NEWSLETTER
Milestone crossed: owing to The Littlest Girl’s therapy schedule and my own desire to exercise this morning, we had an overlap in time where the two bigger kids were home alone for about 20 minutes (The Little Girl in charge of The Little Boy). We figured it was high time to try, given that when we were their age, we were riding bikes across town and major roads and generally being completely independent around the town for hours at a time. Annnnnnnd instantly I sound very old.
•  The current and former Cubs execs who were among the finalists for the Angels GM gig are out of the running:
Hear that the #Cubs Jason McLeod and #Diamondbacks Jared Porter are no longer under consideration to be the next #Angels general manager.
— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) November 12, 2020
•  For McLeod, currently the Cubs SVP of Player Personnel, it’s another near miss, and although I’m sure the Cubs are happy to retain his brain power and experience, I’m sure there’s also some sadness that he hasn’t gotten his shot yet. How that could factor into the Cubs’ coming transition remains to be seen. Although there has been talk about the possibility of promoting Jed Hoyer to the president seat when Theo Epstein leaves, I haven’t really seen any speculation that McLeod would take Hoyer’s place. That doesn’t mean he won’t, of course, I’m just saying I haven’t seen it.
•  Then again, I haven’t seen much of anything on this front since the last series of updates, which had Epstein and Tom Ricketts publicly suggesting that Epstein would stay on for the final year of his contract both to lead the Cubs and help with the front office transition, and also had reports suggesting Epstein was still mulling things. My gut says things are still being discussed behind the scenes, given how fluid the world is at the moment, but if the Cubs were going to aggressively pursue a new president and/or GM, you’d think they would want to get on that process very soon, both because we’re already into the offseason, and also because other searches (like the Angels’ and the Mets’) are ongoing, tapping into the pool of top candidates. So, then, that leads me to conclude that either things still haven’t been decided for some reason, or it’s been decided to stay status quo until on into next year, and we just haven’t heard definitively.
•  Sounds like the Angels gig is going to go to a Braves assistant, by the way:
Braves assistant GM Perry Minasian is the front-runner for the Angels’ GM opening, sources tell The Athletic. Decision expected tomorrow.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 12, 2020
•  Minasian was hired by the Braves in 2017 to be a top aide to John Coppolella, the former GM who was bounced only two months later and banned for life from baseball due to serious malfeasance in the international market. (That is to say, Minasian probably had nothing at all to do with the Braves dirty dealings, in case you were wondering.)
•  Holiday food, Instant Pot, vacuums, clothes, snow blowers, and more are your Deals of the Day at Amazon. #ad
•  Shane Bieber won the AL Cy Young last night in well-deserved unanimous fashion:
Shane Bieber earned every bit of his unanimous AL Cy Young victory. My favorite stat is his strikeout rate progression since debuting.
2018: 24.3%
2019: 30.2%
2020: 41.1%Stud status. #OurTribe #FantasyBaseball (via MLB/YT) pic.twitter.com/ACTaGnCJw6
— Matt Musico (@mmusico8) November 12, 2020
•  As for the NL winner, I think it’s important to say that while I believe Yu Darvish should have won, Trevor Bauer was a defensible selection on the data. So when I continue to raise the illegal grip stuff – how Bauer pretty obviously started using it to create a 300-400 RPM jump this year, which he has said is impossible without illegal grip substances – I don’t really care about turning it into a “he cheated and shouldn’t have won!” thing. It’s like steroids at this point, and so many guys are doing it that we have to move past that part of the discussion. I genuinely just want to keep the conversation in the spotlight because it’s important that MLB start DEALING with it. To that end, I added to my previous Twitter thread last night:
This, for example, is why I feel like we should be talking about the added grip to increase spin. There's a mythology built around Bauer, and the discussion of what changed this year is shockingly absent from that mythology. He said it, he did it, it worked. So let's chat, eh? pic.twitter.com/kZgiqBycjp
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) November 12, 2020
From my naive seat, I guess I just figured perhaps Bauer's win could bring this topic even more into the foreground, & force MLB to finally deal with it. Make it legal, fix the baseball, add a single grip substance to the mound, whatever. But fix it. Starts with acknowledgement.
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) November 12, 2020
•  As for the Cy Young, Darvish was of course gracious:
https://twitter.com/faridyu/status/1326675485737299969
A reminder of what it's like to face Yu Darvish.
(via @PitchingNinja) pic.twitter.com/zU3lOL17D4
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) November 12, 2020
•  Aramis Ramirez has been elected to the Dominican Republic Sports Hall of Fame:
Aramis Ramirez is now a Dominican Republic Hall of Famer, which is awesome. pic.twitter.com/UQicpgG2GW
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) November 12, 2020
•  Ramirez, who is somehow still only 42, had a fantastic career, the best of which came with the Cubs:
