Elias’ 2019 Orioles could resemble the 2012 Astros - BaltimoreBaseball.com

The Orioles have a long way to go.

Elias said his goal for this season is to beef up the Orioles’ talent base with smart drafting, international signings and perhaps some trades.

The Orioles must nail the first pick in June’s draft and be aggressive when the international signing season begins on July 2. If the team signs some free agents from the huge number remaining on the market, the Orioles could perhaps flip them in July for prospects.

No, we don’t know what the Orioles will look ...

New Excel Tool – Automated SGP Rankings and Dollar Values

Player valuations always interest me. Although I most enjoy simulation leagues because of their truer representation of real MLB, I’ve been dabbling more and more into Fantasy Baseball. This tool looks like it might be interesting thing to check out.

Yankees to sign shortstop Troy Tulowitzki | MLB.com

Over/under on games he will actually play?

Ray Butler’s 2018 December Top 100 Prospects:

Top prospects rankings are dropping all over. Happy New Year!

Yusei Kikuchi agrees to deal with Mariners | MLB.com

We have a winner!

OT - Catch-All Pop Culture Extravaganza (January 2019)

The 2018-19 TV season is at the midway point, so here’s our annual list of midseason premiere dates for new and returning series. It covers hundreds of broadcast, cable and streaming programs debuting from January 1 through early May and includes shows that were on hiatus.

FanGraphs Q&A and Sunday Notes: The Best Quotes of 2018

“My agent called to say, ‘Hey, the Reds picked you up in the Rule 5.’ I hung up the phone, called my parents, called my brother, and as soon as I hung up my agent called again. ‘Hey, you just got traded to the Royals.’ Then I had to pick up the phone and call everybody back.” — Brad Keller, Kansas City Royals pitcher, May 2018

As of today, Phillies have 4th-best roster in NL East

Prior to the arrival of new GM Brodie Van Wagenen, the Mets largely operated like a mid-market team these last few years. It didn’t help the Phillies much in their head-to-head matchup, with the Phillies going 50-82 against the Mets the last seven seasons.

It did, however, make the Mets less of a threat in the division race. The same can’t be said now after the Mets added Edwin Diaz, Robinson Cano and Wilson Ramos, brought back Jeurys Familia and watched Zack Wheeler transform in the second ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 12-31-2018

New York Sun, December 31, 1918:

Heydler Declines to Name Official Batting Champion of League

Who really is the 1918 batting champion of the National League? The official figures printed in adjoining columns show that Southworth, the young outfielder who came to the Pirates from the Southern League in time to play in 64 National League games, compiled the best average, with .341. Zack Wheat of Brooklyn hit .335 for 105 games, but Eddie Roush of the Reds batted only two points worse in 113 ...

Trump administration aims to stop professional baseball deal with Cuba

The Trump administration is expected to take steps to block a historic agreement that would allow Cuban baseball players from joining Major League Baseball in the United States without having to defect, according to an official familiar with the discussions.

The administration wants to reverse an Obama-era ruling that says the Cuban government doesn’t run the island’s professional baseball league. Such a position gave MLB space to negotiate and reach the deal with Cuban baseball and ...

In court documents, Mariners allege that Lorena Martin was dishonest and misrepresented herself | The Seattle Times

Martin’s lawyer, Phillips, argued in court documents filed Friday that any arbitration provisions in her client’s employment agreement with the Mariners are void under Washington law because the discrimination complaints require the case to be heard in open court. Phillips wrote that having the lawsuit and arbitration cases proceed concurrently could lead to “inconsistent results’’ and potentially undermine her client’s rights.

The Best And Worst Teams Of 2018 In (Almost) Any Sport

The 2018 calendar year has been pretty incredible for sports fans. We saw a Winter Olympics and a World Cup, with Norway setting a new record for medals in the former and France’s young stars bursting onto the scene in the latter. In America’s professional ranks, some teams won their first-ever championships, while others kept winning so much we wondered if they’d broken their sport. And in college, the usual suspects continued to dominate.

In commemoration of all the athletic feats we ...

MLB rumors: Broadcaster Mike Krukow wants Josh Harrison on the Giants

If you watched the Giants at all in 2018, you likely came away muttering one thing to yourself: “This team lacks energy.”

Well, they are reportedly interested in Josh Harrison, and the 31-year-old two-time All-Star is a bundle of energy.

Harrison has several teams pursuing him as Fancred’s Jon Heyman pointed out on Thursday, and Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow would like to see the Giants bring him to San Francisco.

If this is an argument that finds favor in the best broadcast booth in ...

Sources: Angels agree to deal with Jonathan Lucroy after disappointing 2018 season

Sadly, this is an article for which the title makes it more exciting that the actual contents….

Tommy Pham Says The Rays Have “Really No Fan Base At All”

Talks with area officials on a potential new stadium fell apart earlier this month, so the Rays are back in their generation-long limbo. Perhaps matters in Oakland are more pressing for MLB, but eventually, something’s going to have to give here—and as Rays outfielder Tommy Pham so brutally but accurately put it, it’s likely going to have to be “a new ballpark, or maybe a new city.”

Pham, who was acquired from the Cardinals at the trade deadline and went on to post career-best ...

There will be a Bud Selig autobiography in 2019

The former Chicago Tribune/MLB.com reporter Phil Rogers tweeted today that he has ghost-written a Bud Selig autobiography which will be published in July 2019. It will be called “For the Good of the Game” and can be pre-ordered now.

I’ll be charitable enough to Selig to say that it will likely contain a lot of interesting stories. Love him or hate him, he has been one of the most important and influential baseball figures in the past 50 years. He has taken a central role in most major ...

Ban The Shift? - ACTA Sports

John Dewan doesn’t want shifts banned.

Banning the shift is doesn’t balance offense and defense. It is a welfare program for a subset of players who won’t adjust on their own. Baseball has never, in its long history, picked out handful of players and made a rule just for them. That’s what banning the shift would be, and it’s a terrible precedent to set.

That’s my argument.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 12-28-2018

Perth Amboy Evening News, December 28, 1918:

Napoleon Lajoie, for twenty years conceded to be one of the brightest luminaries of the major league, announced his retirement from professional baseball last night.
...
Only once in his twenty-three years’ career on the diamond did Lajoie belong to a pennant winning team. That was in 1917, when he managed the Toronto team of the International League.
...
Lajoie retired from baseball to take care of his interests in an automobile tire manufacturing ...

Twitter: Jeff Passan: Twins Sign Nelson Cruz

Nelson Cruz’s deal with the Minnesota Twins is Worth $14 million guaranteed in the first year, source tells Yahoo Sports. There is a $12 million club option with a $300K buyout. My main man @Enrique_Rojas1 had the financials first.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 27, 2018

Rockies’ chances at landing Noah Syndergaard

This is just made up, right? Right?

Report: Manny Machado not in love with Philadelphia either – Phillies Nation

What are they going to do with their stupid money?

In fact, Joel Sherman of The New York Post says that there are rumblings that Machado, like Bryce Harper, isn’t enamored with Philadelphia:

  Word is neither player [Machado or Harper] particularly likes Philadelphia and both would have preferred the Yankees, who have shown little interest in Harper.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 12-27-2018

Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, December 27, 1918:

Comiskey Yet May Lift Ban on “Outlawed” Players

Charles Comiskey, the generous owner of the White Sox, has taken a stand against the players who quit baseball last season to enter the shipyards. The Chicago fans now have started to write Comiskey asking for different action on those cases. Four of the Chicago stars come under the ban.
...
If Comiskey parts with Jackson and Felsch and this pair is snared by the Yankees, Huggins will have one ...

It’s worth repeating: Alex Cora has a challenge ahead

Dustin Pedroia — Second base was a revolving door in 2018, somewhat solidified by Ian Kinsler, who has since signed a two-year deal with the Padres. Cora would love nothing more than to have Pedroia for the entire season. That is very much up in the air. Pedroia as always remained optimistic in recent comments to this reporter, even though the doctors who performed his complicated cartilage restoration surgery never figured out a pertinent rehab for the knee.

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 12-26-2018

Washington Herald, December 26, 1918:

Connie Mack will be one of the outstanding figures in the reconstruction of baseball. He can reconstruct a ball club out of an orphan asylum.

He can do it twice, though they didn’t know that yet in 1919.

In Korean baseball, opportunity beckons not only players, but a scout

Like most scouts who wandered a sprawling casino in Las Vegas at the winter meetings this month, Aaron Tassano’s goal is to find the best players to fit his organization. What makes Tassano stand out is the destination — both his own, and his targets’.

Tassano has been a scout for almost a decade and a half. With Houston from 2013-18, he performed the job as conventionally envisioned: he moved to Arizona in 2014, watching players moving through Major League Baseball’s pipeline. ...

Top White Sox stories of 2018: Hawk Harrelson’s farewell tour

White Sox fans knew from the start of the 2018 campaign that it would be Hawk Harrelson’s final season in the booth. But for those who have loved him as the voice of the White Sox for the last three decades, it didn’t make the end any easier to accept.

It likely won’t hit viewers until the start of the 2019 season, when there will be no more “he gones,” “dadgummits,” “you gotta be bleepin’ mes” and “you can put it on the boards.” But as sendoffs go, it’s hard to ...

Words that shaped a middling season for the Nationals

Rolling to the end of the year always prompts reflection.

Things are said along the way. Proclamations, reactions, takes on the pivotal moments that can age well or later prompt head shakes. With that in mind, let’s look back at some season-defining quotes from a middling 82-80 year for the Washington Nationals.

Who knew quotes had such power?

Unlike roster, Giants making significant upgrades to AT&T Park

SAN FRANCISCO — It has been a slow start to the offseason for the Giants’ roster, but at their home ballpark, there’s been nothing but nonstop action.

The Giants are in the process of replacing their scoreboard with a state-of-the-art version about two times the size of the current one. Team president and CEO Larry Baer compared the project size-wise to the massive Jumbotron the Dallas Cowboys put up when they built a new stadium.

“We’re going to have the best scoreboard in baseball, ...

Top 25 Baseball Stories of 2018 — No. 20: The baseballs have changed

Much has been written about the composition and performance of baseballs over the last couple of years. In 2017, Five Thirty Eight’s Rob Arthur pointed out that newer baseballs have a lower drag coefficient, which led to longer fly balls and which, in turn, likely led to the surge in home runs over the previous few seasons. In 2018 a new study emerged that, not only do the balls fly farther, but that they also can cause blisters.

This is part of a series of summary articles about baseball ...

Baby Birdland Signing Off, A Bid Farewell and Many Thanks

I have written hundreds of articles over the past two and a half years, but this one will surely be the hardest and last one. I have made the decision that on January 1, 2019, Baby Birdland will be closed.  I did not come to this decision lightly, but with the demands of my personal and professional life, I simply cannot give Baby Birdland, my contributing writers, and most importantly you the readers, the attention deserved.