Fear The Chorizo

Average age of a vehicle across the US has ballooned to over 12 years, an all-time high for this country. Used car sales plummeting was bound to happen when large portions of the consumer base for buying used were priced out of the market and have instead continued pumping money into their existing rides for repairs.

One question though -- how did this dude get hit by a pitch 27 times in one season? For a right handed batter, the toughest pitch to try and bunt for a base hit is inside velocity - they are trying to bunt the ball out in front of the plate and either angle it down the line or push between 1st and 2nd, while starting out running out of the box towards 1st. An inside fastball limits their ability to get a good angle to bunt towards 3rd and get extension to push it to the right side, and impedes them from getting a good start out of the RH batter's box. The high HBP rate could be as simple as a basic scouting report attempted to be executed by minor league pitchers with less than stellar command and have nothing to do with Ruiz crowding the plate or looking to lean into pitches to get on base.

If SLG means slugging percentage, the info in that tweet is not accurate. Also, hard hit rate for guys who bunt for base hits (a rarity in today's game) should not be viewed as a key stat. Speed turns a ton of poorly hit baseballs into base hits - and outlawing a shift only amplifies that. Ruiz also did hit 16 HR last year in the minors, while Frelick hit 11. With regard to Ruiz, worst case scenario for him barring injuries that sap him of his game-altering speed is probably Billy Hamilton - a guy who didn't perform nearly as well as Ruiz did offensively at upper levels of the minor leagues who went on to have a ~10 year MLB career based solely on his speed. Like it or not, exchanging prospects for any player who winds up having a 10 year MLB career is probably a win for the team acquiring that player. Ruiz profiles as a better offensive player than Hamilton at the MLB level, and he will be an absolute terror stealing bases if he maintains an OBP even over 0.300. The Brewers made out very well in this trade because they filled a position of need with a young and talented catcher at the MLB level along with pitching depth, AND while they gave up young MLB-ready talent in return it was from a position they have depth at in terms of MLB-ready outfield prospects.

Depends on the timing of when a trade would happen for how some of the bonus/salary structure would be paid out and how cap hits would be diviied up between the Packers and the team he's headed towards and if/when the Packers exercise the option in his contract. It would be tricky but not impossible - no contract makes a player untradeable. If Rodgers has a strong finish to the season it's all but certain there would be a few teams interested if the Packers opt to want to deal him this offseason and move forward with Love.

It's his take on the Yelich trade that makes me think this deal is going to wind up being one the Brewers regret.

I think it's a solid move for Milwaukee to acquire a good and young everyday offensive catcher by using developed OF prospect depth - even if Ruiz winds up being the best MLB outfielder among Frelick and Mitchell I think it's a good trade because they're all probably holding a roster spot for Chourio, who's going to be in Milwaukee sooner than later. Looking at Ruiz's and Frelick's stats from their 2022 AA/AAA seasons in a vacuum without knowing draft pedigree or career arc, and there'd be plenty of a case for Ruiz to be more highly valued.

Guessing it's going to include one of the other young OF prospects not named Chourio, too. Or a young arm + Hiura I was actually hoping Ruiz would remain a Brewer when the offseason dust settled and have a legit shot at regular playing time in Milwaukee - I think he's going to be good. That being said, Chourio is probably taking the OF MLB playing time from a couple of the group of AAA OFs (Mitchell, Frelick, Ruiz) in a season or two, and now is probably as good a time as any to deal from a position of depth at the top of their system.

Agreed - but I think that decision could still wait to happen after the 2023 season - or at least well into the preseason. I think it would be foolish for the Packers not to pick up Love's option at this point if they don't trade him. Worst case scenario is they pay him ~$20M to start in 2024 during a season the Packers are more focused on getting free from cap hell than winning a title - if he plays well you make him your longterm guy with an extension during the season and if he flops you probably wind up picking a QB high in the 2025 or 2026 draft. If Love is truly wanting a trade out of Green Bay because he may not be the starter in 2023 then I think there's a good chance GB could move him before or during the next draft, at least before the other team would need to decide on picking up that option. I think there's a better chance Rodgers gets traded this offseason than Love.

In 11 years' time at the rate things are going with inflation, we might all be making ~$30 million a year. I'm starting to wonder if the Padres' owner is planning to sell the team with all these crazy longterm contracts getting thrown around. I think he paid roughly $800M for them in 2013ish, betting he'd make a tidy little profit if he sold right about now before all these bills really came due. I'm just picturing the scene in Dumb and Dumber, when Lloyd is handing paper IOU's from Mary Swanson's briefcase to the bad guy after burning through all the money that was inside it. Picturing the Pads owner with a pile of them in the office...."That's as good as money Fernando and Xander and Manny, those are IOUs"

That would never happen. All schools that are not Power 5 of group of 5 schools, wouldn't survive without guaranteed payout games against the Power 5 schools. Like it or not, that's where it's headed anyways - subsidize non-Power 5 college football programs with revenue that they were otherwise receiving for the routine non-conference curbstompings those programs received every September and move on to a more competitive landscape.

They need to do what they did in college basketball and make scheduling tough games a reward come seeding time. I'd rather they just do away completely with nonconference games and fill out 12 game schedules entirely within their conferences - particularly with most of the power conferences now or about to have 13-plus teams in them. If the power 5 conferences all did that there'd be plenty of tough games (home and road) on all their schedules, and an expanded playoff format would allow for multiple teams from each conference to get in - then the outcome of the playoffs can help determine which conferences were actually the strongest and totally diminish the impact preseason rankings have on playoff seeding.

Most international teams aren't capable of doing what Brazil is doing to South Korea at the start of their match even if they were playing on a field with no defenders. When Brazil gets cooking it's incredibly entertaining to watch.

Sorry, but Alabama simply cannot make an argument for their inclusion in this current CFP based on them playing more difficult road games, when this is basically the one season they've actually played anyone worth a darn in true road games outside the SEC west because Tennessee finally decided to field a pretty good team. Easy to forget that 4 loss Texas basically had Alabama beat and blew it early in the season, too. I don't think anyone outside of Bama fans will feel for them losing out on all that $$, as it's gotten to the point where the NCAA has an auto-deposit of CFP funds into Alabama's joint checking account the past 10 years...pretty sure they'll find a way to avoid having to drop the football program next fall. And despite all that, next year Alabama will be ranked in the top 2 of the preseason poll...and in 2024, and in 2025, and so on.

It's not about whether #5 Alabama would be competitive or not, IMO - they lost twice in the regular season against SEC teams that UGA dominated and didn't event play in their conference title game because of it. They had their chance to punch their ticket into the top 4 with a better regular season performance and they didn't.

If we're wanting to expand the college football playoff to 12 or 16 teams or even 32, I'm all for it....just do away completely with nonconference regular season games, have every power 5 team play their conference games only Sept-Oct to determine tourney seeding and then proceed with the playoff starting in November through early December. Then you schedule the final 4 playing Jan 1 and Jan 8th, with other teams getting knocked out in earlier playoff rounds getting a bowl game to round out their schedule. College football isn't the NFL - if they want to make teams play 16-17 games to win a natty they should just let them turn pro at 18 so they can at least get paid for that length of a season. The Super Bowl champion is oftentimes not the best NFL team in a given season even with a playoff format that dramatically de-emphasis regular season success and winds up with half the league in the postseason - there's much more parity throughout the NFL because it's structured in a way that there aren't dramatic financial/personnel/scheduling advantages for certain teams/divisions/etc...College football is nowhere near that balanced, and IMO expanding the CFP without first addressing the structural advantages is going to wind up looking just like the NCAA D3 football playoffs - with the same 2-4 teams who happen to have more resources dedicated to their football program always playing for the title anyway over a 6-8 year period.

I continue to believe Fields is not a good quarterback, and he never will be. I keep hearing about the strides he's making early in his career and I just don't see it - either in the stats or the onfield decisions he makes throwing the football.

I just hope Watson stays healthy down the stretch and gets a full offseason of development headed into year 2 of his career....because he could be a damn good receiver with that athleticism if he figures out how to play that position at the NFL level.

Oops, yep you're right....both teams UGA also flat out dominated

I look at it differently - now the debate about who's taking the #4 spot for this year's playoff is probably among USC, who lost twice to another team in their conference who lost 3 other games; Alabama, who already lost head to head against UGA and didn't even win their conference division; and Ohio State, who just got beaten down at home by Michigan last weekend. Those teams all had their chance to make a case for being the best team in the country in games already played, and they proved not up to the task so I think they don't deserve a 2nd/3rd chance to be considered a national champion for this season. To me there's no doubt the two best teams based on their regular season body of work are UGA and Michigan - and I think there should be immense value placed on regular season body of work to determine a national championship for college football. I think you've got to win your conference in order to win a national championship with football. With how college football is structured I just don't like expanding the playoff to the point where no matter what the Alabamas, OSUs, and other programs that get their pick of 5-star talent every recruiting season do during their seasons to still get a shot at winning a national title.

I think another issue the US faces is that they chase different styles of play based on the tactics that the most successful international teams employ without realizing most established soccer powers maintain their style of play long enough for young players to develop in those systems - and the US as a whole just doesn't have the 2-3 world-class players that would excel in any tactical system to be a truly elite soccer power. Bouncing between different tactical systems on an international level every few years just doesn't let a national team lay a solid foundation that can identify players who fit that specific system to develop as quality depth, so there's at least a solid baseline of talent that is available to draw from - having that in place would make the US squad an auto WC qualifier out of CONCACAF and solid bet to advance to the round of 16 every cycle. Then the job becomes finding and developing 2-3 transcendent talents to turn the team into an actual threat to win a WC. The US men's team as a whole always seems to be not quite balanced - this cycle's version is a strong midfield that had a solid defense who played off them well, but not nearly enough striking talent or skill to take advantage of turning midfield possession into quality scoring chances. That talent gap led to the US midfield getting exhausted as the matches unfolded and they fell apart in key situations against the Netherlands because of it. US teams of a few cycles ago had better striking/scorers but lacked midfield quality and had shaky defenders who were bailed out by elite goaltending.

So far NCAAF Conference Championship weekend and results from last weekend really point to the CFP to be reduced to 2 teams and definitely not expanded to 12.

The biggest gap the US has when compared to traditional soccer powers, at least in my largely worthless opinion when it comes to soccer, seems to be a lack of skill and creativity with the ball - particularly when play gets into the scoring range where it requires players to beat 1 or 2 defenders in very small spaces on their own to generate quality scoring chances. Watching teams like Argentina, Portugal, Brazil - you can see how much faster they can move the defense and get the ball into dangerous spots because of how effortless they are with the ball and how many different ways they can execute precise passes - they don't always have to have the ball settled onto their strong foot without a defender near them to make a quality pass. I think that many of the European and South American soccer programs spend almost all of youth development on individual skills/striking, while I feel like the US program is more focused on team match play...for a long time the US U-17 teams have had really good success at the international level, but that organized team quality just doesn't translate to WC success once other countries develop team match play after their focus on individual skill is completed at those younger ages. This current US roster also desperately needs a striker/finisher to pair with Pulisic on the front line that can win headers in the box and just be a matchup problem who could capitalize on limited scoring opportunities generated by the current US tactics of trying to control the game in the midfield. They need more than Pulisic up front to create more quality chances. 4 more years until the next WC and this team is very young - hopefully they can build on this showing, but we've heard that following many other WCs that saw the US crawl out of the group stage only to be exposed in the knockout rounds.

I just have to wonder how much of the soft zone/soft coverages are called because the safety play this season has been atrocious and there has been limited confidence in MLBers being in the right spot defensively on passing downs. Overall they're a middle of the road defense in the passing game - not giving up a ton of yards with an average completion percentage against, average sack and INT rates, etc. But I do think injuries have taken their toll on the defense lately at key spots (Gary, Stokes, Campbell, etc), and overall the defense just seems to pick inopportune times to have in-game lapses. Also, key veteran players in the front 7 (Clark, P. Smith, Campbell) haven't had good seasons by their standards. They got steamrolled against the Eagles, but up until that game the knock on the defense for me has been they just weren't dominant enough when the Packer offense has been way below par.

Imagine if the current group of nfl slot receivers and corners, NBA point guards, and mlb middle infielders all jumped into a time machine and went back to when they were 6 years old and drilled for 10 years straight under organized training to develop soccer skills. Add in a year or two in Hollywood to develop acting/flopping and it wouldn't be a question of how good a US national team would be.

This goes back to how the u.s. soccer program is run - the pool of potential talent is hamstrung in a big way by how youth soccer programs are organized - not to mention the fact it just isn't anywhere close to the primary sport for the best athletes in this country.