MLB Offseason 2020-21: I'm a Hall of Famer baseball person

Seems like a high risk / medium reward move. Ozuna's knees are completely shot, to the point that he really should be a full-time DH and be nowhere near the field, and all indications are that the NL is not keeping the DH in 2021.

 

Does anybody bunt anymore?

 

The added runner on second pisses me off so, so fucking much, as does the seven-inning double-header. Much like everything Manfred has ever proposed, it's a solution desperately in search of a problem. There was a study done not terribly long ago that showed that fewer than 1 percent of extra-inning games go beyond 12 innings, for heaven's sake.

 

Darvish was a legitimate Cy Young contender, how the hell did he not adjust his game?

 

You are absolutely right, I blame the truckload of painkillers I'm on right now for torpedoing my reading comprehension.

God, I'm still sore over the Cubs dumping Darvish for a few scratch-off lottery tickets and a pack of Bubble Yum.

 

I just spent, quite literally, three weeks in the hospital. Believe me, my grump factor is at maximum.

I'm intensely interested to see what Lester does in Washington this year. I have a strong feeling that the real issue for him was that Grandpa Rossy wasn't willing to push back on him as his boss, since they have such a long-standing relationship (remember, Ross was Lester's personal catcher) ... which, of course, was one of my biggest concerns about Ross' hiring in the first place. He still has something in the tank and I would happily have him in the #5 spot in the bad joke that is the Cubs' rotation this year.

So far, we're barreling towards a 162-game schedule (with associated chaosball rules like the dumbass bonus runner on 2nd in extras). Normally I'd be pumped and I would have already gotten my MLB.tv share set up (I split an MLB.tv account five ways every year with some friends), but to be honest, I don't know if I'm going to even do that this season. The Cubs spending the last two years pleading poverty and telling everyone that they're broke, and selling off the team's core for table scraps, has just left the mother of all bad tastes in my mouth. I just want to punch Tom Ricketts in his disingenuous face and scream at him, "No, you stupid fuck, you and your fellow owners didn't 'lose' $8 billion last year, you just didn't make the $10 billion you expected. You still made a fuckton of cash."

Between that, and the impending work stoppage, I'm just having a very difficult time getting pumped about the season. The last time I was this blasé about the start of the MLB season was 2018, and I was in the middle of a divorce at that time.

 

Because I was bored and I guess I felt like spiking my blood pressure, I went to looking at the numbers for the Cubs this morning, and it just pissed me off even more.

Why would the Cubs not offer Lester anything (it was reported that Hoyer was explicitly forbidden to extend an offer of anything more than $2 million to Lester), watch him sign for $5 million in Washington, and then bring back a quite possibly worse Arrieta at $6 million? Why get rid of Schwarber and his $8 million, then bring in Joc Pederson, who is almost the exact same player, for $7 million? Why dump Almora, then turn around and sign an identical all-glove / no-bat guy in Marisnick?

For Christ's sake, Cubs, if you're going to tank, then why not let me watch the World Series guys suck for a combined total of like $2 million more? And what the hell is with the team suddenly spending money? Did the Rickettses find some cash under the mattresses now that they don't have to fund Trump's re-election campaign anymore?