David and his 29 counterparts start meeting today in Scottsdale. John Shea says Forst is looking for lefthanded batters.
I’m kind of expecting this to be a “go for it” offseason that could feature a big trade or two, but who knows. In the meantime, feel free to talk about football.
The biggest “go for it” move is committing $20-22M or whatever to Semien for one season. The combined bill for him and Khris will be north of $40M which probably precludes any other huge moves. Offloading Stephen Piscotty for a lefthanded hitting corner outfielder with more offensive punch than Grossman would help but that will require adding a lot of value besides Piscotty.
Committing to Semien also makes it more likely that they’ll decline the opportunity to take an expensive chance on fixing Blake Treinen. It’s much cheaper to scrape the broken Lou pieces out of his shower and try to put him back together.
Presumably Semien will make the “I’m not negotiating once the season starts” announcement. I don’t think they’ll commit $100M+ to anybody until they have clarity on the ballpark and it’s tough to see that happening by late March. And if there’s no ballpark resolution by this time next year I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Fisher is actively seeking inquiries from Las Vegas, Portland, Montreal, Branson MO or whoever has the money and the inclination.
At least one, and probably two, of Profar, Barreto, Mateo, Neuse, and Pinder needs to get traded. Whether that will help get any real value back is questionable.
Slusser has also raised the possibility of Treinen being non-tendered. Given the quality of his stuff, plus his one season of excellent results, I would think someone would think he was worth the arb price, even if it’s not the A’s.
Agree with these. Based on their actions this year I can’t see the FO moving Pinder and I can’t see Barreto staying around. The other 3 feel like various degrees of wild cards.
Packaged with Daulton Jeffries or Nick Allen or Austin Beck or whatever and you’re starting to get somewhere.
It does seem likely that Treinen will be traded rather than non-tendered, but his value net of arbitration earnings is low enough that there’s not a lot of difference on the A’s end.
I don’t want to lose him, but would Canha help to improve a trade package? He is surely more valuable than Profar and Pinder, right? The comparison to Barreto, Mateo, and Neuse is more complicated because people can still wish-cast prospects.
Semien will not cost 20-22 million next year. His previous mehness means that he’s tethered to some meh arbitration salaries as well so his Arb3 salary won’t be 4x what he made this year. I expect more in the range of 12 million for next year.
Suggestion for The Athletic’s new A’s beat writer: Separate your personal and professional Twitter accounts, or, if you only want the one account, keep the focus on A’s news and stop retweeting cat videos and other garbage.
Wow, speaking of Mike Leach types who put their foot in their mouth once too often. That’s the end of an era in Canada.
In the overall Cherry context a “you people” feels ordinary. Long time coming. I’m sure his second act as aggrieved rightwing victim of speech suppression will start soon.
Curtain up on second act, on a rather unsurprising stage.
There was a play in the MNF game I haven’t seen before. The 49ers were punting and in addition to the two gunners they had a player lined up about even with the punter, 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage. He took off with the snap and didn’t cross the line of scrimmage until after the ball had been kicked, so in effect he was a third gunner with the running start. It does increase the risk of a blocked punt but if the kicking team thinks it can control the rushers anyway, I thought it was a creative play. However, both the NFL and college have been trying to take the violent collisions out of kickoff and punt plays and I tend to think just because of that specific play that will be an illegal formation next season.
Not to get away from rosterbaiting, I couldn’t chose from all the grift links to reply to:
Fake agency: State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations
i’m gonna love the quotes from bregman at his mvp ceremony
“I felt great, there’s no excuse,” Fiers said. “I just have to laugh about it. It’s one of those games where you feel like they’re on everything you threw.”
some good news
This sounds super intriguing but I lack the needed powers of discernment or scope. If only I knew some astrophysicists.
It’s at the unholy intersection of technically hard observations, limited (and likely biased) statistics, and computationally-constrained numerical studies – so possibly ground-breaking, surely intriguing, and definitely dominated by systematic uncertainties.
It would be really weird if the universe had a preferred axis. My bet is on “don’t know how to properly calculate the significance of the observed effect” (i.e. ptbnl’s limited (and likely biased) statistics).
Absent a preferred axis, I also wonder about the ability of N-body/Hydro sims to capture really large-scale, long-term processes that could produce alignments – initial conditions, finite volume effects, etc.
SAME!
Thanks to you both. Also I saw that the lab is building a new super computer to keep up with your demands.
They put in a new one every 3-4 years, so it’ll be the 8th generation since I started at the lab. They’ve taken the bold step of naming the new one after someone living (Perlmutter) which is always risky, though Saul is a sweetheart.
Even though it won’t be commissioned till late 2020/early 2021, they’re already working on its successor too. We’ve just been asked to provide code to use in the procurement test suite, which is great because it means we can be confident our code will run on whatever they buy!
Bummer for the NCAA that they weren’t allowed to stop this Memphis kid from playing in the “Phil Knight Invitational” because his parents got some moving expenses paid when he was in high school.
#DeathtotheNCAA
Also death to the unholy alliance between the NFL (and to a slightly lesser extent, the NBA) and the NCAA. Making a kid like Tua put his body on the line for free this long rather than earn the money he deserves in the league is disgraceful.
There is currently someone on the A’s roster named TJ McFarland. I don’t know why that happened, but it did.
Melvin complained that Buchter and Diekman walked too many guys. So BillyForst dumped Diekman, maybe Buchter too, and got Bob a lefty who doesn’t strike out anybody and gives up tons of hits BUT DOESN’T WALK ANYBODY.
Chances are he’s waived as soon as they need a roster spot (the 40 man is full now with Jonah Heim being added) but perhaps he’ll be saved by a Treinen non-tender or he’ll outlive Blackburn.
If he does make it, I am going to have a hard time not calling him KT from time to time.
He’ll be DFAed soon enough.
Legend
This is easily the best work Sir Rod has done since he left the Faces
The 25 year old stewart also called himself sir rod
I know its a fantasy, but what gets Betts?
Full salary, Canha, mateo and ??
I imagine either Puk or Luzardo + more.
I don’t think they can get an asset as valuable as Puk or Luzardo for 1 year of Betts at $
24 million$28 million (his likely arb salary I guess).I know I complain about this every year, but my god dribbling out the award announcements at this point is so anticlimactic.
Might as well announce them during the playoffs on the various off days. They might get more attention that way. Otherwise, it’s mostly just meh, who cares.
Oh look, MLB has invented a whole new kind of superfluous awards to drag out the ennui even more.
OK, but you don’t really need to cheat to hammer a Ryan Dull hanger.
The definitive account of Ukraine scandal to date. Tremendous detail. If only facts mattered.
the definitive account of signstealing scandal to date. tremendous insight. if only logic mattered.
That’s quite an impressive array of folks lined up to dunk on that guy.
I don’t know why it bothers me so much, amid everything else, that Jim Jordan refuses to put on a FKing coat, but it does.
its a gross affectation. there is such there, there, and we know all the facts already, forcing us to watch means we will have to focus on that dumb shirt.
plus it looks like every smarmy salesman you have ever encountered
He wants everyone to know he’s just as buff as he was as a college wrestling coach. Also equally as committed to calling out wrongdoing.
i suffer an uncanny valley–like discomfort when i look at nunes then stefanik then nunes then stefanik…
I was such a bad day for them but they will never know and 40% of the country won’t accept and 20% of the country will shrug.
Val Demmings destroyed all their talking points for the day in 4 minutes. (the one cop that can do her job isn’t a cop anyhmore)
not paying much attention today, that mean the 40 is full?
I believe it is.
Even with Cotton gone, that 40-man has a lot of starting pitchers: Fiers, Manaea, Montas, Luzardo, Puk, Mengden, Bassitt, Gossett, Holmes, Kaprielian, Jefferies, Blackburn
Mengden’s probably gotta go, along with Blackburn, and Bassitt should probably be in the bullpen going forward.
I like a AAA rotation of Holmes, Kap, Jefferies, Gossett, and Dunshee, but I’m thinking one or two of those guys is packaged up for a big league hitter.
SuSlu’s article also mentioned a couple of guys who sound like relievers with some decent K/9 rates. Hopefully they get added and maybe 1-2 of the MI mess gets worked out.
Scratch this-didnt realize the deadline was today for protection. Still hope they clean up the MI mess regardless.
Obviously they’re loading up on Cal Bears ahead of Saturday’s Big Game.
But we need offense, not defense. O/U is 40 which is above only Minnesota-Northwestern’s 39.5 in college football this weekend. Furd is -2.5; this is the classic battle of crappy teams from the 80s and 90s.
I went to the Big Game last year (2-week delay due to smoke from the Paradise fire), but am not going this year because I haven’t been to Pasadena in a long time and will instead spend a portion of Thanksgiving weekend watching us and the Eds try to outsuck each other in the Rose Bowl.
O/U 40 is only watchable if it takes place in a blizzard. Yuck.
Fiona Hill gave me a serious case of Unexpected British Accent this morning.
I only heard her with the dems. I assum she shut down the rs?
I love the implied shade thrown at British accent-based classism.
saw something this morning not worth going and search for but it went like…
US: how classy!
UK: how far north??
ESPN broadcasts from the Coliseum on March 29 and March 30
They want to get it over with early I see.
That’s exactly why there’s a Royals vs. Tigers game on that list.
On a Monday at 1 pm eastern. Full burial.
Rooting for Cal tomorrow, of course, but Primera happily informs me that UCSB knocked the Bears out of the NCAA soccer tournament yesterday.
Go Bears!!!
Yeah Berkeley!
Yes, that was a nice finish!
For an awful lot of it I was thinking a climate change protest wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
my LMBrasil theory lives on in the libertadores final.
first time it’s made me happy tho.
My people were less thrilled by this. Flamengo’s dominance of Rio, and really all of Brazil, in terms of fan support is now locked in for several more generations.
an argentine is happy brasil took the libertadores. several brazilians are sad.
THIS IS WHAT THE TWENTY-TEENS HAVE DONE TO US, PEOPLE.
the dumb teens, is what i’m hoping for decade name.
Don’t know exactly what this means but it sounds important.
If it means what I think it means, teams like the Yankees and Dodgers who are getting a shit ton of cash for broadcasting rights will continue to largely lock down their product inside whatever system gives them the most revenue (whether that’s RSN or some other streaming service). And teams like the A’s will likely spread it out more in an effort to maximize their audience.
It appears to open the door to clubs selling in-market streaming rights over the top without requiring logging in to a cable or satellite subscription, i.e. allowing viewers to watch local telecasts without doing something that violates the TOS of MLB.tv. Think of it as potentially lifting the in-market blackouts on MLB.tv.
Whether that actually happens is something to be negotiated between each team and its RSN. It could be pretty significant to the A’s because they have an opt-out in their contract with Comcast coming up shortly.
The demographics of MLB’s television audience are heavily skewed toward middle-aged and elderly and this is probably a suprisingly intelligent way to try to access a younger audience. It will come down to money though, needless to say.
Mateo, Barreto and Neuse would all have to flatline, taken away with sheets over their faces, for Ryan Goins to ever appear in an A’s uniform in the regular season.
So you’re saying there’s a chance?!
This feels like the kind of comment we will be revisiting in mid-May.
Well that would be ungood.
Actually it’s probably only Mateo and Neuse who have to flatline. When andeux links back to this comment, see if Barreto is OPSing .900 for the Marlins or somebody.
With Schlitter and Schultz we have the beginnings of a great knockoff bootleg beer label.
He can’t step on Laureano’s bat in Korea.
Nick Martini is coming to Cincinnati — I better get my tickets now before they’re gone!
(I didn’t realize / had forgotten that he went to the Padres at the end of August)
Romantic dinner, Nick Martini on cameo, “honey I’ve got tickets to the Padres” … smooooth.
I meant that he is on the Reds now — romantic dinner is Skyline coneys
Darn
I like Vogt but I also would really like a good defensive catcher as a back up/fill in for injury and I am not sure that’s him. So I hope he has a great year against the Gnats.
Rosenthal in The Athletic:
On the one hand, I won’t miss Profar or Phegley at all, and Treinen is a crapshoot.
OTOH, FK our skinflint billionaire owner’s refusal to move into the middle third of the league in payroll in order to win a championship.
I would like the skinflint billionaire to enter MLB’s middle class by way of Semien Chapman and Olsen signings. Cutting loose Profar and Phegley makes sense even with an unlimited payroll.
Yes, this current core is about the best and cheapest it can possibly be. By most other teams’ standards, now is the perfect time for some decently sized expenditures and trades to take the team over the top. Like what the Brewers did when they brought in Yelich, Cain, Moustakas. Or what the Braves are doing now. Or even what the Astros did pre-2017 when they shelled out for Reddick, McCann, Beltran, and then Verlander at the deadline.
There’s still time in this offseason of course, so maybe something big is on the horizon. But it’s hard to read articles like this without thinking that this is the same old organization that’s willing to be just good enough while it pisses away another championship caliber core.
Kendall Graveman -> Mariners
FYI, though so far it’s 75% shaming at southwest usage:
Tweets by Dsmoke34
N o one knows how to use Twitter when they start. Many never learn either, but I will give him time.
at my parents house in so cal. forgot how upsetting it is when the newspaper gets wet in the driveway
Also when you drive 400 miles to see a football game in the Rose Bowl and it’s raining. With UCLA being 4-7 I think it will be me and a couple thousand others, mostly from Cal, with plenty of room to spread out in the stadium tonight.
It is crazy that this game still hasn’t kicked off.
And the Bear Territory chant echoes through a mostly empty Rose Bowl.
i bet the bands played the cal fight song
re item 7: does this mean you are all on freekraut.us but didn’t tell me?
I figured I was the one who got ditched, for posting one too many links with autoplay spam.
changes groupchat name to FK SFGATE
What part of “don’t draw attention to it” do you guys not understand?
I second this comment.
Easy to say now but I knew the Raiders were going to get waxed against the Jets last week, and I am equally certain they will get beaten up at KC tomorrow. They’re better than I thought but still total frauds as far as the playoff conversation goes.
I had no doubt about today’s debacle but I had not forgot that we hadnt seen the annual mailed in game against a team that they should roll over yet. It is a tradition like no other.
There are signs of life but until they get a defense that can at least slow some people down it doesnt matter what else the team does.
J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets?
Jets went on to finally give the Bengals their first W.
To capture the 2019 (and final) Asomugha Cup, 7-5 Cal needs the 6-6 Raiders to lose all four remaining games. Since 1995, the Raiders have won 14 Asomugha Cups, Cal has won 9 and there has been one tie.
Asomugha Cup stats:
Raiders and Cal combined records over .500: 5 times
Under .500: 18 times
Exactly .500: 1 time
Best combined record: 2002, 18-10 (Cal 7-5, Raiders 11-5)
Worst combined record: 2013, 5-23 (Cal 1-11, Raiders 4-12)
A tradition like no other.