MLB Bullets wonders what a Sod Poodle is

Good morning baseball fans.

• Tom Verducci has a piece on the career of free agent Bryce Harper and where he stands on the edge of free agency, ten years after Verducci wrote his famous piece on the then 16-year-old phenom.
• Jonah Keri looks at the Nationals offseason plans and what do they do if Harper leaves?
• The Giants are one team who have been linked with Harper but Alex Pavlovic thinks San Francisco is more likely to spend the money on several players instead and he offers some possibilities.
• Richard Justice has seven teams that are likely to break the bank this offseason. The Giants are indeed on the list.
• In case you missed all the other similar lists that I’ve linked to in recent columns, Gabe Lacques has a ranking of the top 57 free agents this winter.
• Dodgers pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu accepted the team’s qualifying offer of $17.9 million. The other six players tendered a qualifying offer turned it down and are now free agents.
• Matt Kelly gives five reasons the Yankees should sign free agent Daniel Murphy.
• There won’t just be free agent signings this winter, there should also be several trades. So R.J. Anderson has some of the top players at each position available for trade offers.
• At the moment, the player most likely to be dealt is Mariners pitcher James Paxton.
• Jeff Sullivan explains what any team trading for James Paxton can expect from him. Something good.
• Whitney McIntosh looks at seven potential trade partners with the Mariners for Paxton.
• The Phillies are reportedly “shopping the hell” out of first baseman Carlos Santana.
• Mike Petriello looks at four possible trade destinations for Santana and argues that despite a down year, Santana is still a valuable player.
• The White Sox are reportedly shopping outfielder Avisail Garcia. Good luck with that.
• The Rookie of the Year Award was announced on Monday and David Schoenfield ranks the top three vote getters in each league by how good a career each one will likely have. Schoenfield thinks NL winner Ronald Acuna Jr. is destined to be the best player in the National League in the near future. So yeah, he’s number one.
• Jeff Passan voted for winner Shohei Ohtani of AL Rookie of the Year and he heard it from angry Yankees fans. (Like 24 of 29 other voters didn’t agree with him?) Anyway, Passan used their insults to write a delightful column where he systematically takes apart their dumb arguments. I love the way he starts the piece: “Look, it brings me no pleasure to do this. OK. That’s a lie. It brings me great pleasure to do this.”
• Jonathan Mayo lists the top candidates for 2019 Rookie of the Year honors.
• Grant Brisbee explains why the Manager of the Year award is broken and can’t possibly be fixed. Basically, no one can determine how much of a team’s success is because of the manager, so people just vote for the team that most exceeded preseason expectations.
• Ben Lindbergh has another column breaking down the Hall of Fame case for recently-retired catcher/first baseman Joe Mauer.
• MLB is investigating allegations of racist comments and discrimination against top Mariners officials made by former Mariners director of high performance Lorena Martin.
• The MLB owners meetings are today and tomorrow and Whitney McIntosh has a preview of what’s likely to happen. We very well could see a pitch clock implemented this week. (Yes, that’s a good thing.)
• Jeff Passan also revealed that MLB is planning to start an elite summer league for the top high school players in the country. This is an attempt to combat the “pay for play” leagues like Perfect Game and make the game more affordable for young players. Of course, by the time anyone is good enough to play in this MLB league, they’ve probably already given Perfect Game several thousand dollars, but the plan is to expand this MLB-sponsored league eventually.
• The Padres new Double-A affiliate will be known as the Amarillo Sod Poodles! Ok then. Actually, I kind of wish they played in a league with a Cubs affiliate. I could easily riff of that name in the Minor League Wrap.
• Whitney McIntosh has some more thoughts on the Sod Poodles. She’s all for wearing a Sod Poodles T-Shirt.
• The Marlins announced what they’re putting into the space that was previously occupied by the greatest piece of public art of the 21st Century. A bar/picnic area. Because the one thing that Marlins Park needed was a space where more fans could be. Do they know that they LSU Tigers baseball team outdrew the Marlins on a per-game basis?
• Phillies manager Gabe Kapler lost his home in the fires around Malibu, California. Kapler wasn’t there, but his ex-wife and two sons were there. All three got out safely. I’m hundreds of miles from both of the two major California wildfires, but I can tell you that the air is still thick with smoke where I am. I can’t imagine what kind of hell it is closer to the flames.
• Sam Miller tackles one of the most pressing issues facing the game today: Why are major league managers so short? Someone has to do the hard-hitting journalism that everyone else is scared to address. (It’s actually a pretty fun and reasonably serious article, so my sarcasm is meant in that spirit. Go read it.)
• If you like articles on the physics of baseball, David Kagan explains the physics behind a wobbly fly ball.
• The Cardinals will be wearing their throwback “victory blue” jerseys from the 1980s at select games in 2019. So they’re being ironic?
• Daisuke Matsuzaka was named “Comeback Player of the Year” in NPB. I bet you forgot about him.
• As long as we are in Japan, Dodgers pitcher Kenta Maeda went on a Japanese TV broadcast of the Japan Series to pay tribute to his former teammate Takahiro Arai, who recently announced his retirement. But he did so while wearing a t-shirt that listed Arai’s career errors, strikeouts and grounded into double plays.
• And finally, some baseball conventions are more interesting than others, but I don’t think any can match the sheer lunacy of the MLB Mascot Conference, currently happening in Kansas City. I’m not seeing Clark. I wonder if he’s been traded already?

“Excelsior!” ‘Nuff said.