2019-2020 MLB Hot Stove Thread

[soulpope]

Madison Bumgarner headed for 85mn to Diamondbacks ....

[soulpope]

Twins sign Romo for 1y 5mn ....

[soulpope]

Dallas Keuchel on the move to White Sox ....

[soulpope]

Hyun-Jin Ryu Sings with Jays 4 years 80 millions ....

[soulpope]

Dellin Betances to Mets ....

[Brad]

1 hour ago, soulpope said:

Dellin Betances to Mets ....

Christmas came early this year!

[Dan Gould]

12 hours ago, soulpope said:

Dellin Betances to Mets ....

The one player I thought the Sox might go after to do something about their horseshit bullpen.  Instead all I have to hope for is that Betts doesn't get traded, Price and the tall skinny lefty have bounce back years, and that they squeak into the second wild card if everything goes right.

[ghost of miles]

16 hours ago, Brad said:

Christmas came early this year!

Sad to see Betances go, but glad that he’s at least staying in New York.  If he remains healthy he should be a very good closer for you guys. Warning: he’s terrible at holding runners on base. Maybe the Mets can improve him in that regard. At his best he’s overpowering. 

4 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

The one player I thought the Sox might go after to do something about their horseshit bullpen.  Instead all I have to hope for is that Betts doesn't get traded, Price and the tall skinny lefty have bounce back years, and that they squeak into the second wild card if everything goes right.

Are they no longer looking to move Price because of his salary? There were certainly a lot of trade rumors swirling several weeks ago... but otoh I don’t see how they field a rotation next year without Price, unless they plan on dealing for another, cost-friendlier arm. 

Edited December 25, 2019 by ghost of miles

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

Sad to see Betances go, but glad that he’s at least staying in New York.  If he remains healthy he should be a very good closer for you guys. Warning: he’s terrible at holding runners on base. Maybe the Mets can improve him in that regard. At his best he’s overpowering. 

Are they no longer looking to move Price because of his salary? There were certainly a lot of trade rumors swirling several weeks ago... but otoh I don’t see how they field a rotation next year without Price, unless they plan on dealing for another, cost-friendlier arm. 

I don't think Price is dealable given health concerns and cost. Eating most of his salary sounds stupid compared to letting him pitch for the Sox. He's proved he can pitch in the post-season two years ago, maybe they can get lucky one more season with the old gang together.  That's why I wanted something done on the bullpen side.

Soon enough Betts will be gone, Price and Sale will be firmly on the downside of their careers, stinking it up on a regular basis and they'll be like the Cubs: One incredible core that won only one championship.

[soulpope]

Encarnacion to White Sox ....

[Brad]

Jon Heyman tweeted the following:

“Most improved teams so far: 1. White Sox 2. Yankees. 3. Angels. 4. Reds. 5. Rangers. 6. D-Backs. 7. Phillies. 8. Mets. 9. Jays. 10. Padres.”

[soulpope]

https://sports.yahoo.com/yankees-german-suspended-81-games-domestic-violence-201316280--mlb.html

[ghost of miles]

1 hour ago, soulpope said:

https://sports.yahoo.com/yankees-german-suspended-81-games-domestic-violence-201316280--mlb.html

Seems like a just resolution--hopefully German straightens himself out in this regard and that the whole affair contributes to the stigmatization of any kind of DV being committed not just by athletes, but by men in general.  

[soulpope]

https://sports.yahoo.com/white-sox-robert-agree-50-million-6-contract-210657635--mlb.html

Another top prospect receiving financial advance laurels ....

[soulpope]

Josh Donaldson 4y for 100 mn .... ?

https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb-rumors-nationals-one-three-010945149.html

[JSngry]

13 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

... stigmatization of any kind of DV being committed not just by athletes, but by men in general.  

Domestic violence is not limited in its perpetration to just one gender. The sooner we can get that out in the open, the sooner we can become effective at truly addressing the roots/causes of the behaviors involved.

[ghost of miles]

4 hours ago, JSngry said:

Domestic violence is not limited in its perpetration to just one gender. The sooner we can get that out in the open, the sooner we can become effective at truly addressing the roots/causes of the behaviors involved.

Yes, obviously it can and is committed by women against men as well, but I don’t agree with what’s called the “gender symmetry” theory of DV. This from the Wiki entry on domestic violence against men:

Gender asymmetry is also consistent with government findings. According to government statistics from the US Department of Justice, male perpetrators constituted 96% of federal prosecution on domestic violence.^[99]Another report by the US Department of Justice on non-fatal domestic violence from 2003–2012 found that 76 percent of domestic violence was committed against women and 24 percent were committed against men.^[100] Dr. Ruth M. Mann of the University of Windsor, an expert on sociology and criminology, stated her opposition to the gender symmetry theory of domestic violence on the grounds that women as well as children are the main victims in the "annual pile up" (Coyle, 2001) of victims being murdered by intimate partners and fathers throughout Canada (AuCoin, 2005; Ogrodnik, 2006).^[101]

 

Violence  against anybody is clearly bad, unless it’s violence in self-defense. (And some of the violence against men from women is exactly that.) But look at the conditioning and stereotypes that were still so prevalent in our culture when you and I grew up and that still linger today. The primary root of the problem is the notion that men have rights over a woman’s body—whether it’s sexual availability or denying them their reproductive rights (perhaps the biggest issue right now), there’s an inevitable extension that occurs whenever the whole system revolves around believing that a woman is your property.  Plenty of women still take their husband’s last name, which seems crazy to me (talk about cultural conditioning of ownership!), but it’s still accepted convention for lots of folks. So yeah, violence against other humans in the context of relationships is unfortunately a two-way street, but most of the traffic is still coming from one direction.

[JSngry]

52 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Yes, obviously it can and is committed by women against men as well....

There's also domestic violence by women against women in same-sex relationships. The data is beginning to form.

It's a power/dominance thing, regardless of gender.

 

[Dave James]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

There's also domestic violence by women against women in same-sex relationships. The data is beginning to form.

It's a power/dominance thing, regardless of gender.

 

I was wondering what this had to do with the hot stove discussion when I remembered that baseball and domestic violence share the word "battery."

[catesta]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

There's also domestic violence by women against women in same-sex relationships. The data is beginning to form.

It's a power/dominance thing, regardless of gender.

 

Yep. They've also been known to share last names.

Edited January 3, 2020 by catesta

[ghost of miles]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

There's also domestic violence by women against women in same-sex relationships. The data is beginning to form.

It's a power/dominance thing, regardless of gender.

 

Aye, but there's the rub--we live in a country/culture/world still overwhelmingly dominated by men.  Look at the makeup of the U.S. Congress, for example.  Even after the last election, in which many newly-elected members were women, the House still breaks down 334 men, 101 women.  U.S. Senate is 75 men, 25 women.  Those are both historical-high proportions for women, but they've got roughly 23-25% representation in a country where they outnumber men 168 million to 161 million.  (The Supreme Court, too, is comprised of six men and three women.)  The moral arc of the universe may or may not be long and bending toward justice, a la MLK, but damn, it sure takes its time getting there.  All this by way of saying that we are still in a place, unconsciously or not, where men hold power in a grossly disproportionate way.  And it's not rocket science to see how that plays out in the realm of the personal, HAS played out in the realm of the personal for centuries.  

I alluded to the women-taking-their-husbands-last-name concept just because it's a stark reminder to me of how much this stuff has seeped into everyday life.  No offense to any male board members whose wives took their last names, of whom I'm sure there are many.  It's still a conventional thing:  Why so many women still take their husbands last name  But as that article also points out:

The tradition of women changing their last names to match their husbands’ has its origins in the property transfer that took place upon marriage, Scheuble said. Essentially, women went from being part of their parents’ family to becoming their husbands’ property.

“Although we don’t have that property aspect anymore, we still have this whole gendered notion that women somehow are obligated to take the last names of their husbands,” she said. “It’s turned over to normative tradition.”

And then there's this:

Certainly, my career provides a valid rationale for keeping my name, but I’ve never understood why I have to give one. If I’m being honest, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the logic behind why a recently married woman would change her name (except in a few, very exceptional circumstances).

I was recently reminded that this opinion is very much in the minority: A study published earlier this month in the journal Sex Roles found that the husbands of women who chose to keep their surname were more likely to be perceived as feminine than those whose wives changed their names.

I mean, whatever re "perceptions."  My wife kept her last name when we got married and I couldn't give a damn about how that might affect dudes' "perception" of me and my masculinity.  But the study to which she alludes is yet more evidence of how deeply baked-in this kind of thing is.  

Look, anybody who gets any kind of power has the capacity to act badly with it, as we've seen over and over and over throughout the history of humanity.  So it's certainly not limited to men.  But when it comes to domestic violence, the problem remains overwhelmingly a male one.  And that leads back, I would argue, to root notions of gender, and how power is managed and distributed in personal relationships on the basis of gender.

[JSngry]

5 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Look, anybody who gets any kind of power has the capacity to act badly with it, as we've seen over and over and over throughout the history of humanity.  So it's certainly not limited to men.  But when it comes to domestic violence, the problem remains overwhelmingly a male one.  And that leads back, I would argue, to root notions of gender, and how power is managed and distributed in personal relationships on the basis of gender.

This is still not the 20th Century(!) - "root notions" are continuing to evolve, possibly changing forever (or at least until they change again...). Since we're now beginning to see data/evidence that the tendency towards domestic abuse translates across gender/orientation lines into same-sex relationships, the responsible (i.e. - scientific) thing to do is to look at this thing holistically and not look at it as one of those 20th Century things where if we can just fix straight men, the problems of the world will all get fixed. Not a bad place to start, but no, they won't.

I mean: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6113571/

Those are pretty serious numbers, and it either means that LGBTQ people are "naturally" more inclined towards violent behavior (if that's the case, let's just fix the straight men and let the rest of humanity figure it out for themselves since there are different "root natures" involved) or that power dynamics and dysfunctionality of same exist throughout the species and need to be/are best studied across gender/orientation lines to better understand the root causes (can I say "triggers" here?) - and then to meaningfully manage the outcomes for everybody.

You tell me - which is the more informed path, accepting the conventional wisdom, or following the data?

 

[soulpope]

https://sports.yahoo.com/minor-league-players-get-important-victory-in-wages-lawsuit-against-mlb-023245114.html

[JSngry]

Minor League Baseball, doesn't look good: https://www.axios.com/mlb-minor-league-baseball-overhaul-ccf68975-c3b6-484a-b5da-f30418af7c39.html

Then again, when I was a kid, there were still remnants of, like, Class C and D teams scattered across the landscape.

[ghost of miles]

On 1/3/2020 at 5:53 PM, JSngry said:

This is still not the 20th Century(!) - "root notions" are continuing to evolve, possibly changing forever (or at least until they change again...). Since we're now beginning to see data/evidence that the tendency towards domestic abuse translates across gender/orientation lines into same-sex relationships, the responsible (i.e. - scientific) thing to do is to look at this thing holistically and not look at it as one of those 20th Century things where if we can just fix straight men, the problems of the world will all get fixed. Not a bad place to start, but no, they won't.

I mean: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6113571/

Those are pretty serious numbers, and it either means that LGBTQ people are "naturally" more inclined towards violent behavior (if that's the case, let's just fix the straight men and let the rest of humanity figure it out for themselves since there are different "root natures" involved) or that power dynamics and dysfunctionality of same exist throughout the species and need to be/are best studied across gender/orientation lines to better understand the root causes (can I say "triggers" here?) - and then to meaningfully manage the outcomes for everybody.

You tell me - which is the more informed path, accepting the conventional wisdom, or following the data?

 

You mean the data that shows men are more than three times as likely to commit violent crimes as women in the U.S.?   Cultural conditioning, whatever the root causes, but the data does not reflect well on your and my gender.

In MLB news, penalties are coming soon for the Astros, Alex Cora likely faces discipline, and the Red Sox are now being investigated for illegal use of the video replay room in 2018.      (Original ESPN story)

Edited January 7, 2020 by ghost of miles