This Week in Baseball – Contract Extensions, Ichiro Retires, Mariners Win, Dodgers Injuries Mount, Catcher WAR
Extension-palooza
You get an extension! You get an extension! And you get an extension! Major League Baseball teams this week gave out nearly $1 billion in contract extensions to some of its biggest stars. Mike Trout. Alex Bregman. Eloy Jimenez. Chris Sale. Paul Goldschmidt. Blake Snell. Justin Verlander. Truly a wonderful time to be a baseball player… and then there’s Dallas Keuchel.
Re-Retirement
Ichiro Suzuki retired. Again. But this time for real. Normally a Hall of Famer ending his career would be the top story of the week, but everyone thought he retired last year, so frankly we’re just not sure we believe him at this point.
Undefeated…
The Seattle Mariners kicked off the season with two victories against the Oakland Athletics. The games were played in Japan, so not many baseball fans in the United States watched them. If you know anyone who did watch those games that were one at 4:00 am, you might want to check their freezer for any severed heads.
L.A. I.L. …
Rich Hill joins fellow Dodgers Clayton Kershaw and Walker Bueller among the ranks of the injured and will start the season on the Injured List. By process of elimination, that means Hyun Jin Ryu will start the Dodgers season opener. And in the meantime the team will keep him covered in bubblewrap.
Revision of the Nerds…
FanGraphs has made a change to the formula that calculates Wins Above Replace (WAR) for catchers. FanGraphs is one of the leading statistically oriented baseball sites and the change affects both catchers and pitchers in an attempt to show how catcher pitch-framing positively or negatively affected performance. Baseball is a kids’ game and part of being a kid is not understanding complex math equations.
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