The Minor League Baseball Fight Goes National, All-MLB Voting, Darvish Whiff, and Other Cubs Bullets

My MCU binge continued last night with ‘Iron Man 3,’ which was a more enjoyable flick overall than ‘Iron Man 2,’ even though – like many other early MCU movies – it could have done a little more exploration with the idea of a post-New-York-anxiety-riddled Tony Stark. I also found it humorous how extremely over-the-top they went with obvious product placements in that one. I don’t know if it’s an every movie thing and I just didn’t notice, but boy, it was constant. Hope they got paaaaaaaaid.

That reminds me! Here’s a product placement for Disney+, which is how I’m binging these movies. You can sign up for a free trial here, or for the bundle with Hulu and ESPN+. You’re supporting BN through a commission in the process, so thanks!

  • Senator and Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders has entered the fight between MLB and MiLB about the controversial plan to cut the affiliations of 42 Minor League teams. I am not naive, and I know politics will permeate these discussions. But whatever you think of national politics, this elevates the attention on this issue significantly, and Sanders lays out the problems/concerns with the plan pretty well in his letter, which is worth a read:
  • As I’ve been saying, the part of the plan that is most deeply troubling to me is how it could destroy realistic access to professional baseball for so many fans across the country. Consider this, from Baseball Prospectus: the average distance to an MLB stadium for the fans in the areas with minor league teams being cut? 236 miles. Only 9 of the 42 teams to be cut are even within 100 MILES of a big league team. And even if fans in those areas could simply switch from MiLB attendance to MLB attendance, consider the extreme cost difference for families.
  • FanGraphs takes another look at it, and considers how much of the country would lose reasonable access to pro baseball:
  • FanGraphs also included a map of the areas of the country that would lose reasonable access to minor league baseball, specifically. Look at the huge chunk of Illinois that goes poof:
  • You may or may not remember that the league does have a response to the idea that these teams are being dropped – it’s the affiliation that is being dropped, and hey, maybe some of the teams can survive as Dream League teams or whatever (I do not find this at all persuasive):
  • The league is doing an All-MLB Team where fans vote, so if you want to check it out and/or support deserving Cubs players, here you go:
  • https://twitter.com/Cubs/status/1199037403073306630

  • The Commissioner’s Office has concluded that the New York Mets were not involved in any electronic sign-stealing:
  • https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/1199311168663359488

  • I do love how right Caratini was there – he was like 100% certain if Darvish executed that particular pitch in that particular way, dude was gonna whiff.
  • Amazon’s Deals of the Day today include toys, chargers, vacuums and more. Plus all the Black Friday Deals Week stuff. #ad
  • Bryan with the random note:
  • It’s a pretty fair guess, even without the Stone connection. The Cubs annually add a veteran minor league deal type to man first base, and Davidson, now 28, fits the bill. He was a slightly above league-average hitter at AAA last year, and in MLB the year before (he just got crushed by the increasing wave of strikeout pitchers). As an emergency option, that’s just fine – and hey, he can pitch a little!
  • Heads up to this one, folks:
  • written by

    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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