MLB Bullets is still waiting

This isn’t worth a separate article and I put it in a comment yesterday, but congratulations to Cubs minor league coach Gary Van Tol, who was named the head coach at Boise State as the Broncos restart their baseball program in 2020 after a 40-year hiatus. Van Tol has coached in the Cubs system since 2008 and was the manager of the Boise Hawks in 2013 and 2014 as well as the manager of the Eugene Emeralds in 2015. (He was also nice enough to give me an interview once.) Van Tol had turned down chances to move up the Cubs minor league system because he wanted to stay near his family in Boise. Now he will get that chance at a Division I program.

• We still have nothing cooking on the Frigid Stove. Will Leitch looks at past offseasons to see when we can expect the Hot Stove to boil this year.
• Jeff Passan argues that there are four big reasons other than Giancarlo Stanton and Shohei Ohtani for why the offseason has been so quiet.
• Speaking of Stanton, he has a no-trade clause and while he hasn’t made any ultimatums, he’s reportedly made it clear that he wants to be traded to the Dodgers.
• So far, however, the Dodgers interest in Stanton is tepid because, in part, his salary would send the Dodgers way past the luxury tax threshold. Grant Brisbee can’t believe the Dodgers would let the luxury tax dissuade them from acquiring Stanton.
• The Marlins, for their part, are exerting some pressure of their own. They’ve made it clear to Stanton that if he doesn’t accept a trade, the Marlins will trade the rest of the team out from under him.
• Evan Drellich reports that the Red Sox are a “longshot” to acquire Stanton.
• David Schoenfield has the rundown on Japanese star Shohei Ohtani, just in case for some reason you don’t know all about him by now. But he also has some details on the posting process and negotiations that might be unfamiliar.
• Jon Paul Morosi has the eight teams most likely to sign Ohtani. Yes, the Cubs are on the list, but they aren’t at the top. The Twins are also on the list and from just a baseball perspective, I still think the Twins make the most sense. They probably don’t make the most sense when you throw in the non-baseball factors, however.
• Jorge L. Ortiz has six teams that fit Ohtani. The Cubs are on his list (although at the bottom) and the Twins aren’t. But the Rays are.
• The Rangers are on everyone’s list for Ohtani and Texas GM Jon Daniels has a plan for luring him to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex.
• Scott Boras, who is not Ohtani’s agent, blasted MLB for the rules that are limiting how much Ohtani can make in MLB.
• Manny Randhawa has a list of prominent Japanese players in MLB throughout history. Kosuke Fukudome was unfairly excluded.
• Mike Axisa has some top candidates to be traded this winter who aren’t named Giancarlo Stanton.
• Anthony Castrovince has ten starting pitchers who could get dealt this winter.
• One of those pitchers is the Braves Julio Teheran, who had a down season in 2017. Or did he? Sam Miller looks at the numbers around Teheran’s season and says it depends on which numbers you trust and there are no clear answers.
• Jeff Sullivan thinks the best available reliever this winter may come from Japan. Or “back from Japan.” Dennis Sarfate, who last pitched for the Orioles almost a decade ago, has been a dominating closer for the SoftBank Hawks the past four years. If you saw a guy in Triple-A with his stuff and those numbers, you’d wonder why they weren’t in the majors. And NPB is better than Triple-A.
• The Yankees still don’t have a manager and now plan to interview the recently-retired Carlos Beltran. I don’t know what’s going on here and Beltran might make a great manager one day. But this move reeks of an owner saying “We need a bigger name!”
• Jorge L. Ortiz wonders what type of manager Beltran would make and lists the other candidates for the Yankees job.
• Mike Axisa has a general rundown of the state of the Yankees managerial search.
• Jonathan Mayo has a preview of the Rule 5 draft and the best prospects available.
• The Mariners have brought back Hisashi Iwakuma on a minor-league deal.
• Every year there is some player caught in DFA Groundhog Day. Last year it was David Rollins. This year, Micah Johnson has already been claimed off waivers three times in the past month. Johnson is now a Ray. For now.
• Commissioner Rob Manfred revealed that former Braves GM John Coppolella was placed on the permanently ineligible list because he refused to cooperate with MLB investigation of the Braves rule-breaking. Craig Calcaterra thinks from a legal standpoint, at least, that was probably wise of Coppolella.
• A wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the widow of former Tigers pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych has been dismissed.
• Bradley Woodrum wants us to rethink the spikes of offense in major league history that we attribute to steroids or a “juiced” baseball and rather think of them as the natural evolution of the game as hitters and pitchers adjust.
• The pitch clock is coming but as some have noted, many times it is the batter who is slowing down the game. Jeff Sullivan looks at the Astros’ Marwin Gonzalez to determine what is taking him so long?
• Joe Posnanski has an essay on the Hall of Fame candidacy of Omar Vizquel and the difference between Luis Aparicio and Vizquel.
• The Mariners have won the “Green Glove” Award for the team that did the most recycling in 2017.
• And finally, here’s the photo that made the hearts of easily-excited Cubs fans go pitter-patter. Kris Bryant decided to check out a Vegas Golden Knights hockey game and apparently he brought a magical gnome along with him. Or at least a lumberjack that looks suspiciously like Bryce Harper. You don’t think . . . maybe it is Bryce Harper? Wearing the same uniform as Kris Bryant?

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