote that.

 

10 Degrees: Dear Shohei: I'm sorry. I was totally wrong about you.

 

Read the original piece. Jeff Passan never gives Jeff Passan's opinion. It is a piece in which Jeff Passan exclusively relays the opinions of scouts.

 

The other faux pas was the headline: “The verdict is in on Shohei Ohtani’s bat and it’s not good.” If I replace “verdict” with “early report,” it sounds plenty more reasonable. Still wrong, but at least more fair.

 

That doesn't make it Jeff Passan's opinion.

Let's say I'm a judge. The jury returns with a verdict. I read it, look up, and say, "The verdict on the defendant is in, and it's not good."

That doesn't mean I, Judge Whitman, think the defendant is guilty. I am clearly referring to the verdict rendered by the jury or, here, the scouts.

 

FWIW, I have far less problem with Passan's piece than with what Bloom was saying.

The scouts are spectacularly wrong. (Yes, they are.) But Passan was giving an insider's view and a very well-informed one. It exposes the groupthink of baseball people (as I've said before, this is all because those "baseball people" don't think the Japanese League is very good). But Dick's right, it is a recounting of what they were thinking, not of what Passan thinks. He did seem to take their opinion as his own, so that's a flaw, but it wasn't like he just watch the guy hit and said "ah fuck, with that front hip position he'll never amount to anything!"

Bloom's tweet and related writing are a perfect picture of what's most wrong with sportswriting. He thinks he is an expert on hitting because he has watched a bunch of games. He doesn't know jack shit.

 

I loved it two years ago in the playoffs when Kershaw came in for the save in Game 5 against the Nationals. It was the second save of his professional career and the first since rookie ball, where his catcher was ... Kenley Jansen.