the lame list

also, no one talking about biggest change in 2020 season: three batter minimum for a pitcher unless they end an inning. no more loogys

26 man active roster during the year and only 28 in september instead of the entire 40 man hanging out

Restrictions on position players pitching too, horrible

Ever hear of brandon Webb or mark prior?

The rule changes especially the 3 batter minimum are great

Webb had, in the 6 seasons he played, basically the same WAR that Corey Kluber has for his career, and almost 7 more WAR than Strasburg.

I think the 3 batter minimum is the one that I don't like.

Yeah I'm not a fan of that. If teams want to carry pitchers only good enough to pitch to 1 batter that's on them imo. Just get rid of pitchers taking 30 seconds to deliver one pitch and the constant stepping out BS.

The stepping out to adjust batting gloves between every pitch is currently the biggest problem in the game. Marwin Gonzalez is the worst offender.

IMO the replay system is the biggest offender. It's cool to want to get the call right, but pausing the game for a minute to decide whether or not we want to further pause the game for another few minutes so that we can zoom in on every close play is so bad when the league office's biggest mandate right now is (supposedly) to speed the game up.

Take the video room out of the equation entirely. If you're so sure that the play was wrong, then stand behind it and throw a challenge flag within 20 seconds or whatever. Yeah, sometimes when a guy is sliding in to a base his hand/foot comes off by a quarter-inch, and by definition, he should be called out. If the coach or fielder can see that with the naked eye, then I'm all for challenging it, but it's gotten to the point where there's a video check-up on every slide and every bang-bang at first. The replay system is meant, in large part, to get the calls right when they're clearly wrong, and these zoom ins to 2b on a SB have quite clearly dogged the system when the plays happen so fast that the umpires can't even see the infraction in question without the slow-mo's and zoom lenses.

I found myself contemplating James Shields.

In 2011, he threw 11 CGs (4 shuttys) and 249.1 innings. That was coming off a -1.5 WAR season.

Trout getting paid

legend

https://media3.giphy.com/media/zTQdK...763972493318b1

wow

he was already at 2/68 left on his current deal so its 10/362 in new money. considering machado got 10/300 plus a player opt out and trout is nearly twice the player machado is, it seems pretty fair. plus they owed him some goodwill for hundreds of millions in surplus value his career so far.

Before someone comes in and says otherwise, this doesn't mean that baseball's compensation system is fixed now, so you can save that one.

As I walk along the Bois Boolong with an independent air,
You can hear the girls declare,
He must be a millionaire.....

Just glad he won't sign with the Yankees so I can continue to root for his run to GOAT status

This seems really light, actually. They're paying him like he's a 6.5WAR player now who is already declining. This assumes $8MM/WAR and 5% inflation year over year.



Even at $7.5/WAR and a 3% growth instead of the typical 5%, 6.75 WAR covers the $430MM.

Mean projection on fangraphs is 8.85 WAR for this season. Using 8.5WAR and -.5WAR/year with 3% yearly inflation, I'm still getting $683MM player value over the next 12 years.

Arbitrarily declining him 1WAR/yr starting at age 33 for some reason, instead of the traditional .5 and still using 3% inflation shows a player value of $519MM.

This is a giant win for the Angels.

I get that they may want to move him from CF here eventually which will drop value, and there probably needs to be some kind of market correction for a player that's so far above everyone else, but he's still 27 for half this season, and has upped his OBP each of the last three seasons. Don't see any reason to even put him in decline for either of the next 2 seasons with these projections tbh.

Bro didn't even get to play a game as the biggest contract ever.

Didn't know this was an available tool on FG, would have saved me some time.

https://twitter.com/benjgc/status/1108028160136921089

Had no idea 1 WAR would be worth 8mil.

He'll still be worth $40mm/year when this contract is over.

Bro and Machado contracts are so bad