Judge had the rare year that would knock Ohtani off the pedestal.

Baseball Reference WAR
Judge 10.6, Ohtani 9.0

Fangraphs WAR
Judge 11.4, Ohtani 9.4

I'm not a slave to WAR by any means. But dissecting it closely, Judge was in the vicinity with Ohtani and any voter that voted for Judge had a perfectly good case to vote for him.

From the 2023 Baseball Prospectus annual about Judge:

"An aspect of Judge's herculean season that hasn't gotten nearly as much press as his exploits at the plate is the fact that he was essentially playing a new position this year, and a challenging one at that. The ineffectiveness of Aaron Hicks and the injury to Harrison Bader pushed Judge into center field, which accounted for the majority of his defensive innings for the first time in his career. Prior to this season, Judge had played only 3.9% of his defensive innings in center. Among players this century with at least 4,000 prior defensive innings in the outfield, that 3.9 rate is the third-lowest for a player who made center their primary outfield position (in 2013, both Andre Ethier and Shin-Soo Choo made the move to CF with less experience in center than Judge did.) Not only was it an unusual switch that helped his team fill a hole, Judge was good out there, too: all publicly available metrics pegged him as an above-average defensive center fielder last year, and his arm is nearly as impressive as his bat. Though it's not what people will remember most about his MVP season, Judge's defensive abilities are a big part of what's made him such a superstar."

Ranking all 30 farm systems
March 22nd, 2023
Jim Callis, Jonathan Mayo and Sam Dykstra



29. Kansas City Royals
2022 midseason rank: 21
2022 preseason rank: 8
2021 midseason rank: 5
2021 preseason rank: 10

Top 100 prospects: Gavin Cross, OF (No. 62)

“As it stands, that Major League readiness is a point in the system’s favor, but once so many lose prospect status, expect a steep drop.” That’s what we wrote in the 2022 midseason rankings, and the Royals have dropped eight spots as more graduations rolled in, with Maikel Garcia, Nick Loftin and Drew Waters not far behind. Top 2022 pick Cross should at least lead the group for a while as he enters his first full season, and 2021 prep selections Ben Kudrna, Frank Mozzicato and Carter Jensen could jump with more experience in their second extended campaigns.


https://www.mlb.com/news/farm-system...=1679576049545

As they do from time to time, MLB Trade Rumors had a chat the other day with their writer Anthony Franco. One person asked pretty much my exact question about Edward Olivares! Here is the excerpt:

Pitcher List has predicted the Royals opening day lineup with some commentary. Against Sonny Gray (RHP):

Note that they show two starting RFs and no LF, so that's a typo and I suspect they meant MJ will be in LF. But the key takeaway is that the mystery about whether Olivares will get a regular shot does continue....

Salvy dong and double today at Peoria Sports Complex
Welcome back big man

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Daniel Lynch left the game with left shoulder discomfort. He&#39;ll have tests done to determine what it is and what&#39;s next, Matt Quatraro said: &quot;Didn’t feel right. But who knows. Sometimes they get in there and test it and it’s not as bad as you think. But definitely some concern.”</p>&mdash; Anne Rogers (@anne__rogers) <a href="https://twitter.com/anne__rogers/status/1639038679326023682?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 23, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Yeah, you kinda knew something was wrong when the trainer walked him off the mound

Per Forbes, the Royals TV deal is 3rd worst in the league only beating Minnesota and Milwaukee. Average TV viewership is 20th in the league. The Royals have an operating income of 32.8 million which is ranked 14th.

They list the Mets as dead last in operating income at -$138.5 mil!

You haven't been following the news? The counterparty (Bally Sports, it appears) of the TV deals for 14 teams went bankrupt, so the terms each team had under their deals have been rendered N/A. So really the Royals are now tied with 13 other teams for worst TV deal, because they don't have one. Or at least it's on the verge of being that way.

Here's your list of teams that really don't have a TV contract anymore:

It's a wild and developing story.

MLB is making steady plans to do it themselves though, so the 'we expect it to be like normal' may just be legal posturing or public-facing optimism or some such spin. Check this out:


All excerpts from the below link. The whole thing is worth a read cause it's gonna affect the Royals and as soon as this here coming season. As the article says:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/...ackouts-mlb-tv

This sounds like a great opportunity for the MLB to do something forward thinking with half of their league to make sure more people can actually watch the games.

But I expect them to lose the ball in the sun on this, as usual.

Of course I have but Bally being in bankruptcy doesn't mean the existing deals no longer exist.

My understanding is that it means exactly that if, or when, payments due to the MLB are missed. So far that has already happened for the Diamondbacks and Padres, with the others of the 14 TBD and we'll find out over the next month.

Eddie O. dong today and Keller was pitching good at Surprise Stadium today

Bally is such a terrible company. Those mother****ers got into so many contracts with different teams and botched it worse than any company I've ever seen when it comes to broadcasting.