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MLB Trade Rumors is seeking a fantasy baseball writer.  This is a paid part-time position that will include a weekly article and live chat running at least January through March.  We’re looking for expertise in rotisserie and head-to-head fantasy baseball, but the position won’t involve daily fantasy sports writing.  The ideal candidate will have experience that includes writing paid fantasy baseball articles online.  Applicants should send an email to mlbtrhelp@gmail.com with the following:

• Explanation of why you might be considered a fantasy baseball expert
• Samples of online fantasy baseball writing

Our free agent prediction contest closed for entries on November 15th.  To date, 17 of our top 50 free agents have signed.  Of the 6,233 people who entered our contest, only three people have as many as eight predictions correct so far.

To follow along with the contest results, check out the leaderboard here.  You can also check out how 11 participating MLBTR staff members are doing here.  You can search for your own name in the contest results, and you can also click on anyone’s name to see their individual picks.

UPDATE: The contest is now closed.  More than 6,200 people entered!  The leaderboard will be available soon.

It’s time for the MLB Trade Rumors Free Agent Prediction Contest!  Click here to enter your picks for the destinations for our top 50 free agents.  The deadline for entry is TONIGHT at 11pm central time!  You can edit your picks until then.  Further contest info:

• After the window to make picks has closed, we’ll post a public leaderboard page so you can see who’s winning the contest as players sign with teams.  We’re going to use entrants’ full names on it.  So, if that concerns you, please do not enter the contest.  Entries with inappropriate names will be deleted.
• We are also collecting email addresses, which I will use to notify winners.
• If a player signs between now and the close of the contest, that’s a freebie, but you still need to go in and make the correct pick.
• After you submit your picks, you’ll receive an email from Google Forms.  In that email, you’ll see a button that allows you to edit your picks.
• We will announce the winners on MLBTR once all 50 free agents have signed.  We will award $500 to first place, $300 to second place, and $100 to third place.  We will also be giving  one-year memberships to Trade Rumors Front Office for everyone who finishes in the top 15.  Winners must respond to an email within one week.
• MLB owners are expected to lock out the players this winter, putting a freeze on transactions.  The winners of this contest will be declared on May 1st, 2022, and any unsigned players will be excluded from the competition.  If fewer than 30 players are signed at that point, the contest will be canceled.
• Ties in the correct number of picks will be broken by summing up the rankings of the free agents of the correct picks and taking the lower total.  For example: Tim and Steve each get two picks correct.  Tim gets Carlos Correa (#1 ranking) and Anthony Rizzo (#21 ranking) for a total of 22 points.  Steve gets Marcus Semien (#6) and Eduardo Rodriguez (#14) for a total of 20 points.  Steve’s total is lower and he’s ahead of Tim for tiebreaker purposes.
• I mistakenly forgot to change the Indians to the Guardians in the contest form.  I’m going to leave that mistake to make sure I don’t break anything by trying to change it.  Sorry about that.

If you have any further questions, ask us in the comment section of this post!  Otherwise, make your picks now!

From time to time, as a service to our readers, MLB Trade Rumors will post job opportunities of possible interest that are brought to our attention. MLBTR has no affiliation with the hiring entity, no role in the hiring process, and no financial interest in the posting of this opportunity.

Position: Baseball Research Analyst – Full-time
Location: Newport Beach, CA

Description:
The Boras Corporation has an immediate opening for a creative, well-organized team player with a genuine interest in a career in baseball. You will be working in an office-based setting with others responsible for handling a variety of research, statistical and analytical needs. The ideal candidate will have personal experience in a team-sports environment combined with ability to present complex information in a visual presentation.

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited university (or sufficient relevant experience)
• Prior baseball or team sports experience
• Proficient in Keynote presentations, visual graphics, and Microsoft Excel
• Outstanding communication, analytical, and organizational skills
• Able to operate under short deadlines in a fast-paced environment

Additional Qualifications:

• Fluent in Spanish (written and verbal)

To Apply:
Please send an email with the subject “Open BC Position” to borascorpcandidate@gmail.com by July 15, 2021.

The body of the email should contain the following, in this order:

• Your resume.
• In addition to the traditional resume information, please be sure to include any details about athletic experience and your ability to communicate in Spanish.
• Your full contact information.
• Personal and professional references
• How you obtained this listing.
• Your minimum annual salary requirement (needs to be a specific dollar figure).

Emails that do not contain all of this information will not be considered. Please do not send cover letters or attachments.

Infielder T.J. Rivera has agreed to a minor league contract with the Pirates, Jon Heyman of MLB Network reports. The deal is pending a physical.

Rivera signed with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League just four days ago, but he’ll instead attempt to work his way back to the majors with the Pirates. Now 32 years old, Rivera appeared in the bigs with the Mets from 2016-17 and batted an effective .304/.335/.445 across 231 plate appearances. The Mets looked as if they had a quality piece in Rivera, but injuries helped to at least temporarily end his time in the majors during his last year with the club. He underwent Tommy John surgery then and dealt with an elbow sprain while recovering in 2018, after which the Mets released him.

On the heels of his Mets tenure, Rivera inked minors deals with the Nationals and Phillies, but he didn’t return to MLB with either team. Now, as long as Rivera passes his physical, he’ll have an opportunity to stage a comeback with Pittsburgh.

We’ve seen plenty of fans and readers comment early in the 2021 season that it feels as though injuries are up from previous years, and that is indeed the case, as Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic breaks down in an excellent look at the increased IL stints of the non-Covid variety. IL placements are up 15 percent overall compared to the first month of the 2019 season, Rosenthal reports, with a 22 percent uptick among pitchers. Specifically, soft-tissue injuries such as hamstring, quadriceps and oblique injuries have nearly doubled in frequency, while arm and elbow injuries are up by a much slighter margin of 19 percent.

Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns, Pirates GM Ben Cherington and Marlins pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre Jr. all discuss the issue with Rosenthal, offering opinions on everything ranging from the root of some injuries to the level of club-to-club variance in treating injuries, managing player workload and other health-related matters. For anyone who’s been alarmed at the number of injuries that seem to be spanning throughout the league, it’s a must-read piece with insight straight from key team decision-makers who are faced with these challenges everyday.

It’s not surprising to see more concrete data backing up what many have suspected to be the case: injuries are spiking around the league. While some clubs are surely just being cautious with minor injuries for key players — Tim Anderson, Josh Donaldson, Max Fried and Trent Grisham all had very brief IL stints for hamstring issues — it’s hard to ignore both the volume of IL transactions and the extent of some of the early injuries.

We’ve already seen Kole Calhoun, Ketel Marte, Carlos Carrasco, David Price, Jazz Chisholm, Jorge Alfaro, Brendan Rodgers, Shogo Akiyama and Jake Fraley sustain hamstring injuries that will keep (or already have kept) them out three-plus weeks. Calhoun’s, which required surgery, could cost him two months. MLB.com’s transactions log shows 13 IL placements due to oblique strains in April alone — three of which have resulted in the player being moved to the 60-day injured list (Julian Merryweather, Rowan Wick, Bobby Wahl). George Springer has already hit the IL with an oblique injury to open the year and now a quadriceps strain, so he checks the box for a pair of those soft-tissue injuries.

Elbow troubles are nothing new for pitchers, of course, but we’ve seen a bevy of Tommy John surgeries already in 2021. Dustin May, Kirby Yates, James Paxton, Adrian Morejon, Luis Avilan, Jose Leclerc, Jonathan Hernandez, Jimmy Cordero, Blake Cederlind, Roenis Elias, Forrest Whitley, Jose Castillo, Michel Baez and Bryan Mata are just some of the big leaguers and notable prospects to undergo UCL replacement surgery since Spring Training opened a couple months back.

We’ve also already seen several of the game’s exciting young stars impacted. The White Sox may not get another plate appearance from Luis Robert (hip flexor strain) or Eloy Jimenez (ruptured pectoral tendon) in 2021. Ke’Bryan Hayes has missed much of the season with a wrist issue, and the Marlins are still building Sixto Sanchez back up after shoulder troubles stalled him. Adalberto Mondesi hasn’t played a game for the Royals yet thanks to an oblique injury. Fernando Tatis Jr. is playing through a shoulder subluxation. Obviously, not all of these are unique to 2021. The volume of injuries is nevertheless alarming.

Clubs will continue exercise caution and utilize a number of minimal, 10-day stints on the IL to manage workload and to creatively keep fresh arms available on their pitching staff. Such tactics are commonplace every year, and that’ll probably be all the more true in 2021 given concerns about the dramatic workload increase over 2020 (particularly among players who spent most of last year working at alternate sites). However, the early trend is concerning with regard to soft-tissue injuries and arm troubles for pitchers. Trepidation regarding those arm injuries, in particular, only figures to escalate as pitcher workloads increase over the next five months.

The NFL draft is just hours away, and Pro Football Rumors has you covered.  Check out the site for up-to-the-second news and rumors, and follow @pfrumors on Twitter!

For those looking to customize their commenting experience here at MLB Trade Rumors, the website now has a mute button available.  Once you’re logged in, you’ll see that each comment has the option to like, reply, flag, or mute.  If you decide you would prefer to hide all comments from a specific user, including all comments on a thread they’ve started, hit the mute link.  A box will pop up asking you to confirm.  You can edit your mute list on your profile page.  The Trade Rumors iOS app now has a flag button, but does not yet have the mute button.

Moving forward, the comment section will now be open on political and COVID-19 posts, while remaining closed on those related to domestic violence.  Please review our commenting policy, which still does not allow attacks, insults, trolling, or harassment.  Off-topic commentary is also not allowed, so please do not leave comments that are unrelated to the subject matter of the post.  If you see comments that violate our policy, please flag them, consider muting the person, and do not reply.  We can’t attempt to assess who started it.

We’ve created a “View Comments” button on each post, so that entering the comment section will be a conscious choice.  Consider that you may be better off sitting out certain discussions.  We’ve set up some guard rails, but the comment section reflects the attitudes and opinions of many different people.  We’ll try to review everything that violates our policy, but we can’t moderate out stupidity, insensitivity, and various other subjective things.  We’re hopeful that the mute button will allow MLBTR commenters more control over their experience.

I’m Tim Dierkes, the owner of MLB Trade Rumors. If you’ll indulge me for a minute, I want to talk about an app I’ve created for youth baseball and softball coaches that has nothing to do with MLB or rumors.

How many times have you observed this scene in a youth baseball or softball game?

An infielder makes an amazing stop on a ground ball. It’s the highlight of the kid’s budding career to date. And then…NOOOOOO!!! Why did you throw it to THAT base? Or…why did you think you could just step on THAT base??! We’ve been over this in practice!

Fundamentals are crucial to understanding and playing baseball or softball. Chief among them: where are the force outs? Our free Baseball Force Out Teacher app for iPhones and iPads is the perfect at-home supplement to any player or watcher’s education.

The eight different baserunner scenarios are randomly presented, and this fun game-like app drills home the correct answers to one crucial question: Where are the force outs? Simply play it over and over until force outs are second nature!

Plus, if you’re a coach looking to freestyle or elaborate on infield scenarios, the app has a handy whiteboard feature.

Download the free app today!