bruin5

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.

I haven’t seen anything that suggests that cable/satellite/streaming providers don’t have to pay ESPN etc per their contracts....

Sinclair needs eyeballs watching their channels now. They grossly overpaid for the RSN’s and thought that they could squeeze extra money from the carriers. When Dish dropped them Sinclair’s CEO said Dish risked becoming irrelevant. Instead Dish had one of their better quarters, didn’t suffer very much subscriber loss, and turned a very nice profit. Direct/ATT took the deal and started hemorrhaging subscribers due to their higher overall pricing. Carriers are taking a stand and are unwilling now to finance huge deals paid by content providers for sports.

Disney only cares about ESPN. They have no vested interest in increasing sports coverage for others at their expense.

They won’t set up a streaming service. First, the price would be pretty high for a stand alone service. They could do the same thing with the carriers, but they will not let them sell the service “a la carte” because they would lose money. Truth is that it’s only a small percentage of subscriber that are into sports but Sinclair wants to charge based on total number of subscribers. Without a big change Hulu will drop them (they won’t be able to compete with the other streaming services). Comcast will also drop them because they will have the much stronger negotiating position. Eventually, they will reach a deal with Comcast and then offer the same deal to everyone else.

How does that help you? Isn’t Amazon Fire TV just a platform (like Apple TV)? You still need to find a streaming service that carries FSW.

Rumor is that Comcast, whose contract is up in June, will be the next provider to pass. Of the streaming services, Hulu is the only one that still carries but I don’t know when their contract is up. So far, Dish, Sling, YouTube, and Fubu dropped. Sinclair massively overpaid to buy the Fox RSN’s from Disney and now they are trying to collect. They’ve added no other teams, so there is no added value. The only one that paid is Direct/ATT but they are losing subscribers at a large clip due to rate increases. The only reason they caved is because of the lucrative restaurant/bar contracts they have. In a season where the taint of the Astros is still fresh the last thing MLB needs is to lose viewers.

They will spend the entire season dealing with a lot of negativity. I’m sure they expect the taunts they will get from fans but the backlash from players on other teams may or may not have been expected. The season is long enough as it is but playing in that type of environment every day and deservedly being subject to all that negativity will take it’s toll. The “us against the world” mentality only works if you truly believe you are doing the right thing. Even Astros players aren’t that delusional...

Isn’t it possible that during the 5 or 6 days when details of the trade between the Dodgers and Angels were leaked that other teams approached the Dodgers with offers that they felt may have been more attractive than what the Angels were rumored to be offering? Maybe the Dodgers realized they could do separate trades for Pederson and Stradling that would net more than what the Angels were offering? I can’t see Arte nixing a trade that the organization had already had an agreement to do....

I don’t remember seeing this mentioned before but tr to be kind in case it was... What if when the rumors of this trade first surfaced other teams saw what the Dodgers were getting in return for Pederson and Stripling was not much and inquired and led the Dodgers believe they would offer more for each individually? Then, the Dodgers come back and demand more but the Angels don’t want to pay more for both or either one individually.

The most likely deal will be a 2 year with a team option for a 3rd. A 1 year deal is more likely than a 4 year deal.

I wouldn’t mind that at all. Station to station baseball blows.

To me, this season was all about Eppler implementing his vision now that Sosh was gone. He worked with Ausmus for a year to train him on managing using analytics, and totally ignored that his downfall in Detroit was in part caused by his lack of communication with the players. Then, mad scientist Eppler hires White to implement his pitching analytics without knowing if he can actually coach. Lastly, Gallegos is put at 3B because analytics must have shown that being aggressive on the bases doesn’t pay off according to the numbers. Now Eppler just pissed a lot of trust and confidence Arte had in him. If Maddon is hired he will be the one calling many of the shots, starting with picking his own staff and choosing his brand of baseball. We may be drifting back to the DiPoto/Sosh balance of power arrangement.

I want to get Ebel back just to get Gallego off of 3B.

If he chooses Maddon it kind of becomes an insurance policy for Eppler because he and Arte would be on the same page in terms of that hire. I don’t see Maddon getting fired after one year and, with a good free agent signing or two we should be a respectable team. What Eppler is not getting a leash on anymore is doing experimental hires (I’m sure he pretty much hired the entire coaching staff) and failing.

For Eppler to fire these two it’s obvious he was not happy with their work and is owning that decision (as well he should). I would assume the other coaches are being kept around to a) see if Maddon wants them, or more likely b) return them to other roles in the organization (like Gallegos had before he became 3B coach). I don’t see White’s firing as representing retrenchment from analytics, but rather recognizing that White just wasn’t good at his job.

`I think Eppler has to be in for criticism. Ausmus was his handpicked guy, and he had the Ausmus’ Detroit experience as background. Sosh got blasted for some of his funky decisions, but you always new he had a good clubhouse environment and that players seemed to really like playing for him. If it’s analytics that are driving the decisions, you better be good being someone guys was to play for. Maybe that wasn’t his forte based on this: Ausmus may not be a good communicator

Another reason Eppler may be on the hot seat is that I believe (but have no proof) that he was primarily responsible for hiring the coaching staff. I’m not sure what effect White had on the pitching staff other than throwing more breaking pitches for balls while putting additional strain on their arms. Gallego as 3B coach was adverse to sending anyone home, even guys with good speed. You have to put some pressure on teams and create some runs. Basically, from Ausmus on down this was Eppler’s staff. I still think that the successful manager deviates from analytics on occasion based on experience and the situation. It will be interesting to see in the press conference how much Eppler “owns” this decision...

This reeks of a poor decision on Eppler’s part to hire Ausmus. Nothing in his stint with the Tigers pointed to him being a good manager. My guess is that Ausmus showed to Eppler in 2018 that he could fully embrace metrics and manage by the “big book of stats”. One thing Sosh was really good at was building a clubhouse chemistry that always fought through bad times. I don’t know that I saw any of that with the 2019 club, even with all the injuries. If I’m Eppler I might start worrying about my job as well....

It’s not smart to offer money unless they know of a situation that could make them partly culpable. The combination of large amounts of alcohol and illicit narcotics is nothing more than a sign of a person that had a problem, and probably did so for some time. If a doctor prescribed (which seems highly unlikely that a doctor said “i prescribe oxy and fentanyl with a 6 pack chaser”) that would be something else. Even if it was a clubhouse attendant, Skaggs would have paid the clubby making him just as culpable.

We’ll find out soon enough because I’m sure the Skaggs family attorney has been on retainer for some time and they will file suit that will name names in short order. My sense is that he may not have been the only player taking this type of drug. And, frankly, I’m not sure I believe that Heaney had no clue this was going on....