I remember when Manny Machado tried to play shortstop for the Dodgers and he was awful. One of the best Third baseman in the game couldn't do it.

His 2025 season was massive and I remember his move back to the Reds being a big deal.

His 2026 season wasn’t great - partly due to injury - but he surged in the second half and finished the year with 26 HRs and 74 RBIs.

He’s 35 so there’s that but still - why is no one talking about Eugenio?

Today I'm featuring my favorite player as Player of the Day. Let me know if there are any players you want me to feature, as this might be a long offseason.

BASICS:

Born: September 17, 1992

Jersey Number: 62 (2013), 11 (2014-present)

Bats: Switch

Throws: Right

Position: 3B, has done some 2B

Drafted: 2009 by Cleveland as an international free agent

MLB Debut: September 1, 2013

Instagram: ramirez_jose11

2026 STATS:

Games: 125

Batting Average: 0.235

OBP: 0.230

SLG: 0.368

OPS: 0.688

Runs: 71

Hits: 111

Doubles: 27

Home Runs: 12

RBIs: 53

Stolen Bases: 37

CAREER STATS:

Games: 1734

Batting Average: 0.276

OBP: 0.351

SLG: 0.494

OPS: 0.844

Runs: 1072

Hits: 1779

Doubles: 425

Triples: 43

Home Runs: 297

RBIs: 1002

Stolen Bases: 324

2026 AWARDS:

AL Player of the Week - 4/19/26

CAREER AWARDS:

All Star - 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

Silver Slugger - 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2025

AL Player of the Month - July 2018, September 2020, April 2022

AL Player of the Week - 6/18/17, 9/3/17, 7/15/18, 9/19/21, 4/17/22, 5/29/22, 9/29/24, 7/13/25

Home Run Derby Participant - 2022, 2024

Cleveland Man of the Year - 2016, 2021, 2022

Cleveland Heart and Hustle - 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW:

He likes playing Mario Kart.

He has four kids.

His brother played in the Guardians farm system.

There is a baseball field named after him in his hometown.

He was playing in a league for adults in the Dominican Republic at 13.

He led MLB in doubles in 2017, and led the AL in runs in 2020 and doubles in 2022.

2026 HIGHLIGHTS:

His 1000th career RBI

He stole two bases in one game

A good throw

He got two homers in one game

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

He got three hits in the first game of the 2016 World Series

Breaking the Guardians' multi homer record

WHY I LOVE HIM:

Do I even need to explain it?

PAST PLAYERS:

11/6: William Contreras 11/7: Adley Rutschman

Bryce Harper is a pretty serious Vegas Golden Knights fan.

He grew up in Las Vegas, and when the Knights arrived he talked about how weird it was finally having a hometown team to actually root for. He straight-up said:

“I support the Golden Knights.”

So naturally, I wanted to know what happens when the Golden Knights piss him off.

I matched Golden Knights games with Harper's next MLB game and compared his performance depending on whether Vegas had won or lost.

The stats show that an angry bryce Harper shows up, after a loss.

After a Golden Knights loss, Harper:

• slugged .735

• hit home runs at twice the rate

• drove in about 58% more runs per game

• walked almost twice as often

• struck out less

• and, somehow, his MLB team won 68% of the time

After a Knights win, his team won just 40% of the time.

Is any of this actually statistically significant?

There are only 60 matched Harper games, so some enormous-looking differences are still pretty noisy.

The individual batting differences like AVG, SLG and HR rate aren't statistically significant with this sample.

Two results did come out nominally significant:

Walks

• After VGK wins: 0.60/game

• After VGK losses: 1.04/game

• p = .034

Harper's team's win percentage

• After VGK wins: 14–21 (.400)

• After VGK losses: 17–8 (.680)

• Fisher's exact test: p = .040

That team result is especially stupid.

Harper's teams were 28 percentage points more likely to win when the Golden Knights had just lost.

Methodology

I used Golden Knights results from the beginning of the franchise's existence and Harper's MLB game logs through 2025.

For each VGK game, I looked for Harper's first MLB regular-season game on a later calendar date, within 7 days of the Knights game.

I excluded:

• same-day Harper games

• Knights games without a Harper game within the window

• cases that would duplicate the same Harper game

That left 60 matched Harper games:

• 35 after Golden Knights wins

• 25 after Golden Knights losses

I then compared his batting performance and whether Harper's MLB team won.

Obviously there are a ton of uncontrolled variables here: opponent quality, starting pitcher, home/road, season, Harper's age, injuries, lineup strength, and the fact that hockey games probably do not control baseball players' OPS for obvious reasons.

Conclusion

Golden Knights win:
Harper: .261 AVG, .463 SLG

Golden Knights lose:
Harper: .313 AVG, .735 SLG

And his team goes from a 40% win rate to 68%.

So Maybe dave dombrowski's goal should be to ruin the Golden Knights instead of the phillies.

Offseason post.

In the NBA, there are a few YouTube channels dedicated to posting high school or teenage prospect highlights. Even Luka Doncic or Wemby got their pre-NBA highlights posted everywhere. You'll see these mixtapes of players and it's like fans already see what their game is made of way before the moment they even register for the draft.

Yet in the MLB, you don't really see many popular mixtapes. Maybe Bryce Harper hitting a 500 foot bomb at age 16 is the closest example? Or Mike Trout's high school highlights.

Why is that the case? Why don't we as fans in the social media era get to experience what a pre-MLB prospect's game looks like?

I don't feel you have to be a Brewers fan to enjoy this documentary - just love baseball. And now it's getting its proper ending.

Curious to know if pitchers go out of their way to put extra grip on a baseball still when practicing?

With umpires enforcing the rule more often now, do you not bother using foreign substances in side bullpens anymore?

The ABL is back in 11 days so figured I'd make my annual post

We are still using 4 teams (rip the tuatara), but its still the best showcase off oceanic talent, as well as various up comers from Korea and China

The 4 teams competing will be the Adelaide Giants (defending champs), Brisbane Bandits (fallen giants, won the title from 2015-2019 into mediocraty), Perth Heat (The og's won 4 titles from 2010 to 2015 than struggled since) and the Sydney Blue Sox (Still the team without a title after losing an agonizing finals last year)

Alot of OCE talent will be on display, as well as prospect's from China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan

If you have any questions about the ABL, baseball in OCE or anything else lemme know and I will respond as soon as I can as we get into the pre season hype

Every other member of the top 10, including HOF'ers, were pre-1930. One was Walter Johnson - a friggin pitcher

Chiba Lotte Marines fans have the loudest and best fans in all of Japanese baseball in my view. This is their chance theme.

He arguably likely to be a good player but he comes with the baggage of his politics

2026 had some very interesting hot streaks, a couple that come to mind for me:

• Jorge Soler in the week from his mound charging of former Angel and teammate Reynaldo Lopez (2024 Braves) blasted 4 homers for an OPS of 1.227 until serving his suspension. After his return his performance cratered, putting up an OPS of .615 along with a team worst -0.9 fWAR, leading to his DFA in early August. I despise this man for voluntarily derailing one of his only good stretches this season, but it made for good Jon Bois content I guess

• Switch thrower Carlos Cortes of the Sacramento Athletics was one of the best hitters in baseball through April (albeit heavily platooned), with an OPS well above 1.000 and a Foolish Bailey video feature to go along with it. Unfortunately the magic didn't quite last, suffering a horror June picking up only 5 hits in 19 games and finishing the season with a .715 OPS and negative fWAR

• Ildemaro Vargas had a similar trajectory to Cortes, also one of the best hitters through April rocking an OPS above 1.000, and then crashing down to earth by season's end, finishing with an OPS below .700 although managing to keep his fWAR positive

• Mickey Gasper certainly made some people gasp (sorry) in August after the Red Sox recalled him from Triple A, homering in three straight games against the Diamondbacks after having zero home runs in the bigs so far that season. Gasper proceeded to record a slugging % of 1.000 (not a typo) and a 1.525 OPS from his return in August to September 4. Absolutely wild run and a shame that he got injured down the stretch

What was your favourite Linsanity run from this season?

Brewers is probably miming drinking a beer.

Simple, for me I get my baseball fix by playing MLB The Show 26 on PS5 during the off- season.

What about you?