Between Prospect Week and spring training, we've had an unrelenting torrent of White Sox coverage that hasn't allowed me to get to all the articles I've bookmarked, but haven't shared. Let's do that now, and consider this the intro.
Spare Parts
I've always wondered why they even bothered chalking the outlines of the first- and third-base coaching boxes when nobody ever uses them, but Jesse Rogers says they'll no longer be a suggestion, as coaches have been roving up and down the lines to improve angles for sussing out pitch tipping.
- What would MLB look like with a salary cap? Explaining the wide-ranging, game-changing effects -- The Athletic
- What Kyle Tucker's Dodgers contract means for MLB labor peace -- ESPN
I don't really want to picture Major League Baseball with a salary cap because that would force me to learn all of the mechanics of a salary cap, and that's something I've managed to avoid doing with every other sport. I have little idea what anybody on the Blackhawks, Bears and Bulls are making because none of it feels like real money in the context of what's guaranteed and what counts and doesn't count against the cap, and it's all so tedious. I much prefer "team can retain its good players if it's willing to pay for them," even if the number of teams that are willing to do that is lower than what's optimal.
- In pitch-rigging case, Guardians pitcher seeks to shift more blame onto teammate -- The Athletic
- Could MLB be next to partner up with prediction markets like Kalshi, Polymarket? -- The Athletic
There's a big discrepancy in the amount of suspected rigged pitches that could be assigned to Emmanuel Clase (hundreds) and Luis Ortiz (two) in the conspiracy case against them, and Ortiz's attorneys are trying to diminish his role as a co-conspirator, which could lead them to be tried separately.
Like betting on individual pitches, prediction markets is another thing that seems so easy to game for anybody with an inside line, so I really don't understand why anybody on the outside participates.
If you're following the Olympics, you've probably heard about the big controversy over curlers double-touching rocks on their deliveries. It led to an unusually heated exchange between Sweden and Canada on the men's side, and a rock being pulled from Canada's match with Switzerland on the women's side. It's basically the equivalent of traveling being called to the letter in the middle of the NBA Playoffs, except NBA games are always officiated by professional referees, whereas curling is a self-called sport, so there are multiple levels of etiquette being breached.
People like to make fun of curling controversies as goofy or trivial -- see Broomgate -- but the underlying assumption of sportsmanship and good faith, generally called "The Spirit of Curling," is the foundation of the sport, and anything that jeopardizes that should be taken seriously, at least among the people who are in it.
This column from two Canadian professors in the department of recreation and leisure studies get to the heart of why that trust is so unique and important:
Research repeatedly shows the places where people curl emerge as a vital form of social infrastructure, built from relationships, routines and shared responsibility. Social fitness is shaped by environments that sustain connection. Curling facilities rely on repeated, in-person participation, often weekly and over many years, where people return to the same space and encounter others who differ in age, ability, background and life circumstance.
These repeated encounters create familiarity, trust and a sense of being known.
Curling’s structure reinforces this relational work. Players call their own infractions, acknowledge mistakes and resolve disputes together, often without an official present. This means curlers regularly practise shared norms of fairness, accountability and informal self-governance, features increasingly rare in modern sport.
This will all sound familiar to anybody who's read "Bowling Alone," but the emphasis on social fabric is why people who curl understand the profanity and accusations to have some ominous undertones.
The US women haven't been accused of double-touching their rocks, and they're off to a 3-1 start after upsetting Canada and then suffocating Japan.
Brendan Gawlowski writes about his biggest whiff as a scout, and what elements contributed in overrating a Royals pitching prospect who didn't escape the Arizona Complex League. Though my incentives aren't quite the same, there's one line in here that I've already internalized from my own process:
Clubs don’t have the luxury of waiting to see which rookie baller can handle Double-A pitching. The guys who can will either be unavailable or very, very expensive to acquire by that point, so if you want to find the next Junior Caminero, you better do it while he’s still swinging at spin in the other batter’s box. And that requires evaluators of all stripes to embrace a degree of uncertainty.
“If you go down there and write ‘org’ every time, you will be right more often than anyone in the department,” the crosschecker told me. “But we’ll need to find a new scout.”
My job is less complicated and the stakes are lower, because I only have to put a number on the good prospects of one organization, and unless the White Sox front office has been waiting for Sox Machine posts before finalizing transactions, no decisions are riding on my reads. In terms of entertainment value however, defaulting to "org" offers little to read, whereas whenever somebody goes out on a limb for a prospect, there's usually an emotion underneath the argument that makes it worth filing away.
