Totally normal to be thinking lustily about Thanksgiving food on November 8, right? I want it now.
The Cubs installed new LED lights at Wrigley Field to improve efficiency and, well, lighting. The process was pretty interesting:
The awards finalists have been announced, and, as expected, there are no Cubs:
If the image is cut off for you at the bottom, it’s the MVPs, and in the NL it is Manny Machado, Nolan Arenado, and Paul Goldschmidt. So the Cardinals got a multi-Gold-Glove-finalist performance from Tommy Edman, a Rookie-of-the-Year-caliber performance from Brendan Donovan, and TWO MVP-caliber performances from Arenado and Goldschmidt this year, and it got them 93 wins and an early exit from the playoffs. I’m not saying that means anything, but I do wonder if they can reasonably expect Arenado, 32 in April, and Goldschmidt, 35 next season, to repeat their 2022 success. They were kinda key to the whole thing.
Which, by the way, is not me saying the Cardinals will underwhelm next year. Instead, it’s me saying I’m nervous about how aggressive they might be this offseason in anticipation of some regression.
The Hall of Fame has announced its Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot, and I guess some of it makes sense? But it seems weird to have Albert Belle on here but not, for example, Sammy Sosa:
The description on how it works:
Any candidate who receives votes on 75 percent of the ballots cast by the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee will earn election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 23, 2023, along with any electees who emerge from the 2023 Baseball Writers’ Association of America election, to be announced on Jan. 24, 2023.
The Contemporary Baseball Era Players Committee is one of three groups eligible for consideration as part of the Era Committee process, which provides an avenue for Hall of Fame consideration to managers, umpires and executives, as well as players retired for more than 15 seasons. The Contemporary Baseball Era features two distinct ballots: One for players (considered this fall) and one for managers, executives and umpires (considered in the fall of 2023).
Following the restructuring of the Era Committee process in the spring of 2022, the two Contemporary Baseball Era ballots were instituted, along with the Classic Baseball Era, which includes all candidates whose primary contribution to the game came prior to 1980. The Classic Baseball Era Committee will meet for the first time in the fall of 2024.
I strongly doubt any of the steroid-implicated guys gets in, but you could see guys like Mattingly, Murphy, and McGriff getting support precisely because they are there in a group with PED-tinged guys.
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Enjoying this look-back, but also wishing Scott Effross well in his recovery from Tommy John surgery:
With the Colts hiring former player and TV analyst Jeff Saturday to be their interim head coach – with no previous college or pro coaching experience – everyone’s favorite cross-sport question is … who would this be if it was your favorite org doing it? My preferred joke is that the Cubs could bring in Carlos Zambrano to be the new hitting coach. The only problem there is that, if history holds, he’d be out of the job in a year.
No offense intended at new Cubs hitting coach Dustin Kelly, of course. Hopefully he will carry forward the great work that’s been happening down on the farm, and the Cubs will finally have a hitting coach who lasts for several years in the role.
Hey, that’s a lot, but … I know a bigger one:
NEWSLETTER
