If you, like me, live outside of an MLB market and were hoping that Major League Baseball would revise its blackout policy to make it possible for you to actually be able to watch games involving all 30 teams, you’ll be disappointed this morning to see that Maury Brown is reporting that the policy will remain in effect for 2012. In my case, this means that I can never, ever watch the Pirates play the Nationals or Orioles unless I go to DC. It also means that I’ll never see Stephen Strasburg pitch unless he pitches on Sunday Night Baseball, FOX Saturday baseball, or I move to another part of the country.
Jerry Crasnick says that there are two big league GMs that think that Derrek Lee will retire if he doesn’t get “the right deal” this winter. In the short-term, this means that you can pretty much cross Lee off the list for the Pirates, because the Pirates offered him arbitration and are therefore probably willing to pay him more than most other teams are, so money isn’t really a hurdle here and Lee’s looking for something more than that. In the long-term, it means that the Pirates wouldn’t get a supplemental pick for Lee in this coming summer’s draft.
I doubt this means much right now, but you may want to file it away for the future: the Brewers are saying that they’re “way over” budget for 2012.
And this is a couple days old by now, but it’ll be interested to see how Yu Darvish’s deal (six years/$60 million) affects the market for guys like Roy Oswalt and Edwin Jackson. Darvish was expected to get in the neighborhood of $70 million from the Rangers — close to Edwin Jackson’s reported $12 million price tag — and the fact that he signed for quite a bit lower may lower the prices on some of the other free agent pitchers as well. If the Pirates are interested in any of them. Of course, we don’t really know if they are or not, so, again, this is just one of those things to keep in mind for the next ten days or so while the last part of free agency plays out.
