Fear The Chorizo

Sure, but what they failed to do was see how any sort of recovered/healed knee and mindset translated to on-the-field performance in game situations before offering a contract extension they had no urgent need to offer. If Yelich's camp told the Brewers' FO that "it's now or never" in early spring 2020, I'd have simply said, "Ok, guess it's never, or we'll address this again over the next offseason when you still have 2 seasons left on your current contract" Yelich is 30 years old this year, which would have been his last under his former contract assuming the Brewers would have picked up his 2022 option (something that would actually be very open to debate given Yelich's 2020-2021 season performance). I'd have been just fine letting him walk after this season and not thought twice about it even if he maintained MVP-level production, because I just don't want to see the Brewers extending players longterm once they are beyond 30 years old.

Stearns' biggest mistake, IMO, is giving Yelich that contract extension before seeing exactly how he recovered from that knee injury when they still had him under his previous contract for up to 3 more seasons at very friendly prices for their payroll. Conversely, this is probably the best move Yelich's agent made in their entire career. By waiting would the Brewers have risked not being able to extend Yelich had he continued raking offensively? Yes, but they also could have gotten 3 more years of his prime without burdening their payroll longterm - something a team with the payroll limitations the Brewers have must focus on instead of extending players well into their 30s so we can watch their inevitable decline. The Brewers built their whole window around him being the 2018-2019 version of himself through the years when most of their young pitching core would reach free agency. Not having that player in the middle of their lineup really hurts, especially now that they are paying him to be that type of hitter and instead they get a "serviceable" leadoff hitter who is a declining defender. The trade for Yelich was highway robbery given the fact none of the prospects shipped to the Marlins have amounted to anything and the Brewers instantly got an MVP-caliber OF in his prime under an incredibly team-friendly contract. The Brewers could have waited 1 or 2 seasons to see how Yelich's career arc trended after that knee injury before working out a mega contract extension, and if they did Stearns and company could have actually walked away from Yelich after 2021 without offering him an option year for this season. In retrospect, Braun's extension looks incredibly team-friendly and a better use of limited payroll than Yelich's, and we are barely into the teeth of this organizational albatross of a contract for a small market club.

And July 2021 was roughly the time when inflationary pressures started gaining steam...any sort of year over year increases in the months ahead means prices are still going up significantly despite demand cratering due to economic inactivity. That essentially is stagflation. Reality is that in order to get prices back to reasonable levels, there probably needs to be an extended period of deflation where we are seeing a prolonged stretch of negative year over year prices - similar to what we saw through most of 2009. The fact demand has dropped to the COVID wasteland of spring 2020 isn't really anything to be optimistic or happy about either - there was so much pent up demand forced on the economy from 2020-mid 2021, the fact there isn't significant economic growth beyond that in 2022 despite the inflationary pressures is a bad sign pointing to a sustained and long-lasting recession. As for the market, it's acting almost independent from what the day to day economic reality is facing most of the country - tough to say when another correction will occur because of so many levers committed to propping the market up, but that most likely will happen after people start scratching their heads as to why the FED continues jacking rates up each month despite monthly inflation rates getting back to 1-2% year over year. This economy is more or less malfunctioning and unpredictable.

My best take is that when Hiura is going good, he's consistently driving the ball to center-right center, and he's proven to be a very good offspeed hitter against RHP, where he can let the ball travel and use his handspeed to drive a ball that's breaking away from him. LHP offspeed breaks in towards his hands, so his approach winds up jamming himself or getting caught in between much more with lefties. If he's going to be a quality everyday hitter he's got to make an adjustment - but I also think the Brewers are at the point where they've done a disservice to him at the MLB level by how sporadic his ABs have been against RHP. Even in 2019, most of Hiura's success came against RHP - he just isn't getting consistent ABs when he's in Milwaukee, and they can't seem to find a way to take advantage of his pronounced reverse platoon splits. McCutcheon has been decent of late....but he's still OPS-ing below 0.725 and essentially is in the everyday role Hiura otherwise would have had, particularly against RHP.

We also took Rogers and his contract off SDs hands. The Twins were already paying pretty much his entire salary this year (financial gymnastics, as part of the trade between the Twins and Padres last offseason included the Padres essentially shipping most of the $7M in cash to Minnesota - but Rogers counted almost zilch towards San Diego's luxury tax threshold this season because of it). Including Lamet in the trade offsets the luxury tax ramifications for the Padres of adding what's left of Hader's 2022 salary from their perspective. I do think there was another move or two involved that was going to include Lamet at the deadline, and it fell through from the Brewers' perspective. With pitchers coming off the injured list there was just no room

As for when has Stearns done X, as I said, if you just want to say, you blindly trust Stearns...fine. If it's just trusting Stearns, ok. I don't believe Brewers fans 3 days ago would have argued for Glasser over Kelly as they are now. I didn't see a specific pitching prospect you mentioned in this statement that Stearns has traded away from the Brewers who is now thriving at the MLB level - so do you just blindly mistrust Stearns since you can't come up with one? Would you rather the Brewers have kept Kelly to see if he could command his stuff effectively enough to become a reliever at the MLB level around 2025 while having to stash him on their 40 man roster the next 2.5 years when other prospects appear to be ready sooner and in need of that roster spot? IMO that's as big a reason Kelly is no longer with the Brewers as anything. And I don't think its fair to directly compare Gasser and Kelly as prospects without also including where they are in terms of minor league service time/40 man roster limitations. Gasser is older but has much more minor league control tied to his development before he would need to be added to a 40 man roster - Kelly does not because he was drafted as a 19yr old, missed a full season of professional development due to COVID and then most of another year due to arm surgery. Kelly will always have more upside simply because he throws harder than Gasser, but he also has a much lower floor and has a long ways to go before realizing that upside consistently. Gasser was a high floor 2nd round draft pick 1 summer ago who has improved his ceiling with increased velo/stuff.

Gasser was drafted in 2021, Kelly in 2019. Gasser has improved his stuff and has remained healthy to date, always shown polish and the only question on him provided he stays healthy is if he profiles as a mid or back of the rotation starter. Kelly had a significant shoulder surgery and hasn't developed nearly enough to be considered a starting pitcher prospect anymore - his path to MLB is in the pen and his questionable command in high A shows he still has a long ways to go to get there. Gasser is older by ~1 year, but from a development standpoint he is much more advanced as a pitcher and a prospect than Kelly. When you look at the pitching prospects Stearns has shipped out via trade over the past few years, which one stands out as a guy he really messed up trading thus far?

This partly feels like a long time coming in terms of weird roster reshuffling and questionable moves made by the FO in the last calendar year without giving some internal guys enough room to earn longterm roster spots. I think something fell through at the deadline that Stearns and company were hoping to work out in terms of a trade for another bat - perhaps Bell or a different bat that would've included Lamet and/or one of their 3 catchers. Severino gets sent packing because he can't play this postseason due to the drug suspension. To me Lamet always did look like a throw in for this trade that likely evened out $$ in order for the Padres to include both prospects they did. Since Rogers' salary was almost fully paid by the Twins, they had to purge some of their MLB payroll to stay under the luxury tax. Hiura has only been shuttled between AAA and MLB because the Brewers threw a contract at McCutcheon to be their quasi DH and Hiura had an option remaining. He strikes out a ton but he also makes peanuts and is one of their most productive hitters against RHP. He's been raking so it'll be interesting to see if he get consistent AB or just gets stuck at the bottom of the Brewers' bench once again. Based on what is coming up through their farm system, I kind of expect the Brewers to have alot of position player trade activity happening this offseason from their existing MLB roster in order to open up spots for some of their prospects and lower payroll in order to afford arby raises to Burnes/Woodruff.

Should've been much more willing to bet way, way more....because that's exactly where we're at.

1) In rural areas aren't gas stations fewer and further between? Don't people have to go out of their way to get gas? Wouldn't it be much more convenient to have your own "gas station" at home instead of driving "into town" to get gas? I take it you've never actually lived in a rural area - if you did you'd understand that people have to go out of their way to get just about anything, and they tend to plan errand trips into town to take care of multiple tasks to be as efficient as possible....including filling up the tank on the way home. People don't just mindlessly drive 30 miles into town to get gas and drive home for no reason, so it really isn't "out of their way" at all.

How familiar are you with the solar panel and battery manufacturing processes, from the point of pulling raw materials out of the ground, to manufacturing these components, to the issues with manufacturing waste biproducts and end of use waste from the spent components themselves? Scaling those processes anywhere close to what it would take worldwide and expand solar and EVs to the point you're proposing would be devastating to the environment - particularly in developing countries and places where the vast majority of these materials are mined and manufactured without anywhere near the environmentally-protective regulatory controls the US has at present. Maybe if we add a wind turbine to the top of the car it'll make it drive forever, too...

Yeah I get the thought that a big market team might feel like they can try to ink Soto to a longterm extension before he hits free agency....but as long as Boras is Soto's agent it isn't based in reality. I can't think of any marquee client Boras has had who actually signed a longterm extension before reaching free agency. Probably missing one somewhere, but to me having 2.5 years to sign Soto to a 15 year extension shouldn't have any bearing on what his trade value is - for any MLB team trying to trade for him. And I'd argue not being able to afford a 15 year extension for Soto is an advantage, not disadvantage for the Brewers as an organization. In fact, if the Brewers do the impossible and acquire Soto via trade, the first thing they should state in their presser is it'll be great to get 2.5 years of service from Soto before he breaks the bank in free agency - just so we don't have to hear from Boras coming up with outrageous player values for his client the whole time he's a Brewer.

Yeah I get the thought that a big market team might feel like they can try to ink Soto to a longterm extension before he hits free agency....but as long as Boras is Soto's agent it isn't based in reality. I can't think of any marquee client Boras has had who actually signed a longterm extension before reaching free agency. Probably missing one somewhere, but to me having 2.5 years to sign Soto to a 15 year extension shouldn't have any bearing on what his trade value is - for any MLB team trying to trade for him. And I'd argue not being able to afford a 15 year extension for Soto is an advantage, not disadvantage for the Brewers as an organization. In fact, if the Brewers do the impossible and acquire Soto via trade, the first thing they should state in their presser is it'll be great to get 2.5 years of service from Soto before he breaks the bank in free agency - just so we don't have to hear from Boras coming up with outrageous player values for his client the whole time he's a Brewer.

I don't know if it's that far-fetched - I don't think it matters where he gets traded, there won't be a longterm extension signed by Soto/Boras with that team. If a huge market team winds up trading for Soto, they surely could resign him as a free agent - but that would be because they have more $ to throw at him when he does become a free agent. Soto won't be a free agent until after 2024, so a trade would be for ~2.5 years of team control before he leaves via free agency. I don't consider 2.5 years of a great player's prime to be a rental, either - it's actually a smart baseball move for a small market team (had they done the same with Yelich and not extended him they could've let him be a free agent last offseason after 4 seasons with the team). They have Chourio - who is legitimately great right now - but the Nationals are likely looking for either young MLB talent or near-MLB talent... Soto was the youngest player in MLB when the Nats called him up - just because Chourio is still a baby doesn't make him young/near-MLB talent in the eyes of MLB execs. It would still take a haul to trade for him, but I think the Brewers could put enough pieces together to swing a trade that also doesn't cripple the talent emerging in their farm system - I doubt the Brewers could put together the best package unless they include Chourio in the package, which would give me pause....but 2.5 years for one of the best players in MLB is going to require a haul.

I don't know if it's that far-fetched - I don't think it matters where he gets traded, there won't be a longterm extension signed by Soto/Boras with that team. If a huge market team winds up trading for Soto, they surely could resign him as a free agent - but that would be because they have more $ to throw at him when he does become a free agent. Soto won't be a free agent until after 2024, so a trade would be for ~2.5 years of team control before he leaves via free agency. I don't consider 2.5 years of a great player's prime to be a rental, either - it's actually a smart baseball move for a small market team (had they done the same with Yelich and not extended him they could've let him be a free agent last offseason after 4 seasons with the team). They have Chourio - who is legitimately great right now - but the Nationals are likely looking for either young MLB talent or near-MLB talent... Soto was the youngest player in MLB when the Nats called him up - just because Chourio is still a baby doesn't make him young/near-MLB talent in the eyes of MLB execs. It would still take a haul to trade for him, but I think the Brewers could put enough pieces together to swing a trade that also doesn't cripple the talent emerging in their farm system - I doubt the Brewers could put together the best package unless they include Chourio in the package, which would give me pause....but 2.5 years for one of the best players in MLB is going to require a haul.

Hell, gas tanks only get ~350 miles. EV's aren't far behind that. An ICE vehicle's range is entirely dependent on the size of its gas tank and not on a battery that takes much longer to recharge in order to regain its full travel range - throw a pair of jerry cans in the back of your pickup and suddenly that range doubles. Plus if you drive a car 349 miles and show up at a gas station on fumes, 5 minutes later you can completely reset its range to 350 miles after filling up. An EV simply can't and won't ever be able to offer that level of convenience no matter how many charging stations pop up - particularly in rural areas that often require vehicles with significant towing or storage capacity, or for people living in urban areas that don't have the means or real estate room to have their own secure charging station. However, that's not saying EVs aren't a good option for anybody to have. EVs can supplement the overall auto fleet in the US and serve that sought after niche as a suburban around-town errand runner for those who can afford its higher upfront cost along with having reliable and private charging capabilities. That's maybe 15% of the population in the US, but it's a far lower percentage across the rest of the world. I think EVs make up roughly 5% of the US personal vehicle fleet at present, so 15% would be tripling it existing market share in this country - and I think that's a realistic ceiling for this type of technology. EVs are simply not the answer to replacing the ICE on a worldwide scale, particularly if people are looking for ways to improve the environment. One exception is Norway (population a bit smaller than WI). To dramatically increase their country's use of EVs, Norway has taxed the crap out of any ICE cars (sales, gas, maintenance, basically everything gets taxed at very high levels) while foregoing any taxes on EV sales/maintenance/charging cost as a way to make them cost competitive and disincentivize ICE cars - at least up until recently as they've had to scrap the EV sales tax exemption because they've blown too big a hole in their fiscal budget. The primary funding mechanism that has made this even sort of a reality in Norway is, of course, the enormous amount of money they collect in royalties from oil exports - which is a huge part of their economy and the only reason they're among the wealthiest nations on a GDP per capita basis. So Norway can say they're very clean domestically in terms of vehicle emissions - but all the oil that gets pumped out of their seafloor and shipped elsewhere to be guzzled that actually funds this endeavor still winds up churning out CO2 on the same planet Norway is on.

When Tesla is pleading for people in Texas to only charge their EVs at night and not during peak demand, it's evidence that if people charge whenever they'd prefer to do on their own that the additional strain on the grid from charging EVs even at the limited % they are part of the overall auto fleet is a problem. Dramatically increasing the % of EVs on the road would only make this much worse. Part of that reason is the existing grid and power supply is strained to its limits at present, too. That's not just in the US, it's happening in many developed countries as they've become steadily more reliant on renewables instead of excess generating capacity from nuclear/fossil fuels to support antiquated peak demand estimates that growing populations are easily able to exceed. And there's still a significant limitation with EVs on how far you can actually drive them before needing to take a significant chunk of time to recharge the battery, not to mention being held hostage to traveling where charging stations are available and actually functioning properly. To me the next step would be for families/households in population centers who have multi-vehicle households to have an EV primarily for in-town local driving and keep an ICE vehicle for more flexibility with longer drives - particularly when not planning to return home to your garage charging station at night to take advantage of that coal-fired trickle charge during bedtime.

Yes, but that decline doesn't really mean much - going from 9+% in June year over year to say 7% in July year over year still means stuff costs a ton more a full year after inflation started spiking. Changes from the interest rate hikes won't be seen in inflation numbers for another few months, at which time the rest of the economy will be firmly entrenched in a progressively worse recession (we're already in a recession that will get worse). The big rate hikes coming now are kind of like a fire department showing up to a kitchen fire and then proceeding to wait until the entire house is a raging inferno before starting to run the hose to the nearest hydrant, then proceed to extinguish the fire on a destroyed house and not turn the water off until they've flooded the rest of the homes in the neighborhood. There should never have been a 2021 round of COVID stimulus printed out (frankly there probably shouldn't have been any in 2020 either but gov't policy panicked). And as soon as that bill was passed the Fed should have started significant rate hikes a full year ago to offset what they knew was coming. Gas/fuel prices are the biggest inflation driver, since everything sold in a store at one point or another got there after being transported by something running on fuel. Gas prices will drop a bit due to reducing demand as summer moves to fall (prices always go down during this stretch), but now the problem is the US needs to stop drawing from its strategic reserves and actually try to replenish them when the cost of oil is near a record high. That will curtail supply and prevent gas prices from dropping faster than they otherwise would have - so we'll get a fresh round of blaming oil companies raking in huge profits. Meanwhile, US refining capability is basically running at max capacity and there are terrible permitting/financing disincentives for those companies to even try to use profits for building new refineries, expanding existing ones, or increasing drilling/production to try and get more in line with demand and get prices at the pump to a reasonable level for consumers. The other option is to make everyone buy electric cars they can't afford to destroy the environment much faster by mining the heavy metals needed to produce batteries, and then subsequently blow out the existing electrical grid. It's going great...

When was that CBO estimate made and what were the actual revenue streams? The article you linked is dated in early February 2019, before increased revenue streams from the economic growth the tax cuts created were actually realized. Throw the intentional recession COVID lockdown policies created and really the first year's revenue that can be looked at to see what impact those tax cuts had on the broader economy was 2021....and thus far in 2022 the reduced deficit in large part is due to those cuts enacted as well whether people will admit to it or not. Those cuts haven't been removed, right? So they are still impacting government revenue streams. Deficits in 2020 and 2021 were incredibly influenced by the trillions of dollars printed out in COVID relief - take those huge amounts off the government's books for 2020 and 2021 and those years' deficits would likely resemble what we are seeing so far in 2022. The problem with CBO scoring is that it is forced to use current economic conditions extrapolated over 10 years or however long they project and don't have a good way to adjust that scoring for either improved or diminished economic growth that makes those projections worthless after a few years.

The key takeaway for me in that article is its headline...I get why states value shifting people from welfare rolls they have a bigger part in funding to federal disability - but the fact there are jobs whose role is strictly to move people from one unit of government's dole to another just to achieve some cost savings on their own books speaks to how additional layers of bureaucracy across government lead to programs costing more tax dollars $ to deliver the same services, and that bureaucracy just fails to see the forest through the trees. Money could actually be saved and tax revenues for these programs at both the state and federal levels could increase if there was more emphasis/funding for programs whose goal is to get people who can work back to work by providing necessary training/offering relocation assistance/etc.

"trickle down" is a phrase opponents of lower taxes came up with to villify policies that promote capital investment as a way of creating more economic opportunities for people who instead want increased government spending as a way of propping up the ground floor. And no, there isn't a need to increase both taxes and slash spending due to the size of the national debt - they key is to rein in the deficit to stop adding to the debt by freezing or finding ways to decrease spending for an extended period of time so revenue from existing tax policy starts making that debt look smaller in the long run. The last round of tax cuts enacted by orange man bad were having a positive impact on increasing government revenues because the economy was thriving and expanding in 2019....then revenues actually spiked significantly in 2021 in large part to corporate tax revenues following that 2017 tax cut. However, we unfortunately didn't see the deficit/debt benefit from those increasing revenues because government COVID policies from both political parties blew it up by cratering business growth that was driving the increased tax revenue and also printing out trillions more in debt with no way to pay for it.

Exactly, and because of that a smaller percentage of the US is actually in the workforce and we've been skirting around a tipping point due to prolonged economic expansion for the past 10ish years - small decreases in the labor rate percentage are significant on a macro scale when the programs supported by payroll wage garnishments are already running at a loss. There needs to be a marked increase in labor participation of working-age adults in order to offset the group of baby boomers entering into retirement, otherwise the gov't programs (social security, medicaid/medicare, etc) don't have enough wage earners to sustain them and the whole thing implodes on itself. That and substantial reform of these programs that likely push back the age when people can start collecting from them and limiting the amount they receive. People on fixed incomes are getting crushed right now and it won't get better for them for a substantial amount of time. COVID forced alot of two parent working households back to 1 parent working households because the extended school shutdowns and forced restriction on activities, and to their credit many families realized the benefits of having one parent at home running the show outweighed the benefits of two wage earners chasing their tails running errands and shuttling kids between day cares/schools/after school activities. It's going to take awhile to unwind things economically to reach a new and sustaintable economic normal, and inflationary pressures are just amplifying the pain while we and the rest of the world start working through it. This turmoil is all happening as jobs are still plentiful and there are still a good number of working age people who aren't choosing to fill those jobs - whether that be due to a population wide skills gap or unwillingness to perform various tasks is beside the point. When the economy does start contracting jobs and people who are currently employed find themselves out of work, there's going to be much more economic desperation than their already is - even in the richest country on earth.

The US still drives the global economy, so when it sucks here it more or less is going to suck everywhere else with a few exceptions that for one reason or another can isolate themselves, and probably sucks even more in countries that don't produce their own energy...I believe California itself has a much higher GDP than the UK.

Oil prices also started falling in October of last year, so there was reason to believe that inflation would subside. Then Russia. In general, oil prices always slide in the fall of the year after peak demand most summers - so that really isn't a surprise or should have been viewed as a sign that inflation would actually not be a problem after printing trillions of dollars for the heck of it. IMO there shouldn't have been a stimulus in either 2021 or the ones they doled out in 2020 - we are reaping the after effects of all of that right now. The roadblocks set up for banks and other financial institutions to invest in expanded oil exploration and oil distribution infrastructure projects (pipelines/refining capacity, etc) coupled with essentially throwing a proverbial wet blanket on any and all new leases/drilling permits has been far more destructive to the global oil market than Russia invading Ukraine. It's not nearly as simple as yelling at oil companies to "pump faster or pump more". The brief unemployment rate increase a little more than a year ago was a product of the government finally pointing to a stop on the extended unemployment benefits and a glut of workers actually trying to rejoin the workforce. The US labor force still isn't close to where it was pre COVID in terms of the number of people actually working - despite that really low unemployment rate...it's because a smaller percentage of the country is actually in the workforce.

Things are going to get worse but at least we're being somewhat proactive this time which is unusual for the government. The last time the Fed jacked up rates 75 basis points was 1994, when Greenspan was roundly criticized by government officials for suppressing economic expansion. At the time, I think inflation was around 2.5-3.5%, and Greenspan indicated he initiated the rate hike to prevent what appeared to be a rebounding economy from overheating. The overall rate increases by Greenspan were relatively short-lived (about a year) and the Fed was able to keep inflation in check even after lowering the rates. Since May 2021, the monthly inflation rate has progressively increased from 5.0% in May 2021 to 8.6% in May 2022, with little sign of dramatically dropping in the coming months. This time around, what the Fed is doing is hardly proactive, and they are going to be forced to be punitively reactive to try put a stopper on the inflation spigot they've let run largely uncontrolled for more than a year. As for student loan repayments, my final loan payment will be made next billing cycle roughly 19 years after I graduated...so that definitely means that huge swaths of student loan debt are going to be forgiven in next 2-3 months.