Cup o’ Joe, side o’ dough: minidraft

2020 MLB draft to be only five rounds
Craig Calcaterra, Hardball Talk at NBC Sports

Of the players who do not or cannot go to college, many will be forced, due to the low bonuses, to work full-time jobs in the offseason to make ends meet, detracting from their training regimens. That has always been necessary for amateur free agents or late-round draftees, but now it will be the case for frontline talent as well. Other players may leave the U.S. and attempt to catch on in Japan, Korea, or Taiwan. Many players may give up playing baseball entirely. Regardless of where any specific player goes, this will, overall, reduce the amount of talent in American professional baseball. Why? To save money.

As usual, Calcaterra cuts MLB’s decision to exploit the coronavirus delay to improve the bottom line and not team’s winning percentages with a scalpel. Losing 35 rounds of a draft, and likely additional rounds in the 2021 draft, is reprehensible. But on the bright side, the Enterprise Car Rental, Arthur Andersen and Jiffy Lube beer league softball teams are about to step up in overall talent, from coast to coast.

MLB’s Possible Three Division Monte
Dan Szymborski, FanGraphs

With so much uncertainty surrounding the “when” and “if” of a 2020 MLB season, it’s not surprising to see a constant progression of new plans. What it comes down to is that there’s no obvious one-size-fits-all solution that maximizes player and staff safety, baseball quality, the number of baseball games, and league revenue simultaneously. It’s only in such an odd year that things like playing in spring training parks, Arizona/Florida leagues, neutral playoffs, fanless games, and Thanksgiving baseball actually seem plausible rather than falling in the category of whimsical skylarkings.

Dan drills down into the latest Realignment 2020 plan (three regional divisions, games in home stadiums), and the Central Division is the most exciting. Neither the White Sox (49-51) nor Cubs (51-49) make the postseason per ZiPS.

The Bill Veeck Show with Bud Selig and Cleon Waalford
via Media Burn Archive

The Bill Veeck show from WFLD. Transfer from kinescope. Lots of talk about the future of baseball and how screwed up the owners are. Special emphasis on Milwaukee, now without a ball club, and the campaign by a young used car dealer to get an American League franchise. It's Bud Selig. BV calls him "Buddy Boy," a young eager hustler with a flat top haircut and a Cadillac car.

Want to see a young Bud Selig, looking and sounding pretty much like an old Bud Selig? A fascinating find by Media Burn, proving among many things that pacing was not really a thing in the mid-1960s.

Ranking the Juiciest MLB Rivalries Heading into 2020 Season
Zachary Rymer, Bleacher Report

As Rivalry Week here at B/R comes to its conclusion, the final order of business on the Major League Baseball front is to size up which rivalries matter the most in 2020.

As offensive as it may seem, the White Sox factor into just one of the main rivalries for 2020, the northsiders ... three. This is part of the fight to become relevant again.

2020 OOTP sim: López stifles Giants, 6-0
Brett Ballantini, South Side Hit Pen at Sports Illustrated

It was one of those Reynaldo López games. Before you scream and barrel-roll under your couch, recoiling in horror, no no, it wasn't one of those Reynaldo López games. It was an unmitigated gem, a 6-0 shutout of the Giants.

All it took was a bullpen demotion for Reylo to wake up a bit. He rescued the White Sox in the SSHP sim, after another injury to Lucas Giolito — and hit a double in the process!

2021 Arbitration Preview: Lucas Giolito
Mike Scott, FanGraphs

I took the liberty of looking at players who will become first-time arbitration eligible following the 2020 season, focusing on Lucas Giolito of the Chicago White Sox.

For those of you who haven’t been anxious and agitated enough about all the off-field issues facing the White Sox during this coronavirus delay, here’s an arbitration preview!

Morning Music
Multiple Seals, all with hair. He got adult contemporary pretty quick, but in 1990 this was a revelatory debut.