According to Alden Gonzalez, the Angels and Mike Trout are close to finalizing a six year contract that will pay Trout $144.5 mlilion over the 2015-2020 seasons.

Trout deal for $144.5M. Average annual value is nearly $24.1M. Makes Trout third #Angels player with AAV of at least $24M (Pujols, Trout).

— Alden Gonzalez (@Alden_Gonzalez) March 29, 2014

Those six years cover Trout’s three arbitration eligible seasons and his first three free agent seasons. Instead of hitting free agency after his age-25 season, he’ll play for the Angels through at least his age-28 season.

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Right around the eve of the meaningful beginning of the 2014 regular season, baseball has announced an enhanced Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. You can read the details right here, but the primary takeaway is that now a first-time PED violation will result in an 80-game suspension, and a second-time PED violation will result in a 162-game suspension. A third violation still earns a lifetime ban, since it’s not very easy to make that penalty tougher without breaking actual laws. Also, a player suspended for a violation will no longer be eligible for that year’s postseason.

Of course, there are other enhancements, too. And it should be noted that the majority of the players have been supportive of tougher penalties for users. Many of the players want to play within a clean game, and they’re not fans of what users do for the perception of themselves and everyone else. In that way, perhaps this shouldn’t be viewed as a concession, but one bullet point in there shows that the players got something extra for themselves in return.

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According to IMDB, Gone with the Wind pulled in nearly $200 million at the American box office. The Sound of Music pulled in just over $163 million. This makes them two of the highest-grossing films in US movie history. Those numbers are also utterly trounced by Fast & Furious 6’s $239 million. It can be said, technically accurately, that Fast & Furious 6 has been a higher-grossing film than the other two mentioned. But that sort of technical accuracy is deceptive accuracy, and, of course, we need to make adjustments. The raw numbers don’t tell us anything of value.

Listen to Twitter and you’ll find out in a hurry that the baseball industry was shocked by news of the new Miguel Cabrera contract. Cabrera’s now guaranteed $292 million through 2023, and beyond that there are another two options. It’s a massive deal for the Tigers, and a massive commitment, and seemingly a massive risk, that the Tigers didn’t need to take right away. Everyone’s floored by the magnitude of the thing. But then, we’ve seen this thing before. Cabrera’s contract isn’t the biggest contract ever, and in fact it’s hardly even in the conversation.

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This afternoon, Dave Cameron has published in these electronic pages the results of the FanGraphs staff predictions both for the American League and also the National League. As Cameron notes, those predictions will be wrong — grievously so, in some cases.

In the spirit of egalitarianism that pervades this site, FanGraphs is giving readers the opportunity to be just as wrong as our staff — by allowing them (i.e. those same readers) to predict the various winners of baseball’s divisional titles and wild-card berths and end-of-season awards.

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The 2014 Major League Baseball season kicks off for real on Monday — no, random days where the Dodgers play someone and it’s the only game of the day don’t count — and so, as a baseball site, we are compelled to offer our staff’s predictions for the upcoming season. We are compelled because you like to read our staff predictions, even though they are terrible. And boy are they terrible.

Among last year’s gems were things like Aaron Hicks, American League Rookie of the Year. Aaron Hicks did not get a single vote by any one voter on a Rookie of the Year ballot last year. We also had the Angels and Blue Jays making the playoffs. Predicting baseball is silly. Everyone is terrible at it, including us. But as long as you know that going in, it’s still kind of a fun exercise.

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The 2014 Major League Baseball season kicks off for real on Monday — no, random days where the Dodgers play someone and it’s the only game of the day don’t count — and so, as a baseball site, we are compelled to offer our staff’s predictions for the upcoming season. We are compelled because you like to read our staff predictions, even though they are terrible. And boy are they terrible.

Among last year’s gems were things like Aaron Hicks, American League Rookie of the Year. Aaron Hicks did not get a single vote by any one voter on a Rookie of the Year ballot last year. We also had the Angels and Blue Jays making the playoffs. Predicting baseball is silly. Everyone is terrible at it, including us. But as long as you know that going in, it’s still kind of a fun exercise.

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12:00

Comment From AL Pitching Coach Yordano Ventura, and to some extent Tanner Scheppers, have picked up a ton of fantasy buzz over the past week or two. Thoughts on what to expect from them in 2014?     Jason Collette: Eno and I discussed both guys on the podcast that dropped overnight. I like Ventura more than Scheppers, but Ventura’s delivery worries me. “his arm looks like it is attached to a rubber band” is the phrase I got from a pitching guru and that’s not a good thing.

12:01

Comment From Tony the Tiger How badly does the loss of Iglesias affect the fantasy values of Porcello and Smyly?     Jason Collette: It certainly does not help.I was really looking forward to seeing what that infield could do for Porcello. Knocks them down a round/round and a half and a $1

12:01

Comment From Guest Miggy’s contract is the n-th worst contract in baseball in the last 25 years. n equals???     Jason Collette: Vernon Wells, Joe Blanton, Albert Pujols, 50 feet of crap, Ryan Howard….so maybe 6th?

12:03

Comment From jocephus swydan is not a fan of martinez/rosenthal going into BP without chance at starting…yer thoughts?     Jason Collette: I side with him on this, to a point. You’ve already started down the path with Rosenthal, so if you’re going to stretch him out, do it in the minors. Martinez has drastic R/L splits and would be better served in the minors working on that as well, but I get putting both on the major league level in their current roles.

12:03

Comment From Chris What is your outlook on Jose Abreu? Does he have the ability to be an elite first baseman     Jason Collette: He was a hot topic of discussion at Foley’s last Saturday night. Crowdsourcing his numbers gave me a .270 avg with 32-35 homers

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Yesterday, the Tigers agreed to make Miguel Cabrera the highest paid player in baseball history. If you look at the entirety of their future financial commitments to him as one single entity rather than two separate agreements, then this is the biggest contract in U.S. sports history. Over the next decade, the Tigers have agreed to pay Cabrera $292 million, a staggering figure for any player, and even more stunning given the context in which it was handed out. Cabrera turns 31 in less than a month. He wasn’t eligible to hit the free agent market for another two years. The contract begins with his age-33 season, and yet, without the benefit of free agency as leverage, he got more for eight years than Robinson Cano got for 10.

As you might imagine, I have a lot of thoughts about this contract. They don’t all agree with each other. So, let’s just go through the things I believe about this deal.

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Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the Miguel Cabrera contract extension, bullpen usage, productive at-bats, multiple Mike Trouts, and more.

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So, look, I feel like I need to explain why I’m looking at something you’ve probably never even thought about before. Obviously, I write a lot about pitch-framing, and about the different strike zones that different players get. Some time back, I was writing about Zack Greinke‘s favorable zone with Milwaukee. As such, I wrote about Jonathan Lucroy‘s receiving, and I wrote about Martin Maldonado’s receiving. Afterward, I received an interesting idea from a player:

I’m convinced the background in Milwaukee affects the home plate umpires’ depth perception and expands the zone down and away. Is there a home road split for both of the catchers? Maybe that will make some sense for my possibly distorted perception of balls and strikes in Milwaukee.

Not something I’d considered. Made sense, in theory. Perhaps a hidden park factor was inflating the framing numbers. Maybe Milwaukee is like the Colorado of expanding the strike zone. For whatever reason I never got around to researching this, until this afternoon, when I compiled the relevant data.

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