Wednesday Bantering: Signings, Lots of Signings

There has been a ton of signings in the last few hours. Unfortunately, none of them by the Jays:

• After we were told by many (including Jon Heyman, who also had a rather funny typo, calling him Arson) that the Giants signed Aaron Judge, Judge signed with the Yankees for nine years, $360 million. I was quite happy about the Giants’ signing, but such is life. $40 million a year is a fair bit of money. Ben Clemens figured he would sign for nine years but at $35 million a year.

• The Padres were a late entry into the Judge negotiations, offering $40 million for 10 years. Judge must have really wanted to stay in New York if he was willing to give up that much extra money (and the better climate of San Diego).
• The Mets signed Jose Quintana, two years at $13 million per.
• The Red Sox signed Kenley Jansen to two years at $16 million a year.
• The Cubs signed Jameson Taillon to a four-year contract at $17 million a year.

In other news:

There is an open debate on what this means. But the team was in on Justin Verlander, and if they had signed him, they would have been very close to the Competitive Balance Tax. With Bo and Vlad up for large extensions, the CBT will come into play at some point.

But I don’t think the CBT is in play this year.

The Rule 5 draft is this afternoon. I’m not expecting much to happen. We spent a fair bit of time talking about the Rule 5 draft, and it turns out to be a lot of nothing most years. We did get Joe Biagini a few years back. And Elvis Luciano gave us a lot to talk about.

And Shi Davidi gets a new job. Congratulations Shi.

And baseball used three different balls last year. One dead, one lively and one just right. The ‘Goldilocks’ ball.

Unsurprisingly, the lively ball was used mostly at Yankee games (which makes me wonder about the Judge contract). MLB is run so poorly a lot of the time. But using a livelier ball at Yankees games seems like messing with baseball's competitive balance. Sometimes we feel like there is a Yankees bias to the league, but now we have proof.

Yes, both teams used the same lively ball in those games, but it just doesn’t feel right. It seems like the league is doing something special for the Yankees that they wouldn’t do for other teams.

Roger Maris’ son said that Judge should be the real major single-season home run record holder because Bonds, McGwire and Sosa all used PEDs, but it appears that Judge saw the ‘dead ball’ far less in his run to 62 home runs.