Fear The Chorizo

I think I'd much rather tell the Dodgers to pound sand and have both the Red Sox and Dodgers pay Price a total of $64M dollars to do basically nothing for their rosters the next two seasons. LAD does have quite a bit of money coming off their books over the next couple years, but they'll also need to pay the piper to retain some of their young studs as they approach or reach free agency. Until the financial landscape for MLB changes to try and actually balance the economic playing field, I'd like to see big market bullies get stuck with dealing with financial commitments that at least lead to them having to do partial teardowns every so often. When they have to do so, there's always that chance they make enough wrong roster/personnel moves and wind up where the Red Sox and Cubs currently are as large market organizations kind of stuck in limbo with their rosters.

Actually very intrigued re: Sherman...if he's healthy he'd be a great fit as a #2 corner, particularly with GB having good safeties behind him. As long as the defensive scheme doesn't require him to be playing press man all day long, I'd bring him in on an incentive-laden deal. He's stated that he wants to go to a contender...

It was after watching that gametape that convinced TT and McCarthy that if they had started Rodgers that game they would have blown the Giants out and gone on to the Super Bowl. Remember earlier that season around Thanksgiving when the Packers played at Dallas, they were getting their doors blown off early in the second quarter until Favre left injured and Rodgers got put in much earlier than garbage time, and GB almost came back and won.

I mean, trading for Lindor and likely offering him the moon in terms of a huge contract extension IS at least a little something, right? Their payroll is right around $190M right now, and that's with Pete Alonso making $575K for 2021...between Lindor's likely extension and what should be every effort on their part to get Alonso under an initial extension that actually pays him something close to his on-field value and buys a year or two of free agency out (he is already 26...might make for contentious arbitration moving forward), the Mets will easily jump up to the luxury tax payroll thresholds without adding any more free agents just with their current roster in the very near future. That being said, if it's between Mets and Brewers, the Mets do obviously have more $ to throw at a 36yr old free agent

I think the opposite, actually. If the goal is to make the product more 'watchable' as we've heard basically since Manfred took over as commish, why would to encourage more boring 3-1 games? Pitcher duels are great for hardcore fans. Not for expanding the game to a new generation and expanding TV revenue. There's plenty of 3-1 games already, when teams' offense is essentially a solo HR and one 2-run blast against the other team's lone solo HR....then mix in 25-35 strikeouts across a 54-out game with no stolen bases, no hit and runs, and around 10 pitching changes.

The Packers' cap situation is actually pretty decent compared to many teams in the league, because their current cap limitations still includes a full roster of players, and they can improve their cap situation through cuts and restructures while adding drafted players on the cheap. A team like TB, who just won the super bowl, is about 30M under a projected $180M cap, but they only have 31 players under contract making that amount up for 2021. If they were to try and run it back with as many of the same key players who are celebrating today, they would be way over that projected cap based on the free agent money they'd have to dole out to retain players like David, Suh, Gronk, Barrett, Godwin, etc, plus they'd still need to find cheap roster filler for roughly 15 spots. In short, if the cap does get set between $175-180M for 2021, many teams are going to be faced with painful cuts and limitations on how contracts get extended to hometown stars....Green Bay would be able to weather that issue better than most contending teams if the cap drop is just for 1 season. If revenue projections are favorable enough I can see the NFL proceeding with 2021 to set the cap exactly where it was in 2020 to avoid roster chaos this offseason, but then plan on recouping pandemic revenue losses by enacting more gradual cap increases for 2022, 2023, etc. The other option will be to have a lower cap next year, deal with one year of cap problems, and teams will do their best to restructure and extend contracts with longer guarantees and bigger deferred money in hopes the cap rebounds sharply in 2022 and 2023 seasons. Either way, Green Bay is actually well-positioned to deal with it.

Tonyan's emergence is going to limit Sternberger's opportunities once Deguara is healthy, so it wouldn't surprise me to see him traded or unfortunately, even cut if there's a roster crunch next camp. I think Sternberger has alot of talent and upside as a pass-catching TE....but he doesn't block well enough to be on the field alot in the current offense and he's been inconsistent at best when healthy and given the limited opportunities he's had his first 2 seasons in GB. A TE3 who isn't a good run blocker isn't going to get enough opportunities.

My exact same thoughts regarding MVS and the comparison to Adams early on in their careers....different type of receivers in the routes they excel at and Adams was more polished coming out of college, but you can't teach the size and speed combo MVS possesses. I'd be hesitant to say he's a lock to be a perennial pro bowler at that position, but he can have a great career playing in a system with a good QB. Play him opposite a stud receiver that draws safety help wherever he goes (i.e., Adams), and MVS is going to score a lot of long TDs. I also think the overall skill position group currently signed to this roster (WRs, TE's, RBs even without Jones) looks really solid and deep. Getting Deguara back should make their TE formations dynamic. It really helps that most are good blockers, with some of the WRs like Lazard excelling at that role for their position.

That simply isn't true. This team's starting RF hit 20 HRs in his last full season in 2019, and the team's starting catcher hit 22 that year. You may not be happy with what Garcia and Narvaez looked like last year, but to not call them legit power threats is simply incorrect. The career high for Garcia is 10 HRs and Narvaez certainly can't be counted on to provide anything. Its fine if you don't think we need power to win but this team is severely lacking in pop. That's incorrect on Garcia - He's been a 15-18 HR per season player over an average of about 115 games played from 2015-2019 seasons. He hit 20 in 125 games with the Rays in 2019. Project that average over a full slate of games and he's a low-mid 20's HR player.

That simply isn't true. This team's starting RF hit 20 HRs in his last full season in 2019, and the team's starting catcher hit 22 that year. You may not be happy with what Garcia and Narvaez looked like last year, but to not call them legit power threats is simply incorrect. I'd much rather DS do what they can to put a 3B option over there that's another OBP machine than trying to focus on power. The Brewers have enough power already - what they need is more guys capable of 0.350-0.400 OBP across the lineup so when that power comes up alot more damage can be done and they can't be pitched around as much. What makes Turner so attractive to me on this Brewers team is his ability to get on base and not strike out nearly as much as other players with comparable power. Plus, his career shows he's essentially the same hitter against both right and left-handed pitching. The HRs and slugging from Turner are icing on the cake - his ability to get on base and limit how often he makes an out without putting the ball in play is the biggest value he'd provide to this lineup.

I'm pretty sure the Dodgers have some significant money coming off the books following the 2021 if they really need to reset their luxury tax threshold - they also have a glut of prospect talent in their system that could help with enticing other teams to take on bloated veteran salaries if they wanted to try and free up room for Bellinger, Seager, Buehler extensions that will most likely be happening. In short, it's nice to be the Dodgers in this baseball economic marketplace - just like it's nice to be the Yankees...for the markets that actually need gameday attendance with fans to even act like a mid market (ala Milwaukee), it makes the gap between haves and have-nots economically even wider when it comes to using $$ to acquire talent.

Well, Nelson Cruz jumps out to me as a callup that should have happened instead of trading him away for a lesser player but the Brewers decided to send him to the Rangers so he could play a corner OF position there and we got MENCHed!! Ben Hendrickson....

Ryan Braun wound up playing 4 different positions despite ranging from atrocious to bad defensively at all of them and found a way to make a nice little living for himself. The bat will play - if Hiura is more the hitter he showed the potential to be in 2019 compared to his numbers in the wacky, abbreviated 2020 I doubt he'll have difficulties accruing generational wealth during his career.

I really do think the NL is going to have a DH, which solves the position dilemma for Hiura. May not happen in 2021, but it will be part of the next CBA agreement whenever that gets decided.

I've also read and heard anecdotally that some people who have previously had a confirmed covid case exhibited more significant reactions after receiving their 1st dose...almost like that first jab acted like a booster that a second jab to a previously uninfected person would do. Based on Zad's post and the timing of how things are being rolled out, it wouldn't surprise me if his brother has only received the first vaccination to this point.

What are they to get their cap number below $175M and field a 53 man roster? If they franchise Robinson again, that's $16M...

An 8-8 team with nothing at QB is likely a contender when they add an all-pro QB. When you look at their cap situation headed into next season, the fact is it doesn't even include a full 53 man roster and its only QB under contract is Nick Foles right now, and they don't have a #1 receiver under contract. The Bears' current roster is on the downside of its window to contend with even a really good QB at the helm. They would have a much more difficult time swinging a trade for a QB like Watson compared to other teams likely looking to make a trade with Houston, because they don't have a quality QB or other good young talent to try and trade away that offsets the cap hit Watson would make on their current roster. Plus they are draft pick limited for the next few seasons. They had every opportunity to acquire Watson at a price that would have had them contending for division and conference titles the past few years based on how they chose to structure their roster from a salary cap management standpoint - they chose Trubisky instead that draft and are now reaping the rewards of that mistake. Frankly their best bet to find their QB longterm would be to draft one in the 1st round this year.

After his 1st three career starts in 2019, Yamamoto has pretty much been an awful MLB pitcher as the book on him has been developed. He walks a ton of guys even when he's pitching well, and he doesn't have the stuff to be capable of being "effectively wild". His MLB ceiling is probably that of a #5 starter/long reliever, and that's assuming his arm isn't injured. Even if the Brewers' 40 man has an opening or two, they can probably make better use of those spots than claiming Yamamoto.

I don't read any of this as we should go back to having all students in school yet. I would guess that most schools do not have the capacity to bring everyone back and maintain proper distancing. The problem with that line of thinking is COVID in schools isn't being spread in school settings at a significant rate, even though some teachers/staff/kids are picking it up from the community and bringing it with them to school. So no mitigation measures inside of schools are going to completely prevent documented cases of people in that setting for the forseeable future as in years - vaccination or not. IMO, whether schools are open to in person instruction with these measures at this point should be done based almost entirely on what surrounding community active COVID numbers are - and hospital capacity should still be the primary metric with that. Have these measures in place with the idea being to prevent schools becoming infection vectors (which they have proven NOT to be time and time again, particularly in European countries who have had schools open since early last summer and through multiple infection peaks and valleys). There isn't a sound argument based in science to keep schools closed when you look at actual results based in reality. Not now, not 6 months ago. I'm not even considering the adverse consequences to mental health, learning gaps, and lack of social development far too many kids are being forced to endure for far too long. It's not like we are where things were back in late January 2020 when hardly anyone in the US was exposed to COVID and we knew very little about it.

$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.

I don't think Schilling is a deserving 1st ballot HOF, but I think his career is deserving of a HOF induction at some point based on the era he pitched in - even if it's simply based on postseason success and the Red Sox storyline alone... And if merits of deserving enshrinement into a sports hall of fame delve too far from on-field accomplishments and turn into litmus tests attempting to judge morality/character/politics, you mightaswell just shut it down.

Take all the angst about officiating selective calls/no calls, missed opportunities in the 4th quarter, the wrong decision to kick the FG instead of going for it on 4th and goal, etc....It really isn't much more than a key injury (Bakhtiari), a dropped TD pass by your all-world WR (Adams), and a horrid defensive call at the end of the 1st half that Brady took advantage of - This year's NFC championship loss was nothing like the smackdowns against the 49ers last year or the Falcons a few years prior that left us wondering how they managed to get that far with the marginal talent they had on the roster in key places...the 2020 Packers were good enough to win and simply found ways not to against a good but very beatable Buccaneer team. The 2014 loss was a total gut punch because the Packers flat out dominated that game but found a way to lose through a combination of poor game management decisions and failure for one player to make a play here and there down the stretch to seal the win. This one just felt like a letdown - and it had zero to do with their offseason roster management decisions that article talks about.

Trade them Rodgers for Watt and some of the other draft picks Houston picks up when they trade Watson....not saying that's likely at all to happen or it would be the right move as a Packer fan, but it could be the most likely way to get Watt in Green Bay without gutting the roster. It would take serious cap gymnastics to have both Rodgers and Watt on the Packers for 2021 with all the other contracts they have on the roster. This would be a more likely trade scenario next offseason if I was the Packer front office and it was apparent they were set to move on from Rodgers - which I think would be a mistake. There are already multiple good QBs in their prime looking to get traded this offseason. I'm 99% certain Rodgers is back in Green Bay next year, but 2022 is 50/50 unless his contract does get restructured. After the season Rodgers has had, I'd be more inclined to try and restructure/extend his deal and hope Love develops into an asset that could be traded ala Garrapolo for draft capital or a roster hole filler a few offseasons from now. Edit - if Watt is willing to do a significant restructure, as Peavey pointed out GB could probably get it done...but they'd still need to get creative without risking seriously diminishing other spots of the roster. The other significant aspect is sorting out how much Watt has left in the tank as a 32 yr old, injury-plagued player - if he can stay healthy he's still a difference maker in the DL and would be a great sidekick to Clark on the interior.

I wonder if their current front 7 personnel gives them an opportunity for a shift back to a 4-3 scheme, assuming Preston is indeed gone for next season. I'd think both Z and Gary could readily transition to DEs, Clark is going to excel no matter what on the interior, and the rest of their D lineman worth keeping around could also be fine as 4-3 DTs. Linebackerwise, they're younger and more athletic and could add to make a 4-3 fit better. To be honest most 4-3 defenses now have a glorified safety playing one of the outside backer positions now with all the multiple receiver sets - I definitely don't want them to force a new defensive coordinator hire to be only a 3-4 guy based on their current personnel in the building, because I think they have enough positional flexibility to make a 4-3 work if it means bringing in the right coordinator should they decide to make a change I think we almost all want to see happen.

To get better for next year defensively, they simply need guys like Savage and Gary to take the next step. I think the MLBers they drafted/picked up are an overall improvement on where they were as a group in 2019 with Martinez making 200 tackles 8 yards downfield, but if they can find an impact player at that spot it would help. CB#2 will be a key hole to fill, which might come from inhouse personnel or the draft depending on what defensive scheme they will be running. I'm hoping a new defensive coordinator is brought in. What they really could use is a quality 3-4 defensive lineman to pair with Clark - Keke has shown flashes but was often injured and likely still a rotational player at this point. Having another stud upfront to help in the run game and improve the non-blitz pass rush would be key. I mean, the Packers had the top scoring offense in the league this year so there's probably nowhere to go but regressing a bit...however they can return most all of what got them that result next year, so mild regression isn't the end of the world as long as they're still elite and the defense continues to improve. Heck, if Bakhtiari doesn't blow out his knee in practice Green Bay is probably in the super bowl right now because TB doesn't generate near as much pressure as they did on Sunday. Overall GB's pass catching corps all had monster years, and MVS/Lazard seem to have taken a solid step forward to being good secondary options. If Tyler Ervin can't stay healthy, they need to upgrade the slot receiver position in the draft or FA bargain bin. The TE position group looks to be really solid with Tonyan, Deguara, etc... Oline will likely see Linsley leave and Bakh open the year on short term IR, but they've got depth there to keep that unit solid and will likely add to it via the draft, too. They need to address special teams as well - likely starting with a coaching staff overhaul - for once I'd like to see a Packer team where I'm not cringing every time they have to kick off, return a kick, punt, return a punt, etc....where that unit is a strength that can win them a game or two instead of losing them or making life more difficult for offense AND defense basically every time they take the field.