The Guardians have promoted Joe Torres to assistant pitching coach.

Torres, who is entering his seventh season in the organization, had been minor league pitching coordinator. He's replacing Ruben Niebla, who left to become the Padres' pitching coach.

I don't follow the minor league staffs but have any of you guys ever heard of him?

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Never heard of Torres but the press release talked about him help develop a lot of the young guys who are now with the big league club. Which is sort of obvious since he was a minor league pitching coach and they were minor league pitchers....

Jeff Passan of ESPN reports that Major League Baseball requested the immediate assistance of a federal mediator on Thursday.


Meanwhile, Evan Drellich of The Athletic reports that the league will not make he counter offer to the MLBPA two days after it said it would. "Under their request, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service would help assist with the proceedings," Passan writes.

The two sides remain far apart on core economic issues including raising the minimum salary for players along with a way to help curb the manipulation of service time. While this could help speed the process along, it does speak to the lack of substantial progress in these negotiations.

It is also worth noting that the MLBPA will have to agree for the federal moderator's assistance. Spring training is scheduled to begin in less than two weeks.

1. If the union does not accept a mediator then that's pretty lame.

2. As a union member often these mediators DO speed up the process. After all, what can it hurt for a 3rd party to view what is going on?

mediation, unlike binding arbitration, means a neutral who discusses the issues with the parties and is useful IF they WANT TO AGREE

Absolutely but just having a 3rd party there brings some degree of transparency.

anyway, the players turned down mediation so we remain at square zero

That's pathetic.

So MLB agrees to universal DH and to eliminate all draft choice penalties for signing free agents.
Perhaps they're on the way to an agreement? Although lots of issues remain.
Manfred says cancelling games would be a tragedy. Don't disagree

First scheduled week of spring training comes to an end with no serious injuries or setbacks.

MLB and MLBPA apparently plan to start meeting daily to negotiate. You'd think so, wouldn't you??

Tomorrow's a holiday. They'll probably take the day off.

Sure, there's no rush.