The Little Boy and I have been rocking two-man Super Mario Odyssey on the Switch – I play as Mario, he plays as the hat – and it’s pretty awesome to have a buddy for games. I haven’t really played video games in like a decade, thanks in large part to the advent of kids. And yet it is the kids that got me back into the games.
… the only problem is that he can cause Mario to jump wildly sometimes, and I’m like, dude, NOT NOWWWW I’M TRYING TO GRAB THAT POWER MOON!
The first of the felled managers has been replaced, with the Mets quickly hiring Luis Rojas to replace former cheater/manager Carlos Beltran. Rojas, 38, was a coach in the Mets’ system for 13 years, and only just arrived in the big leagues last year as a quality control coach/outfield instructor. He’s the son of Felipe Alou, and is a baseball lifer. The Mets may have stumbled backwards into a good one.
This is a helpful read at the Tribune from Phil Rosenthal for folks who have questions about the upcoming Marquee Sports Network. We’ve covered this stuff before, I know that not everyone sees everything here, so if you have questions, make sure you check out the article for more background. Reminders: if you’re out-of-market, you can still do MLB.tv like always. In-market, the non-national games will ALL BE EXCLUSIVELY on Marquee. The Cubs have carriage deals lined up with just about every TV provider except for Comcast (that’s the big, complicated one), DISH (which is out on RSNs), and the streaming services (YouTube TV, Hulu Live, and fuboTV among them). It sounds like the Cubs are trying to bang out the streaming services soon, to give cord-cutters an option in direct opposition to Comcast.
Figured something like this played a part in the Astros investigation and lack of punishments for players:
It’s not that the players were blameless by any stretch – it’s that actually enforcing some “blame” on them would be very difficult. (Also, think about the guys who are on other teams now: by suspending them, you’d actively be punishing teams that had nothing to do with the sign-stealing, and in fact were HURT by the sign-stealing!)
A really good selection of Deals of the Day today at Amazon: Fitbit, cast iron cookware, soundbars, and hot sauce! #ad
As expected, the robo-umps coming to Spring Training are just for testing purposes:
But that’s good! We want to see that data accumulating as soon as possible so that MLB can make sure when they actually deploy the system, they get it right. I still wouldn’t expect to see it in the big leagues before 2022, the first year of the new CBA.
Joe Maddon’s new club is still dominated by Mike Trout’s singular value:
Man, it’s jarring to see how pitching-needy that team STILL is after years of knowing they needed pitching to stop wasting Trout’s prime years. Maybe Ohtani breaks out now that he’s post-TJS and that helps in a big way, but that’s just so much meh in the rotation and in the bullpen. Are you really going to risk your prime Trout/Rendon/Ohtani offensive combo with no pitching?
I wouldn’t be surprised to see them make a trade before Opening Day, and if the Cubs got desperate to move salary, you’ve gotta think the Angels might be interested in a guy like Jose Quintana or Tyler Chatwood (not at full freight for Chatwood, though). The Angels don’t have a tip-top farm system, but after top prospect Jo Adell, they do have a lot of interesting younger depth. You’re not going to get a top guy for Quintana or Chatwood (plus cash) anyway, so there are probably a lot of sensible fits there if the Cubs really want to move out the salary and give a younger arm a shot.
On a lighter note:
Pfft, what can your manager do:
https://twitter.com/obvious_shirts/status/1220109751360598017
I have jokes:
We lost the great Ernie Banks five years ago today. He wasn’t Mr. Cub just because he was great at baseball – he was Mr. Cub because he was great at being a kind human:
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