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I will take 450 strikeouts and 70 homers from him and Colson

Bregman won't get super upset at heckles from some teen that had no idea of a situation. In fact, heckling probably makes Bregman better since he has heard so much of it.

Now do this by market size. The NFL has without question the best parity in major sports. Yes, teams with stud QBs are going to be more successful (which is what the above highlights), but all teams regardless of market size have equal access to getting one. The NBA’s parity is also better than the MLB, but not as good as the NFL because large market teams (and Miami) do have some advantage in getting stars in free agency due to individual player caps. That being said, a small nothing market like OKC is able to form a dynasty because of the benefit of a salary cap. That simply is not possible in the MLB…TB is probably the best example of small market success and they have to battle every year and have never been able to get a World Series.

But that's the problem. In the NFL, Green Bay and KC can be powerhouses and nobody talks about them as small market teams. In MLB, it's gotten to the point where the only powerhouse franchises are in the top 12 or so markets. Everyone else has to either catch lightning in a bottle or keep tearing down and rebuilding like the Guardians and Rays do.

Johnson has been both transparent and backs up his talk with the work. At the bye he said “the running game is not where we want it to be and I’m gonna work to get it better” and he absolutely did that. He talks about involving players in the offense and then you see the results. He wanted to make sure Caleb stays upright and he focuses on opposing defenses and makes sure that the necessary blocks and chips are there for Caleb. He has been everything you can ask for up to this point (unless you are Joe, during a game)

Have you seen him play? Lotta warts in Zavala’s game. Defense in center ain’t one of them.

So, by your logic, the Brewers should be sold because they can't get past the big market teams to make it to the World Series. The Guardians should be sold, too. In fact, using this litmus test, about half the league (all smaller market teams) should be put up for sale. The Rays just got sold. What if the new owners can't get past the big market teams, either? Force them to put the team up for sale again? The Pohlads tried to sell the Twins and ran into issues with their $400M in debt. Two things can be true: their are some bad owners who just don't want to compete (Reinsdorf, Nutting, Fisher) and there's a systemic competitive balance problem in the league that is only getting worse.

From Rosenthal Execs saying “no team wants prospects” if that’s the case Getz needs to get Jerry to pay whatever he needs to, to try and get themselves two top 100 prospects back for Robert

I’m just repeating what your link says…did you read your links?

I argued this point a few months ago at the trade deadline. It's not a crowd pleaser...But I agree.

Glad to see it. Houser pitched his tail of for the Sox and he seemed like a real positive and good guy.

I think their comp pick is in the 35th overall range. I reckon the talent we could push down to that range would be better than any prospect we could trade for.

Red Sox have also been a potential Marte destination

Pirates. Something like Comp A and Levi Sterling for Robert and $$ would be excellent

Chatter is about all it is. If you listen to the audio clip, it is total speculation without any sources just because the White Sox “have money to spend.” Apparently the commentators don’t know that Jerry doesn’t want to spend any money.

There's a little chatter But of course they'd have to be willing to sign the check

Yeah, I blew that one. I don't know what I was looking at last night.

I don't follow hockey except to bandwagon the Hawks, and I don't follow the NBA that closely because the Bulls are a dumpster fire, but enough to keep track of the league. I do follow the NFL. I know the NFL has revenue sharing. If you want to argue that MLB needs a similar revenue sharing model (or at least a standardized TV deal), that's definitely worth considering. I just don't think a salary cap is going to accomplish anything. The A's were in the same market as the Giants and have had multiple dynasties and years of dominance. Their recent incompetence has little to do with their market size.

Dallas/Ft. Worth is the 4th largest metro area in the US. 8.3M people vs. 9.4M in Chicago's metro. How are they mid market by any metric? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area

The markets are different in the NFL. You can't 1:1 compare them. Look at revenue by team for both leagues and compare where each team is ranked.

I disagree with this. Over the last 20 Super Bowl champs, here are the small market winners: Green Bay, Kansas City (x3), Tampa Bay, New Orleans, Pittsburgh. That's 7 times in 20 seasons. Plus 3 arguably "middle market" SB champs: Baltimore, Seattle, Denver. That's half the SB titles in the last 20 years that weren't in a top 12 market vs. only 4 out of 20 in MLB. If Kansas City and Tampa Bay are small markets in MLB, then they're small markets in other sports too. Green Bay/Milwaukee, too.

It was, and that makes a huge difference. But I think both things can be true. A great coach doesn't usually win with a s%*# roster. But a good roster can still suffer from coaching malpractice which can have severe negative implications on the team record. He's done a fantastic job.

I have a thousand posts. Michelangelo likes me. Who the f*** are any of us?

i feel like Rosenthal is putting this out there because buyers want it out there. But really i dont see any evidence of what Ken is saying.. for a few years now teams have been really reticent to trade top prospects. Even for Crochet, we had to take a catcher and an injured guy to get Top 100 guys. Teams now believe other teams are too good at evaluating their guys. Maybe we taught them that in the Semien and Tatis debacles

That’s supposedly based on a 24 pitch sample this year and he was at .324 in the year before when he played a full season

I believe the Sox do truly believe in the culture BS highly. when they sign free agents they want them to come in and lead & inspire. i dont know Murakami's communication ability specifically but I think you couple that with the fact JR doesnt want to pay a posting fee to an outside party.. then that is probably gonna be that. Jerry doesnt like agents or finder fees of any sort

I unno man. I'm not saying Murakami is a sure bet, but if there is one signing that wouldn't surprise me it would be going after a high profile first baseman from abroad.

Robert just doesn’t have much incentive to sign an extension right now, especially not a hometown discount (3/$45 million). He can just play out the string on his current contract. If he performs well for whatever team he is on by the end of the 2026 season, he will either force the issue on that team picking up his final $20 million dollar option for 2027 or he will receive a $2 million dollar buyout to become a free agent and have Boras find him a long-term deal.

Yeah, you don’t sign a possibly team friendly extension when you hire Scott Boras as your agent.

Who said give up on? He just wouldn’t crack OD roster.

Always pumping up Chase

We should check if Adam Dunn is available to coach them

Red Sox have reported interest in both Murakami and Okamoto, but are also trying to sort out the Bregman thing. Plus they might be in on Arenado and/or out on Mayer depending on how various dominos fall. I imagine there's some pressure on them to do something soon, given they and the Rockies are alone in not making any FA moves yet.

Out of curiosity, which teams are an actual threat for Murakami? Of the high spending teams, maybe the Red Sox? Most of the other ones are already locked in at 1B. Maybe there is a second tier team that is desperate for a 1B upgrade, but the market for a big name 1B addition looks soft right now. Again, it very much reminds of the situation when we got Abrue.

It depends on when they were posted. I think Murakami is first.

NFL teams with great coaches are the only ones who are successful, and coaches are not subject to the salary cap. Stud QBs have never been bought by the highest bidder. They've always been zealously guarded by whoever drafted/originally signed them, to the point where a big part of the NFL's stance against free agency until relatively recently was due to "protecting" QBs from poaching. NFL team spending has always been in a rough parity as well. There's just not a lot to indicate that the salary cap has been the driving force in any change to the competitive landscape there. OKC is not a dynasty yet, and this is really their first glimpse of sustained success in franchise history, even going back to the Seattle days. If we're talking NBA market size, four of the seven dynasties (Lakers, Bulls, Warriors, Celtics) since the cap started are large markets and account for 66.7% of dynasty championships and 55% of overall championships. I don't see how four teams accounting for 55% of championships in the last 40 years shows a salary cap win. I've also already outlined why I think a cap and floor won't work in MLB in a previous post, but it really breaks down to A) The cap isn't going to be below the current highest spend, B) The high spenders will still spend the most, and C) Floors are only going to enforce bad decisions from the poorly run teams at the bottom, and you can't force them to pay more than they are able to. A better revenue sharing model and standardized TV rights are much better ideas.

Anyone but the Mets and utility man Acuna please.

100% this. There are a couple of owners abusing the revenue sharing system, but there are many other small market teams that do everything right they can control but are subject to a massive difference in revenue vs. their large market peers. I find absurd to think those owners should have to fund massive losses year after year in order to compete with the big market clubs. There is a reason the other leagues all have better parity than MLB and that’s because they use a cap & floor to ensure the major market teams don’t have a massive competitive advantage.

Salary spend ABSOLUTELY correlates to wins in MLB. I'm not arguing against that. It does in the NBA as well. The NFL always had rough spending parity + coaching matters SO MUCH in football, so it's hard to say the cap changed much there. Some MLB teams (Brewers, Rays) buck that trend, but it's really hard. The playoffs are the equalizer there, as you pointed out, which is why I used the WS champ comparison. You're also not changing the landscape of the best regular season teams in MLB by implementing a salary cap. The cap is going to come in at the top of the current team salary spend. They're not going to make the top 5-10 teams shed a ton of salary from guaranteed contracts. So you'll still have the exact same situation you have now, and even if the cap never goes up you're still going to have the same teams at the top. Smart teams will also figure out how to skirt the rules and continue to sign the players they want even if they're at the top of the cap. If you raise the floor too then maybe you'll see some change, but you'd have to make it pretty tight to make a difference, and there aren't enough good players to go around to change much here. You're also still competing against existing market size and team revenue - you're not going to force the Pirates or A's or White Sox to spend to a point they can't afford.

Anyone see the chip block on Garrett that wiped him out. Was either Kmet or Loveland. Earlier in the year Trapillo was a healthy scratch now he is the starting LT and managing well. I am sure he can be micromanaged to prove me wrong but this staff has coaches that can do their job in places needed. RB, DB, OL those guys are professionals that are getting the best out of their team. Johnson has built a staff that is getting the job done and hopefully sustainable. Johnson and Allen if they can stay on the same page can be an amazing duo. After two weeks the 2025 draft was a disaster now I am not certain Loveland and Burden are not the 2 best receivers on the team, Trapillo is the LT for the foreseeable future and KM one of the top rookie RB in the league. The health of that interior line should not be overlooked as to why we are continually getting better.

I like this move. Hey, it's what we do.

The Packers haven't been a dynasty since the 60s. Them consistently having a hall of fame quarterback and being a well coached and well run organization since the early 90s has nothing to do with the salary cap. Even with these advantages they still only have two championships in 30 years and they haven't won in 15 years. KC has a hall of fame coach and a great QB. There's no salary cap for coaches, so anyone could have hired Andy Reid at any time, and no star QB has ever been poached in the history of the NFL because of the ridiculous free agency rules until the 90s. Even since then you haven't seen it because teams know the value of a franchise QB. "People who disagree with me regularly have a disease" is certainly a take. I'll keep it respectful.

That's if you trust those numbers . How does one determine if it's a ball outside the zone that, if framed properly, it COULD have been called a strike ? Or is it that balls in the zone are being called balls by bad umpires ? If you set up low & inside and a pitch hits the zone high & away and called a ball is that a knock against the pitcher the catcher or the ump ? I think most people quoting framing stats and using them seem to trust the people doing the video checks to determine these things. Also don't veteran catchers and pitchers get more favorable calls than younger ones ? There's so much going on between pitchers, catchers ,umps and location and the speed & shape of pitches that I'm just not going to blindly put my faith into fairly new defensive stats that seem to always be changing. Are there comprehensive videos on youtube out there that shows us how a rookie catcher gets such a bad rap for framing or any catcher for that matter ? They catch thousands of pitches . Seems like a lot of tedious work looking at how a catcher frames every single pitch and determining what is the catcher's fault as opposed the pitcher or the ump on close calls. When a catcher has to move his glove too far its practically impossible to actually frame a pitch. Youre judt.lunging to actually catch it especially on a fastball. Sinkers and split finger pitches or sliders and other breaking pitches with a lot of movement make a lot of umps and catchers look bad. Also pitching staffs on a rebuilding team or team cycling through a lot of pitchers transitioning from AAA are all getting used to each other. There's a lot dynamics going on based on familiarity between catchers pitchers and umps. Sometimes a catcher will set up low and away , the pitch is thrown perfectly hit the spot and the catcher will barely move his glove and it might be called a ball because the ump is setting ump over the catchers inside shoulder. Do catchers with a bad rep for framing get dinged because reputation becomes a self fulfilling prophesy with statisticians ? Who are the statisticians ? How do I know they are impartial ? Do they do testing where 10 or more of these guys all look at the same videos and grade each pitch and see how they differ? It all seems very subjective. Maybe their methods are flawed.

I'm trying to factor in popularity, revenue and neighboring captured markets (beyond just physical market size, which is why the Royals are still a small market to me), but sure. We can call them small as an example. That makes it two teams and four total championships since 2006 for small markets in the NFL. Hell, add the Saints too if you want. Three teams, five championships. Doesn't change the point. If I go back through the MLB list and just rank them by pure market size, then the Rangers move to mid market.

Who the f*** this monkey?

? The offseason is still going on

Why? He's only 21. BA has his run, field and arm look like a centerfielder. Run: 50 | Arm: 55 | Field: 50

Robert has played about 120 games a year on average the last three years. He's only 28. We have no legit centerfielders in the system. He is an elite defender with some power. Increased his walk rate to 10%. Stole 33 bases at an 80% success rate. I know he's not the super star we all hoped...but isn't that a useful player as your #9 hitter? What about extending him 3 years for $45.

He's ranked 61st overall in the class. Performance and asking price will play a large part of it, but I would hazard anywhere from the late 1st to 3rd round?

I think Sosa, Vargas and Baldwin get dinged at Fangraphs because of the utility. Sosa is passable at 2B, and doesn't project enough power to hold down 1B, LF or DH. I can certainly imagine him hitting 30 HRs as he matures, and that's nothing to turn one's nose up at. As far as his perception here and in podcast-ville, I hear the comment "low baseball IQ" thrown around, and I don't want to really touch that. There's some bone-headedness, but I don't think he's as bad as we've all conjured up. Looking at his splits, dude sure ain't streaky. I think he can and should get regular at-bats this year. He's a nice, cheap 2B option who could hit you 20 dingers. I would think that's marketable right now, and should bring back a steady OF or starting pitcher. Or he could plug in for four years.