Today's B&B looks at the massive fallout of news after the trade between the Marlins and Blue Jays, including how just about everyone in baseball is angry at Jeff Loria. There's also some FanGraphs articles from 2012, such as Longest Plate Appearance and Home Runs Hit From The Most Inside Pitches, the Mariners getting a VERY big brand new scoreboard, Scott Boras trying to sell Rafael Soriano over Mariano Rivera, and one man's foray into the PED world.
Congratulations to Miguel Cabrera and Buster Posey for winning the MVP awards for their respective leagues. For the NL, I really can't argue over Posey, whom I would say is supplanting Joe Mauer as best catcher in the major leagues even before winning this year's MVP. As for Cabrera, well I was a Trout supporter, but I figured that there was no way the voters could overlook the Triple Crown achievement. I know that Trout is supposed to become a great player, but I just hope that he doesn't suffer a career-altering injury or the like because who knows, this may have been his best chance at winning the MVP. Now, that's a rather pessimistic view, and I'm sure he'll get his due, but you have to admit that this thought enters your mind at least once. Oh, it's just me? Excellent.
- By now, you have to have heard of the massive trade the Marlins and Blue Jays made earlier this week, where Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, John Buck, Emilio Bonifacio, and $4 million were sent to Toronto in exchange for Adeiny Hechavarria, Yunel Escobar, Henderson Alvarez, Jeff Mathis, and three minor leaguers. But what about the chain reaction of news that followed?
- Bud Selig is reviewing the trade, which is only news because of the Marlins' history of gutting their teams at a moment's whim. Honestly, every trade is under review, but we just make a big deal of it now because this one involves Jeff Loria dumping a s&*t-ton of salary in one transaction under the guise of rebuilding.
- My favorite band Thrice has a song titled "Wood & Wire" which is about a man falsely imprisoned who is about to face the electric chair. At the end of the song, he comes to terms with his fate, and one particularly powerful line in the song says, "Dead man walking down the hall / To meet a mess of wood and wire." I wonder if that's how Ricky Nolasco felt when he declined to offer his opinion on the trade, following with, "I'm next anyways."
- Young slugger Giancarlo Stanton is very upset about the trade as the Marlins went from attempting to be competitive to rebuilding in one season, and in Year 2 of their new ballpark.
- Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle are upset because although they did not receive no-trade clauses in their contracts, they had been reassured that they would not be traded when they signed their deals.
- Sorry for sounding like the Strib Sports section, but Buehrle might be upset that he'll have to get rid of his 2-year old pit bull because the province of Ontario, Canada does not allow them.
- Former major leaguer Mike Cameron retired with the Marlins and he's upset, adding in that this will likely hurt the Marlins with signing big-name free agents for a while.
- Oh, and the owners around baseball are upset at Jeff Loria for this trade. Owners in the NL are displeased that the NL East will get some easy victories facing the Marlins, owners in the AL East are unhappy that the Blue Jays suddenly became a much better team, and just about everyone was annoyed that the Marlins have traded away 12 players since July when they haven't even started their second year in brand new Marlins Park.
- Basically, everyone except Blue Jays fans are angry.
- With the baseball season over, it's natural to recap some of the interesting feats from the 2012 year. That is exactly what Jeff Sullivan is doing over at FanGraphs, of which he's already written about unforgivable walks, pitchers worse than non-pitchers at pitching (remember that Drew Butera had a strikeout of Carlos Gomez!), home runs on the most-inside pitches (Delmon Young makes an appearance), home runs on the most-outside pitches (Delmon Young does not make an appearance), and now the long plate appearance from 2012 in terms of number of pitches. At the very least, click on the last one so you can delve through the comments to find video of Alex Cora's 18-pitch AB against Matt Clement from 2004, complete with narration by Vin Scully. Actually, I'll just link to it here.
- The Mariners are going to be adding a new scoreboard to their ballpark, and it's quite large.
To give you an idea of how large that is, first, it's just a tad smaller than the scoreboards in Cowboy Stadium. It also makes the Twins' scoreboard seem like the Metrodome scoreboards, as this one is going to be 11,425 sq. ft, while the large video board in Target Field is "only" 5,757 sq. ft.
- Agent Scott Boras is notorious for getting teams to overpay for his clients, and it often involves him making outrageous claims. His latest one is trying to convince the Yankees that they'd be better off with Rafael Soriano instead of Mariano Rivera.
With that comment, I wonder if Boras took over webcomic XKCD for a day.
- Finally, a brave soul out there wanted to see if PEDs were indeed beneficial, so he turned himself into a human guinea pig. He used a substance banned from MLB but legal in the U.S., and as you might expect, the added energy and endurance allowed him to work out more, losing weight in the process. However, he noted that the PED did not and would not help him hit a baseball any better, or throw more strikes. Although it's an anecdotal story and not necessarily truth for anyone that takes this particular PED, it's still an interesting read to learn of the pros and cons of using a steroid.
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