Fear The Chorizo

Then tell the pitcher not to stand on the entire bag and get his foot on the fair side edge of the bag where it's supposed to be. And practice that play at game speed so he doesn't risk injuring himself. Rodon almost dislocated his ankle on a play like that yesterday on Opening Day and it wouldn't have mattered if there was an orange bag or not. High throws or ones up the line in fair territory would force the 1b to reach further into foul territory to tag a runner flying down the line who then dives towards the farthest corner of an orange bag in foul territory. Throws into foul territory down the line would still lead to 1b/runner collisions even if there were two orange bags extending into foul territory. I think this is a case where adding that bag at the MLB level will limit injuries on certain types of plays only to make injuries for other types of plays more common.

That's the spot to attack if you get your pitch against a guy like Devin - not faulting Turang for getting into that hitters count and then taking a rip at a fastball he knew was coming even if it wasn't middle middle

Chourio's game bat needs to have already gone through a wood chipper Go get 'em saturday!

One of those plays where a second bag makes no difference in the pitcher rolling his ankle

Brewers lead the league as a team in 3B OPS Write that down... lol

Lotta game left

How does mlb allow field dimensions that would make a summer legion team giddy about going yard to happen with new stadium builds?

Supposed to be in the air on flight home, dreaming of checking game score when I land in an hour... Instead stuck on plane while maintenance is fixing "something metal" in the back of the plane before we take off, check score and see a leadoff HR bottom 1. Ish...

Having the bag extension be a different color helps (but doesn't make it obvious) to see if a batted ball hitting the bag is fair or foul I dont know what percentage of injuries at 1b on these plays would actually be prevented by the extra bag...most of the time the pitcher is rolling an ankle clumsily trying to find the bag and/or the runner is intentionally running through the middle of the bag to try and disrupt the play. Extending the bag gives the runner alot more room to reach safely on a throw that pulls 1b off the bag and avoid being tagged out, too - that itself could lead to other injuries for guys reaching back further. I say leave it alone as is and be more aggressive with both runner and fielder interference calls on those plays if you want to promote more safety. Draw a line through the center of the existing bag for which sides fielders/runners need to step on...or do something different with bag materials and metal spikes that really aren't very compatible.

I think a bigger question would be if Contreras would be open to a role where he'd be the primary DH/backup catcher on a roster, enabling him to have a longer career even if it meant devaluing his AAV by not being viewed as an everyday starting catcher. In that scenario, I'd entertain the Brewers giving him a longterm extension. If he wants to play everyday behind the plate then I'd trade him this or next offseason for the best prospect haul you can get. Then again, the Brewers could just play the arbitration game and have Contreras the next 3 seasons before watching him leave in free agency as a 30 yr old catcher who some other team will pay huge dollars to watch him decline....I'd honestly be just fine with that, too.

94-68, NL Central Champs The organization will continue to lean on its ability to get outs with underappreciated pitching depth in front of elite defense and a sneaky good offensive roster that doesn't have to rely on power to score enough runs to consistently be winning 6 out of every 10 games. If Yelich can stay healthy and Chourio takes the next step, there will be plenty of pop despite Adames cashing bigger paychecks out west. If healthy, I expect a breakout year of sorts for Mitchell, too. Until proven otherwise their model is a machine that grinds out more wins than the March sum of its parts always projects.

Cool read....i think another informative article could be written about actual value of contracts based on state/provincial tax hits players take for signing them. Having to pay Canadian taxes on half your games and then also be taxed for playing a good chunk of your road games in NY, Boston, Baltimore eats alot into takehome pay for Blue Jay players. They at least had Fla for one of their division road game states, but now who knows where the Rays will call home lo term after their crappy stadium got wrecked.

All of Chourio's minor league #s occurred while he was a teenager, starting with typical DSL time logged as a 17 yr old. PCA had all of 32 plate appearances in the minors as a teenager in his 1st minor league season right after getting drafted. I'm not saying PCA hasn't put up solid production when you look at counting stats as a minor leaguer - there's a reason he's already in MLB as a 23 yr old player. However, PCA's minor league hitting production shouldn't be compared to Chourio while hinting in any sort of way that PCA might develop into the same type of talent offensively. PCA has been up at MLB long enough where his age has less and less significance with room for hitting improvement at the game's highest level compared to his actual MLB service time logged, while Chourio OPS-d around 0.900 from June through the end of last season at 20 yrs old. And of course I'm a bit biased and want to be quick to react to what I feel is yet another severely overrated Cub prospect - I actually have felt this way about PCA since he initially broke into MLB in late 2023, and that was based on his less than pedestrian batted ball exit velo #s in the minor leagues. He has made some improvements in that department, but his chase rate remains a big problem. PCA's a great outfield defender who will have a good MLB career provided he avoids significant injuries that diminish him defensively - he just won't be able to hit enough to be viewed as a great all-around player.

I'm not saying PCA's ceiling is that of a 5th OF at the MLB level - he's just not going to be a perennial all star because he won't hit consistently enough to allow the rest of his elite tools to shine and be a player rival teams will hate facing for years and years. Sure, still just 23 - but he's now into his 3rd season where he's played at the MLB level, and at some point either that superstar switch has to light up or it's obvious it just isn't there in a guy to begin with. Also, it's not fair to any prospect to compare what they've done compared to what Chourio did in MLB last season as a 20 yr old...even with his first 1.5 months of struggles, what Chourio did was historic.

I like that comp, too. He's not an OMG watch out for this guy the next decade sort of prospect. Good tools, stellar defense, but he's just not going to hit enough at the MLB level to be a cornerstone offensive player

PCA is doing a great job thus far affirming my belief that spring training numbers are absolutely meaningless...and that's he's got alot more Corey Patterson to his game than most Cub fans begging for him to take a significant step forward at the MLB level will allow him to actually do it.

Cole basically could only give the Yankees a half season last year, too. Wasn't there some strangeness with his existing contract "opt out" only for the Yankees to basically keep him on his existing deal last November that included a hesitancy to give him an extension (and also a hesitancy by a Boras client to jump into free agency whenever he could)? And now he shows up to spring training with a bum elbow that needs surgery - must be nice to throw upper 90's whenever you're not rehabbing from surgery and get paid $30+ million for something a guy 10 years younger than you can give a team for 95% less cost on the field.

The Fed waited far too long to raise rates to try and get a handle on inflation, and even after they did they didn't raise them high enough to actually get prices headed back down - not to just keep slowly increasing, but to actually drop. Them starting those rate increases from a point of basically zero was still an after-affect of the last bad recession from the housing market crash. This goes back years, not months - and the market still has a significant amount of a bubble baked into it because of monetary policy that wasn't allowing a typical economic downturn to happen in financial markets. We are overdue for a recession that also includes a market correction that isn't self-imposed like the COVID shutdown was, and trying to soften or ease into/out of it just risks it being more painful than it otherwise would be for people who don't have yachts. My point doesn't discount the fact that imposing new tariffs of any kind from the US' perspective on foreign goods is impacting the markets right now - especially until there's some sort of certainty on what those will look like in the long run. Kind of the same way that tariffs imposed on US goods by other countries in the long term had been baked into the global economy. Fundamentals of the economy are still really solid, which is why the weird threat of making trees from Canada or bottles of red from France cost alot more to get through customs and into the US marketplace isn't going to be a sustained anchor on what the markets do or don't do. The uncertainty of what may or may not come next is the biggest drag - but once that does clear up and if we wind up seeing a better overall economic playing field for US goods to compete in because of it, stock prices will bounce right back up the other direction.

Corrections and extended bear markets inevitably happen with the market even when every single economic lever is is pulled in the direction to try and avoid them at the expense of the rest of the economy. The fact things are so volatile and swing so wildly based on what anybody is saying points to how long those levers were left unchanged in effort to avoid natural market swings that would more accurately mirror what the rest of the US economy has been feeling for years. Despite the shock of the last few weeks of a market swing down, it's a blip when you look at market performance over the past 5 years - it feels like a profit taking cycle before all of a sudden a whole bunch of capital gets dumped back into the market and we're going the other direction again.

The #'s absolutely bear it out - without unicorn Ohtani in the NL, Chourio was the NL MVP the last 4 months of the season....as a 20 yr old

Trying to time the market based on politics is too risky for my investing stomach, regardless of party - if all it takes is one trade agreement announcement or actual concrete policy going into effect to restore enough certainty for an index to recoup a month of losses in one day (or lose a month of gains), it's too late to try and either take cash back out from under your mattress or grab a wheelbarrow and take it out of funds. More often than not, staying in the market and riding whatever happens out with continued investment winds up being the best option. I think the bigger concern is banks trying to figure out how to get out from under massive commercial real estate losses that are continuing to mount without it leaking into the housing market. Everything that's happening in D.C. right now is little more than reshuffling deck chairs with the markets compared to what would happen if banks start going under again. All that being said, it's less than an ideal time to be less than a few years from retirement and wonder what to do to best protect and continue growing that nest egg. That has been the case for several years not because market uncertainty, but persistently increasing prices on everything across the board. However, as nate indicated even a slipping market is a good opportunity to make some money in the long run.

I've said it in other threads - if Garret Mitchell can find a way to stay healthy, he's capable of putting up a handful of prime seasons in the 30/30, approaching 40/40 club and playing gold glove caliber defense.

I actually think it's gotten alot of fanfare....and what is so shocking is the public sector and associated companies heavily reliant on govt contracts have been allowed to balloon to the level they have under both political party administrations where it's acceptable to run multi trillion dollar deficits, continue printing money, and then act like we don't know why things cost so much. The budget deficits are about alot more than government employee payrolls, but in the absence of reasonable reforms to entitlement programs that would require cooperative legislation, slashing the beauracracy while daylighting some of the nonsense receiving tax dollars is the next best thing to do at the moment to shake things up in the public sector. Mass layoffs will always have tough stories for individuals who were cut, both public and private sector. Most of the time it's not about those people themselves not doing effective work in the roles they were in, it's that the roles they were in didn't provide enough value to a project, program, or activity to justify its cost. The public sector can't be allowed to be sheltered from those type of staffing resets, which is exactly what this is. Quality employees/people who are let go by employers find a way to land on their feet and ultimately their careers benefit from these type of job upheavals, too.

The Dodgers aren't the only team with deferrerals, yes, but they are the only team with the quantity of deferrals they currently have, headlined by a guy getting paid $2m of his $70M salary now and still fielding a real dollars 2025 payroll over $300M. The time to make changes was 1994, yes...but the next time to make changes is this upcoming cba negotiation. And I'd be just fine with a missed season or two to get the right changes made. I'd also add that it would be pretty easy as part of the next cba round for mlb to reimburse deferred money deals to teams worried about how they'd find a way to ever finance them ( in the dodgers' case im pretty sure theyd be able to find the spare change layong around), provided the deferred contract garbage ends in the new cba.

The amount of revenue the Dodgers are getting from Japan and Asia for basically having all their best players is most likely comparable to their annual stateside TV deal...they are the farthest team from going bankrupt no matter what changes get made to a future CBA. They are like a cartel running out of room to put all the money coming in