NEWSLETTER
I’ve been cultivating an aquarium for the last few months – something I’ve wanted since I was a little kid, and finally decided to go for it. It’s gone well overall, but the inevitable happened last night: one of the fish died. You kinda have to know it comes with the territory when you get into this, that sometimes a fish just won’t acclimate well, but it’s still sad. I will pour out a very tiny drink today.
- When MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred was on John Ourand’s podcast last month, I checked it out. But I’ve been so into the TV/streaming stuff that I primarily focused there, and did a whole lot of skipping around. Apparently I – and everyone else not named Jayson Stark – missed a whopper of a comment from Manfred about rules changes getting kicked around league circles. As Stark notes at The Athletic, one of those rules change ideas that came up at the owners meetings last month – and got “a little buzz” – was the Golden At-Bat rule. The rule can be crafted in a variety of specific ways, but the short version is that each team would get to choose one at-bat per game where they can send any player they want to the plate, regardless of batting order or substitution rules or whatever. It’s a total freebie of a moment, where you just get to send your star hitter or whoever to the plate to take the big at-bat. Hence the name.
- If this sounds too gimmicky to ever become a possibility, I’ll say that (1) Stark rightly points out the way Manfred talks about it sounds a whole lot more like something SERIOUSLY being discussed by the league than a laugh, and (2) maybe the designated hitter sounded like a laugh when it was first proposed. So color me mildly concerned about this one becoming a real idea that the league wants to test or implement.
- That is to say …. NOOOOOO, I would not be into this idea. I actually think MLB has been very thoughtful about just about every rules change in recent years, and I’ve come around to being on board with all of them. But this would be a bridge way too far, mostly for the reason this anonymous exec offered to Stark:
‘The club official who is skeptical wanted to make it clear he’s not one of those old-school execs who hates every new rule. The last wave of rule changes — pitch clock, stolen-base incentives, etc. — were great, he said.
“With the other rule changes … you’re trying to create the best version of baseball,” he said. “But with this rule, the Golden At-Bat, it’s like you’re trying to create a different sport. You’re trying to create something else that’s kind of like baseball, but not really.”’
- Bingo. There’s something about this that smells much more like a fundamental change to the way baseball has EVER been played, rather than it being about trying to craft rules to better fit the sport to what many of us have always considered it to be in the first place. Tons, tons more in Stark’s piece. We’ll see if this ridiculousness actually goes anywhere, but the reactions I’ve seen have been almost universally negative, rather than the 50/50 you often see when rules changes are floated.
- The financials on the Kyle Higashioka signing didn’t come out right away when I wrote it up, so I’ll share it here now: he’s getting $13.5 million over two years from the Rangers. More or less in line with projections, and not so large that it makes you re-think what the price tag could be on other options like Danny Jansen or Carson Kelly. The Cubs still need to be looking in that direction. My guess is that Kelly winds up with a deal in the same range as Higashioka, with Jansen getting more. I suspect the Cubs would really hope to sign only a one-year deal if possible, but if it takes two years to get one of these guys, I don’t think that actually does much harm to their future plans for Miguel Amaya or Moises Ballesteros.
- For what it’s worth, FanGraphs did not have Higashioka or Kelly in its top 50 free agent list, and projected Jansen at two years and $16 million (I bet he gets $20M+). Higashioka was 2/$15M at MLBTR, Kelly was an honorable mention, and Jansen was 2/$20M. You can see the ballpark of expectations here. One or two years in the $7 to $10M AAV range, maybe less for Kelly (who I think might be underrated a bit).
- Speaking of the catching situation – where Moises Ballesteros can fold himself in as the third option as soon as this year – how about minor league hitting coordinator Rachel Folden talking all things Ballesteros:
- More on the A’s-Vegas stadium situation, where the projected price tag has risen to $1.75 billion, and where team owner John Fischer is seeking to sell upwards of $500 million in team equity (at a whopping $2 billion valuation) to help cover the extra costs. That’s all via The Athletic, a read where you can’t help but get the sense that this project is going to continue to be troubled.
- Rob has learned that we all want more knuckleball content:
