I miss baseball. Although, I will not lie, I do not miss being utterly disappointed and pissed off by how poorly the Pirates would be playing about now. So I guess that is a positive.
A guy came into work today and was trying to talk to the other manager about baseball. He said “did you see that baseball players want all of them millions? I say just get out there and play buddy.” The manager looked at the guy and was like “I do not follow sports, sorry.” I realized the guy was a bit weird, so I ducked into the bathroom to hide from him. He saw me and followed me inside (so much for social distancing). He asked me the same thing (and washed his hands to not look like a total weirdo). I did not feel like arguing with the guy, so I said “yeah, I saw it and I agree with them. I do not feel bad for a bunch of billionaire owners.” I then ran out of there and went home.
Honestly, I have not been paying too much attention to this story, but I was not lying. The players are the ones taking the risk (as well as any staff). The league agreed to prorated salaries earlier, so they should stick with it. Sorry, the owners may lose some money this season, but I am sure they will be just fine. They did not seem too keen on opening up their books to the players union when the revenue sharing proposal began. I wonder why…
The players union should appoint a few players to get a cohesive and coherent message out there. I like Blake Snell as a player, but him ranting on Twitch about this is probably not the best way to get the point across. Find some talking points, craft them in their own voice, and then get out there (okay, not physically out there, but they can appear on shows and be interviewed) and hammer the point home.
Switching gears…I saw something from a Pittsburgh sports radio person, where he said the DH is the most expensive position in baseball. He was pointing out that it would not be good for the Pirates if MLB went with the universal DH this season. Weird. Is the DH the most expensive position?
If you go to Spotrac, it looks like DH has the highest salary average. However, when you drill down on that a bit, it takes Miguel Cabrera and Shin-Soo Choo into the mix. Choo only had about 43% of his PAs as a DH. Cabrera was signed to that huge contract back when he was one of the best first basemen in the game and rarely was used as a DH.
Many of the American League teams just use a good hitter, maybe it is a chance to give guys a rest in the field, or they are not that great in the field. Look at the Rays, they used Meadows a good bit, but they also used thirteen other players as a DH…granted, most of them get one or two PAs, but still, they were not using just one player.
Would a universal DH hurt the Pirates? Not really. They have Josh Bell, who is not a defensive wizard or anything. Let him DH more often and bring up Will Craig or give Jose Osuna more chances. They have options. Maybe not great ones, but those are the Pirates.
It would be interesting to see if the starting pitchers salary average would go up significantly if you just took the top four starters from each team. Maybe another time…
