~2019 MLB Thread~

[ELA]

The dead market last offseason really making some waves in how contracts are negotiated

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2863837-report-prospect-evan-white-mariners-agree-to-historic-6-year-24m-contract

[ELA]

Woah, Astros get hammered


https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1216796031200976896


https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1216796065405505537

[CWSooner]

The Rastros fired their manager and GM today.

And apparently the current Red Sox manager is implicated.

[ELA]

Alex Cora out in Boston as well

[Hawkinole]

But, Astros still have a World Championship.

[OrangeAfroMan]

Dodgers gotta be like WTF.....both teams they lost to in the WS were cheating.

[FearlessF]

F the Dodgers

[ELA]

Interesting distinction, but makes sense

https://abc7chicago.com/sports/source-mlb-ineligible-list-ends-at-death-for-banned-players/5858409/

[OrangeAfroMan]

Yeah, Joe Jackson should've been inducted into the HOF the year after he died.  Ditto Pete Rose when he goes.

[FearlessF]

doesn't make any sense to me

two very different things

being employed by a MLB organization

being cornsidered for induction into the MLB hall of fame

no correlation in my mind

a person's actions while they were alive don't change when they die

[CWSooner]

Yeah, Joe Jackson should've been inducted into the HOF the year after he died.  Ditto Pete Rose when he goes.

I'm not sure Joe Jackson should have been made ineligible at all.  He was not very sharp, and it's not even clear that he knew what he was getting paid to do.  He certainly didn't play like he was throwing any games.  Per Wikipedia:

Jackson's 12 base hits set a Series record that was not broken until 1964,[15] and he led both teams with a .375 batting average. He committed no errors, and threw out a runner at the plate.[16] Assertions that the Reds hit an unusually high number of triples to Jackson's position in left field[17] are not supported by contemporary newspaper accounts, which recorded no Cincinnati triples at all to left field. The only two White Sox errors involving extra-base hits were committed by Shano Collins, in right field. (Collins was never accused in the scandal, and in fact was listed in the indictments as a wronged party—the victim of $1,784 in lost earnings due to the actions of those charged.[18])

Some news accounts quoted Jackson, during grand jury testimony on September 28, 1920, admitting that he agreed to participate in the fix:[19]

“ When a Cincinnati player would bat a ball out in my territory I'd muff it if I could—that is, fail to catch it. But if it would look too much like crooked work to do that I'd be slow and make a throw to the infield that would be short. My work netted the Cincinnati team several runs that they never would have had if we had been playing on the square. ”
No such testimony appears in the actual stenographic record of Jackson's grand jury appearance.

I'm not sure, though, that his career, curtailed as it was, warrants HOF selection.  Maybe he should go in just to right a wrong.

[FearlessF]

.356 career batting average, hit over 400 in in 1911. Joe's glove was called “the place where triples go to die,

only came in 2nd in MVP voting

maybe everybody hit .400 back then?

[CWSooner]

.356 career batting average, hit over 400 in in 1911. Joe's glove was called “the place where triples go to die,

only came in 2nd in MVP voting

maybe everybody hit .400 back then?

Yeah, 13-year career.  That's probably enough.
Career stats from Wikipedia:

G         AB        H         2B     3B    HR   R      RBI   BB     SO     AVG    OBP   SLG    
1,332   4,981   1,772   307   168   54   873   785   519   158   .356   .423   .517

Also, from the same article:

Dispute over Jackson's guilt

Jackson spent most of the last 30 years of his life proclaiming his innocence, and evidence has surfaced that casts significant doubt on his involvement in the fix. Jackson reportedly refused the $5,000 bribe on two separate occasions—despite the fact that it would effectively double his salary—only to have teammate Lefty Williams toss the cash on the floor of his hotel room. Jackson then tried to tell White Sox owner Charles Comiskey about the fix, but Comiskey refused to meet with him.[25] Unable to afford legal counsel, Jackson was represented by team attorney Alfred Austrian—a clear conflict of interest. Before Jackson's grand jury testimony, Austrian allegedly elicited Jackson's admission of his supposed role in the fix by plying him with whiskey.[16] Austrian was also able to persuade the nearly illiterate Jackson to sign a waiver of immunity from prosecution.[25] Years later, the other seven players implicated in the scandal confirmed that Jackson was never at any of the meetings. Williams said that they only mentioned Jackson's name to give their plot more credibility, although he did not say why Jackson would have been paid $5,000 had that been the case. Jackson's performance during the series itself lends further credence to his assertions, although the game records show that he hit better during the "clean" games than those which were thrown.[16] A 1993 article in The American Statistician reported the results of a statistical analysis of Jackson's contribution during the 1919 World Series, and concluded that there was "substantial support to Jackson's subsequent claims of innocence".[26]

An article in the September 2009 issue of Chicago Lawyer magazine argued that Eliot Asinof's 1963 book Eight Men Out, purporting to confirm Jackson's guilt, was based on inaccurate information; for example, Jackson never confessed to throwing the Series as Asinof claimed. Further, Asinof omitted key facts from publicly available documents such as the 1920 grand jury records and proceedings of Jackson's successful 1924 lawsuit against Comiskey to recover back pay for the 1920 and 1921 seasons. Asinof's use of fictional characters within a supposedly non-fiction account added further questions about the historical accuracy of the book.[27]

Jackson remains on MLB's ineligible list, which automatically precludes his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1989, MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti declined to reinstate Jackson because the case was "now best given to historical analysis and debate as opposed to a present-day review with an eye to reinstatement."[28] In 2020, ESPN reported that MLB had shifted its policy and that the league "has no hold on banned players after they die because the ineligible list bars players from privileges that include a job with a major league club." It's unclear how this will affect Jackson's Hall of Fame prospects.[29]

In November 1999, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution lauding Jackson's sporting achievements and encouraging MLB to rescind his ineligibility. The resolution was symbolic, since the U.S. government has no jurisdiction in the matter. Commissioner Bud Selig stated at the time that Jackson's case was under review, but no decision was issued during Selig's tenure.[30]

In 2015, the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum formally petitioned Commissioner Rob Manfred for reinstatement, on grounds that Jackson had "more than served his sentence" in the 95 years since his banishment by Landis. Manfred denied the request after an official review. "The results of this work demonstrate to me that it is not possible now, over 95 years since those events took place and were considered by Commissioner Landis, to be certain enough of the truth to overrule Commissioner Landis' determinations," he wrote.[28]

[FearlessF]

helluva bunch of 3 baggers