Bregman is the extra roster spot for the DH and a corresponding move will come tomorrow.
The goal was selfish. If people canât live without one MLB, NFL, NBA season, etc., they need to reevaluate their priorities. Also, donât tell me the owners, players, managers and coaches couldnât afford the financial hit.
However, once MLB decided to proceed, their plan was bad. First, they didnât put teams in a bubble like the NBA or NHL, and it took numerous COVID outbreaks to force Manfred to issue an edict that all teams must remain in their hotels and not go out on the town when visiting cities. Not to mention, the season started and nobody was wearing masks or social distancing in dugouts. They didnât even make players that caught COVID self-quarantine for 14 days in the beginning of the season.
Second, they cut the second Spring Training in half, leading to a lot of pitcher injuries. Third, to make up for lost games due to COVID and rainouts, they are making players play a ridiculous amount of doubleheaders, taxing their bodies even more.
Agree with the above. MLBâs season overlapped with Covid, so planning was more uncertain at the time. The MLB player and staff cohort is much larger than in the NBA or NHL, based on figures I saw in USA Today. It was harder to obtain a bubble. Short of outright cancellation, there were no alternatives which could approximate a regular season fans and players could recognize.
There are a LOT of people in this country - especially college/pro football fans - that do indeed need to reevaluate their priorities.
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I completely agree with you.
B.S. â They spent crucial weeks bickering over which bazillionaires were going to get a bigger piece of the financial pie. There were plenty of alternatives on all sides.
Itâs been going on for a few thousand years before that; just under different names. Slaves to owners, serfs to land owners, rich to poorâŚ
I have a little bit of trouble with a continuum that directly connects slavery with MLBâs labor/management dispute.
Apples to chainsaws.
Dave Zirin has written extensively on the topic of sports labor and management conflicts. I suppose baseball had to participate during Covid, lest it fall further behind other sports better suited to limited venues, television presentation, or a favorable calendar which bracketed the pandemic on either side of the spike(s).
Maybe add this book to your reading list:
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Succinctly encapsulates the US governmentâs response to COVID in general.
Bench, I understand allegory and itâs usefulness but the reality is that there is a vast sea of difference between an employeeâs lack of mobility in a chosen field to that of a captive prisoner held against his or her own will forced into building a pyramid or picking cotton. BTW, that book is on my list. I believe Curt Flood, the guy who put his career at risk, should be in the Hall of Fame, not Marvin Miller, who was just doing his job.
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Thatâs fine. But the people personally involved and the people who have studied it have no problem making that connection. Itâs a good book, Iâm sure youâll enjoy it.
Arenât most people in the HOF for doing their job very well? Iâd put them both in.
Outstanding point. That is the entire purpose of the HOF.
Thatâs fine. I have no problem taking exception to their leaps of logic.
I donât see leaps of logic as much as I see two separate points. Any attempt to compare a slave, someone whose very self is literally a possession to be bought and sold, to anyone who is not a slave, regardless of how deplorable their working conditions might be, is difficult to do productively. (Iâm speaking of modern times - you could make some very troubling comparisons between slaves and, say, Appalachian coal miners, and that was in the United States of America only a hundred years ago.)
I think the overarching point is that it is very dangerous to aggregate the vast majority of capital among a small group of individuals who are largely inoculated from and largely indifferent to the will, desires and well being of those with whom they share society. You can easily see this in areas that are largely not important, like professional sports, and in areas that are more consequential.
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Todayâs starter for the Astros, Luis Garcia, prior to last Friday had never pitched above Class A.
âŚthis is normal.
The way some of these guys who havenât pitched above A ball are doing, maybe they need to contract AAA rather than Rookie ball and A ball teams.
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non-Astros, but Matt Chapman is out for the season (hip surgery)