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Use your Sunday morning to catch up on some stories that fell through the cracks because the White Sox were eventful. I didn't realize they had a theme, but it appears to be other teams' gripes, some of which the Sox share(d), and others that are fortunately foreign.
- Rob Manfred, MLB considering radical changes to game - USA Today
- Baseball wants to have more offense and shorter games, which is impossible - SBNation.com
Grant Brisbee did a good job of identifying the self-defeating nature of Rob Manfred's suggested improvements -- if you tweak the game for more offense, it's going to slow down the game, because baserunners make pitchers work more slowly. Pitch clocks, on the other hand, are fine. I watched my first game under pitch clocks in Durham, and I didn't notice them whatsoever.
Houston Astros GM Jeff Luhnow is not a fan of no-trade clauses, mainly because two players who rejected trades to the Astros ended up joining the division-rival Rangers (Cole Hamels and Jonathan Lucroy). While the Astros successfully executed a rebuild, they could've been a little less callous about the way they regarded players.
Keith Law might've sold a few Insider subscriptions with his excoriation of the Diamondbacks front office of Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart. There appear to be no below-the-belt shots -- Law mostly organizes Arizona's public missteps, like poor talent evaluation and their mishandling of draft pools and picks. The one account that relies on anonymous sourcing is an amusing one:
No mistake has loomed larger than the constant stream of errors around Cuban right-handed pitcher Yoan Lopez. The brand-new front office reached to sign him for $8 million after the 2013 season, even though it appeared that he was priced by other teams at about one-tenth that number. The Diamondbacks didn't understand the international bonus pool rules, and thus were unaware they would have to pay an $8 million penalty on top of Lopez's bonus AND would be prohibited from signing any July 2 free agents for the next two signing periods until after Lopez's deal was official. [...]
Stewart's unfamiliarity with the rules hasn't just applied to the international pools. According to multiple sources, in early 2015 he tried to make a trade with another team that would have violated MLB rules, and the GM of the other team had to explain to him that such a move was not allowed.
The Chicago White Sox: They're aware of rules.
Hector Santiago might not carry James Shields' financial obligations, but he's making a similar first impression with the Minnesota Twins. He got shelled by the resurgent Royals for his fourth loss in four tries with Minnesota. Over that stretch, he has a 10.89 ERA with 32 hits and seven homers allowed over 19 innings. He sounds a little messed up:
"At some point during the game I just gave in and said, ‘I'm not going to walk anybody tonight.' That was the mind-set," Santiago said. "And I gave in too much to that."
Even though he's playing for a team with considerably less ambition in his hometown, Gordon Beckham is having a relapse to his late-Sox career -- a bench player who collapsed upon receiving regular run.
- First half: .290/.387/.458 over 124 PA
- Since: .111/.189/.185 over 90 PA
- Total: .213/.304/.370