Fear The Chorizo

Norris was pretty darn good as a reliever in 2020...looking at his 2021, he's had 3 blowup appearances where he's given up more than 2ER, the last time in mid June. His July BAA is 0.107 with a 0.72 WHIP across 10 appearances. If nothing else he's a good arm with experience that should help add depth to the middle of the bullpen, and he does appear to be a weapon against LH hitters.

It also hasn't been around through a legit longterm recession to know how it would perform when excess capital isn't looking for a home - if I recall crypto originated on the back end of the last big recession and has been able to fluctuate and gain public interest during a very long period of sustained economic growth - particularly US economic growth. I don't know enough about crypto to be an expert, but in the face of a longterm recession based on economic fundamentals, I'm not sure I'd want to lean too heavily on an imagined asset - making speculative plays, sure.

There will be a significant correction that goes with getting the supply chain and labor/housing markets sorted out after all the things propping them up expire. There's a record amount of job openings in the country, and unemployment is stagnated or even creeping back up - some (not all) of that undoubtedly is the excess unemployment benefits being printed out and issued. foreclosures and evictions are still not happening as far as I can tell - eventually that will be allowed to happen again, and even if it's a gradual phasing back to how things ran pre-covid that will impact the housing and rental markets. CPI going up for these items independent of interest rates/inflation and the real estate market being pretty overinflated is very similar to what happened leading up to the last significant recession around 2006-2007. Differing reasons, but a very similar pattern seems to be underway.

I've had it for about 9 months. I've only gotten about 35Mpbs not the 50 they advertise, but overall few issues with outages or dropped signal (most streaming has been smooth). There isn't a modem/router based speedtest like I can do with Spectrum, but even my 200Mbps advertised Spectrum line comes in at 150-160. You probably cant stream 4K to 3 devices, but it should handle most streaming needs depending on your circumstances. Thanks for the info! I think we're going to order and try it out for a bit to see how it does and then decide whether to return it or cancel our current service. Medicaom advertises 100Mbps for the current setup we have but tests indicate it hardly ever gets above 50 and we've had out own sporadic outages/dropped signals with it from time to time.

Question on internet streaming...anyone have that TMobile home internet service that uses 5G and a gateway device they send you? Our area west of MPLS just got this service option available, and I'm contemplating dropping my local cable internet provider and trying it out if streaming speeds are ok - seems like a decent value ($60/month).

Yep ... should probably serve as a warning to those pushing for the Brewers to trade Hader. They'd probably be lucky to get 1-2 prospects back the caliber of Diaz and Harrison, let alone a Top 25 MLB prospect like Brinson was at the time. Ya, nothing's a sure thing but Hader has a lot more value now than when Yelich did at the time. Brinson was the only "top guy" we gave up. Diaz was well regarded and Monte and Yamamoto were essentially lotteries. I'd expect at least two "top guys" in return and certainly higher level prospects overall. I'm not sure about that - at the time Yelich had more years of team control under what was a bargain contract even for his production pre-MVP than what Hader has left now via arbitration. IMO an everyday all star caliber corner OF in his prime and locked into a very team-friendly extension for 4 (or was it 5) seasons carries more value than a lockdown late inning reliever with 3 years of arbitration-based team control. Brinson headlined the trade return, for sure - but Harrison appeared to be a season behind Brinson in terms of being an everyday corner OF with pop at the major league level. Diaz was also a prospect with a solid-enough track record that he was far from a lottery ticket. Also, given the amount of minor league service time for both Harrison and Diaz at the time, I believe the Brewers needed to either trade them or add them to their 40 man roster before they were ready to avoid losing them via the rule V draft. It goes to show how hard it is to project what well-regarded prospects wind up being at the big league level.

I wouldn't go that far, yet. There is still lots of time for any one of Harrison, Brinson, and/or Diaz to figure it out and be a stud. That said, the early returns are looking good for Stearns. I mean, Yelich won an MVP and probably would have won a 2nd had he not fouled a ball off his kneecap in his first two seasons with the Brewers. Even if one of these three does figure it out and become a stud, the trade will remain highway robbery. And those prospects were already kind of long in the tooth to be considered prospects while they were with the Brewers three seasons ago.

I'm in suburbs, and I prefer any of the Moretti's locations. Their deep dish is okay, but their thin crust is why I go there. The other places that are great are Home Run Inn, and of course an old favorite that is still around, Barnaby's. Haven't tried Pequod's but I will keep it in mind. Ironic, in that I've found Pequod's to be the closest thing to Rocky Rococo's that I've found in Chicago. Pequod's sauce is a little spicier, but overall it's fairly close. My favorite deep dish in Chicago remains Art of Pizza on Ashland, just south of Belmont in Lincoln Park area. On the south side near white sox park, Ricobenes makes a good thin crust pie as well.

Many homes that aren't dumps in that $300-500K price range are often sold or have offers/inquiries before they every actually hit the market around here - even during dead of winter. I should've clarified where I live too... I'm about 25 miles south of the metro (Lakeville/Prior Lake). Probably in the last "suburb" heading south of the cities. When I moved in, my neighbor had goats. So the price range I mentioned was for here and south of here - which becomes farm land. I wouldn't touch anything close to downtown or the nicer suburbs (Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, etc...) for the prices I mentioned. For reference, brand new cookie-cutter 3-4 bed room houses on a 1/4 acre lot run $400-500k in Lakeville, which is why the cap on used is around $350k. All true - I'm equally as far out west/southwest in Saint Boni (near Waconia). Just west of me is still cornfields and goats.

Many homes that aren't dumps in that $300-500K price range are often sold or have offers/inquiries before they every actually hit the market around here - even during dead of winter.

I live in a condo community in Waukesha. Last year, I had six neighbors who had lived here fewer than four years sell their property at a gain that computes to an annual 6%-8%. I will be listing soon, and I would love for my place to have appreciated at an annual 6%. But near north Chicago isn't quite as hot with all of the restaurants shut down and all of the riots/looting last summer. I think I'm far enough away, but 6% ARR from when I bought it four years ago would be an absolute dream... it's what I would need in order to not lose money on it, given all of the repairs. 5 years ago we moved from a pretty well-to-do neighborhood north of Chicago to a far west burb outside MPLS....we wound up making a small profit on our home sale in IL and thought we bought at the right time in our current MN locale. A few weeks ago we just saw our neighbor's house and other nearby homes sell for close to 175% of what their value was back in early 2016, and our old home back in IL is currently under contract for close to 10 percent lower than what we sold it for back then. The housing market is exploding in many places, but it is stagnant to declining in others - and that's even with all the levers trying to prevent a flood of foreclosures from happening right now. Also, rent is getting crazy expensive pretty much everywhere, to the point where it's more financially sound to overpay for a house in a mortgage one can barely afford compared to a similar monthly rent payment for something crummy and you get zero equity from.

$300 as of 5:00 am ... this is just silly. These guys are going to ruin commission-free retail investing for the 99.9% of individualis who do it responsibly. Looks like they're gonna take a few hedge funds down with them. GameStop is over $340 at opening bell. Seeing stuff like this happening forces me to diversify a good chunk of retirement fund assets as far away from stocks/hedge funds/risk as possible without incurring tax burdens...if the system in place leads to these type of situations, the overall fundamentals that traditionally drive markets are completely out of whack. Right now it feels like the markets in general are priced to fit perfection based on printed money and optimism - and economic fundamentals (let along policy uncertainty) are very far from that being a reality. I'm not a market sage, but it sure feels like the best case scenario for market funds in 2021 is to largely tread water - and that makes me nervous. I'm at a spot where I'm not super close to retirement but need to start planning for it and my present risk tolerance can't really take a 30-40% haircut on my portfolio value coupled with a slower rebound than what happened in 2020 - so essentially my paycheck contributions I make at present and moving forward are still going into the more aggressive mix of mostly stock funds that I stuck with throughout last year....but a big chunk of my current plan balance got shifted into less volatile havens at the start of 2021 for the time being.

And I wonder how many people don't opt-in just because they think the immediate $200 more in their paycheck is a better deal. I think it's much more that the immediate $200 in their paycheck is needed to cover monthly bills for the vast majority of people in the low middle class and below incomewise - not that it's a better deal, but that it's necessary to put food on the table. Where I think a huge benefit could be realized is understanding that putting even a pittance towards retirement early on can really make a difference, and understanding what minimal amount people could put into a retirement account to get some sort of company match and reduce their taxable income to the point where takehome pay reductions from retirement contributions are offset by a similar reduction in payroll tax. This isn't talking $200/check, more along the lines of $25-50 a check.

Virtually everyone is preparing for massive budget cuts. This is happening at my university, it is happening behind the scenes at every corporation in America. That's going to be the driver that opens everything back up - when entire hospital systems are on the verge of collapse due to an economic shutdown originally enacted as a way to try and protect hospital systems and public health, the writing is on the wall that it isn't sustainable no matter what the health risk is. Nonexistent tax revenues emptying coffers of state and local units of government, regardless of regional political leaning, will drive economic reopening, and I think it will happen at a faster pace than even currently rosy economic predictions lay out. I think we'll avoid a depression but have a bad recession, and the rebound will be hampered by dealing with this disease and prolonged public fears of returning to some societal norms - but that will be far better than stretching shutdowns into summer and leaving the economy to start so far down that it leaves scores more people in generational poverty. Doom and gloom longterm economic forecasts are being put together much the same way initial Covid-19 modeling was done forecasting millions of dead - depicting worse than worst case scenarios and assuming no societal/economic changes would be made during an extended period of time. Those models will be shown to the same government officials who were largely responsible for driving the economic shutdown along with what projected budget shortfalls will be if these actions remain in effect, and there will be a sobering realization that this just can't continue. As for public sentiment, look what is happening in Michigan today - despite it being a midwest state that is pretty hardhit by Covid-19, especially in the Detroit area...a rapidly growing contingent of people have had enough and the fear of indefinite economic collapse on a nationwide scale outweighs the fear of a disease - no matter how infectious or potentially harmful it is to the elderly and medically vulnerable. The market is still propped up because corporations "got theirs" in terms of recent stimulus/printed assistance dollars - small businesses and hourly workers are totally skewered by the shutdown.

The market overall has an awful lot of stress trying to drag it down further - uncertainty breeds panic and unfortunately the month of April looks like nothing but uncertainty from a business standpoint right now. Last week's rally sure looks like one of those dead cat bounces temporarily propping stocks up by Washington printing $, but my gut tells me it's going to drop further back to reach lows from a couple weeks ago and likely fall further down to find a true bottom. 6.6 million+ new unemployment claims over the last week reinforces that, unfortunately. The rebound isn't going to be instant, either. The only way out of this economically without facing crippling permanent job losses and business closures is to take the next couple of weeks to develop a risk-based set of criteria that local communities can use to assess how quickly they can reopen business. That includes expanded testing programs and continued hot spot area management. The country is too large to continue with a one size fits all approach indefinitely until New York is able to reopen, for example. Hot spots will undoubtedly pop up here and there in other parts of the country, which will need to be managed as best they can - but maintaining this current strategy across the country is going to lead to much larger longterm financial and health problems than the risk this virus presents to the population. I'm not saying to greenlight MLB Opening Day for May 1 and start packing stadiums/conference centers/concert halls right away - but there's got to be an end to this current wet blanket approach to manage social interactions by restricting businesses being open. Give people some benefit of the doubt for making good decisions in the workplace and out in public in general - after all, the people that are fools about this have continued to act as fools and make bad decisions even during the past few months.

Looks like he hasn't had too many hits since that 1st one. I'm already convinced that yelich has already outperformed what these 4 guys will do in their entire mlb careers, and the brewers still have yelich a couple more seasons. This trade was highway robbery

Yeah, it's pretty apparent that his stuff is not that of a frontline starter...he could definitely become a mlb rotation piece and have a good career if he improves his command, but he needs to live on the corners to do so. Basically his upside is Zach Davies - while his downside is that he's a flash in the pan who flamed out in mlb before ever settling in as a starter at this level.

What's pointless is essentially saying that one needs to be a Top 25 overall prospect at some point to validate their success. Sure, I'll go back to my fantasyland of not being over the moon impressed with a 23 yr old OPS-ing 0.950 in AAA considering he's repeating a level there, and not lamenting the loss of a corner OF who is OPS-ing mid 800's as a 23 yr old in that same level...that's nowhere near comparable to being the universal best prospect in all of baseball as an 18 yr old regardless of what level Franco is at. Since neither Harrison or Diaz are 20 yr olds tearing up AAA, and none have near the ceiling a guy like Franco has based on his talent level, the post I was responding to in my prior post was just a straw man argument I was calling out. 20 yr olds tearing up AAA are basically limited to generational talents like Trout, Harper, Machado, Vlad Jr., eventually Franco, etc. If age truly does matter, then you can't say a 20 yr old tearing up AAA is the same as Diaz and Harrison having good seasons at AAA. I never said that no prospect is truly a prospect unless they're rated in the top 25 - I'm glad Diaz and Harrison are having nice years for the Marlins' AAA affiliate, and hope they develop into everyday MLB players that are above replacement level. I'm also glad to have Hiura instead of Diaz in the organization playing 2B, and the reigning MVP of the National League as well playing a corner OF spot.color me crazy, I guess

Exactly, age matters. If a 20 year old is tearing up AAA, every evaluator is going to be more impressed than if a 26 year old is doing it. Wander Franco isn't the best prospect in baseball because he's hitting .341/.410/.560 between A and A+. He's the best prospect in baseball because he's hitting that well (in addition to being an average at worst defender at the most premium defensive position) as an 18 year old. And putting too much stock in a small sample size of anyone's minor league performance at any level and age is foolhardy, particularly when there is a larger track record tied to a prospect or player that indicates they aren't likely to be as good as a two month stretch of at bats indicates. Guys like Diaz and Harrison have been pretty good this year, but both are coming off relatively poor 2018's, and neither were ever considered even top 25-ish prospects even during their best stretches. And it's not like either are 18 years old. Including wander franco in this conversation to make a point is pointless.

Diaz has had a phenomenal season in AAA so far. He deserves it. He's well on his way to being a top 100 again. At least Brinson is floundering. You don't want the team you traded with to go 4 for 4. compare Diaz's 2019 in AAA to Saladino's, and you'll soon realize a TON of minor leaguers are having a phenomenal 2019. Including Diaz in that trade meant the Brewers were committed to Hiura at 2B instead of Diaz since their development timeframes were essentially identical - I'll make that same decision every single time. Until all these prospects actually become productive everyday MLB players, it's way too early to heap praise on them. In fact I'd say the odds are still stacked towards only one or possibly 2 of these four prospects developing into an MLB starter that has a career that reaches through the 1st 6 years of team control and into unrestricted free agency. That pretty much means the Brewers robbed the Marlins of one of the top 5 players in the entire world through his prime, who is making less than most veteran #5 starters.

Regarding Yamamoto, check back with me after he makes his first all star game appearance, and then I'll tell you he'd only need another two AS appearances and a Cy Young to even consider feeling bad about losing him in a deal for prime Yelich.

I think the only players I'd even consider something like this would be young position players primed to be MVP-caliber talents, who either are still pre-arbitration or are signed to very friendly contracts. Guys like Acuna Jr., Vlad Jr., Bellinger perhaps, maybe even Wander Franco of the Rays. Pitchers carry too much injury risk, and other veteran studs are either too expensive or aren't as good as Yelich.

When the other 3 prospects have a total of 1 start in MLB between them, there's just no way of knowing that. Brinson looks to be the only bust because thus far he's been the only one to have a sustained MLB opportunity - and he fell on his face to start his MLB career. There just as much chance of Brinson having the best career of the three and Diaz, Harrison, Yamamoto all amount to nothing more than a footnote on Christian Yelich's Wikipedia page referencing how in the world the Brewers acquired him.

Yelich is a cheapish best player in the game controlled though his prime - The fact he doesn't command 1/3rd of the Brewers' entire team payroll makes him astronomically more valuable than 4 young MLB everyday players. It's not even close.

Unless one of the four prospects becomes an annual MVP or Cy Young contender, the Brewers stole Yelich from the Marlins - there really isn't any other way to evaluate the trade at this point. Even if all four wind up having decent MLB careers, the Brewers win the deal in a landslide by getting Yelich's prime years under an extremely team-friendly contract. Great to see Yamamoto have a good first start, particularly in beating the Cards!