I’m a wreck now because I watched the Anthony Rizzo video below before typing this intro. Oops. In any case, I hope that all of you – whatever your faith, whatever your situation – are able to have some wonderful time today and tomorrow with family, friends, or even if just time for yourself.
Take a few minutes, get some tissues close by, and watch a wonderful video on the impact Anthony Rizzo has had:
We may not all be Anthony Rizzo, but I’m reminded that each of us does have the power to make some kind of positive impact in the lives of others.
The average annual salary for MLB players increased again last year to … do you know off hand? What would your guess be for the average big league salary? It’s higher than I would have thought given the volume of pre-arb players on big league rosters.
… it’s $4.1 million. Obviously there are some relative “haves” and “have nots” among MLB salaries, but that’s certainly a pretty nice average.
More “ouch” for the Marlins and their fans, as a report out of the Miami Herald points to just how poor the Derek Jeter/Bruce Sherman offer was ($200 million more than the next highest bidder, almost entirely via debt, and they’re still looking for more investors/financing). Worse, the other main bidder, Jorge Mas, says his plan was to maintain a $130 million payroll and keep the team intact. The whole article paints an extraordinarily grim picture of the future for the Marlins, who will be buried under the debt of their new owners for years, without any meaningful way to improve revenue – which means continue deep cuts to their costs. All while Jeter rakes in a reported $5 million annual salary as the team’s CEO. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
Ichiro Suzuki was let go by those Marlins after an unsuccessful age 43 season, but he’s hoping to find another job for 2018 in MLB. The fit isn’t great with the Cubs, but you can’t tell me that bringing Ichiro into Spring Training wouldn’t be a great thing for any organization. Somebody give this guy a shot; and if he’s willing to come to Spring Training with the Cubs without any guarantees, I seriously hope they do it.
Speaking of 44-year-old wonders, Bartolo Colon wants to keep playing, too, but it sounds like he’ll settle for a minor league deal only if it’s with the Mets. And the Mets aren’t jumping at that. Which … whatever, man. Marlins and Mets. Those orgs are a mess.
(That said, like Ichiro, Colon had a very down 2017 season after several years of surprising effectiveness in his early 40s.)
(Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)
David Laurila’s Sunday Notes features its usual smattering of interesting bits, including Craig Counsell’s thoughts on the importance of giving batters different types of looks in a single game (and why you might construct your bullpen, vis a vis your rotation, with that in mind). Laurila also always finds fun historical match-ups, which often includes great names like this:
A very good heads up: Fanatics just flipped to end-of-year clearance, which means there’s a ton of Cubs stuff on ridiculous deals now while they try to sell off merchandise. Go there, shop, support BN, get huge deals.
Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here.
Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.
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