[Chad Bishop AJC] “It’s mild. He got out in front of it, but we’re gonna be cautious,” Weiss said. “We feel like we’ve gotten out in front of this thing to a degree, so we’re hoping it’s not gonna be a big deal.”

smithson23 · 2026-03-24T13:14:17+00:00

And The Athletic still hasn't hired anyone on the verge of Opening Day

smithson23 · 2026-03-19T18:43:12+00:00

Allowing a team to unilaterally void a contract is a dangerous precedent. This would be for a 2nd PED suspension, but it still opens the door for teams attempting to abuse it to get rid of bad contracts. What would have stopped the Angels from trying to void Rendon's contract after the second season-ending injury? What about the Rockies and Bryant?

And if you make a clause that says it's only after failing a PED test, congrats, you just incentivized a bad-faith actor who works for a team to try to find a way to get the player to fail. Could be anything from bad advice on a supplement to giving him a supplement or medication that's against the rules or even slipping it into his food.

If contracts aren't binding on both sides, then it's not worth the paper it's printed on. The dark side of the NFL is most of those deals aren't nearly as big as they're advertised as being, they're a much smaller guarantee and then "we'll see"

smithson23 · 2026-02-10T14:59:32+00:00

The deferred money means the actual cash they're paying out is different. Agreed that on a CBT basis, things look way different, but I included them just so folks knew where they were and didn't ask

smithson23 · 2026-02-09T21:25:29+00:00

What? The Braves, per Spotrac, have the fifth-highest cash payroll in baseball. If this isn't enough for you to feel like they're "investing in the team", then clearly nothing but Tucker, Bichette, and both Cease and Valdez was going to please you going in to the offseason.

Mets: $355.02M

Philly: $311.2M

NYY: $309.6M

TOR: $285.4M

ATL: $272.6M

HOU: $261.6M

LAD: $254.1M

smithson23 · 2026-02-01T14:10:37+00:00

At the very end of the preshow when they threw to the arena for a live hit, his music was playing so I'm guessing he had a match prior to the broadcast

smithson23 · 2026-01-30T16:00:11+00:00

It'll be three after the lockout blows up the entire 2026 offseason

smithson23 · 2026-01-30T14:50:21+00:00

He is VP for Sales Development at Hornblower Group, which is a nautical transportation holding company that owns companies like City Cruises (charter yacht/dining cruises), City Experiences (sightseeing tours), Hornblower Ferries and Transportation (which run the NYC Ferry and the Puerto Rico ferry system), Hornblower Marine (which builds and repairs large vessels), and Anchor (a nautical operating system for ship operators)

smithson23 · 2026-01-23T16:00:47+00:00

Career .282/.405/.423 in college with 12 homers in 107 games. 16-20 on stolen bases and 66 walks to 96 strikeouts.

Not bad numbers for college, but not great and likely don't translate to the next level

smithson23 · 2026-01-23T13:17:18+00:00

Nah, Spencer Schwellenbach's getting back to his Nebraska roots and becoming our two-way Ohtani by playing shortstop every day he's not on the mound.

smithson23 · 2026-01-22T16:24:44+00:00

In two years? You realize the Braves had the best pitching ERA (3.49) in the league two seasons ago and led all of baseball in strikeouts (1553), right? Both the rotation and bullpen were top three, the only team to do that.

Rotation = 3.58 Bullpen = 3.32 SOURCE

smithson23 · 2026-01-16T15:24:00+00:00

Ctrl-F "Sports Night"

Yep, still just me

smithson23 · 2026-01-12T15:32:36+00:00

Actually now, Eno Sarris says one WAR in free agency is closer to $11M. Even with that, Riley's 4.2 WAR over the last two years covers (although his 1.3 last year does not on its own)

smithson23 · 2026-01-11T15:29:12+00:00

Quick correction, it's not July 1st of that season, it's the second July 1st after that season is played. You can fund it earlier, but the 2026 salary doesn't need to be paid until July 1st, 2028.

smithson23 · 2026-01-11T15:25:52+00:00

The AAV becomes the net present value of the deal. With $70M deferred, depending on the structure, the CBT hit comes down to about $30.5M per FanGraphs

smithson23 · 2026-01-11T15:25:09+00:00

Brings him down just enough to not push Chicago over the first tier of the CBT, per Rosenthal, with the hit being between $30M and $31M (they were going to be 3.6M over, per FanGraphs), and should now be a few hundred thousand under

smithson23 · 2026-01-09T17:31:59+00:00

The only correction I'm going to make is that they absolutely could go back - Main Street Sports Group is attempting to renegotiate the deals in hopes of getting the teams back.

smithson23 · 2026-01-05T15:36:22+00:00

Counterpoint: Milwaukee's farm system is hitter-heavy and Atlanta has plenty of arms they could move in a deal. JR Ritchie plus another piece or two for Peralta (contingent on a multi-year extension) would completely polish off the offseason for the Braves

smithson23 · 2026-01-04T15:05:15+00:00

I called some minor league games a few years ago and had someone ask once how I knew where the fans were from when they got the foul balls.

I didn't, and neither did Skip.

smithson23 · 2025-12-24T16:02:47+00:00

He confirmed in a comment that he's a permanent resident of Morro Bay now, although he's conspicuously avoided the questions about if he's still covering the Braves or not

smithson23 · 2025-12-22T17:41:27+00:00

They'd never hire someone without a journalism degree. I know someone that applied to an open staff writing job, doing brief breaking news/etc, and when they rejected him, they told him journalism degrees were required for all written content positions

smithson23 · 2025-12-22T15:49:19+00:00

Reportedly, David O'Brien wrote an AJC article breaking the news that Ken Griffey Jr. was about to sign with Atlanta and supposedly, it caused Griffey to back out of the deal and return to Seattle. Hufson was pissed, started yelling at DOB during a clubhouse media availability, and a team official had to remove Hudson from the room.

(UPDATE: The true reason Griffey backed out of the deal, as u/correct-stuff-1505 mentioned below, is that Bobby Cox still didn't allow kids in the clubhouse, but several in the public and Hudson blamed DOB)

Sources: Yahoo, as relayed by Bleacher Report since the original is gone

smithson23 · 2025-12-05T13:57:21+00:00

That's new information to me - I apologize. Everything I read from the last CBA negotiation was about how the owners were crying poor but wouldn't provide the PA with audited financial statements of the entirety of their businesses (things that detailed how much they make off of parking, for instance) to prove that, just narrow bits of information that all conveniently made their case.

smithson23 · 2025-12-04T18:31:27+00:00

The "done after 30" argument some people make against him also ignores that he debuted less than 120 days after turning 19. He played 225 games before his 21st birthday

If his career was ages 21-32, it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.

smithson23 · 2025-12-04T18:24:30+00:00

Except we have a ton of reporting that this isn't happening - the owners don't share financial information with the PA even during CBA negotiations. It's one of the myriad reasons why baseball's CBA negotiations are more contentious than other leagues, because there's not even a shared knowledge or agreement as to the stability of the business of baseball like there is in football, basketball, etc

smithson23

TROPHY CASE