[MLB] MLB 2025


Why did the 2025 version of Sonny Gray have a no trade clause in the first place?

This one's pretty simple. When he signed that contract he was coming off a year where he finished #2 in AL Cy Young voting. So he did have that leverage before he got to St. Louis and regressed into a bottom of the rotation innings eater.

It may be too late for him (at 36 years old) to fix his fastball velocity in the post-steroid era, but if he does have a bounce back year for the Red Sox that would have to make him an all-time reviled player in Yankees land since he infamously sucked for them but showed Cy Young quality stuff before and after in Oakland (2013-2015), Cincinnati (2019), and Minnesota (2022-2023). I'll always root for former A's to play well regardless but any chance to stick it to the Yankees is a nice bonus.
 

To be fair, we have a lot of pitching we need to pick up. Outside of Webb and Ray, it's the 43 year old FA Verlander and a bunch of unproven kids who haven't really shown they can maintain a rotation spot. Roupp is probably fine as a back-end starter, but realistically, we have 3 rotation spots open while our Bullpen is equally a mess. Randy Rod the only real elite arm we have and he's out all of 2026
 
I was hoping the Giants could trade for Sonny Gray by offering to eat his contract. Alas, the Red Sox landed him instead. I agree the approach needs to result in good depth, but Imai’s quotes about wanting to beat, not join, his countrymen make it easy to imagine him in orange and black.
 
What a completely inexplicable result! Sportswriters everywhere are scrambling to understand how this might have happened!

I expect an avalanche of think pieces explaining to all of us exactly why this was the right call. When we have robot umpires and AI announcers and all of the sportswriters are unemployed in another ten years I wonder if any of them will look back on this and laugh at the irony? A human being taking performance enhancing drugs to enhance his already exceptional sports performance?! Impossible! Inexcusable! Unforgivable!
 
I expect an avalanche of think pieces explaining to all of us exactly why this was the right call. When we have robot umpires and AI announcers and all of the sportswriters are unemployed in another ten years I wonder if any of them will look back on this and laugh at the irony? A human being taking performance enhancing drugs to enhance his already exceptional sports performance?! Impossible! Inexcusable! Unforgivable!
To be clear, my comment was more on the manner of the tweet than the steroid controversy. Everybody, whether they agree or not, KNOWS precisely why Bonds is not in the Hall of Fame, and this sportswriter is like, "Oh, look at this shocking thing that is very shocking" only to take away from the real story, which is that Jeff Kent, who had a very good baseball career and was always sort of an edge candidate for the HOF, got in. Kinda stealing Kent's moment for clickbait.
 
To be clear, my comment was more on the manner of the tweet than the steroid controversy. Everybody, whether they agree or not, KNOWS precisely why Bonds is not in the Hall of Fame, and this sportswriter is like, "Oh, look at this shocking thing that is very shocking" only to take away from the real story, which is that Jeff Kent, who had a very good baseball career and was always sort of an edge candidate for the HOF, got in. Kinda stealing Kent's moment for clickbait.

I assumed you were being sarcastic since the sportswriters don't just know why Jeff Kent got in before Barry Bonds, they're the ones who vote for the Hall of Fame so they made it happen.

Jeff Kent will always be tied to Barry Bonds. He won his one MVP award in 2000 over Barry because sports writers liked him more. It is what it is. Looking back on that era of baseball now, it's absurd the type of numbers guys were putting up. Todd Helton had a .372 BA with 42 HR, 59 2B, 147 RBI and he finished 5th in NL MVP voting that year. Fifth! Since his playing career ended, Helton has been arrested for drunk driving 3 times and sportswriters still felt he was worthy of being elected to the Hall of Fame in 2024. Barry's biggest crime was being so absurdly good at baseball that he ruined the lie for all of them.
 
Back
Top