Cool Hand Lucroy

I'm getting a lot of mixed signals from this Badger team, both in terms of metrics and eye-test stuff. The good: They have 12 Q1 and Q2 wins. That's like fourth in the country. They've played a top-5 schedule, according to KenPom. They're hard to play against and can beat you with a lot of different guys (though maybe not in a lot of different ways). When Klesmit or Storr are playing assertive, confident basketball (Klexmit from the perimeter, Storr getting to the rim), the offense is incredibly efficient. The bad: A 3-8 road record is hurting them. They're usually able to pick off one or two more of those B1G games. Even 5-7, and you're feeling great about this resume (the silver lining is there aren't true road games in the NCAAT). Storr has struggled lately, since Purdue, I'd say. Without that athletic dynamism, the offense can get very stagnant and limited. Only 54 in defensive efficiency at KenPom. Ouch. Some of that is that they've played some incredible offenses (schedule is 4th in offensive rating in the country), some is luck, some is just what Jim French has been plugged into for a while--they just don't seem quite as together in the defensive half court as past iterations. Chuckie's got great hands, but Crowl is a pretty limited defender, and teams are very, very good at putting Klesmit in pick-and-roll situations. Essegian is the best pure shooter on the roster but has no role because he's limited defensively. I'd like to see him get more minutes, but I worry he's a transfer candidate. Overall: I think this is just what this team is. I think it's important they get on a bit of a roll heading into the tournament. Today's game is very important. Namely, they need a confident Klesmit and a confident Storr. Wahl, Chuckie, and Crowl are going to give you a lot of consistency. Those other two need to score. As others have said, it's a good team, but not a great team, with a very good resume. I think they've slightly overachieved relative to talent. But the B1G is a well-scouted league, and they've known how to expose the Badgers, especially in road games. The good news is: we're not going to see any B1G teams in the first weekend. That alone boosts my confidence in a Sweet 16 run.

Forgot about the no-trade thanks. Yeah. I still don't mind committing 17.5 million to a guy who might be very useful in 2025.

Yup. And this seems prudent to me. Who knows what $10 million will mean in 2026. If Woody is worth $15 million in 2025, you only have to commit $5 million and have trade deadline flexibility. If he's not, you defer the back two-thirds to the next year, when it means less. If Woody is really good, but the team is falling out of it, you might also have some trade possibilities.

Re: the chances of Woody being effective again: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3899910/ Anterior capsule surgery is usually pretty successful, so I think those numbers might even be low. But 68% return-to-sport at the elite level suggests a good chance Woody is back on a major-league mound. Obviously, that doesn't guarantee he'll be effective once there, but I'd put the chances at significantly higher than 10% we get some value than Woody in 2025. Obviously, that's just my opinion, and it very well could be influenced by how much I'm rooting for Woody.

Back when we nearing the end of 2023, I threw out 2/12 for Woody, with the Crew basically giving him a couple mil to rehab in 2024 and then guaranteeing him 10 or 11 in 2025. That seemed like a VERY low-risk deal for the Crew. We'll see if it turns out to be a bit higher. I just see no reason not to do this. Worst case, you're out the value of 1-2 WAR on the open market. I get that 15 mil is a lot for a small-market team, but the worst-case scenario is also not the most likely one. If I had to guess, I'd say I doubt the money is much more than 2/12, just because I bet Woody tested the open market and didn't find much going for him. I'm not saying this is going to be great, but it's a great risk as I see it. Even if Woody's not very good, you show some goodwill to a guy who's earned it. Maybe that entices others, or maybe it's just an instance of doing the right thing. We'll see what the money is. But no way this makes the Crew worse off in 2024 and 2025. EDIT: by "the right thing," I just mean, worst-case scenario, paying Woody for the value he provided over and above his salary during his pre-arb and arb years, even if the 2025 value doesn't pan out.

https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-wisconsin-madison/student-life/sports/ Can't vouch for the accuracy of that, but it looks like decent ballparking.

While any theoretical gymnastics or softball union could take the position that the players deserve more than scholarships covering cost of attendance, I doubt they would in most cases. Far more likely is that any unions that do form focus on the amount of required practice time, "captain's practices," meal stipends, etc.--basically just "working conditions" stuff rather than "wages." And I can see a situation where, say, swimmers, simply have no appetite for unionization and would be happy to operate under the NIL status quo. The question, of course, is how deep the wages football and basketball players will almost certainly ask for will cut into athletic department budgets. Will universities be less likely to fund swim programs if every rostered MBB player has to be paid a 10K stipend beyond COA? Probably. It won't make swimming extinct, but I'd bet it will shrink the collegiate player pool in a substantial way. Title IX will absolutely be a factor too (though I wonder if you'll see an effort to exempt football from its proportionality requirement, which is something I've seen floating around--in theory, that would marginally protect sports like wrestling and baseball, which have historically been first cut when schools need to create participation statistics in line with regulation). Agree with owbc that the "vanity system" of some non-revenue sports may fade, or just get squeezed out by new budgeting priorities. That might be for the greater good on the whole, but it'll also involve all the heartbreak cutting programs usually involves, and not all of those players or programs will be "vanity" ones. I'm honestly fascinated by how things might go just from an athletic perspective, and that's not even considering all the weird recruiting things that'll pop up depending on how union-friendly various states are. Imagine a world where Ohio State and Alabama start losing players to, I don't know, Illinois or something because those players want the wage bumps unions almost always provide. Given how much football bedrocks just about everything in the US, I doubt the implications of this, should it be upheld and move forward, will remain siloed within athletics.

Yeah, there's SO MUCH unsettled here, and we're looking down the road. I've heard a lot of "end of college sports as we know it" takes, and I think maybe that's true in terms of the "as we know it" part. Of course, conference realignment and basically doing everything in the service of football $$$ has been the driving factor, and this ruling is just part of that. I think football and men's basketball are the two sports where athletes would be most interested in unionizing. MAYBE you could add men's hockey or baseball or women's volleyball or basketball to that mix. Given that, here's an outcome I could reasonably see way down the line: The NCAA splits or disbands and reorganizes. A new organization forms and governs football (maybe with two divisions) and basketball (because I think men's and women's hoops are likely to be bundled). You get something like 100 schools competing for a national championship, probably with a 32-team basketball tournament (perhaps with a series or play-in element to boost inventory for TV $$$). Current D-2 and D-3 schools (and a lot of smaller D-1s) band together to form an NAIA-like organization. A lot of these schools either cut football or field very regional football conferences because there won't be cash available for an year-end championship since the current version of that relies heavily on NCAA money. Essentially, you get a situation where college sports exist, but there aren't as many, and, at the lower-levels, things become very regional. You probably get a lot more club sports. In some ways, that's not a bad thing. Sports take up a lot of oxygen at colleges and universities, and maybe it's too much. Maybe some of that energy is better-directed into club sport models. In other ways, of course, something will definitely be lost if you can't go to a great Saturday WIAC football game. Who knows? But it's a lot of interesting thoughts.

Absolutely. Purdue's guards were very good Sunday. Hit some contested 18-footers that make a huge difference (Nebraska's guys did the same thing late in that game). I'm not sure I TRUST Purdue's guards fully (it's why I'd pick UCONN as the most likely national champ if I had to choose right now), but the Boilers are, for my money, the best team in the country when they get good guard play. If I'm scheming for them, I might just single-cover Edey, which sounds crazy because he's likely to put up like 50. But at least then you can hope you get hot from three or get him to pick up a few fouls. Maybe a little hack-a-Zach too, and I've seen some off nights from him from the line. Badgers have two road games this week (never easy) against opponents who seem to always play well against them. Important to go 2-0, I think. They'll probably only be small favorites, but they'll be the better team in both. If they stick on a top-4 seed line, I'll still feel pretty good about their chances to make a run.

Figured this was the place to post the recent Dartmouth ruling on player unionization: NLRB orders union election for Dartmouth men's basketball team - POLITICO That article has a link to the full opinion. Likely won't impact the B1G at the moment (at least not immediately) and there will be lots of appeals, but it's pretty clear the NCAA model is getting less and less sustainable. I think that's a good thing overall, but there will certainly be unintended consequences, and I think it's fairly likely college athletics as a whole shrinks as we move down the line (easy to imagine a situation where football and basketball players form unions, the school negotiates with them, and lots of non-revenue sports are left competing over small scraps of the pie). For now, I have little complaint about the idea that student-athletes are "employees," that they should be able to bargain about working conditions, and that schools, despite their protestations to the contrary, expect athletes to be athletes (often more than students), even at the lower levels of the NCAA. That's really all this ruling implies. We're about to enter a wide-open space of negotiation and renegotiation in terms of college sports, and there'll hopefully be a lot of good conversation and discussion about how to envision athletics within educational institutions, how to balance revenue-generation with "the common good," how to continue to provide educational opportunities for non-revenue athletes and in women's sports, etc. while fairly (whatever that means) compensating football and basketball players. I suppose I doubt we'll get good conversation given the way this stuff always turns into a lot of yelling and nonsense, but this board's usually better than that. Anyway, worth posting given the potential implications for CBB and college sports writ large.

I think this is a good basketball team with a top-10 resume. The much more difficult question is: is this a top 10 team? It's complicated. The Badgers are hard to play against because everyone they send out on the floor can score (maybe Carter Gilmore excepted). Storr is their best player, but you can stop him and still lose (and I thought Storr played poorly today). Klesmit can hurt you on the dribble or from deep. Wahl and Crowl are pretty good around the rim, and Chuckie will knock down jumpers late-clock. Blackwell has a ton of athleticism and Essegian can come in and stretch a defense. The problem is that none of those guys are pure scorers. UNC is going to RJ Davis, and Baycott's there for a dish. Purdue's going to Edey. Houston's guards are incredibly. Even Kentucky (whose defense is PUTRID right now) can find points when they really need them. The Badgers really have to make jump shots to win. It's been that way under Gard for a while. I don't think that's bad. I like Gard, and I think this is one of his best teams. This just feels like one of those Badger teams that's going to go as far as matchups and 3-pointers take them. Now, that's probably true of most teams. And I'm not complaining about it. I'll take it every year! It's just why I'm not too worked up about the two L's this week. I think it's a little bit reversion to the mean. The one area where improvement is needed is defense. When you play slow (and the Badgers still do, even though they're very efficient), you have to be able to get stops. They really struggled to do that down the stretch against Nebraska and Purdue.

Scrolling through, reading reactions, I think this was the RIGHT move. Doesn't mean it's a great move. Return seems about fair. I wouldn't call Ortiz and Hall "lottery tickets," but they both have a ton of upside for big-league ready players. If one of them works out, it's a win long-term. For those not sure they see the plan given the Hoskins signing, I get it. This move probably reduces our division odds slightly, but how much, really? In a division that's still pretty wide open? We are now pretty loaded on young position players, with an exciting roster, and a proven bat at 1B. Bullpen has a great track record. Rotation is a question mark. That's a good enough roster to win the Central next year if lots of things go right (which always has to happen in baseball). Plus, you get a bunch of control years. Bottom line, for me, the Brewers are doing a reset. It's a soft reset. This is basically how the Rays have run for decades, and we are the NL's version of the Rays. Let's see what comes, but I, for one, am ready for a new style of Brewers baseball. Whether it results in as many wins next year or not, it's going to be nice to have some young, fast, talented position players and maybe an offense that can produce a bit more consistently.

Totally echo the free throw sentiments. Makes a ton of difference when you're hoping to mostly win games in the 60s or low 70s.

Storr and Blackwell are total game-changers for this team. Just that little bit of agility makes so much difference on a team that's always going to be sound in the halfcourt. The Tennessee game showcased a lot of what I thought was wrong with the Badgers in previous years. They just were really limited offensively. With some guys starting to grow into themselves a little, they're looking much, much better. When you don't have to count on Wahl and Essegian to score a bunch and can let Chuckie take what comes, you're going to be good. If Crowl shoots like a little over 30 percent from 3, lookout. He's going to get a million open looks when the defense has to rotate so hard on the high ball screen.

Soccer does it all the time, and it's great. Take Brighton, who's going to pretty much for sure be mid-table in the Premier League. They won't get relegated. They won't win the league (or make the Champions League), so being in the Europa League (2nd level all-Europe competition) adds interest and drama. There's no reason MLB couldn't devote 25 games or more to an in-season tournament. I'd say the simplest approach is to go interleague style. You balance the schedule and count IL games double: once for regular season standings, once as part of the IL cup or whatever. End of schedule, 4 teams in each league with the best records play three best-of-3, knockout series, with the final being a "mini-World Series" for a trophy (I'd also just count them as regular season games too). Scheduling is a the challenge. You'd have to a) front load IL games for everyone, hoping to finish the competition by late-August, I'd think and b) hold space for extra games. I think it's doable given all the modeling software out there. Competitively, I suppose counting theoretically difficult, IL Cup games double might be difficult, but there you're talking 9 games. Always going to be trade-offs. You could also do something smaller. You could reduce the regular season to 150 games and budget 12 for some sort of mid-season cup in a single location. Maybe during the LLWS, and you could call it the "Little Big Leagues WS." You could even play it in Williamsport if you wanted. Two weeks in August where everyone starts from zero would be fun. I fully support this in principle, and there will be a way to make it work. It will involve complications and trade-offs, but giving fans another competition to engage with is something a marathon sport like baseball desperately needs. The more I think about it, the more I'm a fan of the single-location tournament with full revenue sharing and a separate media rights deal. You'd think that would entice some owners to forego the 6 home games of lost revenue.

I love this deal. It's pretty low-risk for the team (Chourio's always going to have trade value based on the skillset, even if he struggles early, especially at this price), and it shows a lot of faith in a player. These are always fascinating economic situations. Chourio might be giving up $100 mil in hypothetical value, but it's clear what he's trading it for, and he'll still have a shot at another big contract if he can stick in the bigs. Good day to be a Brewer fan.

I'm done after this. We disagree, fine. But the idea that volume of money means someone is being treated well is...not a good argument. Service time manipulation, low-ball arby figures, etc., all those are bad ways to treat people. That applies no matter how much you're paying someone. Players take on WAY MORE risk than franchises in contract negotiations the VAST MAJORITY of the time. Teams are backed by billions of dollars. Even Mike Trout can't come close to that. The Brewers and Rays etc. have to play a different game economically, and I'm not silly enough to argue that point. All I'm saying is that pure financial value should NEVER be the ONLY factor involved in a contract negotiation. Everyone who argues that teams shouldn't sign Aroldis Chapman or whoever because of personal history makes the same argument all the time. Maybe the Brewers were super ethical and responsible in this case. Great! Maybe Woody would rather be an FA no matter what the terms of the contract. Great! I just didn't think it would be controversial to suggest my hope that the Brewers didn't simply just automatically non-tender the guy. An automatic non-tender would be bad. That's my entire argument. If I have to defend it this vociferously, then baseball's in worse shape than I thought.

Dude, the principle applies no matter what. If you're only goal is to get the most production for the least financial input, you're treating the guy like a widget. I contend that no good organization should treat people like widgets, whether they're paying them minimum wage or 2.5 mil/yr. If that makes me a Marxist, fine. I just didn't think it would be that controversial to say Woody deserves some human consideration given he's been underpaid relative to the value he's provided until now. I mean, disagree if you want, but wouldn't you want your boss recognizing past value and compensating you for it? Wouldn't you want your boss taking on a reasonable level of risk even if it seemed unlikely you'd achieve the same level of production in the future? This isn't that freakin' hard. If it's crazy to think Woody earned a little extra consideration, this game's in worse shape than I thought. Edit: under the scenario I outlined, you'd also be paying him like 2 mil to rehab and like 10 mil to pitch the next year, betting he'd be a 1-win player. Again, fine if you think that's a bad bet, but the idea that it's some insane level of commitment is just silly.

Absolutely. I'm not angry or angsty about it. We'll never know. I just think it's worth pointing out it's a pretty bad way to treat someone IF it was a straight nontender. And I hope anyone asking Woody (or the Brewers) about it as a journalist is asking that question because it seems an important one, even if you get a PR-speak response.

Okay. I mean, I agree. I also think analytics accelerate the trend and mean everyone is essentially operating on cold economic logic. I think that's bad in the same way unregulated capitalism is bad. Some things are worth protecting, even if they aren't the most profitable. Remember that we needed the pitch clock and the shift rules and the Manfred runner because efficiency was grinding the joy out of the game. I happen to like joy, even when it makes organizations less economically efficient.

I mean...12 mil? A guarantee that he'll have some leash to try and get back to health? I get the point. Maybe the market is more robust than that. Then, yeah, he should go try and get what he can get. Again, I just think you have to make an offer to the guy. And it's gotta be reasonable. I think 2/12 is, but I have no qualms about him saying no. If he does, the offer itself is the team doing right by him. I think part of the point is that the Brewers really just had to clear the bare minimum here. I'll never know probably, but I hope they did. Edit: if some team gives Woody like 3/30, I'll take it back under the argument the humane thing was letting the guy go get paid.

Agreed. I hope the discussion was had. I thought Woody could accept a multi-year contract offer anytime, regardless of arb status. Maybe I'm wrong. And, yeah, maybe Woody says no, but you have to make the offer. I would contend that every organization treats players like pieces of meat. And that's bad. The end of analytics is that players are assets and nothing more. Long-term that does bad things to the game. At some point, pure economic logic sinks baseball, not to mention that it's just wrong to forget these are humans. Look, maybe the team was nice to Woody. That's good. All I'm sayings is: IF they didn't even try to avoid a nontender, that would be awful.

I just disagree completely. Treating Woody like a human costs Mark A 10 mil. And he might end up seeing that 10 mil translate into value down the road. The idea that a pro sports owner cannot afford to take care of a guy in Woody's situation is not something I will ever believe. Business is business, but it doesn't have to mean treating Woody like a piece of meat.

I think I have an ethical rubric here and just think non-tendering a guy who got hurt is bad personnel relations. Now, if there was an offer I don't know about, maybe that changes things. But I'd have offered Woody 2yrs/12, with 10 backlogged to year 2. He'd only need to be worth 1 win to equal that. And he's earned it. Others can exercise a pure business mindset if they want. I understand it. I just think there are non-financial factors that belong in the cost-benefit analysis.

The whole problem is that sports teams are public utilities owned by private parties who are primarily interested in profit. How are sports public utilities? I'd argue that sports provide an essential emotional service in a lot of communities, and it isn't easy to replace that. We can talk about whether sports should be put in that position (I'm here for the argument that the US in particular cares way too much about organized athletics), but they're in it. I know people might be upset by this, but they serve an essentially religious function. They provide community and ritual and a whole lot of mystical wholeness that's hard to describe. I don't think that's a fiction. I think it's real and genuine and important. The problem is, other than (MAYBE) the Green Bay Packers (the closest thing pro sports has to an actual public utility), everything in American pro sports has been commodified within an inch of its life. None of the actors with power are at all beholden the public utility goals of sport. Under those rules, communities have to decide between losing the closest thing to a collective, ecstatic experience that modern America can provide or participating in a rigged game. You're either a martyr or a co-conspirator. There's no way out. I guess, as a fan, all I've got is this: I have no faith in any body of legislators to do very much right. At least them being wrong in this case has some positive side effects.