Fear The Chorizo

Guess that means Adames is going nowhere, nobody else in the system to play SS next season in Milwaukee;)

I think that's the biggest difference, as a 19th rounder, Hader wasn't a bonus baby ($40K signee) and he was dumped into the middle of a generally weakly regarded Oriole farm system at the time. Hader may have been logging more innings early, but honestly he had to hit the ground running if he wanted to have any sort of chance at a MLB career based on his draft position. Misiorowski already has a MLB-ready pitch mix, and I think his timeline based on the first few AA starts from last year evaporates if he continues improving his command. He will still just be 22 at the start of next season. This is a scouting report about Hader from a scout in 2014, into his THIRD minor league season - this report indicated Hader's peak FB velo was 93, sitting at 90, and the pitch grades for FB/Curve/Change were 60/55/55....other scouting reports indicated that Hader frequently tired and got inconsistent later in his appearances as a starter, which never really improved over time and prompted his move into the bullpen. Hader is an interesting prospect in the sense that some his strengths may also be his weaknesses. He does not possess an overpowering pitch, but there is plenty of deception in his delivery, allowing each of his offerings to play up. Hitters are simply never comfortable from the moment they step in the box. In fact, I saw one hitter swing and miss at a pitch that hit him square on for strike three. However, all the moving parts within his mechanics make it hard for him to repeat his arm slot for five innings. Finding a consistency and being able to repeat in the long-term will be the key. I believe there is enough going on here to warrant a No. 4 starter ceiling for the recently turned 20-year-old. Hader is undoubtedly a long-term project, as noted by the 2017 ETA, but the wait could be worth it once he is a complete product. In the meantime, I would like to see him work on adding a slider to his repertoire as a fourth pitch. Perhaps more importantly, he will need to continue to build arm strength while improving his strength and conditioning.

He's got to improve at throwing the deep ball - and I also hope some of the questionable red zone decision making on where to throw the ball/when to get out of the pocket when the defense can condense will improve with more experience. He takes some bad sacks trying to extend plays from the pocket when they're in solid FG range, and he also isn't as quick to churn through progressions or anticipate what routes will be freed up given what the defense is doing. That great throw and catch to Heath that temporarily gave them the go ahead TD against the Giants is a prime example of that - predetermined where he was going with the ball based on the blitz look and it was a really good play, but had he recognized presnap what the Giants were doing on the other side of the formation he could've just flipped to an uncovered Reed on a shallow post for a gimme score. Love has all the physical tools needed to be a really damn good NFL quarterback - whether or not the decision making improves in some of those key spots on the field determines whether he (and most any other young quarterback) realizes that potential or not. I do think he's grown during the season in this regard, so hopefully that progression continues and he takes a huge step forward in year 2 as the starter throwing to all these young receivers/tight ends.

I can see Love and this group of receivers taking a really big jump next season after getting this 1st year of playing time together under their belts - if Watson could only stay on the field, I'd be even more excited about seeing what they can do. Shoring up the Oline and hopefully moving past having to dedicate a huge chunk of the team payroll for a left tackle who can't play football anymore due to injury will be huge for the offense. They do need to sort out their RB situation longterm this offseason - pretty apparent that Jones has aged beyond the point where you can expect him to stay healthy as the primary back, and Dillon is at the point where he'd likely be pretty expensive to keep around and get marginally decent production. Expecting a draft pick and a few other acquisitions - although I do like the addition of Drake to see if he could take Jones' role moving forward. Defensively, they have to bring in a new D coordinator and also figure out their secondary - it seemed like a roster strength, but Jaire has had a lost season due to injury (bad omen for an undersized and expensive corner, although he's great when healthy), Stokes is now a nonfactor the last two seasons due to injury, and Nixon may have worn out his welcome as a kick returner who shouldn't be playing as much slot corner as he is on this roster. I think they do wind up at 10-7, and even 9-8 likely squeaks them into the playoffs if they win the right games left on their schedule - all in all that's a positive for the organization in a season that has seemed endlessly riddled with negatives.

It's pitch count moreso than innings pitched for guys that are mainly focused on developing more consistency with their delivery - that's Misiorowski's biggest area needing refinement. Command improves with consistency and learning how to harness your stuff - I'm looking forward to what he looks like after working through some AA struggles and having another offseason to further develop physically and working on that delivery. Through most of his minor league appearances last season, including AA, Jacob M would rack up big pitch innings primarily because hitters couldn't put the ball in play and were battling to either walk or strike out. I also recall frequent commentary on umpires flat out missing strike calls with his stuff that led to walks/extra batters faced and pitches thrown. This was also Misiorowski's 1st minor league season of development after 1 year at a Juco program after high school, so the first time in his life he had a regular season that spanned 5+ months of games and not 2-3...if he wasn't as raw as he is, he would've been a 1st round draft pick out of high school - but the stuff is absolutely there. That being said, making a 20 yr old with developing mechanics jump into pitching 100+ innings his first minor league season just because he's 20 is a good way to injure a 100mph arm. No problem whatsoever with him pitching ~71 minor league innings across 3 levels, plus spring training/futures game for his 1st full professional season.

Probably just Mark A being cheap and not wanting his family to pay full price for bratwurst

It's late 2007/early 2008 all over again. Signals by the Fed for rate cuts are good temporarily for the stock market and for investment firms to pad their year end bonuses - but wall street and main street are living in completely different universes at the moment, which is actually a really bad thing and the main reason the Fed is going to start going back down the ladder with rates. The market has been counting on the Fed easing rates for quite awhile. Making $ in the market can happen at any time if people are buying/selling the right things at the right time - the fact the DOW is pushing over all-time highs right now doesn't feel like it's going to indefinitely keep climbing.

Hader was the throw in piece of the Gomez trade with the Astros that wasn't going to be mlb ready by the time he'd reach rule 5 eligibility, and the Astros didn't have room on their 40 man roster to hold onto him. That was also the second time he was traded. If he had a lofty prospect status at that time, no way he would have been jumping organizations every couple years. He didn't blow up in terms of being a potential stud mlb until AZ fall league in 2016, a full season after being traded to the Brewers- the format for that league is pitchers getting an inning or two per appearance, which was a natural way for him to showcase how dominant he could be as a reliever with a limited arsenal of pitches. Jacob M. is an altogether different animal in terms of what his mlb ceiling is - Hader is one of the greatest LH relievers of his generation, but he'd wish he had the arm and raw stuff Misiorowski does. To me, it's all about continued focus on refining command, repeating delivery, and hoping for good health. He will likely start back in AA, and at some point move up to Nashville with a starter's workload - whether he winds up seeing time in Milwaukee as a starter or reliever late summer depends on his health and where the Brewers are in the standings. Pitchers that are ready for mlb don't get stashed in the brewer minor leagues, they get called up to use their bullets in mlb before injuries cost them time and team control. Jacob M. scuffled a bit in AA last season, but seemed to settle in late - if he picks up where he left off at the end of last year he wont be long for Milwaukee, and we can continue wishing the system could have more pitching prospect depth while looking the other way whenever Gasser and Mis are on the hill at AmFam instead of Nashville or Biloxi.

I really don't get the Dodgers wanting anything to do with Glasnow - as you mentioned, they already have an All star roster of arms recovering from injury or dealing with legal issues (Urias). Perhaps they really do view the Rays as an extended farm team for their mid-level prospects who are hopelessly blocked, and can let them get their feet wet in MLB for a few seasons before they cost the Rays money in arbitration and can then go back and reacquire them via trade if any take a meaningful jump in ability.

why randomly select 0-10? why not 2-23 stretches? or 5-40? 0-10 is realistically just 2 games with free-swinging Adames hitting in the top half of a lineup. And you're still comparing Adames' 2021 Brewers run, which is by far his best stretch of extended hitting at the MLB level over 6 seasons, to what he did last season (likely his worst). That stretch is what got many people clamoring for the Brewers to extend Adames, and since then he's done a good job of showing why that would be a terrible idea longterm for the Brewers. The fact is, over the long haul Adames isn't as good a hitter as he was during his 2021 season with the Brewers, that appears to be the biggest aberration in his career long offensive stat line. He also isn't as bad a hitter as he was through most of 2023, although his approach at the plate leaves him vulnerable to extended cold streaks that a hitter routinely in the top half of the lineup can't have. Depending on how hot and cold streaks play out, Adames is a 0.720-0.770 OPS hitter who plays a good defensive SS - definitely a valuable player, but not necessarily one that screams longterm "franchise building block" once he reaches free agency if you have to pay him anywhere near the going rate for veteran shortstops.

Because they actually can't redo Love's current contract until they're into the 2024 league year, the Packers have the benefit of seeing how the rest of this season plays out AND most of the offseason before having to make a decision on Love. They could probably wait to get a new deal done until all of the old dead money falls off the books and frontload that contract so it wouldn't be a poison pill if they want to cut him before the new deal expires. If the Packers wind up squeaking into the playoffs and Love stays healthy, with positive signs of development, he'll get an extension offer at some point next year.

It means that Adames isn't a consistent hitter....if you take roughly 100 hitless at bats away from any hitter's season-long statline, it's going to look much better.

Perhaps the mirage offensively for Adames was the short 2020 Covid season that didn't include games played in March-June (0.813 OPS) and Brewers' portion of the 2021 season (0.886 OPS) for Adames, since the rest of his career he's been a mid-700s OPS hitter. Last year Adames was brutal save for couple week hot streaks in April and July, but then he had a pretty strong last 40 or so games. I think he is what he is, and the season long offensive stats either look decent or not so great depending on how many hot streaks Adames pieces together, because his approach will always make him very inconsistent at the plate. He'll provide really good defense at SS, but I think his 2021 season set unrealistic expectations on what he is offensively - his inconsistency/struggles weren't totally due to Adames struggling to see the ball in the Rays' home ballpark.

I've been waiting for them to sign Hiura on a flyer - and then watch him hit 40 HR playing with that home ballpark (0.950 OPS/0.600 slg in about 100 plate appearances there)....then again, perhaps some of Hiura's success hitting in Pitt had more to do with Pirates pitching, lol.

I don't like that comparison, because the Dodgers are able to spread out what it costs to sign a generational talent playing for them for the next 10 years over double that amount of time, and did so in a way to also afford adding additional generational talents around an already loaded team because they're pushing that cost far enough down the road that it won't matter to their future payroll bookkeeping. The fact they were able to defer actually paying about 97% of the contract value in actual dollars to Ohtani until after the term covering years he plays expires is insanity. More specific to your comparison, I'd be ok with this type of contract if the Dodgers were forced to have Ohtani in their lineup for the next 20 years and suffer the onfield issues that running out a middle aged man would have on their onfield results, if that's how they elect to spread out the costs from a competitive balance luxury tax perspective. Instead, if nothing changes they'll just have the next 'best player ever' signed and ready to take Ohtani's roster spot well before his current 10 year playing deal expires.

Waiting for the announcement that Lugo will be paid his first 3 years in car wash tokens, will receive a briefcase full of IOUs from 2027-2035, and will be paid out in deferred Yuan (presumed US currency by 2035) in annual $2M payments until either the total value reaches $45M 2023 US dollars or he passes away, whichever happens first.

I think it has to, and it really wouldn't surprise me if it's the other huge market clubs that don't have a quarter of a billion dollars coming into their coffers each year just from TV money that would spearhead it. I really could care less how a team moves around actual dollar expenditures to benefit/reduce income or payroll tax burdens paid to entities outside the league (i.e., government) - but for the spirit of the competitive balance luxury tax system to actually work across MLB, which has very marginal revenue sharing in the grand scheme of things, guaranteed salaries, and no salary cap, exploiting the current luxury tax reductions with deferrals at this type of scale that wind up being paid long after a player is on the field absolutely can't become the norm when it allows teams to stockpile silver slugger-type talent in its prime all over the diamond without having to pay the luxury tax penalties to the rest of the league that were designed to prevent an organization from being able to do this longer than 1-2 seasons.

What's mystifying to me is when the Packers rush 4 and play coverage behind it with 7 guys consistently, that the scheme routinely has enormous gaps in the middle of the field for TEs and RBs to catch easy passes and turn upfield for huge chunk plays - and it takes Packer defenders several seconds to even get in the vicinity of those players. It's not like the Packers don't have athletes at LB or safety that can't run - it's just that the scheme has 1 or two defenders responsible for far too much of the field that is easy for underneath and intermediate pass patterns to exploit. Those aren't NFL windows for QBs to thread the needle to complete passes, they're more like vacant city blocks of space - it looks more like the Packers sent the house in a blitz and didn't get home, without enough people on the back end to cover everything. Almost as if at the snap the Packers' scheme runs two DBs off the field and they're playing with 9 defenders instead of 11.

Then that's what needs to happen - unless MLB is ok with the Dodgers being able to operate this way financially in a way that even the other monster MLB markets can't.

Will the deferred money actually hit the LAD luxury tax payroll down the road though? Even if it fully does, that $20-30m annual accounting value 10-20 yrs from now is much less of a hit to those luxury tax years because of inflation and rising payroll limits. It's simply not right and more evidence of a broken financial system mlb organizations operate in. It's way different from chourio's contract, too - one thing to be paid $80 m over 8 seasons /calendar years at progressively increasing amounts, totally different to sign a ten year, $700m free agent contract and then proceed to be paid $2m actual dollars a year for those 10 years of play, then get the remaining $680m the following 10 calendar years and have the actual contractual impact to the Dodgers from an accounting standpoint spread across 20 seasons with accounting gymnastics to make it feel to the LAD like they signed a mid-tier player to a 20 year contract. It's like doing salary cap gymnastics without having to meet a salary cap to avoid the luxury tax penalties paid to the rest of the league. People will say that any of the other teams could also work out this sort of deal with huge deferrments, but thats not based in reality. The only way it's possible for LAD to make this work in terms of annual cost is the fact their TV deal alone pays them enough annually to field close to a $250m payroll without selling a single ticket or a jersey shirt. That's entirely due to the market they play in. No other team could afford to play footsie with the luxury tax for 20 straight seasons and in years 11-20 of that stretch pay out $68m dollars a year in actual dollars in deferred money to a player that has likely been retired for a few seasons.

Packers are now seemingly one of about 15 nfc teams with a 6-7 record. Enough gb dbs gotta get healthy so Nixon can leave the field on defense...dude made a big INT against the chiefs but he's the patsy in coverage right now. Instead of putting together a defensive game plan to step on the giants offense, Barry reverts to the bend and eventually break soft coverages and lack of imaginative blitzes that give a hack quarterback a chance to make a couple throws and scramble all over the field, and it results in a L.

Force him to get there throwing, please don't give up a 30 yrd scramble to Tommy meatball

Was he in?

I think that's a td...but Calvin Johnson would probably disagree with me

good thing they burned a timeout to take a 10 yard loss and then turn a gimme FG into a miss...what a stinker of a game