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Thurston Fluff

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Everything posted by Thurston Fluff

  1. Thurston Fluff
    That's about right. I like to go to early season games because you can just walk up and get a ticket. I don't have to plan ahead, can buy cheap tickets and sit in the best seats. I looked up the attendance record for 2019- which is the last season no effected by covid- and they had 218,037 show up all season. That's well below 50% capacity for the year.
  2. Thurston Fluff
    Looks like the Appleton Baseball Club, Inc got $559,000 in federal PPP "loan" (which really meant you usually didn't have to pay back). They have 66 home games a season. If they filled the stadium for every home game 3.894 million gross. While that sounds like a lot they never sell out all 66 games. Given the overhead of running a stadium that leaves very little meat on the bone for the ownership group.
  3. Thurston Fluff
    The T-rats got sold last season because they couldn't afford to operate anymore. Granted it was due to a missed season but if they were making a ton of money they would have managed. After all who sells a lucrative operation because of one down year?
  4. Thurston Fluff
    The money is being spent on improvements to the stadiums- often times mandated by the parent club, paying employees, promotions and such. Very few make a fortune on it. The players are MLB property and MLB gets to decide who plays where and for how long. The minor league affiliate does not get to play fan favorites to draw more people in nor do they get to choose who plays for them or for how long which directly effects their revenue. Given how limited their input to the on field product is I'm not sure why they should be responsible for their care. I'm sure there's some amount of help affiliates provide in finding suitable housing but ultimately it's the people who employ the players to help said employees.
  5. Thurston Fluff
    This is far enough back that the Timber Rattlers were still the Foxes but they had agreements with people to put up players in homes. Don't know if that was a Seattle thing or if it changed when they became the T-Rats but I always just assumed the league helped find places to stay. Guess not. Seems like a no brainer to help players get settled in so they can concentrate of baseball.
  6. Thurston Fluff
    If today's players could bunt the extreme shifts wouldn't exist. That would be an example of a skill today's players don't have that players 20 years ago did. I don't know if it's a skill that they don't develop or if it's one they don't look for when looking for players but it's pretty obviously not something today's player does like yesteryear. FWIW I think it's also something that's going to come into vogue once again. As is hitting the other way, moving players over, stealing bases and maybe even hitting for average. Just because baseball went 3TO for a couple decades doesn't mean it's going to be that way forever. I don't think we have to change a bunch of rules to make it that way either. As pitching and defense evolves hitting is going to have to change to keep up.
  7. Thurston Fluff
    Going by OPS+ Kolten Wong, Omar Narváez, Avisaíl García, Lorenzo Cain, Rowdy Tellez, Manny Piña, Jace Peterson and Daniel Vogelbach all had similar years as their career norms this season. Some a little better, some a little worse but all were within the range one would expect given their career trajectory so far.
  8. Thurston Fluff
    I too would rather we have consistent winning teams. The more opportunities you have your odds are better to win it all eventually. And it is a hell of lot more fun to follow a team in contention every year than watching your favorite team have fire sales and stink most of the time like the Marlins and others. Same here. The best part of baseball is the everyday experience. The ultimate experience would be to finish it off once in a while but it isn't the only part that makes a season enjoyable. I'll add that I also think consistently good teams is the way to finish the quest. I know the "would you rather" argument is a hypothetical but, as we learned in 2011, the reality is neither approach is a guarantee.
  9. Thurston Fluff
    I think if people are expecting a lot of moves this off season they'll be disappointed. That's not a bad thing. After all when a team is as good as we were and have most of it's players coming back there isn't much that needs to be done. There will be tweeks. There will be some additions and perhaps a surprise non tender or two but, for the most part, this team is already good to go.
  10. Thurston Fluff
    Is that due to the coach or a team philosophy? I know the team is geared to sabre and I think the sabre approach to hitting is in a transitional phase right now. Batters for the last decade didn't care about striking out, didn't learn to use the whole field and generally swing for the fences every pitch. Suddenly pitchers learned to throw harder, use the spin of their pitches better and the defenses learned some hitters can't hit certain parts of the field if they got to hit off a tee and adjusted accordingly. Suddenly the types of hitters being drafted and the way they're developed have to change. Maybe we haven't figured out what to look for or how to develop that yet. That isn't to say I disagree with a statistical analysis approach. Just saying that approach needs to be adjusted as the league adjusts.
  11. Thurston Fluff
    We have most of the pitching staff back and more young pitching coming up. This isn't 2011. We aren't at the end of a cycle we're in the middle of one. Now all we need is a collective bargaining agreement so we have a 2022 season. If not, well... that's one less year on Yelich's contract and both Cain and JBJ's contract will be over without costing us another dime.
  12. Thurston Fluff
    I don't care what his career WAR is, almost all of it was prior to the extension. We paid Braun over $100mil over five years for him to average 1.7 WAR, that is what matters. What he did prior to that extension just doesn't mean anything. We could have paid Braun like $40mil over 9 years for 35ish WAR. Now THAT would have been amazing. They didn't do that though. They gave him $100mil+ half a decade before he would hit FA as a 32 year old. Of the five seasons of that extension Ryan Braun failed to have a WAR over 1.0 three of the years (via Bref). Another year was only 1.7 WAR. That is terrible, any random OFer off the street can give you 1.7 WAR a year. Tyrone Taylor had like 1.5 WAR this year. Keon Broxton did that twice for us. I am glad Ryan Braun wasn't Vernon Wells...or apparently Christian Yelich, but it really just wasn't a wise decision and really didn't end up that great. Well said. There was a time when all players got paid for what they did as opposed to what they'll probably do in the future. I think there is some argument to be made for doing that when a the team got the good part of the players career on the cheap. In that sense maybe the Yelich contract is more acceptable than Braun's. It also might help attract other free agents because the team in known to reward it's players. But that doesn't make either of their actual contracts any better from a pay for production standpoint.
  13. Thurston Fluff
    For myself the hard part of every season ending is losing part of my daily life. It always feels so hollow for a week or so. This season was awesome day to day for the whole season. Very few losing streaks and a lot of series wins. Thus most days I had a bit of built in joy. Even the days they lost was usually comforted by the fact they won or could still win the series. I don't usually get emotionally invested in any particular game until the playoffs. The sad part of this season- other than having a three to four hour hole to fill every day- is the playoff adrenaline was so short lived compared to the daily enjoyment I got from the regular season.
  14. Thurston Fluff
    But then you are also getting rid of an integral piece of your pitching staff, arguably the best reliever in the game, while you are in win-now mode. I don't think we are in win now mode as much as we are continuing to win mode. To do that we have to be able to get something for those close to the end of controllable years before we lose them for nothing.
  15. Thurston Fluff
    I worked and lived on my own for seven years then went to college. The first couple months working next to adults of all ages and learning how to live on my own were as useful in learning independence as college did. Nothing like having no money, half a jar of peanut butter and a box a Ritz crackers left to eat for the week to learn how to budget for example. It did well to learn day to day adult living. It did not do well to expand my knowledge base after I learned those basic skills. I learned more about the unseen world around me in one year than I had in the seven previous. I guess what I'm saying is you don't need college to learn how to learn independence but it does help you learn that on top of teaching you things you cannot learn without it. Those are things job training alone does not do.
  16. Thurston Fluff
    I had softball and badminton. Ha. I do think college should focus more on core classes, but I cant it wasnt nice to have an easy 2 or 3 credit course when I did 18 credits. For me, college was a great opportunity to grow myself and learn to be independent. I met people that were much different than myself and I quickly learned what was and wasnt acceptable to say and do around others. I dont think I necessarily became smarter, but I did learn a lot. If that makes sense? It makes perfect sense. Intelligence and ignorance are two separate things. The former is fixed the latter fixable.
  17. Thurston Fluff
    A 162 game regular season needs to be worth something, especially given the randomness of baseball in small samples. The high-stakes wild card game had the Giants and Dodgers fighting like crazy all the way to game 162. It was great for the fans. In the end, the Dodgers lost. They finished in 2nd place. And then you have the AL wild card race which was thrilling up to the final day. The Blue Jays had 6 straight sellouts to end the season (30K capacity limit) and the Mariners had three straight sellouts. The fans are buying into the current system. There was a ton of casual/neutral fan engagement and cheering for 'chaos' scenarios. As for making the wild card a 3-game series...I don't see a good reason to do it. The single-elimination format is made-for-TV excitement. The winner of the first game is going to win a best-of-3 most of the time anyway. I get that they will probably go to a different playoff system that lets more teams in, which will probably be a net win because playoff baseball is usually fun and exciting. Although the 8-seed Brewers were not any fun to watch last year. I don't think the format is what caused the excitement. As you pointed out, the teams fighting for the wildcard spots were what caused the interest in the AL while the NL was all about the top two teams. How does that change with a top five league wide format? The only real difference is the one division/balanced schedule approach eliminates the advantage of being the only good team in a weak division has.
  18. Thurston Fluff
    Completely agree. If you're going to college just for the job then make sure it's a job that needs a college degree. If not then do an apprenticeship or tech school. Less money spent, less years to complete and many times similar income. Should also note I was from a rural area though rural Door County did offer more than it's share of visitors. But there is a difference between people and FIBS.
  19. Thurston Fluff
    In theory, I agree, however, I think that the majority of college students are there to either kill time before hitting the real world, or to get the piece of paper that says they did something with their life. In today's campus political climate, I doubt anyone is becoming well rounded, in fact, it feels like the opposite is happening. It isn't just the classes. You meet people from all over and from different circumstances that you just don't get from tech schools and apprenticeships which tend to server the local areas more. My first roommate for example was from Bangladesh. I learned how to play cricket and I got my first taste of haleem from him. I still make haleem on occasion to this day. Those are things I had very little knowledge of before then. Hell I had no idea what a lentil was until then. I'm a bit odd in that I worked for seven years before deciding to go to college. I made more before I went to college than I do working for myself now but I wouldn't trade my education for anything.
  20. Thurston Fluff
    No kidding. If the Cards knock out LA/SF in the one game play-in I expect a re-structuring of the playoff system immediately. But if the tables were turned and one of us small markets got burned it would just be "That's baseball" I see a lot more of the "it isn't fair" stuff coming out now than I did in 2018 when the two best records in the league were in the central. Considering four of the five teams in the central had winning records it was even less fair than this year.
  21. Thurston Fluff
    College isn't, nor should be, just about building a better work resume. That's what tech schools and apprenticeships are for. A college education is about being an overall more informed, well rounded person. If you have a better understanding of the world you live in then you have a better chance of making better life choices.
  22. Thurston Fluff
    Of course. However, I did preface it by saying they "were the very definition of mediocre". The way they are playing indicates that they are obviously above that currently. How is pointing out their season record before going on an unprecedented 16-game winning streak "cherry picking"? They were a mediocre team prior to it. Now they aren't. I'm not sure what your point is. Are you agreeing with me that they're a good not great team or are you saying they really are mediocre and this winning streak makes them look better than they really are?
  23. Thurston Fluff
    Good read. It seems like every team that goes on a hot streak like that tend to struggle a bit after the streak ends. Look at the Brewers record setting streak to start the season in the late 80's. It was followed up by almost the same amount of losing shortly after. The Cardinals are a good, not great, team that happens to be on a hot streak. I think the odds of them riding this streak for a month is less than them returning to their normal slightly above average ability they've shown all year. The Cardinals were 2 games above .500 before their streak started. They were the very definition of mediocre. If we're cherry picking then if we take out their 2-11 streak in late May early June and they'd have been 11 games over .500 when the winning streak started. Both count in what their record is today which is good but not great.
  24. Thurston Fluff
    Good read. It seems like every team that goes on a hot streak like that tend to struggle a bit after the streak ends. Look at the Brewers record setting streak to start the season in the late 80's. It was followed up by almost the same amount of losing shortly after. The Cardinals are a good, not great, team that happens to be on a hot streak. I think the odds of them riding this streak for a month is less than them returning to their normal slightly above average ability they've shown all year.
  25. Thurston Fluff
    How very northern hemispherist of you lol. In my defense I did mention in this hemisphere. You do bring up an interesting question though. Do all places use up and down when describing places North or South of them? Do people in Aswan Egypt say I'm going up to Cairo for example?
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