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Are the Baseball Winter Meetings becoming an overhyped waste of time for not only the fans, but the clubs themselves? I know deals can be complex but this thing is becoming a bigger snooze fest as each year passes.
Teams are increasingly hesitant to trade prospects, and less likely to sign older players who become free agents. It makes for a less busy time.
I also think that in the days of Twitter and constant updates, it can make it seem less busy when you see a deal or a trade happen every few hours compared to back in the day when you saw all the stuff at once.
Winter meetings were a ball back in the 70’s when I was a kid…..Christmas come early if you will. You would either stay up until 10:20pm to catch sports on tv or check out the daily newspaper. You would open up that sports page during the Winter Meetings and walla!! Enough notable trades to choke a horse! Unfortunately, those days are literally ancient history.
These are not your father’s winter meetings. I can remember sitting second row at the 1992 winter meetings press conference when Barry Bonds signed with the Giants. It was exciting. Nothing like that will happen this week. He was twice the player either of the two top guys are this year. Heck even Barry in his prime wouldn’t strike a deal the way things operate today. This has nothing to do with social media the way things operate in the game today is just different.
Two things I loved “back in the day”. The winter meetings in December, and the annual St. Louis writer’s dinner in January. Jack Buck would MC the writer’s dinner, and was always hilarious with that dry sense of humor he had. KMOX would broadcast the dinner, and it was a great hot stove baseball fix.
One of my favorite lines Buck used was when the Cardinals had re-aquired Ken Reitz, after he played one year in San Francisco. Reitz was a very slow runner for any of you fans who are not familiar with him. So Buck goes something like, “Ken Reitz is so happy to be re-joining the Cardinals he said he would run to St. Louis to play here again – we expect him here around this time next year.”
This sums it up well. It is a nice networking event, but in terms of actual content, zzzzzzzzzz. FWIW, since the expense would be out of my own pocket, I do not attend.
One prominent agent on the #MLB winter meetings: “It’s just an excuse for everybody to get out of the house.”
— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) December 13, 2018
Well like TC said-boring snoozefest.Can`t wait for the usual ” we worked hard but no deals that we liked came to pass but we felt we laid the foundations for further discussions BS”.
CC-anyone who ever subscribed to the Sporting News was well aware of the Winter meetings.Most newspaper covered the meetings somewhat by running baseball info during the meetings.
“Man, I can still remember waiting for the Sporting News to come in the mail each week!”
And each February, waiting for the monster Street And Smith annual. (Same with football and basketball.)
When I was an adolescent it was an expectations battle royale between the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and the early baseball stuff. If only Cheryl Tiegs had played for the Cardinals, then I could’ve scratched two itches at once. So to speak.Funny this topic should arise, because I saw a Dave Dombrowski interview just a few hours ago wherein he waxed rhapsodic about how, decades back, there was a winter deadline for all trades — and maybe for free agent signings too, I don’t know. I believe it was a pre-Christmas deadline, so that MLB execs could have some true “down time” built into their schedules, before ramping up again for Spring Training. But now, a cowboy’s work is never done.
Hang in there, TexasCard. I have a feeling the Birds will do something on Thursday.
RReed-Everybody had to get their Street and Smith for Baseball and for football.Remember the Baseball guide Stats book? The little Red Covered book that still comes out every spring?Had Stats for nearly every MLB player.Oh hell yeah..Cheryl Tiegs…..she is still damn fine looking.My age bracket too.LOL
He mentioned 1992 just like I did above. My buddy and I walked in to the press conference right beside Bonds. Im sure we weren’t supposed to be in there at all. He kept nudging me to ask a question. It was funny because we were just two college kids that were in the right place at the right time. We went looking for a job in baseball. Nothing like that would ever happen today. There just isn’t a signing the magnitude of Bonds or Maddux. Don’t get me wrong Goldschmidt was one heck of a pickup but these meetings used to be active and fun. Now they are a almost a complete waste of time.
I agree. The winter meetings are really a joke these days when it comes to trades and signings. The hype is not justified.
I used to love getting the Sporting News. I could get lost for hours reading and re-reading each edition.
This man will not be denied making a trade.
Yes. Jerry Dipoto finalized the trade for Encarnacion from his hospital bed with assistant GM Justin Hollander standing there. Hollander has a picture of it.
— Ryan Divish (@RyanDivish) December 13, 2018
Seattle #Mariners GM Jerry DiPoto rreturns to the winter meetings hotel after being hospitalized with blood clot in his lung. He actually made the 3-way trade in the hospital giving fist pumps to nurses.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 13, 2018
My birthday is in January, and for years as a teenager through young adulthood my parent’s annual birthday gift to me was renewing my TSN subscription. Back in the ’80s I believe it was, I was in St. Louis and dropped by The Sporting News’ offices, and they gave me a tour. I met some of the writers, and they took me back to where they compile all the box scores and showed me how they did all that. It was really cool, as I had just dropped in without calling first or anything – pre-internet obviously.
I would pour over TSN every week. I always loved those brief box score comments. They would go something like this: “Gibson pitched 3-hitter and struck out 9 as Cards topped Giants 2-0. Flood doubled, and scored on Javier single in third, and Shannon added solo home run in 7th as Cards won fourth consecutive game. McCormick took the loss for Giants.“
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