nate82

I actually like some of Springsteen's songs but the half time show was rather dull and I do agree that every one for a long time have been dull. I love Tom Petty but that one was dull also and the Prince one I couldn't even stand.

It looks like they finally updated Miller Park. I swear they were using the one they had from the 2006 version of the game and didn't update the graphics for it either.

Actually Hardy was first then Fielder.

Costas leaves HBO to join MLB Network. Wow the MLB Network is putting together a real nice cast.

Griffin still has a lot of question marks about his defense. I just don't see Griffin as a legitimate #1 guy like a Lebron, Howard, or Rose type of a player. I still wish the Bucks would have been able to get Mayo in the last draft and somehow have been able to trade Redd for something. I believe Mayo is going to be a superstar in the NBA. I'm still not sold on Griffin and his defense maybe he will improve his defense and become a great player I'm just not sold on it. I believe the Bucks would be a better team with Griffin but the Bucks would still need a good PG for the team to get over the hump of just making the playoffs and going no where.

Peavy wouldn't cost too much for the Brewers. If the Brewers would have signed Sabathia it would have been more than what Peavy would be paid over about the same amount of years. 10:$15M, 11:$16M, 12:$17M, 13:$22M club option ($4M buyout) that is what the Brewers would have to pay for one of the better pitchers in the league. Peavy doesn't start to become expensive until 2013. Peavy would be under contract for a very team friendly contract. The only problem right now for the Brewers is that Peavy would want the option in 2013 to be picked up and a full no trade clause.

It was a rather dull half time show.

If the Bucks start to tank or whatever they may do and get the 1st pick in the draft who do the Bucks pick? I only see Griffin as a sure #1 and I'm not even sure if Griffin is really worth a #1 pick. Griffin and Bogut in the middle would be nice but I'm not confident about Griffin's defense. Maybe the Bucks would be better to get the #2-5 pick this year. Stephen Curry could be a good SG I'm not sold on him being a PG. I am not liking the looks of this possible draft.

It is not the Brewers who are not interested it is Peavy who is not interested in playing for the Brewers. Peavy would probably block a trade to the Brewers and if he doesn't even before he considers the Brewers the Brewers would have to pick up the option for the last year of his contract and give him a full no trade clause. Basically the Brewers would be stuck with Peavy if they traded for him. The biggest concern would be Peavy getting injured. Melvin really can't take advantage of a situation when there is nothing to take advantage of. Peavy is holding all of the cards right now for the Padres and the Padres are not going to trade Peavy to the Cubs or to another team for garbage players. Basically the Padres are waiting for Peavy to relax on his trade demands so they can get the most out of him and if the Padres have to wait until the trading deadline they are going to wait. The Padres may even wait untill next off season to trade Peavy. Unlike the Twins with Santana the Padres can afford to wait to trade Peavy.

Suppan pitched 206.2 innings in 2007 which was the most in his previous 3 years when he was with the Cardinals. Last year Suppan pitched 177.2 mostly due to an injury he had later in the year and the Brewers riding on Sabathia for nearly a whole month. The only thing concerning about Suppan was his FIP last year which was the highest since 2002. Suppans career FIP is 4.79 that right there suggest he is a solid #5 or a borderline #4 pitcher. Suppan's value to the Brewers is as a #4 pitcher right now since he will give the Brewers close to 200 innings next year. His FIP should go back down near the 4.79 again. The only problem with Suppan is that he is an overpaid #4 or #5 pitcher. Suppan is the #4 pitcher because there is no one else who could be the #4 pitcher on the current team. If the Brewers resign Sheets Suppan does go down to the #5 pitcher though behind Bush and McClung would then become the #6 pitcher.

Exactly the Padres are not going to pay any of Peavy's contract. It makes no sense for the Padres to pay any of Peavy's contract if they are trading him. They could just hold onto Peavy than pay any of his remaining contract. The Padres have the luxury to wait and trade Peavy. Peavy will be underpaid for what he could get in the market over the life of his contract. The only way Peavy gets traded before the season starts is if Peavy relaxes on his trade restrictions. I'm going to go with the Padres trading Peavy closer to the trading deadline than before the year. Peavy won't be happy pitching in San Diego during the year and will then relax his trade restrictions and he will go to a team that he may not have wanted to go to earlier in the year. The Brewers have some of the prospects that it would take to get Peavy. The A's, Angels, Rangers, and even the Yankees have some of the pieces in Hughes/Kennedy but that is about it.

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. and No. No matter how many times you say this it won't be true. Suppan is the definition of a #5 pitcher who is a borderline #4 pitcher. Don't let Suppan's contract cloud your judgement on what Suppan is and isn't.

Top 10 1. Texas Rangers 2. Tampa Bay Rays 3. Atlanta Braves 4. Oakland A's 5. Florida Marlins 6. Cleveland Indians 7. Baltimore Orioles 8. Angels 9. St. Louis Cardinals 10. San Francisco Giants The Brewers would be 12th the lack of pitching prospects is concerning.

It looks like Gwynn is also out of options. Would the Brewers really consider Gwynn as an option as the 4th/5th OF? I would think that Iribarren would be more of an option as the 4th/5th OF option. Iribarren can play in the IF and the OF while Gwynn would only be in the OF. Would anyone even claim Gwynn on waivers?

Hall only swung at 26.8% of his pitches that were out of the strike zone. Of the regular players only Cameron (17.8%), Weeks (19.4%), Kendall (23.5%), and Hardy (23.6%) were better than Hall. Fielder was at 27.9% and Braun was at 34.3%. These stats can be found here.

The Padres can afford to hang onto Peavy as long as they want to. Unlike Sabathia last year Peavy is under contract for the next 3 years I believe it is. The Padres won't lose any value by holding onto Peavy even into next year. Unlike Santana and Sabathia the Padres can wait for the right deal to come along. I still believe the Brewers and Braves are the teams the Padres should be targeting. Peavy is the only person really holding up any trade. If Peavy would relax his no trade clause I believe he would have been traded already to a team. Since Peavy has limited the Padres to teams they can trade him to there is basically a very limited market for him and the Padres are wise to just wait it out untill either Peavy relaxes his no trade clause or one of the other teams on his trade list get some more talent in their system (highly unlikely). The Angels could become a dark horse for Peavy though. The Angels have everything that the Padres would be looking for in prospects.

Yes but I don't use income or profits when talking about gains or losses. Operating income and other defintions are what I use to define what the company has made or loss. Profits and income are one in the same to me. Income has a lot of definitions and different terms defining which stage it is in. Profit is money coming and income is money coming. They are both broad terms and are interchangeable. Profit can come before expenses and after expenses.

No that isn't a good comparison at all. A better one would be me growing some vegetables in my backyard and then selling them to you. I already pay taxes on the land I am using so it doesn't matter if I grow those vegetables or not I am still going to have to pay the land taxes anyways. 100% income right there from the sale of the vegetables. I have a different definition of what profit is to me. Profit is what you take in before expenses and taxes or operating income or whatever you want to call it. I probably should have just used income then there wouldn't have been as much confusion.

Ugggg. Fixed costs = costs you pay no matter what it doesn't matter if 1 ticket is sold or all of them are sold the fixed costs are paid anyways. They have no bearing on the tickets being sold. Replace profit with income if you don't like the word profit. Since profits and income are basically the same thing. You make income you make a profit no difference really other than someones definition of what profit and income mean.

On the topic of the recession the New York Times has an interesting piece from an economist on this very issue with sports. The question from a reader: "Pro sports have a variety of revenue streams, of course, including ticket sales, concessions, licensing, and ad revenue both from the broadcasting of games and via corporate sponsorship. Given the current economic hard times, how much pullback will there be in advertising and sponsorship as well as other revenues, and how broadly (and how long) will that affect sports teams?" Answer: "Generally, the sports industry has been insulated from mild recessions. This is due to the fact that, depending on the sport, there are long-term contracts that guarantee revenues (e.g., four- or five-year television deals), and fans tend to give up other consumption before they cut back their consumption of sports. The present downturn is, however, both much more severe and likely to last considerably longer than the typical post-WWII recession. Moreover, the revenue-generating model in pro sports has been gentrified over the last 20 years, becoming more dependent on the sale of premium seating, corporate sponsorships, and catering - all expenditures likely to be more sensitive to economic conditions. Baseball was the only thriving team sport during the 1930's. Its attendance fell 40 percent between 1930 and 1933. No one should assume that professional sports today will not be significantly impacted by the present crisis. Some sports, like NASCAR, will be affected more acutely. NASCAR racing teams receive over 70 percent of their revenue from sponsorships and the lion's share of this is from the automobile industry. There will be a major impact here. Other sports - like the N.F.L., which receives over half of its revenue from national television deals that last through 2011-13 - will have a softer landing; but even in the N.F.L., certain teams will be heavily impacted. The NY Giants, for instance, are building a $1.6 billion stadium with the Jets. Much of the financing for this facility has come from auction-rate bonds, a market which collapsed and, consequently, interest costs exploded. The Giants lost their protection from this interest rate explosion when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. Some estimates have put the Giants cost at near $100 million from the Lehman collapse. A team in the W.N.B.A. closed its doors, tournaments have been eliminated from the L.P.G.A. tour, and the Arena Football League has suspended its next season. N.B.A. teams have used deep discounts on tickets to maintain attendance. The offseason players' market in M.L.B has been somnambulant. The question of how deep these cuts will go and how long they will last is an imponderable. One might as well ask Ben Bernanke or Hank Paulson these questions about the U.S. economy. The answers depend on macropolicy in the U.S. and the rest of the world, as well as currently unknown behavior in financial markets. What we do know is that the sports industry will reflect, perhaps with some moderation, the vicissitudes of the overall economy."

No and you are missing the point here I guess I need to explain this more in depth. This is not about Operating Expenses. Whether or not the team sells tickets to a game they have to pay for the things anyways those things are not dependent on ticket sales. Ticket sales to produce and sell are a ZERO expense. Because there is no expense to produce or sell a ticket. This is why ticket sales are 100% profit because you don't pay for any expenses to get that profit. Now the operating expenses when you look at a team is very low for attendants and other miscellaneous things compared to the real expenses of the team which is players salaries and other miscellaneous team expenses. Paying parking attendants and other people at the stadium 81 times a year is nothing really most of the jobs are around the minimum wage amount. Again I am not talking about operating expenses I am talking about the cost to produce and sell the ticket.

Yes but they would pay them regardless if the tickets were being sold or not. Lets say in a given year it costs $200,000 to pay for all of the expenses for the tickets this includes all the employees, the cost to print the tickets, and to maintain the lots. Now lets say the average ticket price is $20 just to keep it simple and round. The team would only have to sell 10,000 tickets to cover the expenses. So the team would have to sell out the first game of the year and they are already making a profit after the first 10,000 tickets. Even if it would cost $1,000,000 to do this for the whole season it would only take 50,000 tickets to be sold to cover that cost. How many teams in MLB don't sell 50,000 tickets in a year? Everything after that expense is 100% pure profit. There is no cost to print the tickets and to sell them. The expense of selling a ticket is zero and is 100% pure profit. When you compare the cost of printing, selling, and maintaining everything for that ticket the profits for those tickets is so much more than any cost incurred by selling the tickets.

Well ticket sales is 100% profit to the owners. It basically costs $0 to print off the tickets and to sell them since you are making about 100 times the amount it costs to print those tickets. It is pure profit for the owners. Another thing that is pure profit for the owners is parking. Since the team already owns or rents the propert whatever the situation maybe the amount of parking is going to be more than what they are paying for the property. The players salary and other salaries are not taken into account for the ticket sales because the salaries are already in the budget for the team. The salaries will get paid no matter what even if the team sells 1 ticket or 3 million tickets. Now when you add in revenue sharing and TV contracts the team brings in even more money. Now start adding up all of the endorsement deals the team may get over the year. We haven't even taken into account all of the merchandise sales that the team will get yet either. There is very little risk that owners take when purchasing any major sports team. The reason why there are not that many people buying sports teams is because of the capital it takes to run a sports team there are not that many people out there with the capital to take on buying a sports team. Baseball takes the most capital to run btw.

I'm not saying I would do a trade like that it is just what the market is for catchers. The value of catchers right now in the league is over blown and that is the reason why Salome could fetch a #1 or #2 type pitching prospect. I'm not saying he will but the value of catching prospects is so high that a player like Salome can fetch something that is worth more than his value in a trade. Will teams do this? Yes and no it depends on the GM and the team. The Yankees for instance can have Salome be a DH or a catcher and not lose any value at all with him even with trading Hughes or another player in their minor league system. All I am pointing out is that Salome is worth more than Kennedy even with his defensive deficiencies. You can only get what the market demands and currently the market for young catchers is rather high while supply for the catchers is rather low. This is the main reason why Salome is so valuable. In a perfect market where catchers are not at a premium Salome would be equal to Kennedy in a trade but not in the current market.

Millwood did have a 1.27 GB/FB ratio last year. I'm not opposed to trading for Millwood I just don't see anyone on the Brewers other than Hall or Suppan that the Brewers could realistically trade away to get Millwood. I was looking to much into his WHIP and ERA from last season and labeling him as an expensive #5 pitcher I probably should have looked at his FIP instead.