Morning Mound Visit: Ryan Tepera gets accidental MVP vote

Gordon Wittenmyer | NBC Sports Chicago: The biggest surprise of Thursday’s MVP Awards announcement wasn’t that Freddie Freeman or José Abreu won in their respective leagues, it was that middle reliever Ryan Tepera got a vote. This wasn’t like Kevin Pillar getting a tenth place vote in 2019, this was just an honest-to-goodness goof up.

Patrick Dubuque | Baseball Prospectus $: Baseball is often thought of as a strategy game, the duel between the batter and pitcher likened to a chess match, but baseball has been solved. With strategy, and with it unpredictability, sapped from the sport, baseball has been engineered for efficiency, and it turns out that what happens on the field is immaterial to profits.

Blake Harris | Halos Heaven: The Angels found their replacement for Billy Epler on Thursday. Perry Minasian was named the new Angels general manager after beating out the other finalists Justin Hollander and Jeff Kingston. Minasian spent the last three seasons as assistant general manager of Atlanta.