This week in baseball blogs:
- Jays Journal wants Toronto to pursue a trade for Marlins center fielder Christian Yelich.
- When Sid Slid shares a Braves offseason blueprint.
- theScore has some concerns about Clayton Kershaw.
- Pop Culture Abstract is leery of reliever Greg Holland, a potential target for the Cardinals in free agency.
- The Point of Pittsburgh looks at Gerrit Cole’s issues with homers this season.
- The Sports Tank argues that Brad Ausmus should be the next manager of the Red Sox.
- Everything Bluebirds explains why Toronto should consider trading Josh Donaldson in the offseason.
- Underthought examines how starting pitchers who entered games as relievers have fared this postseason.
- Mets Daddy is glad they passed on Matt Wieters last winter.
- Atlanta Baseball Talk (podcast) chats with David O’Brien, who covers the Braves for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
- Pirates Breakdown talks with Bucs left-hander Jack Leathersich.
- Clutchlings believes the Blue Jays will have a legitimate chance to land Shohei Otani if he leaves Japan.
- Hardball Via Hardcore flashes forward to life without Nelson Cruz for the Mariners.
- DiNardo’s Dugout (podcast) hands out NL awards.
- The Loop Sports assesses James Shields’ season.
- Call to the Pen delves into the possibility of the Phillies trading for pitching.
- Clubhouse Corner’s Bernie Pleskoff (links: 1, 2) analyzes impact players and rosters from both leagues.
- The Runner Sports (links: 1, 2,) writes about the importance of starting pitching, and has a piece on Astros outfielder Josh Reddick.
- Rotisserie Duck highlights the best clutch hitters of 2017.
- Ladodgerreport is impressed with Kenta Maeda in his new relief role.
- The 3rd Man In profiles right-hander Adam Kloffenstein, a 2018 draft prospect.
- Pinstriped Prospects (links: 1, 2) lists five underrated performances from Yankees hitting and pitching prospects in 2017.
-
Jays From the Couch opines that Toronto’s outfield should not be its top priority this offseason.
- MetsMind points out that the club was terrible against playoff teams this year.
- The Giants Cove doesn’t hold Dusty Baker in high esteem.
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The article about how the Jays should trade Donaldson erroneously says the Royals will get third round picks for Cain, Hosmer, and Moustakas when they will most likely receive first round picks. Would have made this comment on that article but it requires facebook.
All first round picks are protected under the new CBA. The Royals would get picks between the between the first two rounds if the player signs for 50m or more. If it’s less than 50m, it would come between the second and third rounds.
The Pop Culture Abstract is generally a poorly written blog. Barely made it through a couple of articles and gave up.
Dusty is either the worst manager of all time or extremely snakebitten. I will go with snakebit
Dusty made a bad tactical decision when the 3rd baseman went for the double play on Bryant instead of throwing to the plate to prohibit another run from scoring late in the game. Before the pitch was thrown, the bench should have instructed Rendon to throw home on Ball Hit right at him or to his right. Let’s not mention the fact that Murphy had the wrong foot on the base while taking the feed from third during the pivot at second. Cost them a run in a game they lost by one run.
How do they pick the blogs that get mentioned here? There shoukd be some quality review. Not necessarily this time, but some of the blogs are poorly written and/or lack intelligence. The one citing RBIs as.indicators of “clutch” is laughable, for.ex.
Agreed to the thousandth degree! It has nothing to do with merely disagreeing with a viewpoint, but a few of them are just garbage and the “writers” should go back to whatever they did before they started their blogs.
Some are better than others, Sundown. But all I’ve seen you do is bash everyone and everything while offering zero substance yourself. Nobody’s forcing you to read “garbage”, but if you feel there’s a serious lack of quality and you could do better, perhaps you should step up and stick your neck out there?
Zero time and interest for not enough benefit or reward. It’s the same argument about criticizing an MLB player or executive. No, we’re not going to “get out there” ourselves to prove we can do better.
My only concern that I agreed with was the OP’s question of how blogs are selected and if there’s a quality review. Could you intentionally write a horrible piece and get it linked? That’s what I wondered.
Again, it’s not about what I like or dis/agree with; the quality of thought and writing going into “a few” (which I didn’t name or criticize directly) is disappointing.
Who’s forcing you to read anything? Surely if your time is as valuable as you suggest, which inhibits you from offering anything yourself, then the same logic should be applied to the time you take to criticize everyone else.
Blogs are exactly what they are: blogs; amateur posts. Most aren’t run by professionals and that’s understood by most people. So if you’re expecting professional brilliance from every link you click on, you’re obviously going to be disappointed and waste a lot of that valuable time of yours.
Pretty sure that the authors or outlets of the blogs submit them to MLBTR.
Once you start “quality reviews” it’s hard to avoid a slippery slope into selecting articles based on things that you personally agree with. For example, with what you said about RBIs, I would agree that it’s laughable, but I’m sure the author wouldn’t, and would accuse MLBTR of selecting against them just for disagreeing with ideas, rather than quality. Even if they would be in the right to do these quality checks, considering it is MLBTR’s webspace, they understandably probably don’t want to deal with the complaints.