Thurston Fluff

There is a guy who orders something for every holiday to the same person living in a group home for a couple years running now. I took the order for Thanksgiving and while casually talking to him I asked how he knew this person. He said he didn't actually know her. He had a disabled family member who lived in a group home and always felt sorry for some of the others there who never had any visitors or get any presents. When his family member passed away he decided to call the group home and ask about someone there who never got anything or any visitors. They gave him her name and he's been sending something to her ever since. This Thanksgiving I'm thankful there are people like him in the world.

The brutality is the run itself. For hundreds of years, every bull has been tortured and killed in this ridiculous tradition. There are humane ways of killing livestock, but people like to do it this way. So if some dope gets gored, I shed no tears. When I was in Italy there was a bull fight on tv. I watched a total of about five minutes and was horrified at how brutal it was. They don't just let a bull out and have a matador fight him with a cape and sword. That at least would be a fair fight even if the bull had no choice. But that''s not how it works. First the matador rides a horse and uses spears to stick the bull to the point where the blood loss takes enough of a toll on it to make it calm enough for the matador to get off the horse and use the cape and sword. It's like 90% dead before that happens. It's not like I'm squeamish or a major animals rights guy or anything. I helped butcher several types of animal including cows, pigs, deer, rabbits, ducks and chickens from start to finish. I personally think everyone who eats meat should do so at least once so they know what it takes to eat an animal. But never would have I thought people would enjoy seeing an animal tortured before it's killed like that.

Summer of Soul was awesome. I loved some of the background stories and the music was second to none. Several times I felt like standing up and joining in.

I don't know if it's as easy as to see what they do there and think that was what they'd do here. Do players get pushed in their new team in a way that is detrimental to them? Was there something one team did that made them better at dealing with certain players? We've all seen players suddenly do well after a mover and vice versa. Obviously I'm not saying those guys would have been great, or even average here but it's not as simple as saying since they all busted there the same would have happened here.

I hate to de that guy but he's young, has an option and Stearns seems to be a guy who isn't afraid of soft tossers. It has nothing to do with his history here but he seems like the type Stearns may have interest in.

That is mesmerizing... You can't watch that video without realizing that these guys truly believe in what they are doing! Thanks for the link, I might have to check into these guys. Wish it was in English, but still very cool! Try this version with Jacoby Shaddix. I think they plan on releasing an album with english singers on it. I know Lzzy Hale did one with them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqnVTBzyX1c

I've been getting into these guys lately.

Diaz has had a phenomenal season in AAA so far. He deserves it. He's well on his way to being a top 100 again. At least Brinson is floundering. You don't want the team you traded with to go 4 for 4. compare Diaz's 2019 in AAA to Saladino's, and you'll soon realize a TON of minor leaguers are having a phenomenal 2019. Including Diaz in that trade meant the Brewers were committed to Hiura at 2B instead of Diaz since their development timeframes were essentially identical - I'll make that same decision every single time. Until all these prospects actually become productive everyday MLB players, it's way too early to heap praise on them. In fact I'd say the odds are still stacked towards only one or possibly 2 of these four prospects developing into an MLB starter that has a career that reaches through the 1st 6 years of team control and into unrestricted free agency. That pretty much means the Brewers robbed the Marlins of one of the top 5 players in the entire world through his prime, who is making less than most veteran #5 starters. I don't think that means the Brewers robbed them at all. I doubt any team trades for that many minor leaguers thinking all of them are going to pan out. They get that many so they have a better chance of getting any of them to pan out. Then there is the issue of timing. If one pans out during a span where the Marlins have other young talent hitting their stride that one player will do far more towards them actually winning something than Yelich was going to do over the life of his contract when there was little else on the team to help them win. The timing of a prospect's arrival I think plays at least as important a role as overall productivity.

Didn't Yelich specifically say he wasn't going to tinker with his swing? From an article on Brew crew ball I read he actually hasn't changed his swing as much as the timing of his swing. That could just be coincidence or it could be something the Brewers do that spotted it that Miami doesn't. I do think though that there has to be something to all this new stuff the Brewers are doing that changed from what they used to do. Or what other teams who aren't having as much success do.

This is something I've thought about for a while now. How much credit/blame goes to the new club for that change? Miami might just not have the same level of scouting, coaching or analytics the Brewers have so the players involved might not perform the same as if they had been with the original club. Would Brinson have struggled the same here as he has there for example? That to me is the one thing we can't know when assessing the success of a trade. Obviously Miami has had success in developing top talent players but how much success has the Jeter era really had?

Even if they don't it's still doesn't mean it was a mistake to trade Yelich for them. Yelich's only value to them was as trade bait. He was not going to help them win anything. So if they get any positive value down the road when they have a chance to win was better to get the lesser total talent than to keep the greater overall talent at a time it couldn't help them.

The Marlins are far better off with some young talent because Yelich wasn't going to matter a hill of beans for their playoff hopes in the next couple seasons. The Brewers had a lot of young talent that could have helped build a good solid core down the road but weren't going to be the bona fide all star they needed now. Each team gave what they had but couldn't use for what they needed but didn't have. How is that a loss for either team?

While I only get half of the references, Midnight Misadventures With Mallika Dua is hilarious. She is outstanding in that role. Kind of Colbert Report type of character spoof without the political overtones.

Some of the kids that work for us listen to K-pop. It has to be the single worst genre ever. I'd listen to country or muzak over that stuff. Then again I'm 55. If I like the same music as teenagers there is probably something wrong with one of us.

Taxi is one of those shows I can watch and laugh no matter how many times I've seen it before. Same with Married With Children and WKRP in Cincinnati.

Yeah, that was high quality January baseball reading right there. Hot takes just flying. Obviously there were people who loved the deal, and people who hated it. Hopefully those who hated it, or were extremely upset by the prospects we gave up, have come around. Yelich truly has proven to be a special player. While I wasn't one who hated the deal I didn't love it either. I was skeptical the overall value was going to be in our favor. It's still to early to know that but Yelich has produced so well now that even if the value slants in their favor down the road I am fine with the trade. Sometimes the timing matters as much as overall value.

I'm an OG (original gamer) my first game was pong and I've played ever since. My first computer game was Civilization on a Tandy before windows came out. It took an hour for the intro to play the first time I played it. Have had every version of Civ since. I like strategy games like Civ as well as open world games with some amount of story line with them. The Witcher, Fallout, Skyrim stuff like that. I've finally set up my desk so I can pedal an excesie bike while playing. I fell less guilty that way and average about 20 miles a day now.

Yea, way too early to say it was a great trade for the Brewers. At the very least it looks like the Brewers got what they wanted. Just far too early to know if it will be as good of a trade as the Gomez/Fiers trade was. THAT was great trade, will probably end up being exceptional. And yea, I won't be happy if the four traded away all become HOF players. That would mean it was a horrible trade. I'm not sure if this was directed at my post about being wrong about the relative production or not but let me clarify what I meant. I thought the Yelich deal would help us some this season but not enough this year to make a difference compared to what we'd have got from the others. I was wrong about that. I agree it's too early to know if it's a good trade overall but for this season, and probably next, we are getting much more production than we'd have had with some combination of Broxton, Brinson and Phillips.

I was one of those who was skeptical that this trade was going to give us much more production than we'd have had to be worth the cost. I'm very happy to be wrong.

I always felt that was one of the best things about Firefly. It mixed the best of westerns and sci-fi so perfectly.

I just started watching Comrade Detective on prime and it is quite funny.

Trailer Park Boys. New season starts at the end of the month!!! Decent.

It’s been overstated so many times that Braun’s contract hurts us. Well it didn’t stop us from adding over $20M to our outfield for years to come a few days ago. Not only that but if 1WAR = $8M, I think Braun will probably do alright in getting the value out of that contract. Also you may want to check out who the Cardinals are paying money to over there in St. Louis. Lol The reason we can pay that now isn't because we just got done selling off every expensive piece we could. The reason we did is because every other veteran player we had was valuable enough compared to their contract to get good value in return. Now we are good enough to win which made these moves possible. Braun couldn't get us anything of because of his contract. So now we sit here with a guy who can only play 120 games a year, making more than the rest of the outfield combined and we now have to figure out what to do with Santana. Who BTW may very well be better than Braun at this stage. But that isn't hurting anything. My point about the Cardinals isn't that they never waste any money. It's just we want to have that string of success. In my mind the best way to do that is not to pay players more than they are worth in any given year. When it comes to judging the value of a contract looking at WAR over the life of the contract is next to useless. It doesn't take consistency into account at all. A player can be great one year, suck the next and it's the same as if he consistently produced year in and year out. When building a team for the long haul every GM in the world would take player B over player A.

We'll see how that plays out in years 4 and 5 of Cains contract. There is a pretty good chance we have that bloated contract on the books when we need to have the money for another player at that time, but will be strapped. I might be wrong, but so could everyone else. But you’re more missing he point. He will be nothing but a bonus in terms of the value of the contact by then. In year three he will, most likely, have made the contract worth it. And $18M in 2021 isn’t going to be holding the crew back if in contention just like Braun isn’t present day. You’re just looking for reasons to hate this because your beloved prospects are gone. I think the point is if we are working towards always being a contender we should never knowingly overpay someone for the year they are playing. Braun's contract already hurt us. Imagine if the money spent on him the past four years were spent on players worth that much money. To me the contract's total amount is only half the issue. How it's structured is the other half. Knowingly overpaying someone at the end of the contract for gains at the beginning of the contract creates a cycle of a couple years of good teams followed by a couple years of terrible teams. The goal is to be St Louis not Pittsburgh.

For me it's not underrating him as much as wondering if the difference between him and what we already had was worth trading 4 prospects for. I would have prefered not to have done this deal but not overly fussed about it either. One thing I do like about this is he is the type of hitter that we don't have a lot of. I'm a fan of having different types of hitters in the lineup and we were missing his type of hit tools.