Nine years ago Buck Showalter, then managing the Baltimore Orioles, gave a wide-ranging interview to David Laurila of Fangraphs. Among the things he said to Laurila was:
I tend to agree with Showalter’s statement. Indeed, what is it about sports that makes fans and reporters go:
The Shohei Ohtani frenzy began at the Winter Meetings, National reporters were apparently unhappy that Ohtani didn’t give them a story in Nashville, as if they were entitled to one. Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic called the meetings “boring”:
The 2023 “Shohei Delay” edition, on the other hand, is a colossal bore, a detriment to a sport that should be generating worldwide attention with the shock-and-awe signing of the game’s biggest star.