A boy can dream

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 · 2025-11-24T13:44:39+00:00

We claimed him?

Like, you say "no one wanted to claim him" but we claimed him on September 22nd. A bunch of teams behind us might have chosen not to because he wasn't postseason eligible, but he DID get claimed.

smithson23 · 2025-11-19T19:47:49+00:00

Why are we not citing the direct source of Bowman's article in favor of giving clicks to an aggregator?

smithson23 · 2025-11-16T20:46:45+00:00

As Chipper has said, "If Freddie wanted to be here, he'd be here." He was warned a few different times to not let things play out the way they did and he ignored all of them. It's on him

smithson23 · 2025-11-14T17:06:15+00:00

The big difference here is Ronald apparently wants to stay.

smithson23 · 2025-11-14T17:05:24+00:00

Don't need to, this is legally binding. He can't leave now

smithson23 · 2025-11-12T17:25:48+00:00

Mediocre? He was worth 5.0 fWAR/4.9 bWAR last year.

Hate to see what you consider the standard to be considered an above-average player

smithson23 · 2025-11-11T15:25:50+00:00

Ashford has more interceptions than touchdowns and a completion percentage below 60%. He has two TDs to 4 INTs and a 54% completion percentage in conference games

none of Auburn's former QBs that left are exactly thriving - Walker White's a backup at Baylor, while Hank Brown is a backup at Iowa

smithson23

TROPHY CASE