Newsletter Excerpt, May 29, 2020 -- "Missing a Friend"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"It’s a hard moment, and in that moment I want to retreat to the comfort of a sixth inning, a highlight show, a page of box scores, a walk in the park with a game in my ears, an afternoon in the sun explaining tag plays to TWCFG, an argument about whether the guy hitting .337 is for real, or whether the superstar with four homers in two months is done."

Newsletter Excerpt, May 27, 2020 -- "The Proposal"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"More insidious, though, is the principle behind the plan. It’s asking Mike Trout to give money to Arte Moreno. Trout is rich; Moreno is wealthy. When Moreno had leverage, he paid Trout as little as he could. Now he’s asking Trout to give him back basically all the money Trout made in the first four years of his career."

Newsletter Excerpt, May 22, 2020 -- "Bob Watson"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"In the history books, Bob Watson is a lion, a great player who went on to be a championship executive and a pioneer in the league office. To me, he was the guy who replaced my childhood favorite, took the job of the GM who’d saved my team, and orchestrated a trade that ended the career of my all-time favorite player."

Newsletter Excerpt, May 18, 2020 -- "Sharing"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"Now, set aside for the moment the baseball reasons it did, covered here and elsewhere. If you believe in 'sharing' as a concept and not as a convenient hammer to wield in a downturn, would you not have found a way to shower some of that cash on the players? MLB treated the BAMtech money as wholly its own, pocketing the profits unshared. That example, from just the last few years, puts the lie to any claims that today’s pain should be shared."

Newsletter Excerpt, May 12, 2020 -- "The Short Draft"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"Baseball, though, isn’t going to suffer for drafting five rounds in one season. The medium- and long-term effects on the talent base will be negligible. The players you care about the most emerge from the international market and the first round, and then the four rounds that follow. The players the game won’t draft this year will find their way into the system over the next few years. We’ll never know the difference."

Newsletter Excerpt, May 6, 2020 -- "The Scheduling Conundrum"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider. Joe Sheehan is a founding member of Baseball Prospectus and a contributor to Sports Illustrated and Baseball America. He has been writing about baseball for nearly 25 years.

Your subscription gets you the newsletter and various related features two to five days a week, more than 150 mailings (more than 200,000 words) a year full of smart, fun baseball writing that you can't find in the mainstream. Subscribers can also access the new Slack workspace, to talk baseball with me and hundreds of other Newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $49.95 using your PayPal account or major credit card.

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"The problem MLB faces is that the longer it plays, the more it exposes itself to the virus and Covid-19. That risk, however it may be mitigated by the sunlight and heat of a summer, is expected to rise again in the fall and winter. The deeper into the calendar MLB pushes its playoffs, the more it risks having those playoffs never happen. The worst-case scenario for MLB isn’t not having a season; the worst-case scenario is playing a regular season and not getting to have the playoffs. The playoffs are where the money is, perhaps even more so if the shortened season leads to an expanded playoff format. The entire reason MLB and team owners want to have a season is to ensure the postseason TV revenues. ESPN and Fox and TBS air regular-season baseball as much out of obligation as anything else; what they pay for is playoff games."