MLB Bullets takes a break for the holidays

It’s been Christmas since I last spoke to you and not much of anything got done in the baseball world. Not much got done by me either. You may have to get used to that.

This is a site about a Chicago baseball team. We never said which one. (I’m lying, Of course we said which one. But how many times can anyone say “Theo says there is no money in the budget”?)

• The White Sox have agreed to a one-year, $12 million deal with DH Edwin Encarnacion. There’s an additional team option for 2021 for the same amount.
• Dan Szymborski projects out what the White Sox can expect from Encarnacion.
• R.J. Anderson thinks that if the White Sox really consider themselves contenders in 2020, then they can’t keep their top prospects in the minors until after the “Super-Two” deadline.
• Matt Kelly has five pitchers who may be available in trade who could be excellent “buy-low” candidates. I’d love to “buy-low” on Corbin Burnes, but I doubt the Brewers would trade him to the Cubs at any kind of discount.
• The Reds are negotiating with Japanese outfielder Shogo Akiyama. The Cubs were rumored to be interested in Akiyama, but there’s no money in the budget, of course.
• David Schoenfield names an “All-Decade” team for the 2010s and every other decade since 1900 as well.
• Nineteen “bonkers” statistics that defined the 2019 season.
• Sam Miller has nine things he learned about baseball in 2019 that surprised him. I just learned about that bizarre Cubs/Cardinals brawl from 1974 this year as well.
• Will Leitch, who also does some film criticism on the side, lists his 25 best baseball movies. I don’t agree with his list, but I do pass it on.
• I don’t normally pass on non-baseball stories, but since the news is so light today (and what do I care?), I thought I’d pass on this piece by Lydia Tomkiw about the real history of the Christmas classic “The Carol of the Bells.” It’s actually a Ukrainian folk piece about New Years and like almost everything in Ukraine, it has a sad and bloody history,
• Emma Baccellieri has the weirdest baseball moments of the past decade. Like when Jean Segura stole first base.
• But that doesn’t compare to one of the weirdest moments of 1979 when catcher Steve Nicosia beat the tar out of a fan who came onto the field and tried to steal his mask during the celebration of the Pirates winning the World Series. Rob Biertempfel has the oral history of that incident, how the fan who got beaten up has come forward and has met up with Nicosia, forty years later. (The Athletic sub. req.) Yes, there is video of the incident.

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