Morning Mound Visit: sabermetrics news - 2/18/20

FanGraphs | Craig Edwards: With Kris Bryant losing his grievance case, it’s obvious that at some point the Cubs will trade him. With Mookie Betts on the move we have a comparable value case, and this means that they should be able to net good-but-not-great prospects.

Baseball Prospectus | Patrick Dubuque ($): Baseball likes to think there is justice; it is governed by umpires, and they are supposed to dictate what is right and wrong. But there are no umpires for the owners, who are absolute arbiters for what is right, and when they fail to take responsibility in the way Jim Crane did, it’s hard to imagine what justice would even look like.

The Athletic | Marc Carig ($): Mike Trout is known essentially as a quiet person, but he couldn’t keep his mouth closed about the Astros and the commissioner. He explicitly said that the punishment should have been harsher and that it harmed the competitive nature of the game; again, these are immeasurably harsh words from who is the ambassador of the game who rarely makes a controversial comment, let alone calling out players and the commissioner directly.