One week to Halloween. Got stared down by a black cat yesterday, just randomly walking around outside. If I just up and disappear at some point over the next few days, now you know why …
- Nice to be able to say this out loud and mean it, I’m sure:
- Backed by Steve Cohen’s money and a decent core, there’s no reason for the Mets to hold back this offseason. They have needs – particularly in the rotation – and they have money coming off the books (as if that were a requirement). You can expect them to be very aggressive on a guy like Corbin Burnes, and maybe also Max Fried and Blake Snell. Plus, you know, the whole Juan Soto thing.
- Speaking of which, this would actually strike me as a relative bargain:
- A $36.7M AAV for Juan Soto is obviously quite low, and the trade-off is the length of the deal, where you have to project that the last three, four, five seasons could be close to dead money. Of course, the flip side of that? In 12 years time, $36.7 million is worth only about $20 million in present value. So the massive length of the deal actually winds up effectively deferring a lot of the compensation, and bringing down the real value.
- That is all to say, if Juan Soto were actually willing to sign a 14/$513.6M deal today, the Cubs would be crazy not to jump all over it. Which leads me to say: (1) he’s probably going to get a better deal than that, and/or (2) the Cubs are going to disappoint us.
- It looks like people are finally being permitted back into Tropicana Field as part of the efforts to survey the damage from Hurricane Milton. We knew it was really bad just from the external videos and pictures, but these clips really underscore just how decimated the park was:
- It remains unclear just what will happen from here. Maybe the park gets fully fixed at some point in 2025, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the Rays just try to figure out a temporary home before moving into their new park in 2028. Maybe they play all of next season somewhere else. Maybe they have to split their season between lots of different places. Terrible situation.
- Needs more Ben Zobrist:
- Speaking of comebacks against Cleveland, I am ashamed to say that I actually do not remember this:
- How about that man on top:
- Kyle Hendricks, by the way, has only 11 postseason starts, so he doesn’t qualify for that list. But if he did, he’d be at number 5, just behind Gerrit Cole (3.12). Jake Arrieta has only 9 postseason starts, but he would actually be just ahead of Hendricks (3.08). Cubs really had some great postseason starters.