Yankees are going to have PTSD over any big name acquisition... who was the last big name star that got better once he got to the Yankees? Coupled with them missing out on some guys like David Ortiz, every Yankees fan is going to be skeptical that their shiny new toy is going to pay off.
I have zero ill will toward Gerrit Cole. I wish him the best. I hope he finishes 2nd behind JV for the Cy Young. I hope he dominates the league for the most part. And I hope we kick his ass. I want the Astros to beat the best. All the best, Gerrit.
The Yankees had incredible luck on the offensive side last year... I would not be shocked if they have some back slide. Judge hasn't been healthy the last two seasons and is entering his late 20 with a big body. Stanton is 30, coming off a bad injury and he also is a very large man at 6'6" and 250 lbs. LaMahieu played way above what he has in the past and did so at 31..... Urshela has never hit like he did last year, not even remotely close and he did that at close to 30... Pitching wise...... Tanaka hasn't been good in 3-4 years Happ is another mediocre pitcher with an era well in the 4's Paxson is chronically injured and wasn't anything more than a #3 starter last year. Severino is done for the year and possibly more. German had a FIP of 4.80 last year and when he isn't beating women, hasn't pitched in a long time. Sabathia and his innings are gone..... They do have arguably the best pitcher in the world in Cole but i have seen a lot of projections having him comeback down to earth some, and we will also need to see how he adapts to NY. Their bullpen should be pretty good..... The Yankees have a chance to be a 110 win team and win the World Series, but a little deeper looks shows some holes. They do have the prospects to go out and make a trade for an ace or a top bat if they want to. They likely have less money to spend than people think with so much money tied up in Stanton and Cole.
There's very little chance Cole will have a better season... ever... than what he had last year. Lost in the game 7 loss, along with the cheating scandal, is the recap that Cole had truly one of the most dominant seasons in modern memory.
He supposedly never got over his personal issues. It is too bad. I figured he would attempt Japan or South Korea. I hope he finds peace.
Not sure which is the right thread, but MLbTR posted Luhnow’s trade history: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/03/gm-trade-history-jeff-luhnow.html Wins: Musgrove for Happ Devenski for Myers Peacock for Lowrie Hader/Fisher for Norris Moran/Marisnick/Martes/Cameron for Cosart Alvarez for Fields Verlander for Perez/Cameron/Rogers Cole for Moran/Musgrove/Martin/Feliz Losses: Grossman for Wandy Gomez for Hader/Houser/Santana/Phillips Sneed for Villar Bailey for Laureano Interesting: Lowrie for Melancon Fowler for Lyles Valbuena for Fowler Kazmir for Nottingham/Mengden Giles for Velasquez McCann for Abreu/Guzman Pressly for Celestino/Alcala Osuna for Giles Diaz for Thornton TBD: Santana/Adolph for Davis Biagini for Fisher Greinke for Bukauskas/Martin/Beer/Rojas Taylor/Corona for Marisnick Pruitt for Stevenson/Battenfield
Evan Gattis officially announced his retirement. Thanks for your time in Houston. I'll always remember the game 7 hr in the ALCS to break the goose egg.
Spoiler When word gets around among his new colleagues that he used to play baseball, Jio Mier knows now to brace for some variation of two questions. “What are you doing here?” “Dude, you were drafted before Mike Trout?” Either query is a dead giveaway that the person did some basic investigating. A simple Google search reveals that Mier, 29, received a $1.358 million signing bonus from the Houston Astros in 2009. A little more digging recalls one of the many stories about his draft, infamous for being the one in which Mike Trout fell to the 25th overall pick. “The Googling is what gets me every time,” Mier said. Mier shrugs it off, especially the Trout part. Yes, he was a first-round pick, 21st overall, and the Astros paid him a handsome sum to forego his verbal commitment to USC. And yes, he was one of those 24 players selected before Trout and the fifth-highest drafted of six among that group who failed to reach the majors. These are facts nobody can dispute, facts by which he is remembered in Houston. But Mier isn’t ashamed of his baseball career nor does he make any excuses for why it didn’t pan out the way the Astros hoped when they made him the first high school shortstop selected in the 2009 draft. Life goes on, and after a decade of toiling in the minors and independent ball, the one-time Baseball America Top 100 prospect has moved on to the next phase of his life. In November, Mier became a deputy for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in Southern California. He works in the department’s Custody Operations Command, which is a cool-sounding way of saying he works in the jails system, the first assignment for any new deputy in the county. Eventually, he will shift to patrol. “When I decided to retire from baseball, I was looking at some different paths that I wanted to get into. I’ve always loved serving others and just helping out other people any way I can, whether it was to coach or become an agent or get into law enforcement,” Mier said. “I just really felt like law enforcement was calling my name. I have a brother who’s also in law enforcement, so that helped out a lot, seeing what he does and how much he loves the job.” Mier’s 35-year-old brother, Jessie, a former minor leaguer with the Dodgers, also started out working in the jails and is now on patrol. The county has three jails. Mier works at the Theo Lacy Facility in Orange, which is just down the street from Angel Stadium in Anaheim. At Theo Lacy, Mier and his partners are tasked with making sure things run smoothly. Their job is to ensure everyone at the maximum security jail is safe, that the inmates are fed, that they get their outdoor recreational time and make it to their meetings with attorneys and to their court hearings. Mier works 12-hour graveyard shifts (6:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.) three or four days a week. The aforementioned duties make up a typical day, at least. Considering the threat of a virus outbreak in a setting as populated as a prison, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department implemented new measures at Theo Lacy and its other facilities in March to combat COVID-19. According to the department’s web site, every person who enters the jail has their temperature taken, new inmates are screened for symptoms and any inmate who shows symptoms is isolated from the general jail population. Public visitations have been suspended, and court hearings occur virtually. Mier lives with his wife, Kristen, and their one-year-old son, Jackson, in Rancho Cucamonga, about a 40-minute drive from Theo Lacy and about a 20-minute drive from his hometown of Pomona. Though he hasn’t officially filed the paperwork, he considers himself retired from playing baseball. He last played in 2018, for Toros de Tijuana of the Mexican League, his second stint with the team. He’s fielded calls from Mexican League teams since, most recently in January, to which he’s said thanks but no thanks. “It was time,” he said. “Obviously, I was out of the States after 2017, when I was in Las Vegas with the Mets. I didn’t get any offers, so I went down to Mexico and I loved it. It was a great time. But I had kind of known that it was probably going to be my last year. “I just wanted to move on. Baseball wasn’t what it used to be for me. My wife was pregnant at the time. I was tired of being away from home and living on the road and kind of living my life six months at a time. … I wanted something more stable. I could’ve kept playing and obviously I could’ve been making money, but I was tired of playing baseball for the wrong reasons at that point. I just wanted something that was going to make me happy.” Mier found that in law enforcement. He applied to the sheriff’s department in Jan. 2019, passed the required written and physical tests, a background check and a formal interview. Later came 29 weeks in the academy, from which he graduated in November. A year and a half since he last played, Mier said he doesn’t miss baseball but does miss the camaraderie of being part of a clubhouse. The only bat he’s picked up since his last game is the plastic toy bat he got his son. “I absolutely love what I’m doing now,” he said. “It’s one of the most fun, rewarding things that I get to do.” For Mier, having some distance from his baseball career has lent itself to plenty of reflection. He was 18 when he started pro ball, so it’s not a stretch to say he grew up in the minor leagues. In retrospect, how does he look back on his career? “You can answer that two different ways,” he said. “On one side, I didn’t do the ultimate goal, right? I never made the big leagues. Any professional player, really any young kid who wants to play baseball, that’s their goal. And that was my goal. That was obviously something that didn’t happen. However you look at it, it’s going to be a fail to anybody that you ask, right? “For me, I’ve kind of been just a very positive person internally, maybe not baseball-wise. But I look at what baseball has been able to do for me and my family. I played 10 great years, 10 years that were really, really tough mentally. But for what baseball’s been able to do for me and afford me and my family, it’s something that I will always be grateful for. “It ultimately was going to set me up for whatever my next career was. And that’s for any player. There are so many things that baseball teaches you and there are so many things that the minor leagues teach you. I was extremely blessed to have a lot of great coaches that taught me a lot of things on what it means to become a man. Those are the things I took away from baseball. Yeah, I never made it, and yeah, it sucked. It hurt for a while, but I got long over that. But baseball gave me everything and I can never downplay that.” Even a cursory examination of Mier’s minor league stats makes it obvious why he never made it beyond Triple A. Quite simply, he didn’t hit. In more than 3,300 minor league plate appearances, he had a .664 OPS. He was a major league-caliber defender, but that wasn’t enough. Draftees who make it seven minor league seasons without being added to the 40-man roster reach minor league free agency, which Mier did following the 2015 season, his third in Double A. He caught on with the Blue Jays on a minor league deal and spent the 2016 season in Triple A. The next year, it was the Mexican League and then a minor league deal with the Mets. Then he was back to the Mexican League, his last hurrah. When he reflects, Mier chooses to regard his path as the path he was supposed to take. If not for his struggles in baseball, he’s not sure the person he would be now. When he thinks about the fact that he didn’t accomplish his goal of reaching the majors, his mind drifts to the men behind the Astros’ decision to draft him back in 2009: scouting director Bobby Heck, general manager Ed Wade, crosschecker David Post and scout Doug Deutsch. “Those are the guys that I let down the most,” Mier said. “I didn’t let down my family. I didn’t let down myself. Those are the guys who believed in me, (so did) all of my coaching staffs. Those are the guys who, even toward later in my career, I wanted to make it for them, just to kind of say I knew they didn’t get it wrong, but it just didn’t work out.” Mier said he still loves the game but he no longer derives joy from the idea of playing it. His brother plays on the sheriff department’s baseball team and has invited him to join, overtures he has declined. But he also recognizes that his baseball life will trail him throughout his new career. For all the partners in the department who have asked him about baseball already, there figure to be many more in the future. “Some people care and they want to talk about it, and then some people couldn’t care less, like ‘Yeah, whatever. You’re here now,’ which is what I always say,” Mier said. “They’re like, ‘Dude, you’re a baseball player?’ I’m like, ‘No. I’m a deputy.’ Because that’s just what it is. I used to play, but that’s long gone.”
Mier was a high upside guy. His body type indicated he would grow into more power, and that never materialized. Roids would have made him a star.
This is what Drayton is up to these days... hoping he can help rebuild Texas better he can rebuild the state. Spoiler: Drayton Whereabouts
