Frayed Knot

I'm more surprised that someone agreed to give him two years. Yeah he's still only 31 y/o (32 in June) but doesn't seem like the type you'd have to commit to more than one. Since spending his first five seasons with the Cardinals he's played for six teams in four seasons since: StL/NYY in 2022, NYY/CIN in '23, Mets in '24, then MIN/PHI in 2025 And now the Giants make seven. One could probably find someone to take a prop bet about whether he's still around San Fran at the end of the first season much less both.

Keith Law (The Athletic) goes: Nolan McLean - #15 Carson Benge - 18 Jett Williams - 45 Jonah Tong - 72 Brandon Sproat - 75 A. J. Ewing - 98

mlb.com says Peacock & NBC So having O.D. be a network game rather than SNY/G, K & R certainly suxx ... but it doesn't look like a game that'll be blacked out to anyone.

Williams played just a handful of games in Rookie ball in 2022, but that's nothing unusual for a June draftee right out of HS He missed significant time in 2024 but played mostly full seasons in '23 & '25 and 284 minor league games in three years is not quite "largely unavailable". And whenever he has played it's been enough to earn him top-50 prospect status. So it's fine if Sproat is your choice but, yes, it is a legit question. Sproat had two minor league seasons totaling 50 games followed by four ML starts so is closer to ready. But he also came out of the college ranks and is three years older so those are factors too.

#51 -- unless we're talking about different lists (or a different Williams)

KIMBREL!!

Put another way, "all the Zach Pops", aka: the eight pitchers on the 2025 NYM staff who threw the fewest amount of innings (minus Torrens & Jankowski), combined to pitch less than one percent of all innings for the season. So the combined angst about how David Stearns 'done us wrong' by signing all these replacement level pitchers to all these 'catch-and-release' deals, is vastly over-blown. iow: the 8 pitchers (not including Torrens & Jankowski) at the back of the bullpen combined to throw a combined 12 innings, or less than one percent, of all innings pitched for the 2025 NYM [12 of 1,432 = 0.084%]. Otherwise known as: this is hardly a topic to worry oneself over, much one to carp about it time and time and time again.

Well now, Zach Pop did face 9 batters for the Mets in 2025 (one more than Luis Torres and three more than Travis Jankowski) so I can see how equating his signing with that of Freddie Peralta is a valid comparison.

MLB.com releases its off-season list Mets: #100 - Brandon Sproat (now Brewers) #97 - AJ Ewing #51 - Jett Williams (now Brewers) #48 - Jonah Tong #16 - Carson Benge #6 - Nolan McLean Top Ten: 10 - Max Clark - OF - Tigers #9 - Colt Emerson - Mariners #8 - Samuel Basalo - C - Orioles #7 - Sebastian Walcott - SS - Rangers #6 - Nolan McLean - RHP - Mets #5 - JJ Wetherholt - SS - Cardinals #4 - Leo De Vries - SS - Athletics #3 - Jesus Made - SS - Brewers #2 - Kevin McGonigle - SS - Tigers #1 - Konnor Griffin - SS - Pirates

It's not often that MLB gets the names Gore and Vidal into the news on consecutive days.

Big trade involving the Rangers and Nationals as Texas packages FIVE prospects, including their 2025 1st round pick, in exchange for LHP MacKenzie Gore Rangers receive: LHP MacKenzie Gore Nationals receive: SS Gavin Fien (12th overall pick in 2025), RHP Alejandro Rosario (Top-50 prospect in pre-2025 lists), SS Devin Fitz-Gerald, OF Yeremy Cabrera (No. 16) and IB/OF Abimelec Ortiz You may remember that Gore, once a 3rd overall draft pick (2017), was the big prize going to Washington in the deal which sent Juan Soto to San Diego

And while I'm certainly not counting on a Luis Robert return to his 2nd RoY and mid-pack MVP years, he is only two seasons removed from an All-Star/Silver-Slugger/130 OPS+/12th MVP year (2023), plus he doesn't even turn 29 until August. So that puts him into a category where a bounce-back is at least plausible. iow, he's not some old guy where you hope he can suddenly dial it back a half-decade or more and any rebound that does occur is likely more of a short-term 'dead cat bounce' kind of deal than it is a fountain of youth.

Acuna came here because Cohen was willing to eat a lot of money, and now he goes away because Cohen is willing to take on a lot of money. Robert is due $20mil this year and also $20 more next season or a $2mil buyout. iow, unless Robert suddenly rediscovers his 2021-23 form [.287/.331/.511; 130 OPS+ over 311 G/1,392 PA] while also maintaining his elite defensive rep, he's essentially a 22 million dollar, one-year stop-gap.

HoF'ers Frank Thomas and Jeff Bagwell share an exact birth date (5/27/68) although were not in the same HoF class.

My statement had nothing to do with liking (or not) any particular player.

Major League Baseball owners are “raging” in the wake of Kyle Tucker’s free agency agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers and it is now “a 100 percent certainty” that the owners will push for a salary cap, one person briefed on ownership conversations who was not authorized to speak publicly told The Athletic. “These guys are going to go for a cap no matter what it takes,” the source said. So begins a piece in The Athletic by Evan Drellich The idea of the owners trying to push a salary cap has been hinted at for a while now but this leak seems to all but chisel it in stone. The article also cites the Bo Bichette signing as an impetus to push a ceiling and suggests that the Dodgers and Mets 'might be the only teams that will try and stand in the way of a cap'. That may or may not be an accurate assessment [Me: I can't see the Yanquis suddenly supporting one for instance] but at least eight owners would have to join forces in order to nix the idea. But of course division within ownership ranks is hardly the biggest obstacle to a cap. They're going to try to sell the idea of a cap matched with a salary floor in order to get the players union to even consider it [me: and I doubt even that will be enough]. Better revenue sharing will also be a strategy but there's a limit to how easily the owners (at least half of them anyway) will agree on that. There's not really a ton to talk about now since even the beginning of negotiations is at least two months away. So just consider this to be the opening chapter of our next (at least) year-long thread.

I'm good with Beltran ... not so much on Andruw.

Last I read, he was at an impasse with the Yanx as he was asking for seven years and the Yanx unwilling to go more than five.

re: Wilbur Wood I went looking for what I remembered as having happened but wasn’t sure if it was true, and that involved Wood starting both ends of a DH. And I was right, I did actually find one (maybe there are one or two more, not sure) although it appeared to be more an accident of circumstances rather than something pre-planned. Plus the results weren’t all that pretty. 7/20/73, YS1, Friday, Game 1 of a twi-night DH, Wood faces six batters in the bottom of the 1st and doesn’t retire a single one. - he actually K’d leadoff man Horace Clark but he reached on a passed ball and stole 2nd - Matty Alou walked before Roy White doubled in 2 and Bobby Murcer singled in White - Thurman Munson followed with a double before Graig Nettles singled in both of them and that was it for Wood. The nightcap was only better by comparison: Wood pitched 4.1 allowing 5 runs on 7 hits. The Yanx swept the DH on a combined score of 19-2 The other thing I found (while looking for the first) was that in 1971, his first as a full time starter, Wood started four of the White Sox’ first nine games of the season [on 4/15, 4/18, 4/22, 4/25]. He lost 2-1 in 11 innings in the opener (he pitched the first nine) but following it up with CG shut-outs in each of the next three. He'd start 42 games that year and follow it up with seasons of 49, 48, 42, and 43 starts for the years 1972-75, combining for 736 innings pitched just in '72 & '73

Ha-seong Kim, expected to be the Braves starting SS this season, will be out "four to five months" (presumably from now) following surgery to repair a torn tendon in his right middle finger sustained when he fell on ice back in his native Korea. The Braves selected him off waivers from Tampa in September '25 and then was signed to a one year contract in the off-season. Kim won a Gold Glove with San Diego in 2023 but has been limited by injuries in the two seasons since.

Yeah, I remember that joke from childhood, only it was a thrown tin can into the street.

Aside from his injury-riddled and outlier of a season in 2024, Bichette's career OBP is close to .350, so he's clearly a lead-off candidate. Even Nimmo's OPB wasn't that high since 2023

The Phils react to having Bo swiped out from under their nose by resigning JT Realmuto to a three year deal. He turns 35 during ST and is coming off his first sub-100 OPS+ season (91) since his rookie campaign in 2015 with Miami (92). During the nine year run in between [2016-2024 - 3 w/MIA, 6 w/PHI) he averaged 114 OPS+ and 132 G/yr (once you filter out 2020) as a backstop and twice a Gold Glove winner. What he's got going forward for 2026 thru 2028 is almost certainly going to be a significant cut below all that.

The new site has (or is going to have) a forum!!!!

The Guardians transfer $1.5 of international pool money from their account to the account of the Mets so that the former has that much less to spend this year and the latter the same amount more because, just like energy in the universe, international pool money cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed from one form into another. Everyone knows it's Wandy Said to be the second best int'l prospect as the new signing period begins, the 16 y/o lefty hitting SS was thought to be headed to the Yanx but then backed away after the team fired their international scouting director last month. Here he is hiding his stormy eyes. [FIMG=300]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G-uRS7abIAAdWrT?format=jpg&name=small[/FIMG]