bruin5

I think you will see a number of providers carry “Bally” before the start of the season. Two reason: 1. Bally has crap content right now. No need for any service to pay them if they have an expired contract 2. I believe Bally will come back with more reasonable terms in the Spring. They need cash flow.

AT&T streaming still has them but I don’t like their service. I’m sure that, if nothing changes, they will drop them as well once their contract is up. I’m happy that Sinclair is taking a hit on this one. They figured they could use the FSN’s as leverage when renewing their local properties with carriers. I think we are at a crossroads with live sports. Rights holders and teams treated them as the golden goose for a long time but non sports subscribers are getting tired of paying for the rights.

They took a large write off to reflect their overpay for the networks. With that and the naming rights maybe they will adjust their rates so that the many services that dumped them will take them back.

This. I think team will want more in terms of quantity of supposed quality prospects just to make what they think are equitable trades. Trading for prospects always involves some risks, but trading for prospects who in many cases didn’t play this year really limits you ability to analyze. As a result, I think you’ll see more movement of 25 man roster guys than minor league prospects.

It’s actually overall a good pool of candidates. For the last two hires I remembered a much smaller pool and that DiPoto and Eppler were almost front runners (Eppler was the runner up when Dipoto was hired IIRC). I’m sure they will also hear from all these guys the importance of investments in scouting and development as most of them come from teams strong in those areas. Can’t have this stressed enough.

When will Eppler be announced as the new GM of the Seattle Mariners?

Given all the financial uncertainty in baseball right now, why would you burn your bridges with your current team? I just can’t see Simmons not taking a pay cut and getting no more than 2 years on a deal. Many teams have good situations with shortstops right now, and he’s competing with other FA shortstops, so realistic openings are going to be limited. Why eliminate your current team as a fall back option? I just think it’s a bad business decision.

Thankfully we have a whole bunch of MIL outfielders that we aren’t willing to trade. I would add two other things to Maddon’s list of concerns - development and scouting. I just don’t feel like we do a good job in these areas.

Eppler couldn’t do anything other than draft a pitcher this year because the need was so obvious. And, the drafting outfielder strategy fails if you overdraft a position and don’t leverage any of the prospects to fulfill positions of need. Eppler seems like he becomes very attached to his draft picks and is unwilling to part with them. Oh, and you forgot about taking a !B in Thaiss in the first round. I don’t see him in the top 100.

We will probably draft another high ceiling outfielder who needs extensive development time. Eppler feels you can never have enough.

Save him for the offseason so that the next GM has an asset he can parlay to start rebuilding the team. A really good return may mean having to give up one of our 733 minor league outfielders. To drastically improve this team will involve taking some risks. Eppler is just too risk averse for me.

I never thought they would cancel the playoffs. If you cancel the playoffs now, what do you do the next time a black man is killed by police (and, unfortunately, we know it will happen again). While they are playing they have the optimum forum to discuss their concerns. When they aren’t they lose much of that access....

Statement is clear that no one in management knew. Doesn’t say anything about the players. I know some will say management is covering their asses but it actually seems plausible to me. It’s more plausible than the players saying they had no clue what was going on...

I would think Mickey Callaway pushed for this. I’ll trust him on this one.

It’s probably just me but I always thought of Salmon as kind of a stoic player, not a lot of personality until 2002. At the ALCS I was kind of shocked at how much emotion and fire he showed. It was something I really didn’t expect. I mean all the players were pumped, but Salmon was far and away the biggest personality guy on that team.