2021 MLB Season Thread

[brucejoel99]

Padres SS Fernando Tatís Jr. has agreed to a 14-year/$340M contract extension.

ESPN:

Fernando Tatis Jr., the emerging face of baseball, agreed to a 14-year, $340 million contract extension with the San Diego Padres on Wednesday, securing one of the largest guarantees in American sports history and wedding himself to the team with which he quickly established himself as a star, sources familiar with the deal told ESPN.

Tatis, 22, will receive the third-biggest deal in baseball history -- and do so at a far younger age than Mike Trout and Mookie Betts, both of whom signed their megadeals at 27.

The 6-foot-3, 217-pound Tatis, whose dazzling shortstop play is perhaps exceeded by his prowess at the plate, went to San Diego via trade and is now the player around whom the Padres will build a team equipped to win a championship.

This could wind up a steal for the Padres lol

[brucejoel99]

Albert Pujols is set to retire at the end of this season, per his wife Deidre's Instagram.

https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1364009457873653761

UPDATE: Diedre later clarified that the post was not an official retirement announcement.

Well, it was a realistic announcement as no one will be willing to pay Albert to play baseball anymore.

I have to imagine the Cards would be willing to give him a small 1-year deal to retire in St. Louis if he wanted to.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/TalkinBaseball_/status/1376624451148775430

I refuse to believe that there are Rays fans in SE Georgia. There are barely Rays fans in the Tampa area.

I also refuse to believe that there are Marlins fans north of Jupiter. Hell, there are barely any Marlins fans to begin with.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/jareddiamond/status/1378057821003071488

[brucejoel99]

The 2021 MLB All-Star Game (and its associated festivities) and the 2021 MLB Draft will now be in Denver, Colorado at Coors Field. 

Dayn Perry at CBS Sports:

The 2021 MLB All-Star Game is expected to be held in Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, reports ESPN's Buster Olney. The game is scheduled for July 13.

MLB recently chose to pull the festivities from Truist Park in Atlanta as a gesture of protest over the recent passage of voting laws in Georgia. Those laws are widely perceived to be too restrictive and particularly burdensome toward Black voters. Coors Field previously hosted the All-Star Game in 1998.

Kinda poetic, given that Colorado's voting system is practically what voting-rights advocates' dreams are made of.

[brucejoel99]

The Mets just won a very....unique game. The call on Conforto's "hit by pitch" was the wrong call, but you can't convince me the Mets were going to lose. The Magic was with us ever since Jeff hit that ball skyward.

Billy the Marlin will die for our sins.

[brucejoel99]

Went to a game for the first time in almost 2 years yesterday: watched the Yankees complete their sweep of the Marlins, & being 21 now, I got to enjoy my 1st-ever grossly-overpriced ballpark beer, so that was nice (well, the Yankees winning wasn't, but I'm a Marlins fan, so it's basically ingrained at this point to never have any hope for a win, even though the Marlins decided to give it to us anyway through the first 7 innings yesterday). The family & I are all fully-vaxxed & had purchased the tickets well before the Delta variant & breakthrough-case concerns started to spring up, but we decided to just power through: with the exception of drinking, I was double-masked the entire time (the ventilation system at Marlins Park - I refuse to call it LoanDepot Park - also sucks ass, so that was probably the right move in any event).