Today is Kiiiinnnnd of a Big One, Minor League Pay, and Other Cubs Bullets

Today is a big one. I won’t rehash everything I said last night, but again, the short version is: unless the new offer today from the owners moves significantly toward actually being reasonable, plans for Opening Day will go poof. So to say I’m pretty tense today is quite the understatement. The Grandparents are visiting today because The Little Girl’s birthday is this weekend … I WILL BE CHILL I PROMISE.

•   Jeff Passan’s take on the importance of today:

•   Speaking of things about MLB that are so very frustrating … This issue has been fought for almost a decade(!) now:

•   The problem with this issue has always been that there are, unfortunately, good *legal* arguments on MLB’s side. But they should’ve been making the decision at a HUMAN level all along: players are clearly working in the spring. Pay them. The salary improvements last year and the paying-for-housing improvements coming this year are positive steps toward properly taking care of minor league players (and the Cubs’ extended prospect camp was a nice step, too). But that’s all they are: steps. There’s still more that needs to be done to really make sure the value of these players – and their basic needs as humans – are properly considered.

•   This is an interesting addendum to Boddy’s recent note about minor league pitching that underperformed expected stats (the Cubs were one of the most extreme, where you would’ve expected much better results). The Cubs did not rate well by Stuff+:

https://twitter.com/drivelinebases/status/1492242042721767424?s=21

•   Some things to note in there: because of the nature of minor leagues, you could rate low overall on an evaluation of your stuff, but still have a good crop of actual pitching prospects; the correlation there between results and stuff isn’t quite as strong as the line makes it look, because of the two data points at the far right and because of the condensed Y axis. It’s definitely a correlation, and since we know Stuff+ is evaluating pitch quality, it’s not like you don’t WANT to be really good at Stuff+. It isn’t the only thing that matters, of course.

•   You’ve got just one day left to take advantage of the various Super Bowl betting promos. That link there is a good place to peruse the various options for those of you in states where it’s legal, but it currently looks like the best one is the Casesars deposit and free bet bonus. Up to $1500 in deposit bonus and up to $616 in free bets.

•   Absolutely obliterated. Lord it’s good to have baseball/softball highlights back:

•   No waste pitches:

•   Ah, this one did … uh … not work out so great:

•   If you’re an IHOP fan, you can get 20% off a gift card today at Amazon, among the Deals of the Day. #ad

•   Feels like a lifetime ago:

•   An addition to last night’s report about the White Sox requiring vaccination and boosters for their minor leaguers:

•   I am fine with organizations choosing to require vaccination, but the idea that the White Sox might hold a player – suspended, essentially – rather than release him, seems … I don’t know, there’s something about that hits me wrong at a gut level.

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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