Listen, we know it’s tough to catch up on everything happening in the baseball world each morning. There are all kinds of stories, rumors, game coverage, and Vines of dudes getting hit in the beans every day. Trying to find all of it while on your way to work or sitting at your desk just isn’t easy. It’s okay, though. We’re going to do the heavy lifting for you each morning, and find the things you need to see from within the SB Nation baseball network, as well as from elsewhere. Please hold your applause until the end, or at least until after you subscribe to the newsletter.
SB Nation’s 2016 MLB season preview is here! So, like, read it.
Friday’s Say Hey, Baseball includes our season preview, eight pounds of mac and cheese, and Hyun Soo Kim refusing to head to the minors.


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We’re going to do things a little differently today. On Thursday, SB Nation released its 2016 MLB season preview, so today, we’ll give you a rundown of all the goodies you can find inside. It’ll give you something to do while you wait for Monday (or Sunday, as is the case for six of baseball’s 30 teams), if nothing else. It was this or more on Pablo Sandoval losing his job, okay? And we can just cover that last part with a couple of links, anyway.
Grant Brisbee spent many, many, many hours figuring out what each team would look like if Rob Manfred ordered every player back to their original teams. There are some legitimately frightening lineups and rotations that this Frankensteinian experiment has created, and that can be taken in either sense of the word. Yours truly took a look at the Mariners, who are slowly becoming baseball’s last cursed team as everyone else used to failure as their identity changes course. Then, Claire McNear did some digging, only to find out every single team now has additional protective netting. The game -- or at least, the fan experience -- is changing.
We answered the biggest questions in baseball, including some you probably weren’t asking. We locked Grant in a small, poorly lit room for days, and asked him to predict the entire 2016 season. We then locked him in a smaller room without light and told him to admit that all of his predictions were just absolute trash. That’s not the end of the preview, though! You still have 30 individual team pages you can read, with notes on key additions and departures, the best and worst-case scenarios for each team, and more. Plus, if you want to go even deeper, there are 30 individual team preview features you can find your way to, written by our team-centric sites. So, go. Get reading. You’ve got until Sunday afternoon to finish learning everything there is to know about the 2016 season.
- We asked about the weirdest baseball giveaways you've ever seen, and you told us of the horrors you've encountered.
- The Blue Jays tried to bribe a teammate to eat eight pounds of lobster mac and cheese for $15,000, and he wouldn't do it. This is... so I've eaten four pounds of food in a sitting before, and it was just to see if I could. (Why do you think my bosses let me do this?) I'm sure I could eat more of it when $15,000 is on the line. Eight pounds, though? I'd finish short and also hate myself for multiple reasons afterward.
- Ryan Howard is the last relic of the Phillies' golden years.
- The 2016 season hasn't even started yet, but Baseball America already has their first of many mock drafts up.
- The Red Sox benched Pablo Sandoval in favor of Travis Shaw, and that raised a number of questions about what's next for Sandoval. There are also potential problems that come from benching Sandoval now instead of later. Sandoval's teammates seem on board, though, with David Ortiz praising the hard work of Shaw in earning the job, so it doesn't sound like they're upset about a high-priced player getting benched for playing poorly.
- Hyun Soo Kim signed with the Orioles out of Korea this offseason, and Baltimore wasn't happy with his spring training. So, they tried to send him to the minors even though his contract explicitly says they cannot do so without his permission. You'll never guess what happened next.
- The Rangers are still waiting for Yu Darvish to return from Tommy John surgery, and Colby Lewis is still a pitcher they are using on purpose, so a trade rumor linking them to the Indians about pitching could be a big deal in the AL West.
- The Cardinals signed Ruben Tejada to play shortstop after Jhonny Peralta went down with an injury, but now Tejada has joined him on the DL. Looks like Jedd Gyorko gets to play shortstop after all.











