OMNICHATTER for Tuesday, June 28, 2022

MLB would not charge Oakland Athletics a relocation fee if team moves to Las Vegas, per reports

Major League Baseball is reportedly willing to waive its relocation fee for the Oakland Athletics if they move the franchise to Las Vegas, Nevada, according to the New York Post.

In what’s undoubtedly a coincidence and certainly not an attempt to gain additional leverage, that rumor has surfaced just days before the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission is scheduled to vote on Thursday on removing a port priority use designation on the Howard Terminal site, the location the Athletics have been eyeing for a waterfront stadium, among other mixed-use developments.

The relocation fee is a standard piece of sports business. As noted by the Post, the National Football League charged the Rams and Chargers more than $600 ...

The Guardians duo carrying Jamaica’s baseball legacy

Naylor, who is from the greater Toronto area, and McKenzie, a native of South Florida, grew up in homes influenced by Jamaican culture, and each regularly made trips to the island nation as children to spend time with family and friends. The experiences shaped them. In fact, McKenzie inherited his love for baseball from his Jamaican father, Stanton McKenzie, who taught him his curveball and paid for private pitching instruction. Naylor inherited his love of baseball, hockey and Jamaica from his mother.

The duo are on a short list of teammates of Jamaican descent to play together at the MLB level. Chili Davis and Devon White of the 1988-90 Angels are the most recognizable pair. (Davis and White are two of only four players actually born in ...

Senate Judiciary Committee targets MLB’s antitrust exemption [$]

Sub required.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has set its sights on Major League Baseball’s century-old antitrust exemption.

Bipartisan members of the committee, including chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have sent a letter to the non-profit Advocates for Minor Leaguers requesting further information on the antitrust exemption and its interplay with three developments in baseball: the pay structure for minor leaguers, the MLB-orchestrated reduction in the number of minor league affiliates, and the state of MLB’s international amateur system. The two-page letter, dated Tuesday, is signed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, as well.

“We need to examine how Major ...

OMNICHATTER for Monday, June 27, 2022

Seattle Mariners acquire first baseman Carlos Santana from Kansas City Royals in exchange for RHPs Wyatt Mills, William Fleming

The Seattle Mariners announced Monday that they’ve acquired infielder Carlos Santana from the Kansas City Royals.

The 36-year-old Santana, in his 13th season, is hitting .216 with four home runs and 21 RBIs this season. He is in the final season of a two-year contract that he signed with the Royals in 2021.

The trade sends right-handed pitcher Wyatt Mills and minor league righty William Fleming to the Royals.

Mills, 27, has a 4.15 ERA in 8⅔ innings for the Mariners this season but is 1-0 with a 1.83 ERA in 19⅔ innings for Triple-A Tacoma.

Fleming, 23, is 6-6 with a 4.92 ERA in 14 starts for the Mariners’ Single-A franchise in Modesto.

Peacock to stream Royals-Tigers game without announcers

NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood realizes that game telecasts without announcers have been attempted a couple times, mostly without success. He is hoping the July 3 game between the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers on Peacock will reverse that trend.

Peacock will not have any announcers in the booth for its streaming coverage of the AL Central matchup from Detroit’s Comerica Park. Instead, reporters will take fans around the ballpark and view the game from different vantage points.

“The whole idea of this is treating a game completely different. We’re going to take you out to the ballpark,” said Flood, who is also the network’s president of production. “We just want to be the ultimate fan’s experience and spend it like ...

Manny, Pedro and Papi’s kids are on the same team?! Meet ‘The Sons’ of the Brockton Rox

BROCKTON, Mass.—As outfielder Pedro Martinez Jr., first baseman Manny Ramirez Jr., third baseman D’Angelo Ortiz, outfielder Jaden Sheffield and pitcher Kade Foulke chat in the batting cages, general manager Tom Tracey shoos away fans loitering outside Campanelli Stadium, hoping to get a glimpse of the players known collectively as “The Sons.”

“Brockton High School is next door,” Tracey says. “There are always people hanging around trying to see what’s happening here.”

Indeed, word has been spreading around New England. About an hour drive from Fenway Park, baseball fans can watch the sons of MLB royalty play—on the Brockton Rox of the Futures Collegiate Baseball League. Once there, they might see Hall of Famer David Ortiz helping players ...

[Medium] Baseball’s Next Defining Innovation is Hiding in Plain Sight: Why Tracking the Path of Every Swing is a Must for MLB Teams

I first heard that bat tracking may become a reality in a 2019 article in The Athletic announcing Hawkeye as the league’s new on-field tracking system. The article includes a letter to MLB teams from Chris Marinak, MLB’s executive vice president, strategy, technology and innovation where he says of Hawkeye:

“We expect this next generation system to significantly improve the accuracy and precision of ball and player tracking and unlock new tracking opportunities like bat swing path tracking and player limb tracking.”

He later mentioned that the “swing path tracking” feature would be “released over time” indicating it would not be included in the 2020 launch of the Hawkeye system league-wide.  That was essentially the last ...

Rosenthal: MLB’s expanded playoffs not yet boosting competition and the risk of trading with the Guardians [$]

One of Major League Baseball’s great promises in pushing for an expanded postseason was increased competition. A team on the fringes of contention might push for one of the additional wild-card spots, producing better pennant races.

Nearly halfway through the season, the competition is not looking so hot. Through Wednesday, 17 teams — 10 in the American League, seven in the National — were 10 or more games out of first place. Though the season started a week later, that total was the largest on that date in the wild-card era, which began in 1995. And the Yankees’ ridiculous 120-win pace, which had three teams with winning records 12 or more games out of first place in the AL East, was only partly responsible….

Six clubs — in ...

Ole Miss Rebels sweep Oklahoma Sooners to win first Men’s College World Series title

The last team to get into the NCAA baseball tournament was the last team standing.

Ole Miss scored twice on wild pitches in a three-run eighth inning and the Rebels won their first national baseball title, sweeping Oklahoma in the Men’s College World Series finals with a 4-2 victory Sunday.

The Rebels (42-23) became the eighth national champion since 2009 to come out of the Southeastern Conference and third straight, and the trophy will stay in the Magnolia State for another year. Mississippi State won last year.

“There is so much to be said for how much we overcame this year, how much we had to fight through, how much we had to pick each other up and never let ourselves get down,’’ team captain Tim Elko said. “The story of our season ...

Minnesota Twins pitching coach Wes Johnson exiting, reportedly for same position with LSU Tigers

Minnesota Twins pitching coach Wes Johnson has informed the club he will leave his job this week, reportedly for the same role at LSU.

Johnson traveled with the team on Sunday night to Cleveland, where he will stay on for the five-game series that’s scheduled through Thursday, Twins spokesman Dustin Morse said.

According to a report by D1Baseball.com on Twitter, Johnson has accepted the pitching coach position at LSU. The Twins did not confirm Johnson’s destination. Further announcements from the club surrounding the staff change will come this week.

The midseason move by a key assistant from a first-place team was startling, but Johnson’s arrival in 2019 was also unusual. He was widely believed to be the first college pitching coach to ...

Eight ejected after wild brawl between Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Angels

The Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Angels engaged in a lengthy full-team brawl in the second inning on Sunday after tensions over two days of inside pitches boiled over.

Seattle manager Scott Servais, Los Angeles interim manager Phil Nevin and six players were ejected after the brouhaha, which stopped and started twice before Angels closer Raisel Iglesias came back out to the empty field to throw large containers of sunflower seeds and gum onto the infield.

Seattle lost three of the first four hitters in its lineup: Jesse Winker, Julio Rodriguez and J.P. Crawford. Angels pitchers Iglesias, Andrew Wantz and Ryan Tepera also were tossed.

The Mariners’ Winker was hit by the first pitch of the second inning by Angels opener Wantz, who ...

Astros Combine to No Hit Yankees

A sellout crowd swarmed Yankee Stadium on a sunny Saturday afternoon hoping perhaps to see a no-hitter, which is always a chance with ace Gerrit Cole on the mound. They instead witnessed the coming-out party of Astros pitcher Cristian Javier, who outshone Cole and the Yankees and helped make history in the process.

It’s the first time the Yankees have been no-hit since six Astros pitchers combined to no-hit them on June 11, 2003, at the old Yankee Stadium. Those are the only two no-hitters thrown against the Yankees since 1958.

Kind of interesting.  Last two no hitters against the Yankees by the same team AND both are combined no nos.

Yankees’ Jose Trevino now thriving after ‘he got shafted’ with Rangers

Jose Trevino will not go there when asked about his old employer. The Yankees catcher, in the midst of a breakout season that’s starting to garner All-Star buzz, has no need to be anything but diplomatic and soft-spoken.

Isiah Kiner-Falefa, his teammate in the minors, with the Rangers and now with the Yankees, though, will.

“He got shafted, pretty much, in Texas,” Kiner-Falefa told The Post on Friday ahead of the Yankees’ game against the Astros. “For him to have this opportunity to do what he’s doing now, there was never a doubt for me thinking that he was gonna do this. It was more so questioning Texas’ decisions and what they were thinking, the whole process of signing those guys and bringing those guys in [ahead of ...

Former No. 1 pick Mark Appel, 30, gets big league call-up from Philadelphia Phillies

Mark Appel, the 2013 No. 1 overall pick whose baseball career included a three-season absence from the sport, is getting his first major league call-up Saturday at the age of 30.

The Philadelphia Phillies are bringing in the right-handed Appel from Triple-A Lehigh Valley because reliever Connor Brogdon is on the COVID-19 injured list, interim manager Rob Thomson told reporters Friday night.

“Completely overwhelmed. I have so many thoughts I want to share but can’t find the words, so I’ll just say this: I’m thankful,” Appel tweeted Saturday morning. “Today, I get to play a game I love as a Major League Baseball player.”

Appel has spent the past two seasons pitching in Double- and Triple-A for the Phillies. He has a 5-0 record and 1.61 ...

Cole Hamels Targeting 2023 Comeback

Cole Hamels has made just one major league appearance since the end of the 2019 season, but the four-time All-Star continues to look for a return to the mound. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports that the free agent southpaw is currently “feeling good” and targeting next spring for another comeback attempt.

The past few seasons have been trying for Hamels, who turns 39 years old in December. He tossed 141 2/3 innings of 3.81 ERA ball with the Cubs in 2019, earning an $18MM deal from the Braves in the process. That didn’t pan out, as Hamels was shut down during the July ramp-up for the shortened season due to a triceps issue. He returned in September, made one 3 1/3 inning start, then landed back on the IL with a shoulder injury ...

Texas Rangers trade Willie Calhoun to San Francisco Giants for Steven Duggar

The San Francisco Giants acquired Willie Calhoun on Thursday, sending outfielder Steven Duggar to Texas for the outfielder who was the main return for the Rangers when they traded pitcher Yu Darvish five years ago.

It will be a homecoming for Calhoun, and a move he requested after being sent to the minors on May 1. The 27-year-old was born in the East Bay city of Vallejo and attended Benicia High School.

“We wish Willie the best in his opportunity with San Francisco,’’ Rangers president Jon Daniels said. “It’s a fresh start for him, as well as being close to home.’‘

San Francisco also receives cash in the deal.

Calhoun has spent all five-plus years of his major league career with the Rangers, playing 253 games and hitting .241 overall. ...

Weekend OMNICHATTER for June 24-26, 2022

Shohei Ohtani follows up career-high 8-RBI night with career-high 13 Ks

It’s really important we don’t take Shohei Ohtani for granted.

The Los Angeles Angels pitcher is coming off the greatest two-way season in the history of MLB — yes, even better than Babe Ruth — and he may very well surpass it this year. He is a talented unprecedented in baseball, but he’s become so big it’s hard to even remember how impossible the idea of him seemed as a prospect.

So when he does something like, say, post a two-homer, eight-RBI performance, then strike out 13 batters across eight shutout innings, we should probably do our best to appreciate it. Therefore, let’s talk about the last two days.

OMNICHATTER for Thursday, June 23, 2022

696 games later, he gets his 1st at-bat, and well ...

Cubs reliever David Robertson waited until the 696th game of his 14-season career for his first. So who can blame him for smiling after striking out?

In the ninth inning of the Cubs’ 14-5 rout of the Pirates on Wednesday, the veteran reliever, who pitched a scoreless eighth inning, grabbed Yan Gomes’ helmet and Christopher Morel’s bat to see how the other half lives. It’s an opportunity that, in Robertson’s words, “made my dream come true.”

“[Manager David Ross and I] talked about it before the position player got in,” Robertson said. “If the DH was up and I came in, he could pinch-hit me for the DH. So we talked about it. I just didn’t think it was going to happen. We had to go all the way through the order for me to get ...

Outfielder Austin Hays becomes sixth player in Baltimore Orioles history to hit for cycle

Four at-bats, four hits, one unforgettable cycle in just six innings of work.

“Beyond unbelievable. An epic night,” Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said after Austin Hays became the sixth player in Orioles history to hit for the cycle.

Hays completed the feat with a sixth-inning double in the midst of a steady shower and shortly before play was halted for good in Baltimore’s 7-0 victory over the Washington Nationals on Wednesday night.

Hays pulled it off while batting leadoff in place of Cedric Mullins, who was given the night off. Facing Nationals lefty Patrick Corbin, Hays got an infield single in the first inning, hit a solo shot in the third and tripled in the fourth.

That seemingly left the 26-year-old outfielder plenty of time to ...

OMNICHATTER for Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Kansas City Royals overcome Shohei Ohtani’s 2 HRs, 8 RBIs to edge Los Angeles Angels

Shohei Ohtani hit two three-run homers, including a dramatic tying drive in the bottom of the ninth inning. He drove in a career-high eight runs, the most by a Japanese-born player in major league history.

And somehow, it still was not enough for his Los Angeles Angels to beat the Kansas City Royals.

Whit Merrifield led off the 11th inning with an RBI double, and the Royals overcame Ohtani’s historic performance for a 12-11 victory Tuesday night.

Ohtani crushed a 423-foot homer in the sixth and a tying, 438-foot shot in the ninth, giving him the biggest RBI game of his five-year stateside career. The American League MVP then set the single-game record for RBIs by a Japanese-born player with a sacrifice fly in the 11th inning.

Although ...

Memo: MLB to require all teams to ‘muddy’ ball using exact same technique

Major League Baseball is now requiring teams to “muddy” baseballs before games using the exact same technique, according to a league memo sent to all 30 teams on Tuesday and obtained by ESPN.

Muddying is the process of removing gloss from new baseballs to give pitchers a better grip. It’s been used in the game for decades and is as important as ever considering the league’s crackdown on the use of foreign substances over the past 12 months.

In past years, muddying involved clubhouse attendants preparing baseballs by rubbing Delaware River mud—which comes in a can—days before each game. Moving forward, they’ll be required to continue to muddy balls on game day only and all with the same technique.

After reviewing videos of clubhouse ...

OMNICHATTER for Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Why Manny Ramirez says Derek Jeter would have been ‘just a regular player’ in Kansas City

Ramirez was discussing the pressure that comes with playing in a city like Boston or New York. The way Ramirez sees it, you’re not playing on a big stage unless you’re in Boston or New York. If you’re somewhere else, people won’t care as much.

“You gotta understand this. If you haven’t played in Boston or New York, you’re not in the big leagues,” Ramirez said. “It’s like if you put Jeter in Kansas City in those years, he was just a regular player.

But in New York? Jeter was a legend because he consistently stepped up on baseball’s biggest stage with the Yankees in the postseason.

“You put him on that big stage, you hit .400 in the postseason for many, many years, he’s the greatest in the history,” Millar ...

MLB should consider adopting a mercy rule

There have been some people around baseball, mainly on baseball broadcasts, who have floated the idea of using a “mercy rule” in MLB games, similar to what’s used in international competition.

To wit: If a team is trailing by 10 or more runs after seven innings, by mutual agreement of the managers the game could be stopped.

I’m coming around. This might actually be a good idea.

Let’s have a look at how many games might be affected by this sort of rule change. I looked at games from 2021 and thus far in 2022, so that’s 2,429 total games from last year and 999 games so far in 2022, a fairly large sample size.

There were 98 games decided by 10 or more runs in 2021 (plus three games that had that large a run differential that ...

Here are the All-Star Ballot standings so far

Right now, the leading vote-getters are Yankees slugger Aaron Judge in the AL (1,512,368 votes) and Dodgers star Mookie Betts in the NL (1,446,050 votes).

There are close races across the ballot at positions like AL third base (Rafael Devers leading José Ramírez), AL shortstop (Bo Bichette leading Tim Anderson and Xander Bogaerts), NL second base (Jazz Chisholm Jr. leading Ozzie Albies and Jeff McNeil) and the outfield in both leagues (Judge leading Mike Trout, Betts leading Ronald Acuña Jr.).

Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts leading the way in their respective leagues as first @MLB All-Star voting results are announced: pic.twitter.com/28WI6pPwOT

— Mark Feinsand (@Feinsand) June 21, 2022