Getting closer

 No seriously they are! 

One could argue (if they were me) that the owners made their first serious offer yesterday. The minor league minimum is now just window dressing (MLB is 700K gradually to 770 by end, MLBPA is 725K to 745 to 765K followed by a CPI adjustment in last years).  The Pre-arb bonus pool is still a bit away but common ground seems findable (MLB is 50 mill flat, MLBPA is 80 mill rising up to 100 mill). Players seem amenable to quicker rule changes the owners want.  Players might give on international draft (which will help suppress salaries but might help curb some of the worst of the things going on internationally with pre-teens being hounded but also might hurt the "immediate help" aspect for younger players in need.  It's a complicated topic) IF owners agreeable to ending the QO system (which helps suppress salaries by tying FAs to teams. It's not as complicated). That'd be a slight win for the owners - the QO system not being used much and more and more of their money going to international signings that wouldn't happen in a draft system.

But it comes back to the CBT

MLB : 230 to 242, new extra penalty level so penalties at 20/40/60 over (unclear current levels - last I saw was 45% / 62% / 95%)

MLBPA : 238 to 263, penalties at 20/40 million over (12%, 45%)

MLB wants its cake (Lower total for salaries) and to eat it, too (defacto cap with onerous penalties).  MLBPA wants its cake (Higher total) basically already can't eat it because there's almost a defacto cap as is.

I can see the players accept a lower total, even another penalty level, but not those penalty rates. They want teams who want to spend to spend. Owners want to save themselves from themselves.

Monday Quickie - holding in place

There's nothing to report lockout wise. The MLBPA came back with an offer a tiny bit closer to the MLB one to which the MLB said "YOU ARE GOING BACKWARDS!!!" which tells you the state of things. 

Alternate baseball

There is baseball right now! In America! College baseball.  

I'm assuming most of you live in the NoVA, DelMarVa, whatever dumb acronym that doesn't really capture the area that you like. If so Maryland Baseball is pretty good - last ranked 21st in the country but losers of 2 of 3 in a little showcase to end last week which will probably drop them out of the rankings, but still pretty good. They have a home and home against VCU this week and a couple games against Georgetown after that.  I don't know DII or DIII schools off the top of my head but I see Johns Hopkins and Lynchburg and Washington & Jefferson and you can view the pre-season polls here : http://baseballnews.com/

In a few weeks, there will definitely not be major league baseball but their will be minor league baseball. The Nats farm system, if you don't know it, is :

Fredericksburg Nationals (Low-A) : the Fred Nats who AREN'T EVEN LISTED AS AN AFFILIATE  Man, what a second rate org the Nats became after winning the title. In theory the drive is an hour or so and Brady House should be here at least to start.

Wilmington Blue Rocks (High-A) : before you head to the beach that's Delaware, not NC. 2 hour drive

Harrisburg Senators (AA) : The little city with nothing in the middle of everything usually has the best prospects though the Nats system is slim and the best guys will be in AAA and Low-A to start the year.  Hmm not selling it. It is only a 2 hour drive!

Rochester Red Wings (AAA) : You want to see Cavalli? Get a hotel in NY's "Oh yeah I guess Kodak built something here a long time ago.  Wait, it's not on the lake outside of a technicality?" city, Rochester! 6 and a half hours away.   

If you don't have to see Nats players there are even more choices

Aberdeen Ironbirds (High A - Orioles) 

Reading Fightin Phils (AA - Phillies) 

Delmarva Shorebirds (Low A - Orioles)

Bowie Baysox (AA - Orioles)

Richmond Flying Squirrles (AA - Giants) 

and that's just the closest

PA has Altoona, Allentown,  and Scranton / Wilkes-Barre, NJ has Somerset and Lakewood (Jersey Shore) VA has Norfolk, Lynchburg and Salem. A bit of a drive south and NC has the most of any state with 10. And this is just the affiliated teams. You gotta have family somewhere!

Put any recommendations you have in the comments. I can answer any NC Qs you might have.

Well I guess I should write something

On Tuesday the talks fell apart.  It's probably more accurate to say the talks were never actually building as we had hoped and the pieces remained unassembled on the ground, but why quibble?  The results are the same - no baseball, not now, probably not soon. 

There are a faction of hardline owners who have drawn a line in the sand. They must make more money out of baseball regardless of what happens going forward and that means limiting salaries. The best way to do that is to keep salaries for controlled young players low; so a lower minimum than the players' ask and no arbitration expansion, and to limit the amount anyone can spend for players; with a cap that doesn't increase with revenues or inflation and harsher penalties for going over.  Why do they want this? Because who doesn't want more money and more security? But its not about the difference between making or losing money. Don't believe that. It's about making money or making more money.

Sports labor fights are hard for fans.  I often have said fans are likely to side with owners because we understand what ownership does. They might not actually do the day to day stuff but someone is doing real work as we understand it. They run a business. You've got to hire and fire, and deal with contractors, and worry about prices, etc. etc. It might be a crazy lucrative spin on jobs we know of in a weird industry, but it's still a spin on jobs we know of.  

Athletes though, that's not a job to us. There is no relation for us to think "ok this guy should get paid just for playing a game" on an instinctual level. It goes against everything we took in growing up. We PLAY sports, for fun, all throughout our youth. We don't play at being boss. It's a game for kids. It's something most of us would love to do for a fraction of their salaries. Of course if we step back and think about it, it makes sense.  An entertainer draws a crowd and you pay to see them. These guys aren't just playing a game, but playing a game better than anyone can right now. But it takes those extra steps.  That makes a difference. That often makes fans side against the players. 

It's also tough because when we think of labor fights we aren't really thinking of people getting paid fair wages, but reasonable ones. We want people to be able to have the basics; food, clothes, shelter. We want people to be able to pay their bills and not worry about health care and be able to put their kids through school.  If a business is profitable we don't want the CEO driving his fancy car to his mansion to pack for a week his vacation home if the guy on the line can't take his family to the beach once a year. But what is reasonable when nearly everyone involved lives like that CEO? 

OK yes, minor league players and guys who have cups of coffee in the majors aren't living that life. A prorated 2-3 seasons doesn't set you up for life and a guy like... let's say James Borque might have played 8 years of baseball for about 100K total.  But the CBA isn't about them, officially so. It's about major leaguers. About major leaguers who stick around.  Changes to the minimum salary and arbitration are nice and needed but they don't really change the facts on the ground.  If you can stick on a roster for the equivalent of 3+ years, you are set for life (assuming you are smart enough to invest some, not waste money, and are planning on doing SOMETHING for income) If you can make it on a roster the full team control time you may not even have to do all that, and if you can get one contract post control you are officially idle rich.

So how does one deal with that? How does one deal with a labor issue that the guy we see as incredibly rich being robbed of some money by the guy with unimaginable wealth? How do we deal with it when this robbery materially changes nothing for the rich guy? He is still rich.  How do you get us to care? 

 It's very hard! Which is again why most of these things have ended with the majority of fans booing the players. Just get rich playing your game and shut up!

But this time it's a little different. We've come to back the players more because the owners haven't even bothered to try to make us care. They are the ones locking the players out. They spent a month doing nothing. Their offers to the players haven't shown movement. They sent up the unlikable Manford to smile his way through public appearances. Why? Because they don't need us to care. It's nice not to be yelled at.  It's nice for the fans to put pressure on the players. But this plays out the same with or without fans. This isn't about the fans. 

What now? 

The owners have some money coming in their mind from additional revenue sources in the CBA; Ads on jerseys, extra playoffs. That extends the time they can have no games. Eventually though that pressure of having no income will wear on ownerships and around 140 games TV deals start to break down into per game payments costing them a lot of money.  Does it wear more than on players? Maybe so.  The players have their personal pressures but it's internal. The ownerships often have external pressures. Other ownership members, debt collectors, shareholders, gambling partners; that don't care about wringing the last dollar from baseball. This is why ownership often loses. 

This is going to go on for a while. Ownership is willing to play chicken with the season . Players are willing to take that bet.  Since everything so far has gone as worse as possible I'll assume the same without the armageddon of losing a whole season. I'll say we're out until somewhere near Memorial Day.

Monday Quickie - nothing quick about it

 Still negotiating with the CBT still being the sticking point.  The players basically caved already and said - we'll take very little improvements in a couple places and salary increases that don't even line up with revenue increases - and the owners said no.  I'm no longer optimistic this gets done but when the owners crack they tend to do it fast and hard.  Baseball players don't get paid but their pressure is their own. Owners pressure comes from a million different directions; advertisers, cable companies, streaming deals, retailers, and now importantly online gambling partners. They're coming for your thumbs, Monfort! Your thumbs! 

Today is a "deadline" day where they said they'll have to cancel Opening Day (they don't - though they still might). We ARE getting closer to not having 162 games.  That's probably a week or two away. 

While others squabble the Lerners keep signing garbage to fill out the organization (and maybe play some scrub baseball?) and this is a not so friendly soulless automaton reminder that 

• The Nats were terrible last year 
• They lost their 2nd (Trea), 4th (Harrison), 5th (Schwarber) best hitters from 2021 AND their veteran leader and likely DH Zimmerman AND their best pitcher (Max) and best reliever (Hudson) 
• They've signed absolutely no one
• The minor league organization is still ranked as one of the worst in baseball.

Maybe there's a bright side to a lost season? 

Went on vacation - missed nothing

 Enjoyed a solid President's Day (Presidents' Day?  Presidents Day'?) of signing bills into law and making public appearances.  Hope you enjoyed yours underneath the presidential seal hanging up in your own home. 

Nothing has happened. My own deadline has come and gone which I kind of knew would happen a week before because the progress has been so glacial and not in the important points. 

The whole thing has cleared up as we moved along and it's pretty much all about the CBT.   The owners want to make it harsher and lower (when you think about inflation) the players want it looser and higher. The owners are coming from a place of "Man that pandemic year was hard" The players are coming from a place of "what about every other year? Plus those valuations still look good".  It is millionaires vs billionaires, but the millionaires to me have the stronger case.  Your take may differ a la former Nats GM and basically criminal Jim Bowden who is shilling for the owners in a particularly embarrassing way. 

Fangraphs put out their Top 100 prospect list for 2022.  This includes Cavalli at 74 (lower than most), Henry at 82 (higher than most) and House at 98 (goldilocks). They worry about Cavalli's injury history keeping him from shouldering a starter's load.  They really like Henry's mix of pitches... as a reliever.  House is, you know, super young still. 

What to think of the list?  Well I looked at the 2019 Fangraphs list and the relative positions and basically one guy is an impact major leaguer as of last year (Jonathan India).  The rest are either not good, hurt, or still working their way up.  While every prospect is his own man, this gives you an idea that Cavalli AND Henry AND House being good major leaguers for the 2024 Nats is extremely unlikely and akin to hitting the jackpot.  Hope for one to be good by then, or two to be useful. That would be a very good outcome. 

In the meantime would you trade them?  I never like holding prospects but if you *gasp* *shudder* aren't going to keep Soto long-term or don't like your chances to do so, there is really no reason to trade. Hold on see what you got. Also if you aren't going big time into trying these next few seasons there isn't reason to trade either.  The Nats aren't a player away. If you want to sign a couple guys and trade for a couple guys and make a real go at it, fine, trade. But I'm not seeing that as the Nats path right now. 

How do the other NL East teams show in this "top of minors" listing? 

ATL - Two guys 70/72 - both older (24+/23+) - they've emptied out their system over the past couple of years through trades and call-ups so this isn't surprising or worrisome. They will need a bat - either Freeman or a replacement for him, but they can probably hope someone internal replaces Morton (who was merely good) so they have leeway to set up the lineup without a trade

NYM - Four guys 7/44/63/64 - all younger (20/22) - an interesting situation as these are all bats, the prize being Francisco Alvarez who is in that "it'd be surprising if he failed" level and is a catcher. Their pitching screams WIN NOW but their batting though hasn't kept up. It'd be hard to justify signing another big name with this talent coming and already the highest payroll. So do you trade or do you wait? There's a way this could be either a nice little multi-NL East title run or a disappointing 4-5 year "sneak into a single WC" situtation. 

PHI - Two 20/34 - one 20+ one 24+.  It'd be great for the Phillies if the guy ready was the starter but it's a bat and the prospect bats have not been kind to Philadelphia with one disappointment after another from what looked to be a stacked system. They desperately need Stott (SS) to be everything he can be as it looks likely they'll have to bludgeon their way to wins. 

MIA - Five total, two super young (18+) others on the verge (22/23).  They got four SP in here, three we could see next year. They could really have dominant pitching very soon and dominant pitching that would last through like 2026. Of course you have to score runs too and the Marlins are neigher young nor good at the plate so they'll have to get some FA. I see MIA as an underdog Soto location

Juan Nogo

Word got out yesterday that the Nats offered Soto a long term contract (that's good!) and it was rejected (that's bad!) but exactly how good/bad it is is up to interpretation. 

The contract itself was 13 years for 350 million or just under 27 million per year.  It buys out his remaining 3 arbitration years and controls him through his age 35/36 season. 

It's not a good contract for Juan. 

Juan Soto might be the best player to have on any baseball team going forward for the next 5-8 years. At the plate it's hard to see anyone surpass what he's doing, only perhaps match his production from a different path. His combined stats for the past two seasons are clearly a step better than anyone else so they first would have to catch him. A guy like Bryce might slug enough or Trea might hit for a high enough average to catch his value that way, but it would take Soto slipping a bit or one of those two doing something special. The juniors, Guerrero and Tatis, might develop into the same bat - but right now they aren't quite there.

Juan is a good athlete and is still very young (will be his age 23 season) and that keeps his value up on the base paths and in the field, where in neither place he's a natural. Still it's possible, I suppose, you could see someone put up a single combined all-around season that has more value but to do so continually going forward?  Of the names I mentioned so far - not Bryce who is an underrated athlete and might sneak one in but at 29 compared to Soto's 23 can't be counted on doing that for half a decade. Not Vladdy Jr, who is already playing a less demanding position (1B) and appears far more likely to age ungracefully in the other aspects of his game. Not Trea, who yes is a solid baserunner and good enough in the field to do it regularly, but would need to morph into a consistently different player at 28. He'd have to do 2020 for a whole year over and over.

Some other names : 

Ramirez - criminally underrated but old. 

Acuna - Has a Trea profile where he wouldn't hit as well but could use great baserunning and decent fielding to outpace Juan, though with more of a chance to pull it off for the time frame needed given his age. 

Bichette - He's not so good in anything to even contend now. Needs another gear in something.  

Devers - a defensive liability who doesn't hit as well as Soto to start.  

Robert - oooh all sorts of interesting but at 23 he gets no benefit of the doubt trying to catch Juan. He's gotta put a full season together first 

Trout - The all-around master, the new Willie Mays, he's been getting hurt and seeing his plus baserunning shut down for his protection and he's 30.  No offense to an already HoFer but give me Juan for the next 5.

There are basically three guys I can think of  a team might rather have in the 5-8 year range . 

Ohtani - no, he isn't the hitter Soto is (and never will be) but he's not just a hitter and the combination in value is hard to beat

Tatis Jr - he could improve to hit like Soto, he's already a better baserunner. His defense is not good but that's not Tatis' fault that the Padres for bringing in Machado and blocking 3rd.

Franco - This is a gamble. He hit very well in half a season last year but nothing close to Soto. He can handle short, unlike Bichette who can hang in and Tatis who should move. There's a lot of ground to make up but he has something everyone else on this list does not. Time. He's two and a half years younger than Soto.

Anyway - this is a very long winded way of saying - the best player needs the best contract and 13/350 is not close to that. It's less that Trout, and Betts and Lindor. It's barely more than Stanton who signed his older and not as good 8 years ago.  It is bigger than Tatis yes but Tatis had injury concerns AND was having an extra cheaper contract year being bought out.

The Nats usually make one and done offers, not negotiating after setting a fair price then moving on.  I'm not 100% sure that's what's going on here. It's further out from FA than usual and before a CBA has been set.  It might be better seen as a "while we're hear this is the best we'll do" but all I can tell you is this won't do.

There's no Ryan in baseball

Like I said yesterday Ryan Zimmerman has retired. 

Even though he was only ever a National there were very distinctive parts of Zimmerman's career.  

He began as the hometown wunderkind. The guy from the Tidewater, who went to Virginia, who was the first Nationals draft pick, drafted in June of the Nats inaugural year, and who was the first hot prospect to be brought up to the team that very same year. He would excite fans with three weeks of great play and quickly settle down to play some great D while figuring it out at the plate and suffering through what would be the first of a career full of injuries. He was something positive to focus on as the team reset.

He morphed into one of the best players in baseball.  For two years (2009-2010) he not only played his regular top notch D, but he hit at another level. As basically a .300 30HR guy with 70 walks a year, Zimmerman wasn't the best player in baseball (Pujols was hitting THAT well at this point) but he was right up there. With Strasburg and Bryce being drafted in back to back years it looked like the Nats had a bright future. 

But this time frame was exceedingly brief, as next came the injuries and subsequent defensive woes. He had abdominal surgery to start 2011. He'd injure his shoulder to start 2012, undergoing surgery before 2013. The shoulder one cost him the ability to throw the ball with any confidence and ended his career as a third baseman.  He could still hit well, but the near great .300 / 30 / 70 became the perfectly good .280 / 25 / 60.  He was a cog in the Nats but just that, not the difference maker, not the perennial all-star. 

If it remained there it would have been disappointing but fine. However, it would get worse and we'd get to what looked like the end for Ryan. The missed time would pile up and he'd play only 270 games over the next 3 years. He'd break his thumb and strain his hammy in 2014. He'd begin experiencing plantar fasciitis and hurt his oblique in 2015.  He'd strain a rib and take a baseball to the wrist in 2016. Right when the Nats were peaking as a team, winning the NL East for the third time in 5 years, Zimmerman put out a half-season of terrible baseball. It looked like Ryan was breaking down right out of the game.

But a contract extension signed in 2012 saved his career and allowed for the late career renaissance.  The Nats had to pay him until 2019 so even if he looked done in 2016, he was going to get that chance to come back. And come back he did. Finally he again played close to a full season (144 games) Finally he was free to find his groove and the .300 30 guy came back. We knew it wouldn't last. Despite the fans (and the media!) trying to tell us that Ryan was just missing Spring Training in 2018 because he wanted to, we could read the writing on the wall. But that was ok, because 2017 showed both the fans and the Nats Ryan wasn't completely done. If he could be healthy, he could hit. While he wasn't healthy much over the next couple of years, he was healthy enough to get at bats and hit ok and more importantly he got to be around for 2019. 

He did not hit well in 2019 but he did everything he needed to in the playoffs. He got a key single to with two outs in the 8th that would help set up Soto/Grisham's game winning combo. He hit well in the NLDS, including a mid game 3-run bomb that help put that game 3 away for Max. He didn't hit all that well the rest of the way but he did homer off Gerrit Cole in G1 setting a tone for the World Series and giving the Nats fans a moment. 

After that it was gravy, though thin and watery. The pandemic ruined the victory lap season and even if it didn't, Zimm, with an Mom suffering from MS, chose to sit out 2020. He'd play in 2021 and hit with some pop but also definitely looked his age hitting for the worst average of his career (.243) and barely walking as pitchers saw no reason not to challenge him. If the end wasn't here, it was imminent. So while the retirement is a mild surprise (see two posts ago) it's in no way a shock.

 

What could he have been without the injuries?  Zimm himself put out 400 homers, 500 doubles, 8GG and a hall of famer. It's hard to go ahead and say "with no injuries" because hardly any player has NO injuries, but if we just fill out 2011-2016 with .300 30 which he was in 09-10 and was in 2017, we get 81 more homers, 450 hits, 100 more doubles.  This is probably optimistic but it also has him crashing out at 33 to make up for it. Something like 2300 H, 500+ 2B, 360HR.  Yeah unless Zimm morphed into a 40 homer guy he wasn't getting to 400 easily.  8 Gold Gloves?  He was already not getting his respect winning only in 2009... I suppose if he won in 2011 and 2012 (over Placido Polanco and Chase Headley) he might have gotten 1 or 2 inertia GGs over Arenado, who started winning in 2013, but 8 is way too many. Five tops, and I'd probably guess 3.  

Now does all that put him in the HoF?  Let's say a .285 average 375 HR, 520 doubles, 1700 RBI, 3 GG, probably 5-6 All-Stars. Well Rolen is at what? .281 316HR 517 doubles, 1300 RBI, 8 GG, 7 All-Stars... Both around 125 OPS+... It's tough. You see the issue Rolen has getting in despite being the best 3B for a decade. I don't think Zimm would quite have enough. I think for him to do it, because he wouldn't be seen as that other worldly fielder, you'd have to assume the injuries kept him from hitting another level as a batter. I'm not sure about that.

It's hard to get exactly what Zimmerman meant and I think it's best to see him as the rock. The guy that tied the franchise together, from that magical 2005, to the garbage reset as cheaply as possible teams, to the first window of maddening back and forth success, to the more consistent second window of continued last chance questions, to the frustrating denouement of a team that couldn't keep getting lucky. He was there for it all. He wasn't always the best player, but sometimes he was. He wasn't always the most beloved player, although he was always up there. But he was was always THERE. Which for a fan means a lot.

Happy trails.

Ryan Zimmerman retires

Just when I though I had something interesting to say, Zimm makes that moot by hanging up the spikes. 

Long career, lots of money, title.  Not much more you can ask for short of a HoF shot (which he does not have).

More tomorrow of course.  

Designated 'Hoo

The baseball negotiations continue as the owners try to make themselves out to be poor and those mean old players are not helping trying to take their money. Yesterday Manfred talked and he tried to convince people that owning a baseball team isn't a good investment. I believe he said something like "worse than the stock market".  It's not a straight lie. There are a million different ways you can cut things to make things true; what exact parts of the team are you including, what's the time frame, what assumptions are you making about stock market growth, but in the sense most people would think - "If I own a baseball team for 15-20 years and sell it - is that a good investment?" the answer is yes, better than a lot of other ones, including the stock market. As smart people have said, rich people wouldn't keep buying them if they were bad investments, especially in the modern days were there are far fewer "Guys with a 100 million dollars to spend" out there and more "companies with a billion dollars" getting into the game. 

The owners are drawing a line in part I assume because the pandemic was hard on them.  They might have actually lost money, and they certainly made less than they usually do.  Rich investors don't like that! They want security. They want to know they'll make a ton regardless. Minimal risk, maximum reward. 

We'll see the owner's latest counter offer Saturday but without a real expansion of the luxury tax thresholds it won't be accepted.  Which by the way Manfred DID flat out lie about that saying the punishments were the same as they had been. The league itself had to follow up and say "oh no penalties for going over have been increased".  The players might take more stringent penalties with a BIG bump in limit (probably not though).  

What was confirmed yesterday was that the DH will be universal next year.  I've explained what I think about the DH (it's "better" baseball, but less fun. Think of it kind of like if you had uniform stadium dimensions. It continues the game down a path where batting and fielding are separated and likely sets up a second DH sometime down the line. Well down the line but it will be argued in the next 20 years I bet) but it was always coming because both sides want it. The owners want more offense because they see scoring as good. The (veteran) players who have the most sway want more ways to hang on in the league. 

What this means is the Nats will have a DH next year, which means Zimm will likely be back. 

After hurting his shoulder in 2010-2 Zimm quickly went from near elite to unplayable in the field. They tried for a couple of years then shifted him where they could, corner OF, but primarily 1B since he couldn't throw. He's been mostly fine but a few years ago his feet started bothering him as well and he's either been a statue in the field or can play half a season. Your choice. 

With the DH now he can play every day and hit and Zimm.. well he was still an above average hitter last year, if only barely. He's never hit particularly well as a DH but it's been so limited per year it's hard to read anything from that. He did look best in April and May when he'd be freshest so that might give you an idea of a "best case" scenario on how he could hit. But it's also limited data. 2019 didn't show that.

Zimm could pass both 2000 hits and 300 homers, which are nice numbers (only like 100 players have done that) but not by themselves HoF worthy. In part because like half of these seasons have come from players in the first 85 years of the game (almost all HoFers) and half in the last 35 years of the game (a mix). If he'd had remained a top notch third baseman he could have played a "Scott Rolen" card when Rolen gets in. Rolen is at 316 / 2077. But Zimm didn't.  He'd have to become a great DH for a few years to maybe get talked about. I don't see it happening. 

He already has all the franchise records*, even throwing in Montreal. His 284 homers are 50 ahead of Vlad. His 1846 hits are 150 ahead of Tim Wallach. Other things he's already first in : Games Played, PA, Runs, Doubles, RBI, SO, GIDP (almost 50% more than Tim Wallach). He's far behind in one's you'd expect (3B, SB, HBP**) Zimm is 2nd in BB but he doesn't actually walk much and Tim Raines had a great eye and is way ahead on that. It'd take like 3-4 more years for Zimm to pass him. Really the only thing he could get a lead on he doesn't already have is sacrifice flies where he is two behind Andre Dawson. 

So what this is would be just a guy playing baseball because he likes it and he's good enough to keep doing it. That's good enough for me.  Also for you guys it's a chance to see him off like he deserves, with what hopes to be a normal full season of baseball. Even if he does walk away with no fanfare, instead of the self-serving "retirement year" you'll have your chance to keep seeing him and accept each time on out might be the last.

*Soto is really good. Is he close to a leader in anything? Nope. Although in three seasons he could challenge for the BB title - he's got that good an eye and is making up that much ground. It's almost certain he'll be 2nd when FA comes around unless he gets hurt.  IBB almost certainly 3rd, same conditions.  But a lot of franchise records come just by being there a long time so Soto would have to re-sign and hang around in order to obliterate the franchise books. 

**Ryan doesn't really get hit all that often. 16th in franchise totals. Werth actually got him more in his stay.  The "Nats" leader is Danny Espinosa at 73 with Victor Robles next at 54.  Rendon, and Nick Johnson (even taking out the Expo year) are also ahead of Zimm.  The franchise leader might be unassailable by any National though. Ron Hunt played only 4 years in Montreal but the guy was one of baseball's best lean-iners. Lead the league with 50 HBP while with the Expos - 15 more than anyone in the past 120 years. Racked up 114 total in his time. That would be like the 63rd best career where like 25% of those are pre-dead ball. In other words his short time in Montreal alone would be a Top 50 HBP career in the usual baseball time we keep stats for.

Still nothing

The players said no to federal moderation because they felt the owners actually hadn't done much negotiating. That's probably true.  The owners are meeting over the next couple of days and the CBA will be discussed a lot but any formal offer is not expected. Gotta say this is killing my blog, dropping my ad revenue an undefined percentage from $0 to $0.  And don't even talk about my non-existent subscriber substack. Brutal. 

So what to talk about?  How about lists?  ESPN put out their list of the Top 100 players and of course people took the bait.  We can't help it.  We like arguing.  It's fun.  

Of course lists like this are stupid, and in baseball more so.  The game has been fundamentally around in the same way for 120 years. So much has changed in that time.  In 1900, which is when we usually put the starting point because the American and National Leagues formalized, there weren't computers... or television... or radio... or automobiles or motion pictures really. There weren't anti-biotics and they JUST figured out germs caused diseases instead of like "bad air".  The US had 45 states. Why are we trying to compare someone from then to now? 

People know this intrinsically so they do try to dismiss a chunk of time from analysis. Most often it's saying "I'm not considering anyone before integration. That's like 20% of the population who weren't allowed to play" But if it's just a population thing (instead of like a punishment) then we can't ignore the explosion of players from Latin American countries in the 80s or the introduction of players from Asian countries in the last 20 years when pointing out population differences. There's also considering the percentage of population who WANTED to play the sport. In the 20s what could you do instead? Box? Everyone who wanted to be an athelete pretty much wanted to be a baseball player.  Now? Football is dominant in the culture. Basketball can be played anywhere. You aren't getting the same level of interest. But does that really even matter considering baseball growth hasn't matched population growth? We're more than 4 times bigger but don't even have twice as many teams.  And that's not considering all those other countries we talked about. So are there more young men who could and want to play now or less?

It's impossible and that's just wrangling the "population involved" question.  Former players didn't have to travel across time zones... but also traveled the same amount of time by train in some comfort but nothing like players have today.  Players today have modern medicine and training methods. Players in the old days played in a era where the system didn't quite optimize the best players and had wider variety between the best and the worst*.  But then again players in the old days had to hit against balls that could be mushed up, spit on, and gunked up but then again again it was on worse maintained fields and guys with gloves the size of big hands. Impossible. 

I'm not saying don't rank players. Do! It's fun. I just say if you are going to do it cross-era you need to admit it is an exercise in opinion. There is no fact here. Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Barry Bonds.  Who's better? Whoever you want to be. 

If you want to take it more seriously then you are going to have to split up eras in some way.  Even that is fraught. When to make the cut and who falls into where is hard.  Dead ball to live ball makes sense.  Pre 69 expanision and field changes and after makes sense. But players' careers don't always fall neatly into one or the other. Failing doing like 5-10 rankings of different eras I prefer the "does anyone alive really remember this time" breaking point. Basically we are coming into that split being around WWII right now.  Players before that are numbers on a page, and a bit on film if we are lucky.  They are legend and stories. That can't possibly be ranked in the same way as people you actually saw play.

*this is part of the theory why we don't have .400 hitters anymore. But of course it was part of the theory on why we didn't have 60+ homer hitters anymore and we saw that can change. You can always tweak the game.

Slow movement is better than no movement I guess

Yesterday was the real first bit of bad news in the lockout front. Now, some might take that to be a delay in opening in Spring Training, but as you might guess from my "Feb 21st" estimate of an agreement date, I expected that and don't honestly care about it.  However, this negotiation period didn't seem to make any progress. The MLBPA did lower the pre-arb bonus pool money request... and are still way off from what the owners want (It's like 100 mill vs 10 mill)  They also made changes to their attempt to stop at least one or two instances of service time manipulation, for which the owners are like "nah, want to keep doing that". The MLBPA bent a little. MLB has to show a bend now. They were supposed to talk more yesterday and today on marginal things that have to be agreed upon in the CBA, not on anything that matters negotiation wise. And we've now learned MLB wants the federal government to try to come in and help with negotiations and an arbitrator.  What people think that means is all over the place from "Trying to show the handful of hardline owners they can't do any more" to "setting up another long 1994 type lockout"

Expanded playoffs and expanded DH are on the table for owners as "prizes" but the latter is almost certainly happening no matter where the negotiations end up. Both sides want it. I don't. It makes the game better but less fun, if that makes any sense.  

This all picks up again early next week. What you want to see is the owners make some movement on that pre-arb money and service time thing for at least the very best players (really they should agree to the player's deal which helps like 2 young players a year and one owner would probably be able to avoid it if they tried). The former is a no-brainer and if they don't move it's the first really bad sign. The latter... well they don't want to open the door even a little to losing service time control so I could see that not move at all. 

 So you want to hear about chasing sun? (one random person) 

It's not actually chasing sun, although if you never ran from impending shade from small clouds on a mostly sunny day that's a fun way to spend a day outside. Granted it's more of a rural activity than a suburban or urban one, but I digress. No "chasing sun" is about being kind of obsessed with time zones and getting maximum (or minimum) sunlight.  

Now of course it could be very simple - from March to September the Northern Hemisphere gets more light and the opposite from September to March. The further you are from the equator the more extreme it gets.  This is neat to think about around the inflection point.  If you take a place near the equator, let's say Aruba (I've been there!) and a place far from it, let's say Yellowknife (I have not been there), at the beginning of March Aruba has 11:36 hours of light* and Yellowknife has 10:20. Around March 15th they'll both have about 11:45 of light. At the end of the month Aruba has 11:53 and Yellowknife 13:21!** So go as far N as you can in the summer and S as you can in the winter, for the most part. 

Now my thoughts break into two arenas.  First is where I can get the most or least sun in the continental US. I'm the type that if I have the free time would drive to the middle of nowhere to see that. Second is where could I live in the world that's reasonable for me that would give me the most overall sunlight. For the sake of rambling savings we'll only deal with the US right now. 

Now two things can come into play here. One is the fact we aren't feudal farmers. What I mean by that is that we don't live by the sun, we live by the clock. We live by a construct of time that we ourselves set through time zones. Second is we aren't robots. We need to sleep. Even us soulless automatons try to get 5-6 hours. 

Why do these matter? Well for the clock in a perfect world the time zones would be equally 15 degrees apart, however countries, states, hell even towns would be split if you did that. So we don't do that. But because we don't do that and time zones differ by size we can't simply say "the furthest northwest spot in any time zone will work. We have to actually look. For the sleep - if all you care about is sun after you wake up - then it's not the most sunlight that matters as much as the most sunlight starting from time X.  In the longest days in the Northern US it's quite usual for the sun to rise pre-6 AM.  For me that's just wasted sunlight. 

So knowing that what matters more latitude or longitude, going north or going west? Again that depends on when you set that wake up time. If it's say... 6:30 well in most time zones even as far south as you can go the sun will be up by then on the longest day so you would be more concerned with longitude.  If you set it at 5:30 it might be either. 

Let's for the sake of argument set wake up time at 6:30 which means that all but the very furthest south and west parts of the timezones are up for grabs. Intuitively you'd then think "if the highest latitude spots in each time zone aren't that different then the widest time zone would give us the latest sunset".  Good guess but WRONG. Why? Well, because of the imperfect sizes some time zones "start" the day earlier than others. In the USs case, sunrise hits the eastern time zone, which is the widest, on June 20th around 4:40 in the morning.  Sunrise hits the central time zone at about that same latitude around 5:05.  That difference is enough difference to make up the width difference and so the latest sunset in the continental US happens in the Central time zone.  Specifically in the NW corner of North Dakota. Fortuna, ND if you are looking for an incorporated town. 10:03 PM 

Sunrise hits the other time zones at roughly the same time but if we are doing this, we're doing this and the earliest sunrise is in the furthest eastern reaches of Maine. I will note it's possible maybe someplace the mountainous border of Idaho and Montana it's earlier but there are no towns there and if you aren't in a town well then you might as well be that feudal farmer. 

And you can flip all this if you are some sort of night lover. The earliest sunset is in Maine, a tear inducing 3:50. The latest sunrise is back in NW ND. 8:49 which isn't as terrible. But it's on November 5th not on the shortest day of the year in late December. It only gets to 8:46 on that day. This is why we have daylight savings time, people! 

The take away from all this is that if you want to have the most sunlight, for most people that don't mind a little darkness in the morning, you should definitely move to the western part of a time zone. In the summer you should move north. Indianapolis, is a choice.  Detroit if you want all 4 major sports. You might think Seattle but actually the Pacific time zone is pretty narrow.  In the winter you should fly South. Atlanta would be the big city sports related choice.

Some other notes 

If you just wanted most sunlight and don't mind sitting in the car all day you can try to literally race the sun.  Like start in Thunder Bay in Canada*** at sunrise and just start driving west.  Back of the envelope calculations say you get yourself an extra hour and half of sunlight that way.  It's not very effective - the world spins fast. 

World wise the southern Hemisphere is pretty empty compared to the North.  All the major cities peter out in the 34-38 longitude range. In the N Hemisphere that's vaguely Charlotte to DC range. So your choices are pretty limited for major places to live. in the N Hemisphere they peter out more around 60 degrees north.  Time zones are very funky worse that US.  China is all one time zone. Parts of Canada and Argentina and Alaska spread out basically two time zones behind where they "should" be. Mostly though it's because these are unpopulated area so it's not a big deal. 

*This is based on sunrise and sunset. There are actually different definition and times for "when the light goes away" and if you ever were a kid playing outside in the summer you should be familiar with the ideas if not the names. It technically depends on degrees under the horizon the sun is but it's easier to think of it in practical terms since you can't see the sun yourself.  

Civil Twilight is after sunset when you can still pretty much see as normal. You can still be playing wiffleball, basketball, or a some 2x2 football. 

Nautical Twilight is basically when there's still enough light to see the horizon and but dark enough that enough stars are out where sailors can navigate. For us not on the sea the sky is light enough to see things in contrast against it but the ground is pretty dark. You can probably squeeze out an end to that wiffle ball game because the white ball will still seem bright enough (being white helps a lot but it's also because of the way our eyes work in dimmer light), but it won't be easy.  Basketball will be ok enough shooting the ball but every rebound could be an adventure. Football is mostly done as only lofty Hail Marys will be seen. 

Astronomical Twilight is when you look around and say "I guess it's not completely dark". No one is playing without lights.

** sunset zooms along faster than sunrise for various reasons. It'll go from 6:00 on March 1st to closing in on 8:30 on March 31st. 

 *** looking for a major E-W highway as far N as I could go. Can't waste time going north/south or heading through too many mountains. 

YAWN

Meeting today maybe. I don't expect anything to get done (I'll hold to my Feb 21st guess) and this and the next player proposal (which should follow shortly) will outline exactly the things to argue about. Essentially all we are missing out on are "truck days" which are stupid and are actually still happening because minor leaguers go to Spring Training too. It's just that we're not going to see big deals made out of it when this whole lockout thing is going on. 

I could ramble but that didn't see to interest a population of readers curated over a decade of baseball talk. What you don't want to hear my thoughts on defining generations? how to best chase sunlight? The seasons? So we'll wrap it up here. On like #39 of Posnanski's book - so I'll finish that probably before the season starts. It's good.

NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING

Does anyone notice how Ortiz is like the only HoF to get appreciably BETTER in his late 30s? I think they do, but with a lot about Ortiz people like to look the other way like they are Sally Jenkins talking about Lance Armstrong. Once you do that well Ortiz is a Hall of Famer, there's no doubt there. In my "Psychology of the Hall of Fame" post Ortiz hits several points. He's not undeniably great or even undeniably great for his position given his time split, or undeniably great at one thing. He DID hit the magic number of 500 homers (541). He was certainly great at the right time as he was basically the face of the curse-breaking Red Sox. If you can twist yourself like a pretzel saying voting for Ortiz is ok and not Clemens or Bonds or A-Rod or Schilling then yes he's easily the best thing left on the ballot. He's remembered for something "great" (the post Marathon speech). It's not close. Again, if you can deny what's in front of you. 

Which apparently a lot of people can. I thought the desire to vote for Ortiz would be so strong it would help pull Bonds and Clemens over the finish line. Clearly you would either land on "no cheater" or "ok cheaters" but apparently that wasn't the case.  You learn something new everyday and this week I learned not to underestimate the power of hypocrisy.*

ANY WAY 

the negotiations are ... ongoing? The players have made concessions. We're waiting to hear from the owners. There's no sense of when the next counter (by the owners) will come but I'd expect early next week.

*It sounds like I'm mad Ortiz is in but I'm really not. (1) I've said many times HoF who cares and I stand by that. I'm not going to walk in an shake my fist at his plaque or anything and (2) I would have put him in (along with all the other cheats).  I'm mad that people made a big show to try to prove they were not hypocrites when they clearly are. It's like dealing with a little kid. I'm probably going to care more about if you lie to me than if you did something I don't like.

Counter Offer Made

The players have really started the process, sitting down with MLB and making a counter offer. Some things we know :

• They cut out the age based FA thing.  That never had legs for like a million reasons and while it seems like a concession I (and maybe the owners) take it more as something tossed in there to be pulled out purposely to make it look like they were doing something. 
• They reduced revenue sharing to 30 million less to the cheap teams rather than 100 million.  That IS a concession and might slip through?  I think it will be some number... we'll talk about it more in a minute. 
• They nixed two of the owners dumb ideas they threw out there (rewarding teams who start draft pick early with draft picks* and a formula based salary system**)
• An interesting thing I didn't mention yesterday is the "draft lottery" which in the non-playoff teams all have a shot at the first X picks (think NBA). The owners said Top 3 picks, the players said Top 8. I can't imagine it matters at all and it's the dumbest thing being argued about. Teams aren't tanking to get better nor does a single baseball draft pick have that much impact on a team. These ideas will change nothing. 
  
• They still want a raise in minimum salary (will happen), a bump in the luxury tax (will happen). 

Ok well what's the lay of the land?  

The minimum salary and luxury tax are your standard back and forth number arguments that will get worked out one way or another at a compromise number. Depending on how other things work they could favor the owners or the players more but these aren't the sticking points. These are the things they can use to get past the sticking points. 

The sticking points are arbitration and that revenue sharing. 

The revenue sharing is the new version of an old argument. For the players having all the teams be able to spend as much money as possible is good for them. Rich teams and teams going for it spend more, which not only give those players they sign more money directly but raise the market for everyone else. So the more money those team have to spend the better. For the owners... well reverse it. It's not like the owners WANT to have their money shared but it keeps the overall market down, it helps curb their spending influences, and it keeps those one or two rogue teams that will spend anyway under some sort of control. 

That's it in a nutshell - it's a money fight. But both will frame it as competitive balance. The owners will say the teams that receive revenue sharing will have more to spend and will be better - even though that has never actually happened. They just use the money to cover their other costs (and pocket some). The players will make a twisty argument that teams spending more force other teams to spend more because they'd be too bad or something. If anyone really cared there would be a salary floor or a demand all shared revenue go to player salaries, but there isn't. Because like I said it's a money fight - not a competitive balance thing. 

The arbitration is a newer one. For a long time young players got to arbitration in three years. The MLBPA was fine with this because (1) good players could make it up in FA and (2) older players were the ones negotiating. But recently the owners decided that the increase in variance in using younger players was acceptable and so paying market for older (re: like early 30s) FA with similar expectations of production just wasn't necessary. In other words you couldn't make it up in FA anymore. Not as much for as many at least. To counter that - the players are trying to get arbitration started earlier. Arbitration is not market but it's a lot better. Soto is an extreme example but he was getting paid under 600K. Arbitration starting took that to 8.5 million and it'll only go higher. That's a big difference. 

It's such a big difference it could likely be a sticking point for the owners. Their current plan isn't built of paying under market for three years. It's built off paying ridiculously under market to be insulting for three years (and that helping keep the last 3 years of controlled costs down).  This would be a bump in tens of millions in salary that they just pared off. If anything causes us to lose games, it'll be this.  The players need it. The owners really don't want it. There isn't much of a compromise to be had.

*wouldn't matter. A draft pick isn't worth the difference unless it's super high and this won't be super high

**never going to agree on a formula

Counter Intuitive

MLB Players make their first counter today and really negotiations will officially begin again, since the owners opening salvo was really just restating their stance when the lockout was put into place. It'll be interesting to see what the players ask for here, but what they really want is more money spent on players to get back to the usual split- which honestly was in place a couple years ago but has moved away in the past couple of years and it's fair for the players to be worried that it wouldn't shift back without negotiations. 

What would shift it back? And what do I think will happen?

• Raising the cap is an obvious ones. Expect that to be in there and some compromise to be reached.
  
• Shifting free agency earlier would help, since teams are purposely going younger. There are two ways to attack this: earlier FA in general and stopping the "guy called up in early May" service time manipulation. The first one is straightforward but is such a shift that it will be a huge fight to change that if the players really want to make a stand. The latter is more promising, especially if teams bother to look and see it's not sure to matter down the road. Plus the limit it crazy, its being active for 90%+ of the season.  I'd expect some tweak to it adjusting that percentage down to like 75%.  That won't stop service time manipulation. It won't even make a big dent in it, but it'll help a handful of players on contenders get called up.  I Not much but even if you got down to the logical number - 50% that still won't make a huge dent. This is more about fixing an specific obvious unfair situation that 
  
•  Getting more teams to want to compete is another goal but this is a vague goal. It mainly boils down to revenue sharing where the players want teams to spend money on players and a lot of cheap teams are pocketing that revenue sharing money. But REALLY the players want good teams to have money to spend on players so they want less revenue sharing in general rather than stricter guidelines to spend this money on players.  The owners as a group don't like that because there will always be a rogue owner or two when given free reign to spend will do so and drive up costs for everyone.  They could probably agree on some sort of forced spending (bc the very rich teams don't like the normal rich teams not spending either), but it'll take a perspective change on this by the players
• Another way to get teams to compete is to somehow make tanking less appealing but it's pretty much a very minor benefit now once you look at things and that hasn't stopped anyone. The public (media + fans) buy into rebuild narratives for at least a few cycles.
  

Ultimately I think the deal will raise the cap and will do SOMETHING else but not much.  If you think that is too little I agree, but anything that keeps the lights on.

Still nothing

 Might get a counter proposal soon.  

At least the too early "They are going to miss games! Baseball is doomed!" talk will get more lively. That's good if you like to be annoyed.

Kevin Frandsen is replacing FP in the booth.  We never got a full accounting of what FP did.  It seems like nothing criminal actually took place and rather it was a bunch of questionable carousing and general skeeviness. If you are popular enough you could probably apologize, straighten up a little and survive, but FP was a guy in a booth. He had some fans but for most he was easily replaceable. It's easier just to move on from that guy at your first opportunity, and so MASN did.

Frandsen is an uninspired choice. Former scrappy but not good ballplayers abound in this business* But from all we hear he was pretty good with Philly, so it could be worse. Morse nor Maxwell were ready to step in.

*So you can't be ALL bad and usually get these jobs. You usually have to have a decent season or two and otherwise not be terrible so you hang around for a long enough time to make a name and some friends. Obvious reason it skews toward these types is they need the job more than a great player who are more likely just to pop in a few games a year along with other guys who need work and/or want to stay in the game. I guess also there are a lot more middling players than good ones, but really I'd imagine a network would want a good player for the name recognition so they definitely are enjoying retirement.

Now why these are completely white non-Hispanic guys except for Keith Hernandez... well I'll let you think about that. The pop-in types are a little better representative of the guys who played the game. 

Note :  Mets often go three man enough that both Darling and Hernandez would be primary. Philly splits 50/50 Kruk and Ben Davis, both are here. Pittsburgh rotates 5 guys in and out so none are in here. Matt Capps is one!

Primary TV Color Guys

Not middling pitchers - Jim Palmer, Dennis Eckersley, Mark Gubicza, Orel Hershiser

Middling pitchers - Steve Stone, Dallas Braden (yes yes injury), Brian Anderson, CJ Nitkowski, Jim Deshais, Chris Welsh, Ron Darling**, Mike Krukow, Mike Grant

Not middling players - Kirk Gibson, Justin Morneau, Paul O'Neill, John Kruk, Keith Hernandez, Jim Edmonds

Middling players - Rick Manning, Geoff Blum, Rex Hudler,  Mike Blowers, Pat Tabler, Jeff Franceour, Jeff Huson, Todd Hollandsworth, Bill Schroeder, Ben Davis, Kevin Frandsen

Other - Bob Brenly (middling player - but also a bad but lucky manager)

**In my head he's good but really in my head I stop thinking about him in 1986. He WAS good in 1986 and the couple years before that. He was middling for far longer after that. 

Still nothing nationally, a little internationally

 Last week was the international signing period and the Nats did what you want them to. They IDd a top prospect and they paid money to sign him. In fact they paid the most money they ever spent on an international prospect.  So welcome Cristhian Vaquero.

 What does that mean? Well a ton of players come internationally, more than their share drafted.  Of course part of that is the fact baseball drafts a ton times a ton of players. But international players are very important and signing the best ones is usually the best bet. 

That being said one only needs to look at who held the Nats record previously to see how much of a crapshoot this really is. It was held dually by Armando Cruz, who as a 17 year old put up a "talented 17 year old in the Dominican Summer League" season which is to say - not very good in general, but he's super young (in fact his 18th birthday was just a couple days ago) and by Yasel Antuna, who as a 21 year old MI now OF put up a "averagish for a 21 year old in High A" season - which is to say also not very good, but he's still young for his league. If you want to be positive, they've hung on in levels above their ages. If you want to be negative, they haven't done anything outside of Antuna's 17yo rookie league season. If you want to be fair, Antuna is getting toward a make or break time since it was hoped he'd be knocking on the door by now, and it wasn't a good start for Cruz but it's so far off writing him off that you can ignore it other than to say he's probably not a first ballot HoFer to be. 

 I went over international signings a while ago and I felt they were best described as lottery tickets, even more so than draft picks.  Generally if you have a top half first round draft pick you should end up with a ML player. If you didn't you either got bad injury luck or messed up. But the Top 15 international signings? No guarantee. The variance is wild. But you hope that you got the Juan Soto* of the year and not the Yadier Alvarez. 

 

Juan Soto at 17? Had a fantastic Gulf Coast Rookie season. Juan Soto at 21? That was 2020.

Everything a reboot?

More ramblings as the MLB negotiations opened exactly as I thought they would.  It wasn't a continuation of negotiations, but a restart as the owners basically reiterated their initial demands with a minor tweak or two. We had a 6 week pause where nothing happened and this highlights that. 

We'll continue with the TV theme and as you probably know the Fresh Prince is getting a gritty reboot. Who doesn't love a gritty reboot? ... Huh. Everyone.  I think it isn't a bad idea - they actual set-up of the show isn't necessarily comedic and works well for a drama. But keeping everything the same makes it sillier than it needs to be. He doesn't have to go to Bel-Air, the characters all don't have to have the same names. He probably does have to come from Philly, just because it's Will Smith's show, but other than that play around and change things up so it feels like an inspiration, not a parody. 

Any way everything gets a remake or reunion or restart because it's easy. You have a built-in audience to check it out to start and that's better than most anything new you can put out. The two that seem a bit impervious to this are kid/teen shows and doctor shows. Kid/teen shows generally appeal to kid/teens - so you don't have a built in audience if you simply reboot, you either got to convince adults to watch teen or kids stuff or get new kids. If you want the original audience you have to do like a "20 years later" but then you have to get the original cast to agree, not always easy. Also the "best" ones are generally not well watched and short lived*. Doctor shows are so ubiquitous you can just easily make another and people will watch. 

To prove it I pulled a a random list of the Top 50 TV shows of the 90s (80s might be too old for some of you, we're not quite at the full 00s being able to be rebooted yet - takes about 15/20 years to really cycle through) and we'll see one by one where they went after ending. I'm gonna leave out continuations like the X-Files movies or Saved By the Bell the New Class that happened soon after the originals ended

Friends - all rich now don't have to redo the show but had the reunion

Twin Peaks - limited follow up season in 2014 on Showtime

Seinfeld - also all rich, instead had a fake reunion in a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm

My So-Called Life (ed note- hey I didn't pick the list! I didn't like this show and in fact generally hate "this is real life" dramas but I made my choices apriori here) - Teen show. No real reboot (I don't count a post show novel) Cast got famous.

Fresh Prince - see above

X-Files - Got a revival for a couple new seasons in 2016 and 2018

Freaks and Geeks - Teen show. Cast got famous.

Wonder Years - Reboot is on now and is supposed to be pretty good

Saved by The Bell - Revival is on Peacock

Simpsons - Still on! 

Boy Meets World -  Revival "Girl Meets World" ran from 2014-17 on Disney 

Buffy - several undeveloped spinoffs and a planned revival in 2018 that didn't go anywhere

In Living Color - attempted reboot in 2012 didn't get past pilot episodes

Full House - Revival Fuller House streamed on Netflix for 4 seasons? I don't know and my kid isn't home to ask

Murphy Brown - Forgive yourself if you don't remember the one-season 2018 revival 

Mr. Show - Bob and David got around to putting out 4 new episodes for Netflix in 2015, but it's a two-man show and Odenkirk got pretty busy

Unsolved Mysteries - Revived in 2007 for three years on Spike. Revived again in 2020 on Netflix.  

Kids in the Hall -  the original cast was filming something for Amazon but I don't see if it went anywhere

The Adventures of Pete & Pete - Kids show. Nothing.

Married... With Children - In 2014 the production company asked for pitches for a Bud Bundy show but it didn't go anywhere. 

OK that's 20 - I'll peruse the rest for what I know off the top of my head...  Quantum Leap's reboot was just announced, Daria is having a spin-off, Magic School Bus was redone at least once, Animaniacs came back, Law & Order (original flavor) is coming back I think?, Beavis and Butthead definitely had several revivals, Rugrats came back in new animation, Mad About You did new shows, the was a new Melrose Place at some point I think, 90210 was BH90210's revival, MST3K rebooted, The Nanny is doing a reboot. 

So that's at least 12+15 like 27 out of 50? And I bet it's closer to 40 if I dug down into those other 30.  Maybe later.

Even though it feels like "We have no new ideas" I can't imagine it's all that new.  Pick a classic show. It's gonna have something in the future. There's money on the table and they aren't going to leave it there. The only difference is now there are a bunch of streaming channels along with the usual suspects trying to get programming and that's digging down a little deeper into our memory holes.

*nothing separates a critic from the real world more than their love of a "realistic" teen drama. Real teens want Riverdale.

Thursday Ramblings

Huh - so still no baseball talk. That's odd. Wonder what's going on. 

Look there isn't going to be anything really here baseball wise for a month. And chances are most of what will come about is - "That's a ridiculous offer by the owners" "The players still need to make a couple concessions" "Ok now the owners are serious" type stuff, but that only makes for three posts as you see. If you make me guess I'll say Feb 21st for an agreement date (with ST starting a few days late) so that's still more than a month away.  You guys don't want three posts do you? You need content to fill your lives! 

So what content shall that be. I can definitely ramble. I have the correct thoughts on pretty much everything. You tell me. 

I'm working my way through Posnanski's Baseball 100 - which is sort of his Top 100 players with a few "article in a newspaper" pages on each as opposed to "this is their career" dryness. It's very good.Some thoughts

The first players that make his list started in 1890 which may seem like a long time ago but cuts out probably 20 years of decently viable baseball. The big loser there is Cap Anson who was kind of baseball's first superstar but also a virulent racist so no tears shed - especially considering this is a personal list not trying to be THE objective 100 best players.  Most of the others come from the fact sometimes you threw 500 innings. That's kind of hard to translate to now terms if it was actually any good. If you want to feel bad for someone maybe Roger Connor is the best choice from this group. The guy was the HR king of baseball from the end of his career in 1895 until Ruth took the crown after like his second big season. He was the first one to really HOLD it and was a great hitter. Maybe Dan Brouthers - baseball's first slugger. But still the game was admittedly a bit wonky until you get to the 1890s and the leagues start to gel so I can see denying those 1880s stats.

The guys after 1900 who were kind of snubbed were

Eddie Plank - a rubber armed dead ball pitcher who was good but primarily got his value from never getting hurt and throwing a ton. 

Tom Glavine - you know Glavine. He's sort of the same as Plank but was very good. Honestly the difference between Glavine and a guy like Blyleven (who does make it at #71) is more era than anything. If you are going to adjust for old timers and for now timers you should adjust for the subtle changes in between as well. 

That's probably it honestly.  Once you try to adjust for adding in Negro Leaguers and historically under appreciated catchers you shift everything like 15 spots and a guy in the 70-80 WAR range (which is where we are now) is in 85-95 and if you like someone better at 105 or 115 should we really call that a snub?

He probably overrates the stars of his youth (21 of this list debuted in the 15 years period between 1959 and 1974). Even limiting baseball to 1900-2000 that would be a bit of a stretch. And then again the stars of his early work (another 16 pop up between the decade of 1986-1995).  Did 37% of baseball's greats appear in like 22% of it's years? Maybe I guess. These things aren't going to be exactly distributed.  Most likely though there are one or two here that wouldn't be on others.

Ok so there you go - some baseball talk.

Wednesday ramblings

Talks coming? Well of course they were coming, but the first talks are finally starting up this week. Despite what you might hear the season is not in jeopardy right now, neither is any Spring Training in fact. Pitchers and catchers report around Valentines Day so as long as the deal is struck within a couple days of that date things will be basically normal.  You can probably even go a week+ later and have minimal impact because do pitchers and catchers REALLY need to come early in this day and age where everyone is working out and keeping fit all winter long? No. The answer is no.  The MLBPA still probably strikes a week of ST because they can and the owners don't really care but they don't have to until we actually get TO the ST games. I concede they do need some time to get together and warm up and have eyeballs on players, etc. 

So the timeline as of today is like 5 weeks.  Anything more than that likely causes a disruption. Anything more than like 7 weeks causes major disruption and might cause a delay in the start of the season, mostly because they'll want time to get FA and arbitration sorted out then any actual physical reasons. 

Lester retires. Lester was signed last year with the hopes he could pitch a bit better or get a bit lucky or both and anchor the back of the Nats rotation. That quickly became a moot point as the rest of the rotation fell apart with Stras' injury, Ross and Fedde continuing their "not quite good and healthy enough to stick, not quite bad and old enough to dismiss" dance, and Patrick Corbin suddenly becoming truly terrible. But even though the point was moot we should note he did not pitch better nor did he get lucky.  He was a 5.00+ERA pitcher and basically got those results. That's a passable 5th for most teams but not good enough for a team hoping to compete with other rotation issues 

As it is a passable 5th he might have been able to sneak out another season somewhere, eating up innings, mentoring some young arms and throwing to 5.00 ball but he has succumbed to the late career apathy that takes many stars. Lester has enough money and traveling around the country with a bunch of guys he doesn't know dealing with aches and pains of trying to pitch while aging for no real end goal is not super appealing.

Where does he stand in MLB history? One of the best LHSP of the first post steroid era. Good story recovering from a treatable form of cancer. Not a HoFer.  Somewhere better than a guy like David Price, worse than a guy like Tim Hudson. 

Tuesday Ramblings

Hey there isn't baseball news so I'm going to ramble today

Something you learn growing up watching TV is that all the kids you see on TV are probably older than they are playing. Sometimes a year or two, sometimes several, but it's unlikely that that 13 year old is really 13.  Why? Several reasons. Older kids are usually better actors. Older kids can work longer. Older kids have already gone through puberty so you don't have to worry about awkward transitions (see that youngest kid from Home Improvement) But on the flip side they also cast parents far younger than  they should be. Why? This one is simple. Young people are better looking. Old people look old! Yuck!

Getting to the point - when Bob Saget died it led me to look up exactly how old he was when he started Full House. This is what happens when you get older and people who remember as adults in your youth die - you start wondering about your age in comparison. Turns out he was 31.  Which is weird because in theory he had a 10 year old kid and he married his wife after college but such is the TV parent life. If we take your actual age and put it against the supposed age of the kid you have, it rarely makes sense. 

For a service to you here are some parents' ages when they had their first kid based on the actor's birth year and the supposed age of the kid (I worked backward from HS graduation episodes assuming 17 for that to give the parents the biggest benefit of the doubt I could)

Full House - Danny Tanner 21

Family Ties - Steven and Elyse Keaton 19 (Fun fact - Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter share an exact birthday)

Growing Pains - Jason Seaver 23, Maggie Seaver 17 

Who's the Boss - Tony Micelli 22, Angela Bower 27 (this sort of makes sense for a former baseball player and a woman who at least got something going business wise)

Cosby Show - Cliff Huxtable 27, Clair Huxtable 16 (this got really messed up because after the show started Cosby wanted a child already in college and seemingly successful so they added they several year older than Denise, Sondra. The actress that played her was only 10 years older in real life than Phylicia Rashad. But that was nothing special. The actor that played Cosby's Dad was only 11 years older than him)

Family Matters - Carl Winslow 24, Harriet Winslow 26- This works? I mean certainly in comparison with almost everything else here

My Two Dads - Greg Evigan's Dad 22, Paul Reiser's Dad 19.  Don't ask me why this made my list

Boy Meets World - Alan Matthews 32/30,  Amy Matthews 27/25.  This also works but you are probably wondering why the slash. Well the first season they are clearly 11 year olds in sixth grade.  In the second season they are in high school and spend four years there.  It isn't a time jump. It isn't explained. They just age them up 2 years. 

Fresh Prince - Uncle Phil 27, Aunt Viv 1 - 16, Aunt Viv 2 - 24.  Gotta guess here on Hilary because she's already in college and doesn't graduate. I went ahead and did 18 but she could be older and the parents younger. But let's at least keep Uncle Phil in the legal in some states territory.

Home Improvement - Tim Taylor 28, Jill Taylor 30. Times change. I guess. We're no longer in the time where parents had to get married out of HS and pop out a lot of kids because half would die like... the mid 1970s.

 Maybe there will be baseball news tomorrow. 

Happy January 5th

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.

Merry Christmas!

It was just over a decade ago when the Nats made the move that I think really set in motion the next 8 years of constant contention. A decade ago the Nats send AJ Cole, Derek Norris, Tommy Milone, and Brad Peacock to the Athletics for Gio Gonzalez. 

We've gone over what the Nats needed to happen to actually make the window open. A stroke of timing and luck that had prospects develop, signings work out, and trades happen all coalescing on a brief 1-2 year period. But to me the Gio deal was the biggest. It was the one that signaled the team wasn't in it for tomorrow anymore but today.  All four of the guys they dealt were good enough to be major leaguers and all eventually made it. In fact all three pitchers were in the majors last year. But they were willing to give that up for the security of a guy who looked to give you 200 IP of 2-3 type pitching for the next few years. The Nats were going for it. 

Gio would work out really well for three seasons then follow that with three very useful, if in an infuriatingly 100 pitch for 5 inning fashion, seasons before being sent out for next to nothing in 2018. That covered nearly all of the Nats window giving the Nats something every year. 

Anyway, just thinking that a decade ago the Nats made it clear they were going for it NOW and gave the fans quite a ride that luckily ended up with the ultimate prize. Regardless of what happens now you still have that to look back on. 

Monday Quickie - Last minute roster stuffers

You got any last minute gifts you need to buy? The Nats do. It's been a lean year so they aren't looking at putting any big gifts under the Christmas tree. Instead they are stuffing that stocking (Stirrup? No it would fall out of that) with a bunch of cheap stuff that you might have heard of and get a couple days of play out of but really are there to make you feel like you are getting a lot. Silly Putty. A mini plastic slinky. A $5 gift card to Starbucks. Dee Strange-Gordon. A couple candy bars. An orange. Maikel Franco. Socks.

Dee Strange-Gordon 

Last Good - In 2017 at age 29 DSG hit about league average and played above average defense at 2B making him a minor plus for the Marlins

Last Year - In 2022 at age 33 DSG hit .248 / .288 / .370 across three different AAA teams splitting time between SS and 2B. 

Strange-Gordon probably isn't as bad as his last partial season in the majors showed, hitting to an embarrassing .213 SLG, if you can call that slugging. But even still he hit to 79 and 80 OPS the previous two years. The Mariners tried him in CF as that's what they needed which proved to be a mistake and since returning to the MI he hasn't been the plus fielder he was.

Maikel Franco

Last Good - Maikel's 27 year old 2020 audition with the Royals was ok, producing a line of .278 / . 321 / .457 over 60 games. His defense was ok as well. Together they put him in the mix of a bunch of decent third basemen.

Last Year - Maikel's 28 year old 2021 was an abysmal failure at the plate producing the worst season of his career by far and a .210 / .253 / .355 line. Defense was still solid though.

There's kind of a knock on Franco that he can't keep his attention or interest up leading to wildly varying production. His OPS+ the past 5 seasons are 79 - 106 - 81 - 102 - 63.  If he hits with his defense you have a useful player. If he doesn't hit he DOESN'T HIT and you don't.  There's talk the Nats could use him as a DH which is silly considering his decent defense is probably why you signed him as his offense doesn't fluctuate far enough into positive to be worthwhile.

Cesar Hernandez

I like this format so I'll put Cesar into it 

Last Good - At 30 in 2020 Cesar put up solid numbers at the plate, not trying too much for the homers and some strong defense at 2B which he is capable of doing.

Last Year - At 31 in 2021 Cesar once again swung for the fences and got his highest HR total yet (21) at the expense of everything else. His defense was solid but not exceptional

Said this a week ago but Cesar is swinging and missing a tick more in the past few years and walking a bit less and he doesn't have the overall skills to keep that from dipping him into a below average bat. It's just a tick below average though and his defense is still solid making him a kind of borderline starter / back-up in the league depending on the team. 

Cesar is the best bet to be usable. He'd be a great back-up for some team, a decent "worst bat" starter at a tough position to fill, and questionable as anything more important. Franco is a gamble. He seems to oscillate between bad and good at the plate so this year he could be good again. That's more average actually but with his decent glove that's a starter. But he tends to be very bad when he doesn't hit.  Gordon is probably still a good fielder but his bat is likely not good enough to keep him on a team in any form but PR / late inning defense.  I'm not sure why the Nats would grab him. 

There you go! Baseball news.  And if you do need a last minute gift let us know in the comments and maybe the collective audience can help you out.

The fifth rule of no-fight club

Is you don't talk about the Rule V draft. But no baseball can go on, not even FA talks so here we are.  The Nats selected 4 guys in the minor league section of the Rule V draft (which means they don't have to stay on the 25 man roster)

Andrew Young

Young is ironically the oldest player the Nats picked up as he'll be 28 early in 2021. He has one big skill - power and that's only grown as he's matured. The problem is that he strikes out a lot and the last two times up he's only managed to be above average at the plate by maintaining a Top 10 in majors type HR/FB rate. That usually doesn't hold up as major league pitchers have more time to adjust to you AND the fact that he should be starting his decline soon... well its a tough sell.  Made even tougher by the fact he doesn't have a natural position, the kind of guy who plays around the IF because he can and he can't hit enough to play 1B. That's not going to age either. 

But could he play a full season and you get lucky as he turns into something someone else might like? Sure.  Or could he cut down on those Ks and be a decent back up IF who can hit a homer, a C-Fielding Danny Espinosa? Maybe. Of course you don't grab him for that, you grab him for the 1 in 1000 chance he clicks and is a power hitting MI. 

The rest are live arms

Curtis Taylor  Impressive K numbers in some minor league outings. Generally had been hard to hit and hard to homer too.  Why was he available? He's 27 next July, he walks a ton, and the Blue Jays had a bunch of guys they liked more. Also all the trends have been bad as he's moved up. Guys with better patience and hitting seem to catch his mistakes and hold off the rest.

Matt Brill Repeat above. More unhittable and unhomerable but also wilder and has seem to hit a wall in AA where his combined numbers over 2 years and 60 IP is an ERA of 6.34 and a BB/9 of 6.  I don't care how many guys you K that's too many.  He was a converted offensive player but he converted in college because he couldn't hit enough there so it's not like he's going to switch back in AA. 27 next year

Dakody Clemmer 26 next year, the Indians have a very deep system. He's had decent results in the minors but in different ways.  Early on he was an ok control, meh K, fantastic homer control guy ( 7 homers in nearly 200 IP). Coming out of the missed 2020 he went big into Ks and they went way up... but so did the walks. Homer control was still there.  I find him more interesting than Taylor or Brill but the truth is if 2 months into this season the K jump shows itself to be a fluke there's nothing here with the guy unlike the others who truly have those live arms. That's why he's draft in the last round 

Nats have plenty of holes, so certainly fine grabbing these guys. The age says these aren't long term fixes (such is the way for most of Rule V) but if the Nats are looking at 2022 with an eye toward 2023 these are the types you want.

What's going on? HoFers

 Nothing nothing is going on. 

A few guys got elected to the Hall by the veteran's committe or whatever it is called now.  Two guys, Bud Fowler and Buck O'Neil are special cases. Fowler is often noted as the first Black professional baseball player, Buck a tireless advocate for Negro League recognition and a great ambassador for the game itself.  Neither are good enough players to make it but there are these types in the Hall. 

The rest are the usual veteran's committee guys who were good enough to get writer votes but not good enough to get enough writer votes. Kaat and Minoso are in the gray area of career stats where sometimes other things can get you in. Hodges and Oliva aren't there but have their own circumstances.

Minoso was another compiler to the point of sort of being a joke at the end, a fun one though.  During the normal part of his career the guy could hit and run (95 career triples, leading the league 3 times) but wasn't necessarily an intuitive base stealer (career 216 SB to 130 CS - with things getting really dicey after hitting 30). He was seen as a good fielder, wasn't afraid of taking a walk, and was also healthy for a long while basically not missing more than a week in every season but one from 25-35. A lot of games and a lot of hits and walks and good fielding means racking up a lot of value. Being available may not be a skill (injury luck is what it is) but it's important and can't be dismissed. He'd finish his ML career with a .299 BA and nearly 2000 hits. At this point we have to mention his first few years were in the Negro Leagues and he played a year in the competitive PCL bc loaded Cleveland didn't need him. You can imagine a scenario where if baseball wasn't racist he plays around 4ish more full years. That's another 700 hits for a guy like Minnie and at 2600 hits and more major league time he moves up not quite to automatic HoF level but in with the guys where it's more a coin flip. To the point of my first sentence, he'd go on to make appearances at 50 in 76, and 54 in 80 (thanks Veeck!) which was silly but you know what, that's ok.    

Kaat was a good pitch to contact control starter. Just good. But he was good for a very long time and remember that's a skill in my book. He started at least 24 games from the age of 22 through 39 with the exception of one year and started over 40 twice. He was better than league average 14 of 16 years from 22 through 37. He was a slick fielder (though not 16 gold gloves good - that's just inertia) and add that up and... well it's not quite a Hall of Famer.  The 283 wins sort of is right in that sense. If 300 is automatic then Kaat is missing something. Granted if there was no strike in '81 though maybe he powers through to try for 300 as he probably would be sitting around 290. So kind of like Minnie you can imagine a scenario where Kaat gets in. Instead he stuck around long enough to finally win a series at 42 with the Cardinals but with minimal impact.* He's been an ever present broadcast presence since.

Hodges was a premier power hitter of the early 50s with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He struck out a TON for the time but made up for hit by hitting a lot of homers. Never did lead the league but was Top 5 ish each year before losing a step for the second half of the decade. Still when he retired his 370 homers were third most for a RHB.  Seen as a great first baseman he was a very important part of the 50s Dodgers who won pretty constantly. Then he went on to manage, did ok with a middling Washington team before going over to the Mets and being in the dugout for the Miracle '69 title. At 47 with a decent track record you could see him managing another 10+ seasons in various places and another title would be a pretty sure in to the Hall as a manager, especially given his good enough to be reviewed player case. Hodges though would die of his 2nd heart attack just a couple days short of turning 48. This young death has always been one of the things pushing his case forward, sympathy and what ifs matter to voters. 

For an 8 year span Tony Oliva was nearly as good as anyone. He lacked a truly special season but he put out very good to great ones every year and really the only thing holding him back was his free swinging ways (he'd only walk 448 times in his career). He hit for average, he hit for very good power, and he was a solid fielder and baserunner. At 32 he had the best average of his career... and then seriously hurt his knee trying to catch a fly ball. That knee would cost him the rest of 71 and pretty much all of 72. It would take his power as well, turning a 20-25 HR guy into a 15 homer one. Injury stuff is pretty hard to figure out but a normal career trajectory given his averages he probably ends up over 2500 hits and near 300 homers. Again not quite HoF level even then which is probably why he was out but that had less to do with what he did in the majors then his late start. He didn't get here from Cuba until 22/23 and didn't debut until his 25/26 season. It's just hard to hit some numbers given that and his stats from 25-retire would have ended up similar to many HoFers... but he did get injured. Usually that keeps you out, but Tony did enough that his peers wanted him in.

*Fun fact the Cardinals would use 4 pitchers total in the last three games. The three starters and Bruce Sutter would pitch every inning.

Locking the Doors when the store is closed

 MLB is now locked out and I forgive you if you don't care because it doesn't mean all that much.  

Especially as we head toward the holidays, which are typically quiet, and have come off of a especially active period of FA signings, this won't really effect anything for a while. Some Winterfests, some access to off-season facilities for a couple guys, some derailing of what would be occasional GM or manager quotes about the upcoming year to fill time, some weird website changes. You may not notice it at all. 

And because of that there isn't really impetus to get anything done for... like 2 months or so. Not until arrangements start to have to be made for pitchers and catchers in mid February.  So don't expect any movement for a good 6 weeks, because there doesn't have to be movement. 

This has been spurred on by the recent spate (last few years but not this one) of cool FA periods as teams realize the vast middle that they've been paying for of sort of expensive veteran players 30+ can be replaced pretty effectively by guys 22+ under their control. There's a bit more variability there but it's a TON cheaper. If the rest of your team is pretty solidly built or if you don't care if you crash to 70 wins instead of 80 because you aren't trying it's a way to save millions.

What are they actually arguing about to address this shift? Not much.

In brief, the players want more money and want it faster - so an increase in the luxury tax cap and a quicker start on FA for younger players. 

The owners want to reign in giving the players more money as much as possible, more playoffs and ads as additional revenue sources, and some rules changes that may not work but might make the game move faster. 

Both seemingly want the DH, but the players want it more so the owners can negotiate a little off it.

 Here's a good run down of everything 

A couple owners of course have a more hardline stance, which is why you may have seen  earlier proposals that were bad for players once you put them under any scrutiny.  The owners offered up a salary floor - which would raise the payroll of a bunch of teams and the money currently in the system - but with a lower and harder cap, which very quickly (a year? two?) would hurt the players as MLB revenues are still going up.  The owners also offered up no arbitration at all, which sounds good, but ties it to a weird fixed budget for players under control and stretches control through an age (29.5 yrs) rather than a number of years. The likely effect would be an team having a bunch of very young players, as that's the most efficient way of splitting that money and having a player give the team the most for the least for the longest time. A lot of mediocre 24yo costing something tossed to the curb for complete question mark 19yos costing nothing.

These aren't serious discussions.

If you want to break it down to one thing - they are arguing about the increase in the luxury tax and everything else is just negotiations based on that. 

Expect an increase in luxury tax (no floor or some very nominal number set only because some owners don't like others not spending), a very slight change in how fast players get to FA, a bump on minumum salaries, DH, expanded playoffs, ads on jerseys

New Nats

 Lest you thought it was going to be a quiet off-season the Nats have brought in two players! 

Lucius Fox was a very highly touted international free agent (Bahamas( signed by the Giants for a ton of money... then dealt after a single season to Tampa. He hit well in A-ball at 18 and 19 and in High A at 20 showing good average and patience and made a Top 100 prospect list and the Futures game after that. But Lucius also had a decent amount of Ks and not the corresponding power to go with it, and 2019 he couldn't get it going in AA. He was traded to KC and after the 2020 break last year showed a lot of the same stats.  More interested in protecting other guys from the Rule V draft the Royals dropped him from the roster. The O's picked him up, tried to sneak him off the roster into the minors, but the Nats grabbed him. 

He's interesting. From all I read he's got a decent bat, good eye, and good speed, but he's not a particularly good fielder and like said above has no power.  At 24 he's not too old to turn it around but this would presumably be his last shot. 

Cesar Hernandez, the long time former Phillie middle IF has bounced around a couple of teams the past couple of years maintaining his decent fielding, and average-minus bat. It's not a terrible gamble that he keeps that up another year.  He's no longer young (he'll be 32 most of next season) his swinging and missing is trending in the wrong direction. But he's also fast and had some bad luck with balls in play last year and has shown an uptick in power over time.  You can see him hitting .270 with 15 homers by the trade deadline and be a piece that gets you something back, or you can see him hitting and empty .240 and getting you nothing. Similar to Alcides he fills a role.