Baseball Megathread: Ohtani to LAA, Stanton to NYY, prayers to Miami

LA just forced a Game 7! Hold on to your hats!

Really, the way this series has gone, a Game 7 only makes sense. What a great series.

Your World Series Champion Houston Rockets everyone!

Reach for the stars, even though we've pretty much torn the funding out of NASA for that sort of thing.

Meanwhile the Tigers, Phillies, Mets, Red Sox and Nats have all changed managers. Good luck y'all.

whoops accidentally bumped this thread

As a Marlins fan this is going to be a rough season. Jeffory Lorie left this team a wild fire. Now Jeter needs to start a controlled fire to stop the original fire. Hopefully after all is said and done it leaves a nice fertile land for the future.

Angels got Ohtani, so I can't be mad.

@ghostpantsu: I don't know. From afar it looks like you may be wishing that Loria never sold the team. Somehow, it looks like there may be a worse ownership group than him, at least short term. They are already looking for new investors and slashing payroll like nobody's business.

Good thing the Marlins freed up all that money to sign all those players who want to play in Miami without Stanton

@ghostpantsu: https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2017/12/9/16756778/giancarlo-stanton-trade-miami-marlins-new-york-yankees-bruce-sherman

this was very informative. Jeter has been the guy in front (but only 4% stake), so much so that I never heard of the guy probably behind things (I'll admit I only casually follow baseball)

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On the other coast, while the rest of the Angels may be mostly trash, Trout + Simmons + Ohtani + (hopefully finally healthy) Richards will be fun. Just looked up that they'll be in town for 2 days, definitely getting tickets

As a Giants fan, I was hoping they'd get Stanton but in my heart always knew it wasn't going to happen. Sluggers never want to sign here because the park is too hard to hit home runs in. On that topic I wish MLB had a pair and didn't allow new Yankee stadium to have the exact dimensions as old Yankee stadium. That bandbox is a joke in today's game. Judge and Stanton in the same lineup is going to be nuts.

Jeter has been an absolute train wreck as the face of that franchise. Feel bad for Miami

Plausible Conspiracy Theory: Jeter took an ownership stake in the Marlins just to steer Stanton to the Yankees, then he could care less about how the team performs until he's ready to flip the team to the next rich asshole, or Miami sinks beneath the rising oceans, whichever comes first.

I still can't believe the Marlins have two World Series titles. They'll be lucky to have 4,000 people show up per game next season.

@dochaus: Miami had deals in place with San Francisco and St. Louis that Stanton vetoed. The Yankees were, at best, Jeter's third pick. That said, Jeter and the Marlins completely mismanaged this situation and backed themselves into a corner where they had absolutely no leverage. As soon as that list of teams that Stanton would approve leaked out, they were effectively forced to take whatever the Yankees or Dodgers would give them, which turned out to be not much at all. I understand why Miami had to trade Stanton. They're hemorrhaging money and Stanton's contract is a huge albatross (but still a bargain compared to what Harper and Machado are gonna get when they become free agents). It's not an easy situation but it was made much more difficult with how poorly it was handled.

But fuck all that, my two giant baseball boys are gonna to have a lot of fun this year. It was fine last year being the young, kind of likable Yankees but this is the best of both worlds. Let the hate flow through you.

I guess the Angels weren't comfortable with just letting the Astros run the AL West. I'll admit, I'll be attending the first game Ohtani plays at Minute Maid Park, though!

And I guess the Yankees were hell-bent on having a 2017 MVP in the lineup, one way or another. I forgot who said it on Twitter, but every sequel needs a badder, stronger villain to keep things interesting. They don't call the Yankees "The Evil Empire" for nothing. Man, the AL is going to be fun in 2018.