It’s been fairly quiet on the free agent front, but there’s been some pretty interesting MLB news making the rounds.
Welcome to ‘Marty’s Musings’, my weekly column of numbers summarizing the happenings in the baseball world. I am your guide for taking an analytic look at the news and notes throughout the game.
In today’s Musings, a two-sport athlete brings to light some of MLB’s recruitment problems, two teams emerged as potential front-runners in the Manny Machado and Bryce Harper sweepstakes, MLB sets another revenue record, and MLB mourns the untimely passing of a former coach.
All this news and more in this week’s Musings.
9 - Overall draft pick in the 2018 draft for Athletics’ first-rounder Kyle Murray, who earned a $4.66 million signing bonus (per MLB slot-values). Murray won the Heisman Trophy as an excellent starting quarterback for Oklahoma State, and is reportedly seeking $15 million guaranteed dollars from Oakland to commit to baseball and not enter the NLF draft. Today is the deadline to decide whether or not he will enter the draft, so the situation is moving quickly.
More on this from BtBS as the week continues, but the bottom-line is if the NFL is a more attractive option than MLB, baseball has some serious recruiting work to do to land this type of generational multi-sport athlete.
8 - Year contract the White Sox reportedly offered to Manny Machado, per Jeff Passan. The Yankees seemed like an obvious suitor when Didi Gregorius went down with Tommy John Surgery, but the Yankees have not been linked to Machado in a few weeks and they signed Troy Tulowitzki for practically nothing. The White Sox are seemingly leading the narrative surrounding Machado’s free agency. Rumor has it Machado prefers the Yankees, but that New York has yet to put together a formal offer.
1.1 - Total fWAR generated by Philadelphia Phillies’ center fielders in 2018, the third-worst in the National League. The Phillies look like the leading team to sign Bryce Harper after a five-hour meeting took place over the weekend that included both Bryce Harper’s wife Kayla and agent Scott Boras. Last season Harper posted a 3.5 fWAR, a far-cry from his 9.3 win 2015.
10.3 - Billion dollars in revenue for Major League Baseball in 2018, per a recent Forbes’ report. The revenue record has been broken for 16 consecutive years, despite a wet spring in which attendance was down for MLB.
68 - Age of former MLB coach and MiLB manager, Rick Down, who passed away last week after a lengthy illness. Down worked as a hitting coach for the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Orioles, and Mets. He also led the then-Yankees Triple-A affiliate Columbus Clippers.
73 - Days until Opening Day!
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Steven Martano is an Editor at Beyond the Box Score, a Contributing Prospect Writer for the Colorado Rockies at Purple Row, and a contributing writer for The Hardball Times. You can follow him on Twitter at @SMartano
