MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

Dammit I hate these stories.

Be a freaking grown up; you are the client, you decide what happens, not your agents.

YOU ALONE decided to play hardball with the Braves and now you're wishing you hadn't because you see how it played out.
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And now you're making your agents (look up definition of "agent" Freddie, they take orders from YOU!!) the fall guys.

GROW UP.

 

I could not agree more. Feeling sorry for yourself for being on the Dodgers. Just pathetic.

 

Saw this on the interwebs. Ye gods.

 

This catch. Damn.

 

Damn and I left in the 6th tonight…..

 

Poor Freddie Freeman.

Poor, poor Freddie Freeman.

Poor, poor, poor Freddie Freeman.

LOL

 

This guy could inject race into a story on a sewing circle.

 

His premise is wrong. Fighting isn’t allowed in baseball. You get similar punishments as you do in football and basketball. Baseball doesn’t prevent people coming off the bench. The difference between the NBA and NFL is two guys get into a scrum and the two teams have equal numbers of players in play already. Baseball at best is 9 on 6. Assuming the bases are loaded plus batter and guy on deck. At worst it’s 9 on 2.

These fights are usually two guys mad at each other and 48 other guys plus coaches standing around either holding someone back or looking to get a better view.

But if he can find racism in white fluffy clouds, I guess he wasn’t thinking that deep.

 

That's a lot of cheap and stupid spread out over seven years. It isn't realistic to think they could have kept all of those guys and they actually got Musgrove in the deal that sent Cole to the Astros, but man, that's ugly.

It gets uglier when you look at what they got for those guys, at least in most cases. Only four players from those trades are currently on the major-league roster. Roansy Contreras is in the rotation. David Bednar has been a dominant reliever before his current back issue. Infielder Diego Castillo is a starter. Hoy Park took his place at second base today. Those four are it. There are quite a few guys still in the minors, but none of them is an elite prospect.

Morton got them David Whitehead, who was never much of a prospect and never made it past Class AA.

Cole actually got them a decent package. Jason Martin and Michael Feliz at least made it to the majors, but neither became much and both are elsewhere. Colin Moran became a useful part-time player for a few years before they cut him loose this past offseason. The real prize was Musgrove, who of course, they ended up trading away for more prospects before he emerged as an outstanding starter for the Padres.

Musgrove got them David Bednar, a quality relief arm who they seem to be ruining with overuse, and a bunch of guys still in the minors. None of them is regarded as an outstanding prospect.

Glasnow and Baz were both parts of the disgraceful trade for Chris Archer in 2018, along with Austin Meadows. The Pirates gave up three valuable young player for a middling starter who was showing clear signs of breaking down and declining because he had a team-friendly contract. To be fair, Glasnow has been hurt much of the time and the Rays moved on from Meadows, but they had value at the time and Baz was an elite prospect who has pitched well so far in the majors.

None of the four prospects they got for Taillon were highly-regarded, though Roansy Contreras took a huge step forward in 2021 and has shown promise in the majors this season, so give them credit for maybe seeing something on that one. They also have Miguel Yajure in the majors from that deal, but he hasn't really shown much.

To be fair, I don't remember hearing much complaining about them dealing Holmes. Both guys they got in that trade have been in the majors this season, though Diego Castillo and Hoy Park aren't exactly setting the league on fire.

In all, it's not an impressive haul for all of those arms. Baseball's financial system is part of the problem. Owner Bob Nutting is in the conversation for the cheapest bastard in MLB, which is another problem. The general managers who made those trades deserve some of the blame, though they have impossible jobs as long as Nutting owns the team. That said, many of these were also failures in player development. Cole was very good as a Pirate but didn't become an elite pitcher until he left. Musgrove, Glasnow, and Holmes never really put it all together until after they left the Pirates' organization.

 

Speaking of ugly, Astros outfielder Yordan Alvarez was carted off the field after this collision. I'm not sure if he ever tried to call Pena off. He took a hit to the face. Supposedly, he looked groggy afterward, so I'm guessing that at least means a trip to the concussion IL. Hopefully, it's nothing worse than that. Alvarez is just crushing the ball.