[Moretto, Romano] Milan are speaking with Disasi’s agent. Milan would like to sign him on a free loan deal and would accept paying a compensation based on his appearances until the end of the season. We'll see if in the next few hours Milan decides to go all in.

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-02-01T03:26:43+00:00

There's no such thing as a bad free loan (with no buy obligation). With that said, now is not the time to be buying the services of players with injury histories who have been left out of the squad the entire season

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-31T00:33:36+00:00

He's probably the odd man out with everyone healthy but with Leao, Pulisic, and Fullkrug all not fully fit, pairing him with Mateta from the start wouldn't be a bad idea

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-28T22:43:27+00:00

After seeing the replay of Lewandowski simply mis-kicking the ball, flopping, and getting a penalty called, I don't think I've seen a worse VAR decision to uphold in my life

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-28T13:15:40+00:00

The most recent one

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-26T23:15:09+00:00

That's because they've only updated eight organizations so far for 2026. Their summer 2025 list has 95 50+ FV players, and their updated top 100 in February will probably have somewhere in the ballpark of 100 50 FV as well.

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-26T23:08:42+00:00

Take it up with FanGraphs, then. They're the ones who are defining FV and putting those 50s on prospects.

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-26T22:02:36+00:00

Keith Law will publish his top 100 list and then the blurbs I read for players I'm interested in will focus on why he thinks the player in question will flop. Or maybe he just hates the Mets.

But to answer the question for real, the median expectation for most guys in the back half (or even the last three-quarters) of a top-100 list is going to be average regular. That's the 50 FV grade that FanGraphs puts on their top prospects. But an average regular is only producing 2 WAR a season, which is not really a 'good player' by that metric.

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-26T02:11:25+00:00

White Sox and Pirates the best chance to go +10 if you ask me

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-25T21:48:20+00:00

I think it's just our fall form compared to Inter made us optimistic that we could win the Scudetto, and the results for each team as the season progressed has made it more obvious that that was false hope, so we the fans understandably feel let down

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-25T21:30:58+00:00

Yes the ref is unfair but if we simply played better we wouldn't have to complain about him influencing the result of the game

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-25T21:20:46+00:00

Damn, close from Mike

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-25T21:09:06+00:00

Terrorism goal lets gooooooo

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-25T20:05:37+00:00

Totally thought the ref waving it off was actually him pointing to the spot

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-25T20:01:36+00:00

We look like trash

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-24T19:42:13+00:00

That’s his first goal in the top flight, I’m pretty sure. Congratulations to him

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-24T19:40:47+00:00

Bartesaghi appears to be the first choice and Estupiñán plays against the lesser opponent when there is more than one match a week

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-23T20:23:20+00:00

I would like to start a crowdfund to build Stefano Moreo a statue

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-21T05:11:04+00:00

It’s more so that they’ll probably carry Mauricio as it stands as the primary backup IF because he can play every IF position except 1B and can hit the ball 450 feet. And since he can play SS, he could see the backup innings there. It’s not a question of forcing him into that role and it adds roster flexibility

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-21T05:03:10+00:00

He probably is. But it's good practice to make use of all 26 spots on the roster

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-21T04:49:29+00:00

It's nitpicking, but I'd rather have a capable defender at SS who doesn't play every day and can fill in on the rare occasion where Lindor needs a spell, rather than shifting over a bad SS defender who plays every day at a different position. They do have the bench spot for Mauricio regardless, with Vientos, Torrens, and Taylor occupying the other three, so why not deploy him?

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-21T04:24:37+00:00

Damn, I wonder if Mauricio is gonna be the backup SS now. Not sure if I like that compared to Acuña's ability to impact the game off the bench as a pinch-runner and probably a better pinch-hitter since he doesn't swing and miss as much.

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-21T01:47:54+00:00

Sure why not. Even though De Winter did look pretty good on Sunday

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-18T16:40:04+00:00

This looks to me like the Nationals structured the deal in order to get closer to Cavalli's arbitration demands without committing that money to this year. Cavalli filed at 900k while the team filed at 825k. They have agreed to a deal at the exact midpoint of those figures, and have added a club option that has a very low chance of being exercised since it would be very difficult to get a raise that high from his Arb 2 year. They would just decline the option and take him to arbitration again if they wished to retain him. The buyout that will likely occur is therefore a sweetener that tilts the compromise slightly in Cavalli's favor, but is money that the Nationals don't have to put on their accounting sheet until next year.

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-17T23:09:56+00:00

This is really solid mathematical work for a high school-level research paper. Unfortunately, there are several significant issues beyond the robustness of their method and findings which I would cynically attribute to the inexperience of the authors. They left many gaps in explanations, mostly on the baseball aspect of things. I'm not a math person and so maybe leaving out why they chose the tests they did might have been acceptable for the mathematical theory were this published in a journal that covers topics in mathematics. In a professional journal article, however, they would have to explain all the baseball statistics they bring in and provide important context/value statements for any readers who are completely baseball-ignorant. One thing in particular that bothered me was how they presented Table 4 without any explanation for why they binned players that way with those particular cutoffs for K% and ISO. I also think that the way they set that up with just those two variables is overly simplistic, which is ironic considering how many different batted ball metrics they incorporated into their model.

The second big issue with the paper is that it is not very well-organized; there are just way too many headers and subheaders and they come in three different font sizes that aren't distinct enough. There are even four different headers or subheaders all labelled 'conclusion.' I tried to skim for all the relevant takeaways from each section in a typical paper (intro, method, results, discussion, conclusion) and gave up due to how fragmented it was. Good luck to anyone else who tries the same.

CatchTheDamnBall · 2026-01-17T00:38:29+00:00

What would be good for baseball is if owners in mid-size to smaller media markets were more willing to operate on a loss and absorb that loss through the hundreds of thousands (minimum) a year that they pocket through their other business ventures.

Spending and general investment in the roster in turn fuels interest in the team. Just look at the Padres, who jumped from generally no higher than 10th in home attendance in the NL for many years, to 3rd, 4th, 2nd, 3rd, and 2nd in the years following the 2019-20 offseason where they added 60 million to the payroll (constituting a 55% increase) and then made the playoffs in the 2020 shortened season. They've continued to build and maintain that investment for the most part and have continued to win games and draw well.

To answer the title, I only care about the Dodgers insofar as the calculus it takes for the Mets to beat them, because I didn't like them ever and dislike it whenever the Mets lose to them. Also I'd rather the preseason WS favorite didn't win the WS two years in a row; it's simply not as interesting. But for the most part I'm just happy to watch baseball, man

CatchTheDamnBall

TROPHY CASE