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New York Post | George King III: One of the remaining major pieces of business for the Yankees this winter is figuring out their situation at third base. Brian Cashman stated in November that it was Gio Urshela’s job to lose, but teams inquiring into the availability of Miguel Andujar have been told the Yankees need to be blown away to consider dealing him. It looks like the team is betting on a good old-fashioned battle in spring training to determine who wins the job at the hot corner.
Forbes | Maury Brown: In a further rebuke to the “baseball is dying” narrative we’re plied with all the time, MLB reported another year of record revenues in 2019. This comes on the heels of declining attendance, proving that the league-wide trend towards optimizing attendance is more lucrative than maximizing it. Fortunately, this winter we’ve seen a return to teams spending on free agents, even teams at the bottom of the win distribution. As long as players get their cut of increasing revenue, we can all be happy.
New York Daily News | Dennis Young: The biggest obstacle to robo-umps was long thought to be the umpire’s union itself. It’s generally hard to get labor to agree to measures that reduce their own importance. However, the recently negotiated CBA between MLB and the MLBUA includes a future implementation of a computerized strike zone. The momentum towards automatic balls and strikes is only increasing, and it’ll likely be here before you know it. No word on whether we’ll lose Savages in the Box-style rants, or if managers will deliver them to Siri instead.