Daniel R. Epstein – Beyond the Box Score: Women play baseball, that is a simple fact. They play in the amateur ranks and they play professionally, both in their own leagues and in leagues with men. There’s no reason that women playing baseball shouldn’t get more attention, but ultimately the women who do play get very little attention and thus very little resources at their disposal. There are organizations that help them, but until the media takes them seriously and push for women to be included right alongside men they are facing an uphill battle.
Mike Oz – Yahoo! Sports: Madison Bumgarner has a reputation as a red ass. It is, all in all, a very well-deserved and earned reputation. I personally think Bumgarner comes across as a giant baby with his antics. He’s also a hypocrite who wants others to run right out of the box when they hit homers off of him but he can stroll and watch his home runs as much as he wants. Still, as long as all Bumgarner is doing is yelling at his opponents and being a crybaby, let him do his thing. I’d much rather have that than retaliatory measures like beaning a hitter, where more than feelings can get hurt.
Jarrett Seidler – Baseball Prospectus ($): There was a time when most Major League Baseball teams were concerned with putting the best team on the field. Their methods in figuring out the best team to put on the field may have been flawed, but they were at least trying. Nowadays I’m not convinced any MLB team actually cares about putting the best team on the field. They care about making money, pocketing as much of that money as possible, and saving money whenever they can. This results in things like service time manipulation of prospects, but it also results in a generational prospect like Casey Mize working his way through the minor league ranks and risking injury when he should be in the major leagues already.
Lead photo courtesy of Bill Hoban – Sonoma Index-Tribune
