MLB 2024

[The Buscher]

Ohtani’s interpreter fired and currently being investigated by the feds for potentially stealing millions from Shohei to use on gambling.

The guy was paid great money to just travel around, hanging out with Shohei, handle his interviews and watch baseball. What a dunce.

[gunnar hendershow]

There might be more to this since it sounds like Ohtani was going to pay off his gambling debts. Then the attorneys and maybe team/MLB got involved.

[Your Mom]

The article I just read said Ohtani didn't know about the gambling debts or the wire transfers

[Chris2K]

It seems he went on TV and said the first thing (Ohtani knew and was helping him) and then released a statement afterwards to say the second thing (that Ohtani didn't know). I have to think it has to be the former, and they tried to completely remove Ohtani from the situation afterwards.

 

[The Buscher]

Despite these inconsistencies in the story, MLB is apparently not planning on investigating Ohtani at all.  Granted the feds might be doing it, but surely MLB would be keen to dig deeper if this were a normal player.

But it's not.  It's the guy MLB pretty much can't afford to lose under any circumstances.  MLB doesn't want to know anything.

[gunnar hendershow]

It would be exactly how a prominent athlete with a gambling habit would want to do it, have someone else be the person "placing the bets" so that if it boils over they can be absolved. People aren't crazy for thinking that's what happened, unfortunately.

[ThrillhouseMAX]

JD Martinez to the Mets. 1 year/$12M

[The Buscher]

They finally listened!!!  Fuck yes.  I know they wanted to play Vientos this year but even with him having 4 HR this spring it’s been on offspeed stuff.  He struggles on fastballs down the middle and that’s a killer in today’s game.

JDM is low risk, possible high reward at this point and doesn’t impact the 2025 reset they want to do.  Moreover no matter how it plays out it tells the fans they’re not just punting the year.  It’s a legit mid order bat for a lineup that needed it.

[ThrillhouseMAX]

Yeah, I can't think of a bad reason to bring him in. Putting him behind Pete in the lineup would be a solid move. 

[gunnar hendershow]

Jackson Holliday has been reassigned to the minor league camp and won't be on the Opening Day roster. Orioles are frankly in a pickle because they have too many guys without options right now. No doubt he'll be up later on in the season, as will Mayo and Kjerstad, but to start it's not a huge surprise. Especially since, as I repeatedly get reminded, you need infielders fluent in Spanish if you're going to have Spanish-speaking pitchers.

[Toe]

I only saw a little bit of him, but to me Holliday looked ready to go.

[gunnar hendershow]

26 minutes ago, Toe said:

I only saw a little bit of him, but to me Holliday looked ready to go.

He more or less is, though spring training success can just mean "mashed AAA level pitching". There's just a lot of guys without options that they'd lose if they DFA'd any of them and they currently don't want to do that.

Someone will get injured at some point and then they'll bring Holliday up. Right now, with what happened to the Mets, teams are being very cautious having the season-opening IL stints to avoid DFAing players, but after a few weeks there will be plausible deniability you could say.

[The Buscher]

Turns out MLB is investigating Ohtani after all.  They let us know with a short press release at nearly 6 PM on March Madness Friday.  Not trying to avoid attention to it at all.

[Your Mom]

Sorry @The Buscher but this made me laugh  

[gunnar hendershow]

Peter Angelos has passed away at 94.

[The Buscher]

The 2025 season will open in Tokyo.  Unsurprisingly, the Dodgers will be out there again and this time against the Cubs.

So that’ll be Ohtani’s return to the mound vs Seiya Suzuki.

[The Buscher]

Upon signing his deal, JDM gave the Mets consent to option him to the minor leagues because he, by his own estimation, needs about 2 weeks of reps against live pitching to be ready for the season.  Makes sense on all fronts.  Still funny to see "Optioned DH J.D. Martinez to Triple A Syracuse" on the transaction page right after signing him for $12 million.

It says a lot about what the Mets really think of Mark Vientos that they chose to option him to Syracuse instead of give him the first 2 weeks of the year as the DH.  He was understandably frustrated by the news.  But again, he is really, really bad at 95+ MPH fastballs down the middle.  It's not something he's really gonna learn to do better at Syracuse where he has raked for 2 years now.  But it's also nearly impossible to produce at the big league level.  Hence, his skillset right now has him stuck in AAAA limbo.

FWIW even his draft scouting profile as a 17-year old high schooler back in 2017 said the same thing - tons of raw power but inexplicably misses straight fastballs down the middle.  Maybe it's the player, maybe it's the development staff, coaching etc but after all these years he's never been able to overcome this issue that would cripple you at the big league level.  Is it even fixable at this point?  Who knows, but the only way to know is to face big league pitching and that's a tough sell for a team entering the season trying to compete.

He'll be the Mets' DH if an injury arises or they fall out of it and trade JDM.  But I feel like the best thing that could actually happen to him would be to end up in Colorado or Oakland where they have no expectations and he could just learn on the job playing every day without scrutiny.

[The Buscher]

The last big free agent hold-out is now off the board.  Jordan Montgomery to the D-Backs.  1-year, $25 million with a vesting option that will probably turn it into 2-years, $50 million

[The Buscher]

There was a Twitter account called GENY Mets which was just an aggregator account.  Routinely stole tweets/speculation/reports from others, never did any original reporting of his own.  Got suspended multiple times.  What really ticked the writers off the most though was that he'd never quote or re-tweet.  He'd instead take a screenshot of the original and post it as new tweet, crediting the writer but getting all the likes/shares etc for himself to keep his numbers up.

So upon him announcing yesterday that he was shutting the account down, the Mets' official twitter account trolled him by doing the same thing to him that he did to so many others.

Outstanding.

[gunnar hendershow]

As of an hour ago the Orioles are no longer owned by the Angelos family.

It's over. It's finally over.