Friday Bantering: Jays Sign Eric Stamets

There is some actual Blue Jays news. Or at least Blue Jaysish news.

The Jays signed shortstop Eric Stamets to a minor league contract. Since Eric was a minor leaguer last year, he can be signed to a minor league free agent contract even with the lockout.

He has 48 at-bats of MLB experience, with Cleveland. He hit .049/.149/.073 with them in 2019. Last year he hit .168/.283/.319 in 119 at-bats for the Rockies Triple-A team. He’s played short, second and third in the minors. I think we can safely guess that he is a glove-first infielder. He’s 31 now.

I’m doubting we’ll see him in the majors much this season, but you never know.

Evan Drellich, of the Athletic, tells us that four MLB owners objected to the MLB’s offer of raising the ‘competitive balance tax’, from $210 million to $220 million: Bob Castellini of the Reds, Chris Ilitch of the Tigers, Ken Kendrick of the Diamondbacks and Arte Moreno of the Angels.

Not only did they not want to raise the value of the ‘tax’, but they also wanted to count the players’ meal money in that.

So it isn’t just the ‘small market’ teams that are causing talks to hold up. The Tigers and the Angels are definitely not small market teams.

I’m not feeling good about the possibility of baseball happening any time soon, but apparently, the players are offering back the idea of a 14-team playoff. Maybe that will get the ball bouncing again.

The players are putting together a $1 million fund for workers affected by the lockout:

Jeff Moorad, at Sportico, writes about how owning a sports franchise is a license to print money.

Without baseball, pretty soon I’ll be down to writing about my tennis game......