Phightin’ Words: 2/14/20

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Did you know: the player with the highest career WAR total with the last name of “Valentine” is Ellis Valentine? He was worth 17.1 bWAR over the course of his tumultuous career with Montreal, New York and California.

Phillies news

• Matt Klentak spoke about a variety of subject during his season opening interview. You can get the main parts here.
• If you are getting ready for your fantasy baseball draft, here is a team preview of the Phillies for 2020.
• Reggie McClain is an arm the team brought into camp this year from Seattle. He had some rough, rough outings against the Astros, but was okay against everyone else. He spoke to Matt Gelb ($) about it all.

MLB news

• Here is your spring training preview brought to you by Jayson Stark ($).
• The Astros apologized yesterday, but that wasn’t good enough for many people. Here is my controversial take: move on, folks. It happened, people lost their job, but the team is not getting punished nor is their title being vacated. It’s time to just accept that fact. Enough with the morality thinkpieces about it all, we all know what should have happened. It didn’t, so let’s just get on with it.
• Kevin Pillar signed with the Red Sox, meaning the team essentially replaced Mookie Betts with a good defensive glove in Pillar and hopefully a good bat in Alex Verdugo.
• It’s the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Negro Leagues, so the league and player’s association made a joint $1 million donation to the museum. Negro League history is so good and should be preserved and studied by everyone. It’s well worth knowing about some of the greats that populated the league.

BSOHL update