MLB Bullets Just Hit The Jackpot

In contract negotiations with the Angels, Mike Trout asked for all of Orange County. The Angels countered by just offering him all of Anaheim, including Disneyland.

I'm willing to give Al the hometown discount and sign for only half of what Cabrera got.

• The Tigers and Miguel Cabrera have reportedly agreed to a ten year deal that will pay him $292 million. The two-time MVP will will be under Tigers control until he's 41.
• Buster Olney says that rival executives in the game are "appalled" and "disgusted" by the Tigers decision to give Cabrera, who turns 31 next month, a ten-year deal.
• Jim Bowden in an ESPN insider article ($) says the timing of the extension is "bizarre" since Cabrera was already under team control for the next two seasons. He feels this is an overreaction to the breakdown in negotiations with Max Scherzer. Also, it means that Scherzer will not be pitching for the Tigers in 2015.
• Now I'm going to shamelessly plug a colleague, but only because he deserves it. Charlie Wilmoth of SB Nation's own "Bucs Dugout" has written a book called Dry Land: Winning After 20 Years At Sea With The Pittsburgh Pirates. For all the talk of Cubs misery, this team has never gone 20 years without a winning season. In fact, no team other than the Pirates has. The remaining Pirates fans deserve nothing but our respect for sticking with their team through all those years. You can read an excerpt from the book here.
• I went eleven years as a Cubs fan before I experienced my first Cubs winning season.
• Joe Lemire has a look at the ROC, or the "Replay Operations Center" in New York.
• Will Leitch thinks the replay system is a bit of overkill for what will really be only a handful of overturned calls each season. He also thinks people will still be unhappy when they realize the new system can't deliver what it promises.
• And here's a preview of the other rules change for 2014, which bans some, but not all, home plate collisions.
• If you're a regular reader of Bill Plaschke in the Los Angeles Times, my first question would be why? But if you are, you know that Plaschke is quite unhappy writing about sports, having missed his true calling of being a Puritan minister in colonial New England, sitting in judgement of his congregation and deciding which of them are going to heaven and which are going somewhere else. So his latest column is about how Yasiel Puig is going somewhere else.
• And Craig Calcaterra's job is to be the town witch. He's disgusted by the "Puig is a clubhouse cancer" narrative that Plaschke is pushing. He admits Puig has some maturity issues, but says Plaschke ought to have at least been able to get someone on the Dodgers to anonymously slam Puig if he was really a problem in the clubhouse.
• Gabe Kapler thinks that it will take a village to help Puig gain some maturity. He has some ideas about how the whole organization needs to help Puig become not only a better ballplayer, but a better person.
• Town Witch Calcaterra isn't going to stop repeating his heresy by only going after Plaschke. He wonders how Jane Leavy can say with a straight face that all PED users need to be kept out of Cooperstown when her own biography of Mickey Mantle chronicled his extensive use of amphetamines.
• Tony Clark was "overwhelmingly" approved as the new head of the MLBPA.
• Miguel Cabrera wasn't the only player to get an extension over the past two days. Starling Marte signed a new six-year, $31 million deal, or essentially just a little more than what Cabrera will make over one season.
• The big offseason signing by Milwaukee is now official: "Hank the Ballpup" is officially a Brewer.
• Ken Rosenthal wants to know why Jon Lester hasn't signed an extension with the Red Sox yet.
• Maybe they're too busy designing the BEST JACKETS EVER for their trip to the White House.
• Anthony Castrovince thinks that Grady Sizemore, not Jackie Bradley Jr., gives the Red Sox the best chance to win now. At least until Sizemore's body breaks down.
• Tom Verducci profiles the career of Masahiro Tanaka and the incredible number of pitches he's thrown before coming to the Yankees.
• After Randy Wolf said "Thanks, but no thanks" to the Mariners offer for him to begin the season in their starting rotation (with the caveat that they could cut him anytime in the first 45 days and owe him nothing more on his contract), Seattle inked Chris Young to a one-year deal. That's the pitcher Chris Young and not the outfielder for the Mets. At least I think he's playing for the Mets these days. Both Chris Youngs move around a lot.
• Ken Rosenthal talked to Randy Wolf and Wolf said that he turned the deal down because he thought the Mariners were backing out of a fairly-negotiated deal. C.J. Nitkowski also points out the absurdity of giving Robinson Cano $240 million and then trying to get out of a deal to pay Randy Wolf $1 million.
• Rany Jazayerli thinks it's in both Nick Franklin's and Seattle's best interest to trade Franklin now.
• The Angels cut Joe Blanton and will eat the $8.5 million left on his contract.
• David Aardsma just signed a minor-league deal with the Cardinals. Now about those things he wrote about his new teammate Jhonny Peralta. . .
• Jon Heyman has always been one of the sportswriters most critical of the drug users in baseball. In an act of utter hypocrisy, he gets completely stoned and writes that the Kansas City Royals are going to the World Series this year.
• But seriously, Albert Chen does point out that it could be a good season in KC this year. And while I do think it's a serious stretch to see the Royals in the Series this season, I am being too harsh on a team that could sneak into its first playoff appearance since 1985. I do think they're a .500 team though.
• Pat Jordan has a long and detailed profile of Rays pitcher (and former Cubs farmhand) Chris Archer. He's certainly has an interesting background and has a positive outlook on it.
• Clayton Kershaw will miss the Dodgers US opener with muscle inflammation. Doesn't sound too serious, but you don't mess with the meal ticket.
• This story is from this week's ESPN The Magazine on Theo Epstein, the Cubs and the importance of patience. Everything is going according to plan.
• Ted Turner talks about the team he once owned and says he wouldn't move the Braves out of Atlanta.
• The current state of Tiger Stadium and the group of volunteers that maintain the House That Cobb Built. They're violating trespassing laws every time they do so too, getting harassed by the police for mowing lawns, picking up trash and pulling weeds.

All baseball fans can download a free copy of #SABR's Emerald Guide to Baseball 2014, complete record of 2013 season: http://t.co/OGFlmcohzk

— sabr (@sabr) March 27, 2014

• Wendy Thurm looks at the broadcasting situations for the Padres, Dodgers and Astros and the issues getting their games to the fans. The Padres have finally solved their issues, although it only took two seasons.
• Maybe this is important and maybe it isn't. But in light of the Astros inability to get CSN Houston carried by most television content providers, they're hinting that they may ask MLB to lift the blackout of the broadcast of their games on Extra Innings and MLB.tv. The Astros are in a weird situation, but maybe this is the first step to ending the blackouts. Or maybe it isn't.
• Recently unearthed footage shows Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Yankees. The game is from June 1, 1925, which just happened to be the first game of Gehrig's 2,130 consecutive-game streak.
• Finally, if you're a fan of the knuckleball, Little League baseball or great human interest stories, you're probably already familiar with Chelsea Baker, who learned to throw a knuckleball at age 7 from the late Joe Niekro. "The Knuckleball Princess," as she's known in Japan, is now a high school junior pitching for her very good varsity baseball team. How's she doing? She's 2-0 with an 0.78 ERA.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.