Yeah look nothing is going on.
Worse than that - since MLB is probing its deep library for content in the meantime, that means the Nats website is back to showing Expos stuff.
There's a bit on minor leaguers (they aren't locked out as they aren't part of the MLBPA). They talk about who they thought might be the breakout prospect and who was. They thought Yasel Antuna might be. The 21 year old was bumped up again and responded with the same kind of bad average / bad patience year he had in his last full season (2018), but with some increased power. .227 / .307 / .385. Not a breakout, not a disappointment. If he goes to AA next year, likely the case, and does something similar that's fine. If he stays in High A he'll need to do better. They admit the real breakout was Cade Cavalli, and yep he was. Obvious choice. Probably will see him at the end of next year.
The fun thing is out of 30 teams they only correctly picked 4 breakout prospects. That's not to say their picks all were terrible - but still. Prospect evaluation is hard! Everyone has a limit and you don't know what that really is until they get to it.
They also put out a guess on the prospect most likely to bounce back. For the Nats it was Jackson Rutledge - a good pick too because he was bad! His ERA was a little unfair but he did pitch pretty poorly overall while fighting injuries. Healthy it's a pretty good bet he'll do better. Will he pitch well? I don't know about that. But better? Sure.
No developments at all on the player-owner negotiations?
ReplyDeleteSeems as if the MLBPA has much more urgency to get a deal done. Owners are all billionaires and --- for better or worse -- can sit out a season if necessary. Except for the top FA's, most players need that income and can't afford to sit on their hands for 9 months.
Both stand to benefit to coming to a deal. What goes here?
No one wants to sit out a season. Even though most of these guys CAN cover a complete season of lost revenue, only a bare minimum would even consider it. It's not like these guys are like Scrooge McDuck with a giant money bin. Their money is in a bunch of different stuff. There are debts to cover and they don't want to have to sell things or move money around to cover it.
ReplyDeleteUrgency for everyone won't come until it really starts to effect something they get money for - so ST games. That's not a lot but they do get crowds and they are televised. Which means around 2/21 is when they want this settled by (pitchers and catchers don't really need 2 weeks - and you can run out whoever in those early games).
Figure a couple weeks of negotiations, I wouldn't expect things to get really moving until into February. They'll probably send out feelers around now with the goal to start things up again late this month