GAME05

Dexter Lawrence traded to the Bengals for at least the 10th overall pick. Great move for the Bengals.

Pratt? Isn't Jett the most logical next guy up? Plus if they're willing to move Jett around his rookie year, he'd be a big help making up for some of our outfield absences, too. Add in Jett's versatility would mean a little more playing time for Rengifo/Hamilton, which I sure wouldn't mind, plus I'd prefer them to Perkins/Jones/Matos. Or is this just a temporary thing and once Chourio/Yelich/Vaughn come back, the -offense/+defense of Ortiz is a lot more tolerable?

These are always great. Every year I never bother reading analysts because your reviews are always better. And I suspect if we went back, more accurate, too.

Cross Plains got golf-ball-sized hail. But at least the rain please send some of it my way. Some counties by me are starting water restrictions.

No QB picked Rounds 5-7 would surprise me.

Yah, getting 1G Spectrum internet on Saturday. They were trenching across the street a couple days ago. The salesman showed up yesterday and said he had to sell 17 houses per month or he loses his job. Brightspeed had done 3mb for a while and then they just dropped service. Elon Musk had a lot of tree coverage so only got me maybe 3mb. Living in the middle of nowhere (though not quite AKCheesehead nowhere) sure makes fast internet nice. Time to stream some baseball and connect to people via Playstation. Also apparently I say a half-hearted/monotone/sarcastic "Yay" a lot, but it doesn't bug me because if I have to have a 'thing,' that's not too bad.

I'm a hard-cap and hard-floor guy but I see no reason MLB revenue couldn't be audited every few years to re-jigger the cap according to new revenue totals. If the Brewers can't be in there, than I hope the Dodgers win the next eight WS in a row. It's the best thing to build enough momentum to actually fix this.

In my OOTP game I created two Leagues, no Divisions, divided roughly by the Mississippi River. Top four in each make the playoffs. It also required a two-team league expansion in the West to make things even. You'd create more fan interest with local rivalries (like Yankees vs. Mets or Milwaukee vs. Minneapolis) and you'd greatly cut down the miles players have to travel during the season. I know players have talked about going back to a 145-game season because more rest equals fewer injuries, as well as more doublheaders but they're 7-inning games, but also recognizing neither will happen. I favor a near-complete revenue sharing with owners keeping something, like a % of gate receipts, to ensure they have a positive income stream and a payroll cap/floor ensuring players get their 52% of revenue. I know teams have argued "Well maybe our good players are young, so we don't need to spend to a floor" but there's always room to add an expensive reliever on a one-year contract to meet that floor. Also the home manager should have the decision on whether or not the teams will use a DH for the upcoming series, but that's unrelated. There's also certainly some room to allow more arbitration years, too. Guys like Turang should be making more than $4m. Unless it can be the Brewers, I hope the Dodgers win the next 10 World Series in a row. Payroll disparity is by far the biggest problem in this sport. Short-term it gets you more eyeballs on the World Series because it better ensures NY and LA are involved, but long-term it's going to ruin engagement. Why should a potential fan in Cleveland or KC or Tampa Bay bother?

Which seems kinda pointless. It's here to stay and it's only going to grow from here, so whether a person likes it or not is pretty irrelevant.

Boy, it would be an absolute hoot to interview some past GMs to talk about all the almost-trades us fans never find out about or all the 'almost' ones Selig shot down.

Well, to be hated on Reddit is a good sign you're doing something right.

I should've clarified, it's a workout machine. Stretches and bird dogs and light deadlifts have greatly helped the day-to-day back going out, but it still gets sore from bigger things. Just cutting a couple small trees today was enough. So looking into more dedicated work for it to see if that makes a difference. If it doesn't, then I can decide to either live with it or get major surgery.

Even the Titan brand back extension (roman chair) has a weight limit of 250#, so maybe I'll go for the bulkier Freak Athlete Hyper Pro, even though it's $700. Back still really tightens up and hurts on longer, busier days, so curious enough if back extensions and/or reverse hypers would help. Trying something a lot more dedicated to the lower back would also check that variable when I start to contemplate surgery five years from now.

It means we'll still have a heck of an infield defense! 2b/3b/SS with Jett playing a lot of INF/OF fits them all in

$6/yr is really just gambling on him to be a backup, Plus I assume SS skills translate to 3b and 2b, too. And if needs be, a solid half-year at AAA and that contract makes him even more valuable to trade than without it. Writing was already on the wall for Turang. He's a great candidate to trade with a couple years of arbitration left, which would net us a heck of a player. I don't think the Brewers are going to wait until Turang's final year. Heck, he'll probably be making $25m his second-to-last year of arbitration.

Ten different streaming services and something like $800 to watch every NFL game this coming season, plus RedZone now has commercials. FCC is now launching an inquiry into the NFL with the possibility they could lose their antitrust exemption on the idea that it's no longer freely available for the common viewer to watch.

Darn. Now there's a guy who started off awesome and only got better with age (William Shatner is another). And as I understand it, his karate chops were legit and he was a heck of a fighter.

Heck the whole 40-man roster looks like it's purpose-built for 2-3 May trades or a spate of injuries.

The way people are talking up Kyler Murray makes a person wonder why Arizona got rid of him in the first place.

Classy sign-off by him. A pretty decent player paid to be a great player. It's not like you have to be either great or you suck and there's no middle-ground. I don't really understand why there's much debate around him at all. Weren't there a decent number of kickers drafted last year who turned out to be pretty good? Especially considering the length of their careers and that good ones still don't break the bank, using a draft pick on the chance to get a good one still seems like good value. It's not like 5th-7th Round position players have any more chance of making it. And for how much kicking can change a game but a backup-backup LB doesn't, I'd rather take a flyer on drafting one than trying to find the surprise good one from the FA heap.

Fields couldn't beat out Russell Wilson on the Steelers and it sure looked like he was even worse with the Jets than the Indiana Bears. Heck, the season is over and I think Fields is still holding onto the ball. Willis at least gets the "but bad team" excuse with Oilers. Not a ton to go on with the Packers but there has to be a little fudge room left for week-after-week play from wherever imperfect scouting puts him. 2/$60 seems a good price for potentially competent in the absolute perfect year to be a FA QB. One can argue Love's ceiling, but probably safe to figure Willis' ceiling is where Love is now. And that makes Love the better QB than Willis. And that's not a dis to Willis because that's still a big fat paycheck.

The brother's daughters are all gonna be like 6'9"+ and there's a lot of volleyball in the family plus friends with a Top-5 D1 girls volleyball coach. But I suspect the obsessive dedication, wads of money, practice-time requirements and whole-family commitment required to actually reach college-scholarship talent is just going to be too much and won't happen. It's unfortunate kids are running themselves ragged to make the team which for 99.9% of them is supposed to be just a fun after-school sport.

Too many good infield prospects coming up at once to still hold onto Turang. Plus there's also Luis Pena who isn't all too far away yet. Unless there's a wave of busts that's too much talent to be a backup or stuck in AAA. Trade a few years of Turang control for a top-tier SP prospect, where we do lack high-end prospects. And if you thought Hader and Peralta were tough to lose, trading Turang is going to have people switching fandoms. It's gonna feel like it did when we didn't pay to re-sign Molitor.

Presumably adding depth to the bullpen in a potential/probable Megill trade, too. I'm starting to really like the trade. Jett gets a steady position at 3b instead of bouncing a rookie around and making the bet he can at least duplicate Durbin's offense. Unless Jett is supposed to be the best defensive SS prospect out of all our others, why put him at the more difficult SS position? Seems a good gamble for a potential top-line starter.

That's my confusion, too. Next offseason would have made more sense without potentially having to rush prospects. Obviously they see Jett as ready to get a lot of playing time, but you'd think his rookie status would bring more caution to that thought, plus his versatility would have given him tons of ABs already. Plus if Mitchell misses a lot of time again and Perkins struggles, that should mean Williams at CF more and at that point who plays 3B? Or the Brewers are just scared about their pitching depth for next season and a 3b need is better than a SP/RP one.