Nationals Arm Race

I do a lot of spreadsheet work when it comes to tracking Baseball stuff that I like to track. Some of those have turned into relatively well-known resources, while others are things I generally edit privately and post to Google Sheets sporadically.

First, some Housekeeping.

Frequent commenter Will pointed this out, and also pointed out that the links on the front page of NationalsArmRace.com were well out of date. What’s ironic is, I almost never go to the non-WordPress dashboard version of this page, so I hadn’t really looked at the mess of content that was along the right-hand side. In like 10 years. Most of the links there were for long-dead blogs, or spreadsheets I did in like 2015 or 2016. So, I cleaned them up drastically. I also got rid of several useless sections (the tag cloud) and now the right-side set of links is much more streamlined with content that’s actually up-to-date.

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Next, now that I’ve cleaned up the Link section called “NatArmRace Creations,” here’s a review of those links and some discussion/insight into them. I’ve got these sections organized in the order these links appear along the right-hand side.

If any of these links don’t work, please let me know. They should all be set to be viewable for those with the link.

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“a All Nats Links I use“

Direct Link: Nats Links: or https://www.nationalsarmrace.com/?page_id=16709

What is it? ALL the Nats/Baseball related links I’ve ever collected and/or use frequently. This is essentially my browser bookmark set for baseball and the Nats.

History/fun facts: I got tired of trying to use bookmarks to go to the pages I visit frequently, so initially this was a private HTML page, but eventually I migrated it to be a WordPress “page” within the nationalsarmrace.com blog site.

The links in the top few sections are mostly what I visit on a daily/weekly basis; for each of our minor league affiliates I have direct links to the Local paper for gamers (if one exists that covers the team), the milb.com home page, the roster, the stats, schedule, standings, and transactions.

If you scroll down you’ll see some out of date links for the Nats, and then you’ll see entire sections devoted to thinks like PEDs, Hall of Fame, stats, etc. I’ve recently put online all the CBA pdfs I have to have them all in one place, and all those links are on there.

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Minor League System Org Rankings

Direct Link: Minor League System Rankings or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ipxQoHgXrf0EDL0iMc2zqLu4rX7RbXani4nfY0RUJlw/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? This is a list of all the Minor League system rankings i’ve found over the years from various pundits. There are more than 175 at this point dating back to 2000 and with links to older Baseball America rankings from there. There are divider lines that denote breaks in the rankings. Yellow shaded ranks are outliers that seem to not comply with the general consensus.

History: this is an XLS i’ve maintained since the late 2000s as I started to get into tracking prospects for the team. I used to actually keep a narrative of why each teams’ ranking rose or fell, but that proved to be too difficult to maintain (its still at the far right side dating back to 2010).

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2025 MLB Draft Order

Direct Link: 2025 MLB Draft Order or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eOam8iWCo-n3BC9baIU06c7aBxvV9oKqANl7WDqUsys/edit?usp=sharing

What is it?. this is a working XLS that tracks the changes in the draft order as players with Qualifying Offers sign. Published/finalized with last QO-assigned signee once the last order-impacting event occurs.

History: I couldn’t find a resource elsewhere on the internet that kept the data in the way that I wanted to see it, which was driven initially by a desire to see what kind of draft picks teams were giving up when they signed QO-affiliated FAs. Other draft tracking sites (like MLB) just remove the picks as they’re lost without great detail as to what happened. I keep the team in place and adjust the number so you can see how many picks have been added or forfeited.

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MLB Qualifying Offer Disposition

Direct Link: Qualifying Offer Worksheet or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f9oJDRmCD0rH7zVj5FlcJ65YvPiuVvpFz3dkyUhHuaI/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? Every single QO player since the system was created is tracked in this XLS, with their new contract, draft picks given up, and a judgement whether the QO “screwed” the player or not.

History: when the QO system first was devised, I was fascinated to see if players were “screwing themselves” by taking a QO. So this spreadsheet was a way to kind of judge that, and to judge the effectiveness of the system.

Opinion: I can’t stand QOs. They are the epitome of a Union negotiating a “benefit” that impacts a tiny fraction of its member base instead of addressing larger concerns. Each year around 12-14 players get offered one and accept it. That’s around 1% of the union at any given time. Half those QOs offered are from teams who have no intention of re-signing the player; they’re just gambits to net an extra draft pick from a player already heading out the door. Plus, each year a chunk of the players just re-sign and it becomes moot. It also seems that every year one or two guys really mis-read the market and end up getting screwed by the QO. This past off-season, that screwed player was clearly Nick Pivetta, who took a 4yr/$55M deal and a huge decline in AAV.

The player who probably got the MOST screwed in the history of the QO system? It was either Mike Moustakas in 2017 or more likely our own Ian Desmond in 2015, who turned down a $100M contract from the Nats to play the market, found zero buyers, and ended up taking a 1 year $8M deal in which he moved to left field.

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The Big Board

Direct Link: The Big Board or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? Updated rosters for every Nats major and minor league franchise, from the MLB all the way to the DSL. Each year has two tabs: one for the Rosters, one for the Releases.

History/fun facts: This document was the initial brainchild of an O.G. Natmosphere staple in Brian Oliver, who maintained the old Nationals Farm Authority site. From there, another big-time Nats fan named “SpringfieldFan” took over the XLS updating for a long time (the current online XLS dates from 2010, so we’ve lost the first few years of Oliver’s ownership). In Dec 2019 they transferred control to myself, and i’ve been updating it ever since.

Updates I’ve made since I took over:

• I’ve added milb.com/baseball-reference.com links for every player.
• I have added color coding for in-season promotions/demotions.
• I’ve added in current age columns for all players
• I added the XST section for players who seemed to be missing but not released but not assigned to a team.
• I add URLs documenting releases if I can.
• I try to keep the actual starters in the main positions they’re holding per team.
• I try to keep the rotations accurate, and in the synced order with the big team across the system.
• I mostly keep the bullpen roles accurate, especially in the upper levels, but in the lower levels it’s fluid.
• This year I just added a running count of the entire system, given MLB’s new 165-person limit.

On a daily/weekly basis I’m updating transactions (DL trips, promotions, demotions, releases, MLFA signings, etc), confirming the rotation order in each level, and adjusting the starters. To do this, I’m completely indebted to Luke Erickson and his daily work at NationalsProspects.com basically summarizing the same. If/when Luke decides to hang it up on this daily work, I’m not sure I’ll have the time to do it myself, but for now, Luke seems game to keep going.

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The Nats Draft Tracker

Direct Link: Draft Tracker or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? A spreadsheet that has every single Nats draft pick since the team moved to DC in 2005, along with key information such as position, draft round, overall draft pick, their school, initial assignment, when they become Rule-5 eligible, and their bonus amount.

History/fun facts: I’m not sure who the original author was of this resource, but I do know that Erickson owned it for a time, as did SpringfieldFan. I’m also not sure exactly when I took over updating the data, but it was probably Dec 2019 as well.

Updates I’ve made since I took over:

• Added in milb.com links for every player
• Changed the color coding for readability; green means active in Nats system, blue means released from Nats sytem, etc.
• Did a ton of googling about players we drafted but who didn’t sign to put in the correct disposition from older drafts. This is easier for more recent drafts, but harder for older players.
• Began adding two draft artifacts I maintain every year: a Draft Signing worksheet with twitter links for the players, notes, and NDFAs. Plus I maintain a “Local Drafted Player worksheet” with every player drafted who has DC/MD/VA ties. These are all now in the Draft Tracker.

I’m not updating this on a daily basis, but do periodically go through and update for player releases, Rule-5 status in a class, etc. On a yearly basis i’m adding the new class details plus the two worksheets mentioned. And once in a blue moon i’ll google unsigned players from prior classes to see where they are and update the roster. I recently abandoned the “level” as impossible to maintain accurately and just turned it into “roster status” to track release dates for players.

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Nats IFA Tracker

Direct Link: IFA Tracker or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing

What is it? This is an emulation of the Draft Tracker, only for the International Free Agent classes. There’s a set of columns for each “class,” that includes Name, DOB, age at signing, position, country of origin, initial assignment (which is almost always the DSL), Rule5 eligibility date, and known signing bonus.

History/fun facts: I created this with the Jan 2023 class, then have been building it backwards one year at a time. I have it back to 2015 right now, but probably could continue to build it backwards by digging through draft class announcements and our big board releases over the years. However, much past the 2015 IFA class all it would be would be a cut-n-paste job of dozens of kids who got released before they turned 20, and the value doesn’t seem to be there.

The bonus pools are quite sketchy in the international market, but I’m pretty close to having the entire pool accounted for in the last few seasons. Well, not 2023, where i’m off more than $100k. I have no idea how bonus dollars work; can a team sign whoever it wants if the dollars are under a certain amount? Kind of like how you can sign NDFAs to your heart’s content for domestic players? Or does it all count towards the yearly dollar amount?

The IFA tracker also shows that we sign a slew of players each year and don’t announce the bonus amount, which I can only assume means its a nominal amount (like $2k or $5k). Also, we announce a “class” on January 15th each year (what used to be July 2nd until they pivoted the date thanks to Covid), but then they continue to sign IFAs throughout the year. If a player signs in a given year, I still call them part of that draft class.

MLB cancelled the July 2nd signing date in 2020 for Covid, hence no 2020 class, but they still managed to sign a couple guys in late 2020, who are now listed in that year’s class.

Should I build this backwards until we get closer to the “dark days” of Smiley Gonzalez and Jim Bowden? Maybe.

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Nationals Prospect Ranks

Direct Link: Nationals Prospect Rankings or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dtx_W2CN19W2EyRyQ17iaSkoyc51u1qR/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102402795225850924380&rtpof=true&sd=true

What is it? This is a canonical list of EVERY prospect ranking i’ve ever found for the Nats farm system, from the most recently announced (Fangraphs in early June), back to Baseball America in 2004. More than 260 lists, with direct links whenever I could provide it. This sheet also has some cool information per player: their position, the year by year starting level (with red shading that indicates they’re repeating a level), their signing bonus, acquisition method and their signing/draft year. I’ve recently added their milb.com links and an active flag for sorting.

History: i’ve privately maintained this XLS since the Nats moved to Washington and update it every time a new list is released. Periodically I’ll update/upload it to google for announcement.

Note: i’ver never paid for BaseballProspectus, so i’m missing most of their lists over the years. I do pay for the Athletic, BaseballAmerica, D1baseball.com, and ESPN+ so all of those are there.

I’ve taken to highlighting in yellow the “outlier” rankings per player as I ingest them, which helps when i do the writeups/reviews of prospect rankings in this space. So if you see a rank that’s highlighted in yellow it probably is an outlier as compared to the rest of the ranking for that player in that year.

Lastly, my personal rankings are in Green.

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Opening Day Starters

Direct link: Opening Day Starters or https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Mv8gLgJOuJHEAf_pXNwPWGCNRL4RnYEyulH6rxMuudA/edit?usp=sharing

What is it?: just a list of the opening day starters for every team, dating back to 2000. I have always had a fascination with these guys, and there’s a bunch of trivia questions in there. Baseball-Reference now has the same data at their site per team, which is really cool.

I usually do a post the day after opening day and will update it then.

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Other random artifacts not always online: As alluded to above, I maintain a few other random spreadsheets and documents, mostly locally, but do periodically upload copies of them. But, if anyone is interested in these things I could throw them onto Google.

• Nationals 40-man Roster tracking document: maintained in a Text file locally. This is mostly useful to me because I keep track of major transactions here, and it’s a useful way for me to quickly grab acquisition dates for stuff.
• Top 100 prospect tracking: this used to be more comprehensive, but how basically just a collection of pundit top 100 prospect lists for the Minors with Nats guys highlighted. Maintained in a Text file locally. I update this every time someone publishes a “Top 100 prospects in the minors” link.
• Nats Minor League Rotations (now just season beginning and ending): maintained in a Text file locally. Only really updated a few times a year; opening day and closing day.
• Nats Trading Partners: Maintained in a text file locally, updated whenever we make a trade. Fun fact: this team has not made a SINGLE TRADE with Baltimore since 2001. We havn’t traded with Houston since 2007, Colorado since 2009. It’s crazy how we trade with some teams constantly but others almost never.
• Nats Catcher Depth Chart: Maintained in a text file locally, updated several times a year when we have Catcher movement/transactions.
• Nats Attendance and Home Opener stats: Maintained in a text file locally, used to do an annual post on the same topic.
• Nats Payroll worksheet: abandoned recently, Cots does a better job.
• Nats Options worksheet: abandonded recently, Roster Resource does a better job.

Plus for all of baseball i’ve got stuff like:

• MLB Franchise Financial Overview: this is an XLS I put together from some other sources I maintain to put all the core financial details of each MLB franchise in one place: It has the RSN revenue amounts and ranks, each team’s MSA rank and DMA rank for comparison, their Forbes valuation and 2023’s payroll to see who’s skimping and who is spending. It’s a subset of data on the Sports/Winner/City xls below but updated to 2023 figures.
• Sports/Winner/City: a huge spreadsheet that tracks all four major sports in the USA to track franchise movement, champions, most recent year each city won a title, who held multiple sports titles at once, etc.
• Manager roster: used to answer the question, “What percentage of managers were Catchers?” Answer, its not as many as you think. I updated it recently to support a Quora answer I was crafting.
• GM Rankings and Roster: difficult to keep updated, especially “ranking” GM/front offices, but its current to the latest moves.
• Player Demographics: annually updated when the opening day rosters are announced. When I get 2025’s figures i’ll do a quick post and throw it into Google Sheets.
• MLB Team Payroll worksheets: annually updated, then finds its way to other XLS here.
• Hall of Fame Roster: I manually maintain a HoF roster to be able to quickly filter by position.
• Sports Revenues Annually across major sports; updated when we get more macro level revenue figures for the sport.
• Realignment Scenario Worksheet: I did a post on this
• Verducci Effect worksheet: abandoned. In the macro his theory was disproven, though his point was not to apply his theory to every pitcher, just certain starters.
• Ball in Play Studies Worksheet: subject of a great 2012 post I did about the amount of time the ball is in play for major sports, probably needs updating.
• Opener Worksheet: a worksheet that attempts to show how a team could use a staff entirely made of relievers, to see if it could work. Short Answer: i don’t think it can work.
• MLB Team Playoff History: made up to show just how much parity there is in MLB. 66% of the teams in the league have made the playoffs in the last three years and every team in the league has made the playoffs in the last 8, as example stats.

If I was more diligent i’d have all these artifacts in the cloud instead of locally, so everyone could see. If anyone wants to see some of these artifacts I can always upload them somewhere.

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Anyway, hope you enjoy the main links above, which was the reason I posted this in the first place.

With the final two qualifying-offer attached FAs signing yesterday (Bregman and Pivetta), we’re doing a double duty post today; recapping the Qualifying Offer (QO hereafter) crop for this offseason, then publishing the now-finalized draft order for 2025.

First; QOs. We’ve come a long way since the first QO season, and we’ve come a long ways since the awful 2015 season when so many veteran FAs (our own Ian Desmond headlining) got royally screwed by the QO. So, how did the crop fare this year?

Here’s a link to my full QO worksheet with a lot more detail than the below table. It is in chronological order, so scroll to the bottom. But, here’s a summary table:

So, what’s the breakdown of the 13 QO-attached Free Agents this year?

• 4 Resigned with their old team, negating the QO and draft pick loss
• 9 signed with new teams, thus triggering draft pick compensation and IFA money loss
• 5 of the 13 in my opinion had some level of “impact” to their Free Agency by virtue of the QO attachment, even if its arguable:
• Nick Pivetta was probably the most impacted; he took $7.3M less in AAV than if he’d just signed the one year deal.
• One QO attached signing was ludicrous: Oakland/Sacramento signed a reliever Luis Severino to a 3yr/$67M basically to get the union off their backs for hoarding money. Honestly; someone needs to divest this team from its ownership.
• The Rich get richer: four of the signing teams were so far over payroll that they gave up two draft picks (Mets, Yankees, SF, Houston)
• 13 total draft picks were surrendered, which we’ll talk about in a bit in how it impacts a team like the Nationals.
• Boras represented 6 of the 13 players: 2 of the re-signed, 2 got the expected massive deals (Soto and Burns), but if i’m his remaining two clients (Alonso and Bregman) I’d be pretty underwhelmed by what happened this off-season. Alonso got just a 2year deal, Bregman a 3-year deal (albeit with opt outs each year). At least both can go back to FA soon w/ zero attachment.
• CAA Sports represented 4 of the 13: Fried and Adams did well, Walker got less in AAV than the QO but signed early so you can’t say the market played him. But they also represent Pivetta, who signed a deal worth $13.75/year AAV when he could have gotten a $21M QO for 2025. A mis-read by the player and the agent.

I continue to not be a fan of the QO system. I believe it artificially suppresses salaries for veteran FAs. I also believe FAs generally speaking are morons and continually misread their markets. Year after year we see players get screwed by this system.

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So, now that all the QO assigned players are signed, there’s no more draft pick gains and losses, and we now have a basically finalized 2025 draft order. I believe I have this correct and updated for all the moves, but here’s my working XLS of all the drops and adds for the first five rounds due to draft pick comp, comp picks, etc.

As it stands now, here’s how the Nats will be picking:

• 1st round: #1 overall
• 2nd round: #49 overall
• 3rd round: #80 overall: this moved up 9 spots thanks to lost picks
• 4th round: #111 overall:
• 5th round: #142 overall
• 6th round: #171 overall
• +30 every round subsequent

So, we’ll get three picks in the top 80 in 2025, which should add nicely to our existing slate of prospects.

Some random thoughts today on the Juan Soto deal.

15 years, $765million.

Just putting that out there. $51M/year AAV. If a WAR on the FA market is worth $9M (that’s the going rate from a few years back, i’ll bet its more now), then Soto will have to put up about 80 WAR in the next 15 years to “earn” this contract. Or maybe you can’t think about this contract in those terms, because he’ll sell a million jerseys in the next decade, and he’ll be the cornerstone of a franchise that should be able to buy its way to the playoffs each year. Or, perhaps in about 12 years time when Soto has around 700 career homers … the media blitz alone will be worth the money (he just finished his age 25 season and already has 200 homers, and he averages 35/year … do some quick math and factor in that he’s not even in peak slugging years yet and look out).

Honestly, i’m surprised he went with the Mets. He was such a perfect fit in the Bronx. Right attitude, perfect field, all the history, the pipeline of prospects in the DR, etc. But you don’t hire Scott Boras to take the second best offer (reportedly 16yrs, $760M).

I know we’ve made comments about how the Nats 2025 payroll could have absorbed all these contracts and still have room to spare. I think i’m more irritated they let a core of players go that could have carried the team into the next rebuild; Turner ($27M/year), Harper ($26M/year), Schwarber ($20M/year), basically the Phillies 1-2-3 hitters, all Ex nats. But, you take the good with the bad. We gambled on Strasburg and lost, but cut bait on Rendon and won. Nobody has a crystal ball. Was letting Harper go the right move? We offered Soto $440m, he said no, so we traded him for a cache of players that are (or are projecting to be) crucial to us being relevant again (MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell III, C.J. Abrams, James Wood, Jarlin Susana). Was that a good trade? Absolutely. Should this team have committed $51M/year to Soto? Hard to say, given the fact that we were competing against two teams that print money (NYY and LAD) and another team owned by a profligate hedge fund billionaire who could give a sh*t about the luxury Tax.

Draft lottery tomorrow; we project to pick 4th, could move up, will pick no worse than 10th I believe. There’s some decent names in the top 10 projecting already; once we know where we’re picking i’ll throw up a 2025 draft proffer to show what’s likely to be in the mix at our slot.

The World Series is over. The Yankees bungled away game 5, but let’s be honest, they would have struggled to win a game 6 with Yamamoto dealing and Rodon choking. The Dodgers were just the more powerful, complete team in a year when the NL was just far more stacked than the AL. If it had been the Mets, Phillies, or Padres in the WS instead of the Dodgers, I don’t think we’re looking at much of a different result.

So, now we’re to the off-season. I try to write content throughout the off-season as we hit major deadlines that impact our roster. So, based on the off-season calendar of events, here’s when we’ll try to write to.

• 10/31/24: Day after WS ends. All MLB FAs officially cut loose into a 5-day exclusive negotiating period that nobody bothers with anymore. The Nats’ 3 remaining FAs that we didn’t already release or trade are Corbin, Williams, and Barnes. We’ve already moved them to the “2025 Releases” tab on the Nats Big Board.
• 11/4/24: MLB options must be cleared we have one club option that should have already been declined on the .165-hitting Gallo, but that’ll happen soon.
• 11/4/24: All 60-day DL players must be returned to 40-man. We have 4 players on the 60-day DL (Thompson, Cavalli, Gray, Adon) but only 3 open spots on the 40-man. My guess is that the Nats decline Gallo’s option, then put all four on the roster for a 40/40 slate.
• 11/4/24: All MLFAs are officially declared. This is always slightly tough to track from the Big Board perspective. We have 11 2024-MLFAs still on minor league rosters as of the end of the season who one might think might automatically become FAs anew, but we really have no idea what kind of deal’s they’ve signed. There’s still a slew of 2023 MLFAs and a handful of older MLFAs still hanging around.
• 11/4/24: Furthermore, at this stage all 6-year players in the system are declared FAs as well, so this would mean anyone we have who was signed/drafted in 2018 ore before. I count nearly 20 active players we got in the 2018 Draft and another dozen or so 2017 IFA signings still active; are they all now cut loose? The 2020 covid year may factor in here and delay things, but i’m not sure how.
• When all three of these 11/4/24 deadlines hit, i’ll do a ton of cutting-and-pasting in the Big Board
• I’m not really into Awards posts anymore, but all throughout Nov and Dec there’s awards announced, finalists, etc.
• 11/18/24: Hall of Fame Ballot released: i’ll definitely do a post here like I always do, with my fake ballot listing who i’d vote for.
• 11/19/24: Qualifying Offer responses due in: I’ll wait until all the QOs are resolved to do a post-QO post, which may not happen until well into the spring. QOs drive draft picks, and once the draft order is finalized we’ll post about that too.
• 11/19/24: Rule5 protection Deadline; we’ll definitely write about this ahead of 11/19: we have a TON of decisions to make, and we have a relatively full 40-man roster right now.
• 11/22/24: Non-tender deadline; another interesting one for us, b/c it ties into the Rule5 somewhat (if we’re going to non-tender someone to make room for a new prospect, might as well do it before 11/19/24), but we also have a slew of arb-eligible players who may not actually be worth it.
• 12/10/24: Draft Lottery. By final record, we should be picking 4th. We’re guaranteed not to drop below 7th (I believe).
• 12/11/24: the actual Rule5 draft; if we gain or lose players will post here.

By this point, we’ll start seeing all the prospect ranking shops start to publish pre-2025 lists, which I love responding to. I’ve already got my draft prospect list going … i’ve got it built out to more than 80 players (which is crazy, b/c we only have like 140 minor leaguers right now) but I can’t wait to publish that list like I did last year.

So, once we get all the MLFA’s declared (here was the 2023 BA list of MLFA declarations officially) i’ll publish a note.

Shohei Ohtani added another achievement to his already lore-level career: he hit a walk-off grand slam for his 40th HR of the season to officially reach 40-40 status.

40-40 has only been done five other times in the history of the sport:

• Jose Canseco, who did it in his MVP 1988 season at the age of 23 likely before PEDs took over his narrative. He hit a homer and had two SBs in a Sept 23rd 9-8 game as the 104-win Oakland team was cruising into the playoffs. Doing this at the age of 23 sent shockwaves through the sport, but Canseco’s injury-riddled career never really offered another opportunity for him to get another 40/40 season; he only hit 40 homers in two other seasons, and never again came close to 40 steals.
• Barry Bonds, who did it in in 1996, in his age 31 season where he had a 188 OPS+ but somehow only finished 5th in MVP voting. He stole a bag in the final game of the season to get the achievement as his 68-win team was playing out the string. Bonds nearly did the feat again in 1997 (40/37) and then he entered his mid-30s PED era where he was much more of a slugger than a runner. It is only fitting that Bonds did the feat, considering that his father Bobby Bonds was the original pioneer for this feat, nearly doing it twice in his career in the 1970s.
• Alex Rodriguez did it in 1998 when he was just 22, hitting 42 homers and stealing 46 bags. It took a-Rod deep into September to get to 40/40 (game 153), getting his 40th homer for a middling Seattle team out of the playoffs. He added a couple more dongs and a couple more SBs to pad the stats. Like Canseco, doing this at age 22 seemed to really portend A-Rod repeating the feat for years to come, and indeed A-Rod became a home-run machine, hitting 40+ homers each season for basically the next decade, but he never came close to 40 SBs again despite being in his mid-20s prime.
• Our own Alfonso Soriano, who did it for our awful 2006 Washington Nationals team during his one season here. The team signed him to a 1yr/ $10M deal as kind of a pillow contract after he had an ignominious exit from NY and a couple of middling seasons in Texas, and the early news was dominated by the team’s fight with him over where he was going to play. He initially refused to head to the outfield but eventually grudgingly trotted out in spring training to take his left field spot, where he played the rest of his career. Once we got past that, he certainly delivered for us; he was our all star that year and made national news with his 40/40 achievement. Soriano had been threatening 40/40 for a while, nearly doing it for New York in 2002 (39/41) and again in 2003 (38/35). In fact, he should have gotten the achievement in that 2022 season: he sat at 39 hrs and 40 SBs for two weeks in September but couldn’t get that 40th homer. As soon as he signed a big money deal with the Cubs for 2007 (manager, Lou Pinella, same guy managing A-Rod in his 40/40 time), his SBs dropped off considerably and he never came close again.
• Ronald Acuna who went for 41/73 last season in his age 25 season, taking full advantage of the new pitching rules (which we’ll touch on later) to run up his SB count early and then getting his 40th homer deep into September to achieve the result. He hit his 40th in later september, right in the same game 153-154 range as most of the guys above, so he had some time to spare. Acuna nearly did the feat at age 22, going 41/37 in 2019, so this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Unfortunately for Acuna, he blew out his ACL in May of this year, so it may be some time before we see him challenge 40/40 again. Acuna is still in his prime, and seems like an easy threat for 40/40 for a few more years assuming he gets the confidence back in his knee.

I feel like there should have been a 40/40 season prior to 1988, but likely candidates like Bobby Bonds, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and a couple others just never quite made it there. Mantle never prioritized SBs and had a very bad knee injury early in his career, Bonds (as discussed above) nearly got there a couple times, Mays came close a couple times very early in his career in NY, Hank Aaron had a 44/31 season in the early 60s but was more of a steady power presence.

That leaves us with Ohtani, who as of this writing has exactly 40 hrs and 40 SBs, and achieved the plateau at least a month earlier than any of the 5 previous guys. Amazing. One just has to ask … does he have a shot at 50/50? Yeah, I think he does. He achieved this feat in game 129 of the season (126 that he played), which is amazing enough, but may just leave him enough time to do a 50/50 season.

Ohtani is averaging one HR every 14.45 PAs, and averaging one SB every 3.15 games. Assuming he plays every game the rest of the way (he’s played in 126 of the 129 games for the Dodgers, they have 33 games left, so I’ll assume he plays in 30 of those games, averaging 4.5 PAs per game).

• 30 games, 4.5PAs/game = 135 PAs left this season, divided by 1 hr/14.45 PAs = 9.3 homers projected the rest of the way.
• 30 games, one SB every 3.15 games = 9.5SBs projected the rest of the way.

So Ohtani statistically projects to a 49/49 season right now, rounding those numbers down. If he gets hot, or if he plays every game the rest of the way out maybe he gets enough additional looks to get to 50/50.

The new pitching rules have become a boon for stolen bases in the league, something that MLB knew quite well when they went to pitch clocks and limits on pickoff attempts. A few years ago the SB leaders were leading the league with 40-50 SBs. Already this year we have guys with 60 and its mid-august. And some of these guys have power: Elly De La Cruz leads the league with 60 SBs right now and he has 22 Homers to go with it and he’s in his 2nd pro season. Jose Ramirez isn’t exactly known for his speed, but he’s already sitting on a 30/30 season himself and could make a push for 40/40 with a hot September. So, hopefully we’ll see more of this going forward.

It should be exciting to see if he can get there.

If you had March 18th for a two-time Cy Young award-winning free agent to sign, then you won the Scott Boras 2024 off-season bingo game. Blake Snell, who had this stat line last year as a 30yr old: 14-9, 2.25 ERA, 1.189 whip, 234/99 K/BB in 180 innings/32 starts, finally signed just a couple weeks before the season starts, virtually guaranteeing that he misses time for his new club San Francisco. He gets a handsome pay day for 2024 on a short-term gig (2yrs/$62M) but fails to secure the long-term deal that he probably expected coming off a Cy Young winning age-30 season, and probably heads back into FA next off-season w/o the qualifying offer dragging him down.

This is a two-part post. One briefly about the draft, then one about the QO in general.

2024 Draft Order. With Snell’s signing, the 2024 draft order is (finally) finalized. The Giants give up a 3rd rounder to sign Snell, and with it barring any additional last minute penalties we know how things are going. Here’s a link to the 2024 Draft order worksheet (with sources and past years all in the same place), showing the original order and how the various teams picked up or lost picks. Quick summary of movement:

• Arizona, Baltimore: got supp-1st picks for having top-performing rookies
• Minnesota, Los Angeles Angels, Toronto, and Sandiego: picked up picks at various points for losing QO-attached FAs.
• St Louis, San Francisco, Los Angeles Dodgers, Houston: lost picks for signing the same QO-affiliated guys.

The Nats started with the #10 overall, then #48, #88, #118, #148 and so on. After all the movement, we now sit with #10, #44, #79, #108, #140, #169, #199 and so on. So we improved 4 spots in our 2nd rounder, 9 spots for our third rounder, 10 spots for the 4th rounder, and 9 spots for each round going forward.

Qualifying Offer recap for 2023 off-season

Ever since the Qualifying Offer system was introduced in 2012, i’ve hyper-tracked the players who have gotten tagged with them to gauge impact to their free agency. Here’s a Link to my Qualifying Offer Tracking xls. This past off season saw a massive drop in spending from teams, as typical big-money spenders sat out the off-season, were already maxed out and sitting at luxury tax penalties, or had serious revenue concerns with all the RSN issues we’ve been having. However, we also saw that Boras’ three QO-tagged agents sit and wait for months into the off-season before signing.

• Cody Bellinger: didn’t sign until 2/24 for 3yrs/$80M
• Matt Chapman: didn’t sign until 3/3 for 3yrs/$54M
• Snell as discussed; didn’t sign until 3/18 for 2yrs/$62M

As others have pointed out, that’s less guaranteed money for those three guys than some guys got by themselves this off-season. None of them get the kind of 9-figure career-setting payday they probably wanted, but at least all three get opt-outs in case they blow up 2024 to try it again.

Snell therefore is the first QO-assigned player who I think was really hampered by the tag in years. When it first came out, several mid-level free agents took the QO confidently thinking they’d get t heir money like they always did, and got hurt by it. In fact, probably the worst example of the QO screwing a player involved one of our own, Ian Desmond, who declined a 1yr $15.8M deal but couldn’t find anything on the market and ended up taking a 1yr $8M deal three weeks into spring training that year. Now, Desmond eventually got paid by Colorado in a weird contract that turned out to be awful for the team, and of course all these guys are millionaires, so i’m not crying too much for them, but this analysis is more about players getting (or not getting) their worth.

The two sides had their chance to get rid of the QO, but bailed on it in the last CBA negotiations because the owners tied an International Draft to it, which is kind of ridiculous on both sides. QOs impact just a handful of the 1200 union members every year … and owners are just being stupidly short-sighted if they demand an international draft so that they can save a couple million dollars a year. But that’s a topic for another day.

At least these QO Boras clients can go into next off-season knowing they can’t get the offer again, which will free up their markets considerably.

So, the participants for the 2023 Home run Derby have been named. We get:

• White Sox OF Luis Robert Jr.
• Mets 1B Pete Alonso
• Dodgers OF/INF Mookie Betts
• Rangers OF Adolis García
• Rays OF Randy Arozarena
• Blue Jays 1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
• Mariners OF Julio Rodríguez
• Orioles C Adley Rutschman

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So, who SHOULD we have in the derby? Lets look at this a few different ways. Here’s your current top 10 MLB home run leaders:

1. Shohei Ohtani (with 31 before the break, better than Judge’s 60+ pace last year)
2. Matt Olsen
3. Luis Robert Jr
4. Pete Alonso
5. Mookie Betts
6. Ozzie Albies
7. Jorge Soler
8. Kyle Schwarber
9. Adolis Garcia
10. Ronald Acuna

So, based on the current leaders, our HR derby field has just 4 of the current top 10 HR leaders.

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Here’s 2022’s HR leaders, since often the ASG is a small sample size of who’s been hot for a couple months:

1. Judge
2. Schwarber
3. Mike Trout
4. Alonso
5. Austin Riley
6. Yordan Alvarez
7. Christian Walker
8. Betts
9. Rowdy Tellez
10. Paul Goldschmidt

Just two of last year’s top 10 HR hitters are in the derby.

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Now, since its an All Star game, meant to feature (you know) All Stars, here’s the current active list of HR leaders in the sport:

1. Miguel Cabrera
2. Nelson Cruz
3. Giancarlo Stanton
4. Mike Trout
5. Joey Votto
6. Evan Longoria
7. Paul Goldschmidt
8. Nolan Arenado
9. Freddie Freeman
10. JD Martinez

Not one of these top 10 active HR hitters is in the derby.

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Here’s a list of active HR Derby winners:

• 2022: Juan Soto
• 2021: Alonso
• 2019: Alonso
• 2018: Bryce Harper
• 2017: Aaron Judge
• 2016: Stanton
• 2015 and before: all now retired

Soto opted out, Judge is hurt, and neither Stanton or Harper is earning an all-star nod.

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So, if you wanted to put together the absolute best possible HR derby roster, factoring all these lists in, here’s who you’d want. I’m including players we know are injured right now, but astericking them and then adding on players at the bottom until we get to 10.

1. Pete Alonso: 2-time winner, top10 in HRs both this year and last year. Has to be here.
2. Juan Soto: 2022 champ, really should be defending his title.
3. Shohei Ohtani: 2023 active leader, defending MVP, well on his way to being 2023 AL MVP, leads majors in ISO. Its ridiculous he’s not in the derby this year.
4. * Aaron Judge: 60+ homers last year, 2017 champ.
5. Giancarlo Stanton. Top-10 active HR leader, 2016 champ.
6. Kyle Schwarber: top10 in HRs both this year and last year, some of best pure power in game.
7. Mookie Betts: top10 in HRs both this year and last year, perennial MVP candidate.
8. * Mike Trout: future Hall of Famer who sits 4th in active HRs despite being only 31.
9. Ronald Acuna: The guy is on pace for a 40 hr, 80 steal season and is the likely NL MVP.
10. * Bryce Harper: the only remaining former HR derby champ not yet mentioned, on pace for 500 career homers.
11. Paul Goldschmidt: top 10 both in 2022 and active.
12. Luis Robert: #3 this season in both active HRs and ISO. Averaging 32 homers/162 games as a CF.
13. Matt Olsen: #2 this season in active HRs, #2 in the league in ISO. Huge power guy.

Now, if you want some wild-cards, i’d also accept these players just because:

• Julio Rodriguez: runner-up in 2022’s derby, last year’s ROY, one of the best young players in the game.
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr: runner-up in 2019, huge power, big personality.
• Randy Arozarena: exploded onto the scene, a showman.
• Fernando Tatis Jr: another high-profile young player we need to be showcasing.
• Austin Riley: power-first guy who finished top 10 last year.
• Corbin Carroll: 18 homers and 24 SBs at all star break, could press for 40/40.
• Elly De La Cruz: Talk about a debut.

Upon hearing the latest “1 year veteran FA lottery ticket” signing (Corey Dickerson), I paused to update the Big Board and slot in Dickerson into the starting lineup.

If the season opened today, here’s what we’re presumably putting out on the field:

CA	Ruiz, Keibert#
1B	Smith, Dominic*
2B	Garcia, Luis*
SS	Abrams, C.J.
3B	Candelario, Jeimer#
CF	Dickerson, Corey*
CF	Robles, Victor
RF	Thomas, Lane
DH	Meneses, Joey

This lineup includes now three off-season signings in Dominic Smith, Jeimer Candelario, and now Dickerson. All of them are getting non-trivial money to come here, and all of them are going to start.

Here’s the thing. The team lost 107 games last year. We (arguably) had internal players to cover the three positions these guys are now projected to play.

Why exactly did we sign them, instead of playing our prospects??

So, instead of allowing Joey Meneses , who lest we forget hit 13 homers in 65 games last year en route to a 165 OPS+ figure, to play 1B primarily, we’ve bought Smith and guaranteed him the spot (2022 slash line for Smith: .194/.276/.284.

Instead of seeing if Carter Kieboom can actually hold onto the job at 3B, or (gasp) maybe give a shot to (arguably) the best minor league hitter we had last year in Jake Alu, we now get to watch some random guy named Candelario (2022 slash line: .217 .272 .361).

Instead of rolling the dice in LF with a guy like Alex Call (or even positionally-flexible Meneses or Alu) or newly signed Stone Garrett, or maybe even to continue to give ABs to Yadiel Hernandez (who had a 108 OPS+ last year at the position) … we get Dickerson, who is now on his 7th team at the age of 34, has zero history here, and is literally the definition of journeyman.

Is this what we really want as a fan-base? To have these positions filled by guys we couldn’t pick out of a lineup, instead of seeing if we have internal options that can grow into the positions?

What’s the goal in 2023? To only lose 106 games? Do we really care if we go 55-107 again? All our top prospects are babies, aged 19-20 and playing in the lower minors. It’s going to take several years for these guys to matriculate. We KNOW 2023 is a lost season already. The ownership is in flux, the damn MASN thing still remains unresolved, and we have $65M tied up in two starters who may never pitch again.

I mean, what’s next? Do we re-sign Nelson Cruz to paper over Meneses yet again and relegate him to the bench? What’s more valuable to the team: 4 months of a 1yr FA on the off-chance he has a decent summer and can be flipped for some low-A reliever at the trade deadline, or to see if guys like Kieboom, Alu, Garrett, heck maybe even Jeter Downs can compete?

The GM Meetings are underway, now that the little matter of the 2022 World Series is settled (sorry Bryce, still no title for you). And thus the 2022-2023 off-season is underway. We’ll have our regular content (things like Rule-5 protection analysis/predictions, non-tender deadline predictions, and of course prospects), but first up is the Qualifying Offer!

The player’s union really wants to get rid of it; the owner’s don’t really care since it operates as yet another safeguard on their payrolls. This past summer the owners offered to get rid of the QO in return for an international draft … which in my mind would likely kill foreign baseball in a number of countries. The union thankfully said no thanks, so here we are.

Here’s the 14 players who got a QO:

Notice something about this list? They’re all Big market teams! Breakdown by team:

• Yankees: 2
• Mets: 3
• Red Sox: 2
• Dodgers: 2
• Giants: 2
• Cubs: 1
• Rangers: 1
• Braves: 1

I mean … there’s not one “mid-sized” or smaller market team here. its basically a list comprised of players from the largest markets in the land. By CMSA:

• New York: 1
• Los Angeles: 2
• Chicago: 4
• San Francisco: 5
• Boston: 6
• Dallas: 7
• Atlanta 10.

That missing #3 spot? Yeah that’d be us. Washington-Baltimore CMSA is now the 3rd largest in the area, having recently overtaken Chicago.

the larger point is this: these are the sport’s biggest and wealthiest teams basically set to gain a bunch of extra picks because they happen to have a bunch of highly paid players on their rosters.

Now that being said … there are some obvious QO candidates and some guys who just got tagged in one who… are kind of a surprise. Lets categorize:

Players who will reject the QO and will get FAR more in AAV:

• Judge, DeGrom, Turner, Bogarts,
• These are all going to be major FAs this off-season, getting 30M or more a year.

Players who will reject the QO and who will get a bit more in AAV but longer term deals:

• Swanson, Rodon: probably getting 5-6 years at $22-$25M per.
• Contreras is the #1 catcher available and likely gets a 4-5 year deal at a tick above the QO.

Players who may struggle to get an AAV contract matching the $19.65M QO

• Nimmo: interestingly he’s always had solid production but is “only” on a 1yr/$7M deal at the end of his arb years. Odd. He stepped up his power this year though and MLB trade rumors is projecting a 5yr $110M deal. We’ll see. Seems farfetched.
• Eovaldi: he was decent this year, but not earth shattering while making $17M AAV. I could see him getting like a 3-4 year deal at $20M AAV.
• Rizzo: 34yrs old, had a great 2022 in a lefty-hitter’s paradise in NY, but is 1B only. I can’t imagine him doing much better than his $16M AAV contract, and needs to be careful where he goes.
• Bassitt is a serviceable mid-rotation starter with solid stuff. He’s the kind of guy you get in the 15th round of your fantasy draft and you look like a genius. He only made $8.8M this year, but seems set to get a decently sized contract right above the QO.

Players who may want to take that QO

• Pederson: he blew it up in 2022, putting in a 144 OPS+ season after not really being effective at all the last few seasons. Is this enough for a team to sign him to a multi-year deal at $20M per? Doubt it: he clearly likes SF and he should take that QO to see if he can replicate 2022, then go back out on the market unencumbered in 2023.
• Perez: he went from years of ERAs in the 4s and 5s to a 2.73 ERA season in 2022. He played for just $4M this year; he’s almost a lock to accept the QO since no other team is going to give up a pick for a guy who might regress to the mean.
• Anderson: Like Perez, he went from a 4.81 ERA to a 2.57 ERA with the Dodgers, and after making just $8M this year seems a lock to take the QO and give it another go with Los Angeles.

I have not done a Baseball Movie themed post in years. I’ve thought about it … since we’ve had a couple of random baseball movies released since the origins of this blog 10+ years ago and i’ve seen some baseball-movie themed blog posts here and there, but never pulled the trigger.

But today, lo and behold, in my inbox from MLB was a link to vote in a crowd-sourced baseball movie bracket, and I just had to post it, and turn it into a blog post since i’m on a deathly conference call that I only have to pay attention to for a few minutes…

https://www.mlb.com/brackets/mlb-bleacher-features

I’m going to play through the entire bracket, talk about movie snubs, and arrive at the best baseball movie.

First off, here’s the baseball movies of note that I’m aware of from the pantheon that did not make the top 16 below. I’ve listed them in rough order of their own quality … and in the rough order that you may argue to replace ones from below.

• Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper playing Lou Gehrig. Probably more famous for its depiction of his retirement than of his playing ability, since reportedly Cooper was so unathletic they couldn’t even show him playing the sport.
• Bang the Drum Slowly: Great movie, not exactly rewatchable as a story about a catcher slowly dying, but full of significant, Oscar-pedigree actors.
• Damn Yankees: well, if you wanted to see a musical about Baseball, with balding middle aged actors singing in the locker room instead of playing the sport, this is your movie.
• 61*: Billy Crystal‘s tribute to the 1961 season and Roger Maris‘ pursuit of Babe Ruth‘s record. Barry Pepper and Thomas Jane as Maris and Mickey Mantle are great, and the movie is well done.
• Sugar, an inspirational story about a Dominican kid who washes out of the minors and struggles to find himself in America. Well regarded.
• The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings: little known Baseball comedies that do not rate and that i’ve never seen.
• Soul of the Game: Despite its topic, i’ve never seen it. But it does not fare well with the critics, which is too bad b/c a great movie about the Negro Leagues would be awesome to re-watch.
• Million Dollar Arm; Jon Hamm travels to India to recruit cricket players to play baseball. The only problem with this plot? Top Cricket players in India are paid millions of dollars a year.
• Cobb: Tommy Lee Jones plays a great turn-of-the-century racist bastard of a player in a movie that wasn’t really that re-watchable.
• Mr. Baseball: a movie that wouldn’t be made today, Tom Selleck faces culture shock playing in Japan. has not aged well, nor did Selleck’s baseball playing ability.
• Mr. 3000: Bernie Mac as a showman attempting a comeback with an unbelievable plot of a showy retired slugger having exactly one career hit over turned, leaving him with just 2,999 for his career.
• The Babe: Do you remember John Goodman‘s depiction of Babe Ruth fondly? I don’t.
• The Scout: Brendan Frasier was not terribly believable as a baseball player in a forgettable movie.
• Hustle: did you even know they made a movie about Pete Rose? I’ve never seen it.
• Fever Pitch, Summer Catch: just no.
• Little Big League, Air Bud: 7th Inning Fetch: formulaic Disney kids movies, barely behind the other formulaic Disney kids movies that did make the cut below.
• Major League II, Major League III, Bad News Bears sequels?: sequels never work, but Major League III was an abomination.
• The Benchwarmers, Hardball: awful, awful and more awful.

I’m sure i’m missing some; feel free to comment and tell me what baseball movies i’ve missed.

Of the above, I’d have probably replaced several of the below with the top movies from above … but nobody alive today is really rewatching Pride of the Yankees or any of the others listed, so maybe the snubs aren’t really snubs.

Ok lets get to it.

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Methodology: I have none. What makes for a “great baseball movie?” Is it great baseball action? Is it the movie itself, whether or not the baseball scenes work? Is it a believable plotline? Is it the Acting? Is it rewatchability? For me, its some nebulous combination of all of the above, which is why I knock out the movie with the most Oscar nominations in the first round. Everything below is IMHO, your opinions may vary.

Here’s the MLB Movie knockout round of 16 with my comments.

• #1 Field of Dreams vs #16 Angels in the Outfield: #1 v #16 seed is never going to be an upset, though Angels in the Outfield (despite some of Danny Glover‘s best work outside of the Lethal Weapon franchise) was never going to press it. Field of Dreams is solid, but has its flaws; we’ll be getting to them soon, but it moves on here. Winner: Field of Dreams.
• #9 The Natural vs #8 For the Love of the Game: See, right away we get a heavy weight matchup, and what more would you expect form the #8 vs #9 seed. For me, despite Kevin Costner‘s really amazing athletic performance as an aging MLB pitcher in For the Love of the Game, the movie is absolutely crippled by the crap “love story” that keeps interrupting the baseball story. Every scene with Kelly Preston is fast-forward material. Oh, and John C. Reilly as the catcher is so completely unbelievable that it distracts even from Costner’s performance. Meanwhile, there’s nothing more iconic than Roy Hobbs, and the Natural was never going to lose here. Winner: The Natural.
• #5 The Sandlot vs #12 The Perfect Game: legendary baseball film versus a feel-good story starring the same guy who was made famous for smoking Ganga on film; how do you choose here? The Sandlot transcends culture, with its famous lines like “You’re killing me Smalls” and its legendary scenes. Perhaps a movie starting Cheech will age better, but the Sandlot has to move on. Winner: The Sandlot.
• #4 The Bad News Bears vs #13 Rookie of the Year: I see what they’re doing here: all the little leaguers are in one quadrant, to ensure that a movie about kids is in the semis. Ok, fair enough. So, despite the Bad News Bears (which I HAVE to believe refers to the Walter Matthau version and not the 1995 remake with Billy Bob Thornton) not really aging that well (some of it is absolutely cringe worthy today), Rookie of the Year is awful. I mean … ok, suspend disbelief about the plot involving a kid who can suddenly throw 110mph for a bit; the ending is ridiculous. Bears move on. Winner: Bad News Bears
• #3 League of their Own vs #14 The Rookie: tough matchup here; Lets just say from the get-go that League is going to be tough to beat. I’ll give props to Dennis Quaid for his believable performance as Jim Morris (here’s his baseball-reference page, btw, MLB debut at 35), but the movie itself was typical Disney fluff (it was rated G). We’ll cover League in a moment; it clearly moves on here. Winner: League of their Own.
• #6 Eight Men Out vs #11 42: tough one here; I can see some people arguing with me. Eight Men Out was not only a fantastic baseball movie with well done baseball action scenes, it was a fabulous period piece about the 1919 Black Sox and the culture that led to their scandal. Technically “42” was also a period piece … a throwback to a transitional time in baseball’s history, and the actors involved reportedly struggled greatly to curse at Chadwick Boseman (who was amazing as a young Jackie Robinson before he became the superstar actor he eventually became). I’ll never forget the one scene in Cincinnati, where Pee Wee Reese comes up to Robinson and puts his arm around him… but Harrison Ford‘s awful acting performance and the lack of real rewatch ability (it is really difficult to watch a movie where they so freely use the n-word over and over) crushes “42” for me in the end. Winner: Eight Men Out
• #7 Major League vs #10 Trouble with the Curve: this is a blowout for me: Trouble with the Curve was an awful movie full of bad cliches and unbelievable scenes related to the way scouting and drafting occurs. It depended on hit-you-over-the-head racist tropes related to the discounting of the Latino hurler at the end. Amy Adams‘ performance was annoying throughout. Winner: Major League.
• #2 Moneyball vs #15 Bull Durham: I’m sorry, but this seeding is whack. This is a semi-final caliber matchup between two movies that are attempting to accomplish two drastically different things. You just cannot compare a legendary comedy versus a well-executed drama. That being said … despite Moneyball getting six Oscar nominations … it’s story (as written by author Michael Lewis) was a flawed retelling of the famous 2002 Oakland Athletics (baseball reference link here: https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/OAK/2002.shtml), spending almost zero time on the fact that the Athletics had three ace starters that year in Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito (who won the Cy Young), nor that the team’s lineup was anchored by Eric Chavez and Miguel Tejada (who won the MVP). Not to mention, the entire Jonah Hill character was made up, thanks to Paul DePodesta not wanting to appear in the film. Oh, and making Art Howe look like a stiff (both in the book and in the movie) was ridiculous. Moneyball may be the better “movie,” but baseball fans know it focuses on the wrong things that made the 2002 Oakland team winners. Winner: Bull Durham.

Quarter finals

• #1 Field of Dreams vs #9 The Natural. I’m already going for the upset here. Field of Dreams was a solid movie, which makes me cry at the end every time when Kevin Costner gets a catch with his dad. But the movie has huge plot issues, not the least of which is the fact that the amount of corn he plows over to make the field absolutely will not send his farm under. A baseball field takes somewhere between 3-5 acres to make, and one acre of corn fields produces less than 200 bushels of corn a year, and corn sells for about $5 a bushel. Do the math. Corn farmers in Iowa have thousands of acres, have million-dollar harvesters … and losing a couple of acres of land directly next to the house isn’t making that big of a difference. The story is fine, the period piece baseball is great, but the whole hidden voice as the plot driver makes no sense based on where the Costner character goes and ends up. Oh, and by the way, the James Earl Jones character is absolutely reacting if he’s sitting in Fenway Park and hears a damn voice. Winner: The Natural
• #5 The Sandlot vs #4 The Bad News Bears. Even though Bears has not aged well, I recently re-watched The Sandlot, and, well, it just isn’t that good. Its a fun piece about a bunch of neighborhood friends that’s less about baseball and more about just growing up and getting into hijinks. They barely play any actual baseball, and the step-dad’s actions are completely unbelievable (if you’re a baseball fan, and your non-athletic kid asks to play catch … that’s every dad’s DREAM; you drop what you’re doing and help, you don’t hem-and-haw about how you have a bunch of work). Oh, and some random neighbor just happens to have a baseball signed by the entire 1927 Yankees team sitting around and is willing to give it up to some punk kid who broke into his property?? Even in 1962, that would have been a priceless piece of memorabilia, let alone what its value would be now. Yeah right. Winner: Bad news Bears
• #3 League of their Own vs #6 Eight Men Out: two period pieces, one of which is pretty unique in sports history, that being the AAGPBL. Bill Simmons just did a rewatchable deep dive into this movie on his podcast called, fittingly, The Rewatchables, and its hard to find too much fault here. Eight Men Out, despite its excellent baseball scenes and reenactment of the 1919 scandal, does not match up and drags at times. Its an important movie of course, and D.B. Sweeney‘s baseball prowess is pretty impressive (he learned how to hit left-handed and look believable in order to play Shoeless Joe Jackson). Winner: League of their Own
• #7 Major League vs #15 Bull Durham: You see, again, this is a semi-finals matchup of quality. And, I see again what they’re doing here; putting all the major baseball comedies into one quadrant so that the final four basically has just one comedy. Fair enough. As much as I love both of these movies, there’s parts of Bull Durham that detract from the re-watchability. Its hard to watch some of the dramatic scenes that they put in between the baseball scenes. Tim Robbins is pretty darn good, as is Costner of course. But, Major League all-in-all is funnier. It’s a raunchier watch, more laugh out loud moments, and the first 30 minutes are just absolute gold, one liner after one liner. Winner: Major League

Semis:

• #9 The Natural versus #4 The Bad News Bears: This is no contest; the acting, the storyline, and the baseball performances in the Natural, especially out of Robert Redford as an aging slugger, are second to none. There’s some weird plot holes, and I struggle with the ending just a little bit (they couldn’t find a kid to play his son who couldn’t throw the ball like an actual baseball player??), but the run of aging-poorly scenes and themes from the 1976 Bad News Bears causes its demise. Coach freely cursing in front of his team? Sharing his beer with a minor? Kids Smoking cigarettes? A father slapping his son across the face in broad daylight? Yeah; just one of a few of the things that make this “kids movie” unshowable to your, you know, actual kids. Winner: The Natural
• #3 League of their Own vs #7 Major League. wow. Tough on here. I like both movies. I have yet to comment on Tom Hanks‘ amazing rendition of Jimmy Foxx in this movie, nor the great one-liners he gets in that transcend culture (“There’s no crying in baseball.”). Nor have we talked about the pretty solid performances of Rosie O’Donnell and Madonna and Lori Petty and especially Geena Davis as players. From a comedy perspective though, it can’t hold a candle to the raw in-your-face antics of Major League. League is a better ‘story’ and has as good of baseball action as they could muster, given that actresses don’t actually play baseball at any point in their lives. But Major League wins. Winner: Major League

Final:

#9 The Natural v #7 Major League. In some ways, this is impossible to gauge, because we’re talking about the best ever baseball Drama versus the best ever baseball comedy. But we’ll try:

• The Natural pros: great baseball action, great story, easily weaves in a number of solid dramatic actors with a completely believable set of baseball players. Amazing, transcendent ending, with the filmmaking to go with it.

• The Natural cons: Hobbs would have healed from his wound in a couple years tops; where the heck has he been for a decade and a half? And the girlfriend never went looking for him, ever? Even when she had his kid all those years? Really? He struck out Babe Ruth in front of a leading sportswriter for a national paper … and then nothing ever came of it? The Hollywood ending differs from the book; does that matter?

• Major League pros: Charlie Sheen could actually throw in the mid 80s. The baseball players were mostly believable. Pedro Ceranno‘s lines are amazing, as are the quotes from this movie (“that ball wouldn’t have been out of a lot of ball parks…”). As I’ve said before, the premise of the movie is hilarious and the first part of the movie, from the recruitment of players to spring training, is just gold.
  
• Major League cons: Tom Berenger is the lead, and he’s not a good actor, and he’s not a believable baseball player. Explain to me again why his ex-gf dumps her fiancee and her new life to return to him? What exactly did he do to win her back?

The Natural, at the end of the day, is the best combination of Movie and Baseball; it’s the winner.

Winner: The Natural

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By the way, If I was re-seeding this draw …. i’d seed it as follows:

1. The Natural (#9 here)
2. Major League (#7)
3. Bull Durham (#15)
4. Moneyball (#2)
5. League of Their Own (#3)
6. Field of Dreams (#1)
7. Eight Men Out (#6)
8. 42 (#11)
9. Bad news Bears (#4)
10. The Sandlot (#5)
11. For the Love of the Game (#8)
12. the Perfect Game (#12)
13. The Rookie (#14)
14. Trouble with the Curve (#10)
15. Rookie of the Year (#13)
16. Angels in the Outfield (#16)

So, I’ve got some serious problems with their rankings. If the seedings had gone this way, We’d have Moneyball in the semis.