The Dodgers may have broken baseball. How will the sport respond?
Good morning everyone! The conversation around the sport is quickly turning against its biggest current brand, with plenty of good reporting coming out yesterday on how people around the league are reacting to the Dodgers’ ever-growing juggernaut. Let’s get to all of that and more.
In Mariners news…
- Rest in peace to a longtime member of the Mariners organization.
We are saddened by the passing of former Mariners pitching coach, Bobby Cuellar. Our thoughts are with his friends and family during this time. pic.twitter.com/kBcX7mOWIm
— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) January 23, 2025
- Ichiro is too good a person for this planet. That or “good chat” means “beat the poor sucker up.”
Ichiro says he would like to have the one writer that didn’t vote him into the HOF over to his house to “have a drink together and have a good chat”
Around the league…
- The Atlanta Braves have agreed to a three-year contract with outfielder Jurickson Profar.
- Major League Baseball announced a pair of minor rule changes for the 2025 season.
- Bill Shaikin at The Los Angeles Times reports that there’s little traction on a California state senator’s bid to curtail professional athletes’ salary deferral strategy as a way of avoiding income taxes.
- Relatedly, Jeff Passan at ESPN wrote about the Dodgers’ continued amassing of talent, and how the league is reacting to (and may eventually act on) their reshaping the sport.
- Los Angeles is reportedly still interested in bringing back its longtime ace Clayton Kershaw.
- Evan Drellich and Sam Blum at The Athletic reported on leaked audio which reveals former Shohei Ohtani interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and his attempt to impersonate Ohtani when speaking with the star player’s bank representative. ($)
- Former Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro, Jr. is hitting the road this summer with a crazy new baseball competition called “Sluggball,” a 4-on-4 game focusing entirely on situational hitting.
- Dan Szymborski provided a breakdown of his 2025 ZiPS projections for the Houston Astros.
- I kind of forgot that Randy absolutely raked that one postseason.
every active MLB player with 100+ postseason plate appearances, ranked by their OPS pic.twitter.com/1euSzn7AVj
— BrooksGate (@Brooks_Gate) January 22, 2025
- Some of these may surprise you (they sure surprised me!)
Fangraphs’ 2025 WAR projections on the first day of free agency, and today. pic.twitter.com/qG3O8laynI
— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) January 22, 2025
- The National Baseball Hall of Fame museum is hiring interns for 2025! Submissions close on January 31.
Anders’ picks…
- In a fascinating deep-dive, Nathan Fenno at The Los Angeles Times looked back on the 2010s attempt by former NBA player Jackie Lee Robinson to build an arena on the Las Vegas strip. ($)