MLB Offseason 2012

Yyyyep. Don't forget that in addition to scamming Miami-Dade County out of more than 80 percent of the construction cost of Marlins Park (the city and county forked out more than $500 million of the $630 million price tag, and the 40-year bonds issued to cover the costs will cost them more than $2 billion when all is said and done), the City of Miami actually pays the taxes on the parking lots and also forks out an annual maintenance fee to the Marlins. And yet somehow everyone took Loria at his word that he'd invest in the team even though he had been pocketing the team's profits for years.

He's a goddamned criminal (don't forget the shell game he, Selig and John Henry pulled to get Henry owning the Red Sox, Loria owning the Marlins and the Expos getting nuked from existence).

Oh, I forgot: Ken Rosenthal is saying that Nolasco may be the next one out of town, and Stanton has taken to Twitter and telling the world he is pissed. He'll be stuck there for a while, though; I can't imagine Loria wanting to trade Stanton until he reaches his big arbitration paydays.

 

Never underestimate the villainy of one Jeffrey H. Loria, who is well-used to the pastime of taking a runny shit all over the city in which his team is based.

Nolasco / Stanton to Baltimore rumors are starting to heat up, too.

 

Oh, God, an "add up the WARs to see if it makes sense" article.

This is a trade that makes a lot of sense for the Jays, and I have to give a ton of credit to AA, whom I bag on quite a bit -- it's kind of refreshing to see him make a trade that isn't "get another AAAA reliever." The timing makes perfect sense, as the AL East has never been more winnable in our lifetimes than it will be in 2013. The Yankees are getting old and are almost assuredly losing Swisher and Soriano, the Red Sox pulled a Marshall University, the O's won on magic that will disappear (seriously, that team is going to regress so much, they scraped into the playoffs on smoke and mirrors), and the Rays are always hamstrung by the budget issues that come from drawing like 300 fans a game. The timing is right for the Jays to go all-in, considering this is the best chance they'll have to get Joey Bats into the playoffs.

Really, this all becomes easier to understand when you realize that the only reason Loria owns a baseball team is to fund his art purchasing, primarily through pocketing revenue sharing dollars (and every MLB team will receive an additional $25 million per year, with no restrictions on how / if it's spent, beginning in 2014 as a result of the new television deal). He's essentially Max Bialystock.

 

Who the fuck cast a first-place ballot for Fernando fucking Rodney?

 

USA Today is reporting that the Marlins / Blue Jays trade/fire sale/shit on the city of Miami is going under review by the commissioner's office. Selig is reportedly pissed.

 

Miguel Cabrera voted MVP with 22 out of 28 first place votes. I think Mike Trout objectively had the better season, but I'm fine with this because Cabrera made the playoffs and made history. I do think they are rewarding hitting over base running and defense (not that Trout was a slouch at bat), but because of the particular accomplishments he got, I'm fine with Cabrera.

 

The Angels had more wins than the Tigers, for what it's worth. In any event, Cabrera shouldn't win the MVP award just because he had the fortune to play on a team that fell ass-backwards into the playoffs because the Sox completely shit the bed. Trout had a season for the ages -- his best comparison is Mickey Mantle, for heaven's sake.

There's also the little thing about the Triple Crown being kind of meaningless, because it just means that Cabrera was lucky enough to come up to bat when the goobers in front of him had gotten on base. Aggregate RBI totals aren't a metric of a player's talent in the slightest.

To be fair, I'd be less upset if it were, like, 15 - 13 in favor of Cabrera. The landslide is just ridiculous and speaks to how moronic a good portion of the BBWAA is.

Motherfucker gonna get paid soon.

 

Most of the BBWAA is still pissed off that people like Bill James and Nate Silver introduced the focus on statistics that actually matter, meaning they couldn't just look at the standard hits/home runs/RBI line as a metric of quality anymore. They're still tied to their old-school thinking -- and even the ones who have embraced advanced statistical analysis are fucking lazy and just operate under the system of "add up the WARs."

That RBI is considered a valuable and meaningful metric to assess a player's performance in 2012 is fucking absurd.