SeaBass

Right that's why I wrote the second sentence in my post. It seems odd, they didn't simply fire him but I'm guessing there were some discussions about (pure speculation here) maybe stepping back from being ST coordinator and just being assistant HC and/or maybe a salary decrease was suggested, who knows. Like a we'll keep you around but here's how we see that happening kinda thing. Essentially inviting him to resign. I'm sure in the end it came down to negotiations how much of his remaining contract they would pay him to go away.

I'm not against something like this. I think a lot of folks think I'm anti-salary cap when my feelings are more on the side of them all simply not being able to come to a compromise that everyone agrees with and makes meaningful progress towards parity or balance. It's just how I feel, it doesn't mean I know what will happen. Every prior CBA negotiation has been fraught with tensions, pot shots, strong arming, standoffishness and just plain greed. I'm a pessimist plain and simple when it comes to labor negotiations being in good faith and seeking a true good system. Not everyone has to agree with that. I'd love to be proven wrong. I mean, when you're starting out with a lockout, as is universally expected to happen, that's not a great sign, right?

I did not have Rich Bisaccia firing himself on my bingo card. Makes me really wonder what's been going on behind closed doors there.

No, we don't, not 100% of it. We don't have to pay anything. People do because they choose to. Advertising and media contracts are a large part of MLB's income. I haven't attended a MLB game in probably close to 10 years. I watch on TV. I'm happy to pay the price for streaming for as long as I continue to think it's a fair price. That's what I pay, that and whatever percent of my attention is given to the commercials during breaks between innings, which isn't much. I notice the annoying things about commercials like repetitive commercials that play too often and that is more likely to cause a negative emotion towards the company that is advertising.

If the risk were so very high we'd be seeing sales of professional teams more often than we do. And for lower valuations.

I just think the owners are much more interested in making the players bend to their will than making sacrifices of their own. I don't see the players agreeing to a bad deal. Could any of that happen? Sure. I don't know the future. Maybe everyone comes together and actually figures out what works best for everyone and baseball becomes a utopia of awesome. I sure hope that happens. I just don't think it will.

They don't need to be happy but is it realistically going to happen? If you think so I fear you have pie in the sky dreams.

The owners are going to be happy (with revenue sharing)? I can think of several that wouldn't be. Why would the Dodgers chop off their right arm just so their competition has a better chance to beat them? Again, I use the words "realistic". Owners agreeing to lower profits doesn't fit my vision of reality.

Jeff Passan wrote an interesting article last week. I think he tries very hard to bring the perspectives of both the owners as a collective and the players into the overall issue. It left me feeling like there wasn't any way that a cap system would be proposed and agreed to in any realistic sense. This is an excerpt: "Let's use a potentially realistic example that would maintain the $5.5 billion or so teams paid for players in 2025. With a $280 million hard cap and $150 million hard floor, the money teams spend would be within $50,000 of last season. What players lose on the top end -- $236 million from the Dodgers, $150 million from the Mets, $85 million from the Yankees and $69 million from the Philadelphia Phillies -- would be made up on the bottom. To reach $150 million, the Marlins would need to spend an additional $82 million, the A's and Rays $71 million, and so on -- 11 teams and $540 million total. The problems are manifold. The union would sneer at the ceiling on teams that have proved themselves willing to spend twice that amount. The lower-revenue organizations would cringe at the tens of millions extra more than a third of the league would be forced to pay. And in no universe does a $130 million gap between top and bottom constitute competitive balance. Levering both in the opposite directions -- a $320 million cap and $130 million floor -- would placate teams' self-serving desires but would be lipstick on the parity pig. Moving everyone toward a middle, though more equitable, would exacerbate the disillusionment from restricting teams that want to spend and forcing teams that don't." It just doesn't feel like a cap can exist that is actually effective and makes everyone happy, owners included. The players particularly would be justified in simply not being interested whatsoever.

The players are the attraction in an entertainment industry. They should be making very close to half of all profits. Period.

A) It's not going to be a strike, it's going to be a lockout. B) It's an owner issue, not a player issue. The players aren't making the game worse simply by existing. The players didn't create market disparity. They just work here.

I love me some Billy Contreras but organizationally I don't think the catcher position is the one where the team should choose to extend themselves payroll wise. It's come up before with guys like Lucroy and Grandal and they've generally been proven correct to let those players go as they've aged into their 30's. It's just such a physically brutal position.

Ah, warm and fuzzy thoughts of Contreras morphing into the next Cal Raleigh are dancing in my head.

What good is adding Urias in November when you have no idea what the roster will look like in February? Plus it's the Brewers, of course they would want to sign a player for less money. That's if they're even interested in Urias at all, folks can speculate and even think he's a match but that doesn't mean anything until something does or does not happen.

I think Fubo used to be a soccer focused service so it kind of makes sense because the Spanish word for soccer is fútbol so it's kind of like an abbreviated version of that.

I believe you'd get a 1 month free trial of ESPN Unlimited by signing up for a MLB.tv package but you are not required to subscribe to or use ESPN Unlimited to watch MLB.tv games. You would need to cancel the free trial for ESPN Unlimited before the next month to avoid those recurring subscription fees.

From what I understand the T-mobile perk is just for the traditional MLB.tv content. So no in market Brewers games. You'd need to buy the Brewers package yourself and the benefit is you wouldn't need to spend the extra $100 to get the rest of the MLB.tv content.

John Schneider also didn't make the decision to fire Pete Carroll (though I'm sure he probably had input on it) but it was the owner that made that call. Carroll was on even footing with Schneider in the organization similar to Green Bay's current power structure with Carroll even having final say on all player personnel moves, roster construction, and talent acquisition. So maybe the guy you're actually admiring is Pete Carroll (though I doubt that since Schneider is the one that remains).

They're not going to give up on Ortiz after one bad season. They're just not. That means he's going to get lots and lots of playing time. I'd bet money on it. If he's still struggling as bad as he was last season I'd be thinking June is around the time they'd be thinking of going in another direction. If I'm remembering right Ortiz was supposed to be a high floor OBP guy and last season was not good in that regard. It leaves definite room for improvement and I don't think it's unreasonable to think it's really possible. You'd hope with better pitch selection the walks and hits will increase. It really wouldn't take much to bring him back to league average even if he isn't slugging. The trick of course is in actually doing it.

Sure but was he ever going to realistically be named GM in Green Bay in 2010 before accepting that same job in Seattle? Ted Thompson won a Super Bowl that year. This post is basically saying, "John Schneider sure is a good GM, I like him." Which is fine I suppose but I don't really think there's any relevance in there whatsoever to the Green Bay Packers in 2026.

"but they’re trying to win as many games as possible in a tough division and need their 40 man roster for players who can help them sooner than later." So Boston is really trying to win and I guess the Brewers are not? (Also, isn't taking Yophery Rodriguez in exchange for Quinn Priester doing the opposite of getting players that can help them now sooner than later?) 2025 Brewers - 97-65 Red Sox - 89-73 2024 Brewers - 93-69 Red Sox - 81-81 2023 Brewers - 92-70 Red Sox - 78-84 2022 Brewers - 86-76 Red Sox - 78-84 2021 Brewers - 95-67 Red Sox - 92-70 I had to go back to 2018 to find the most recent season where Boston won more games than the Brewers and the Brewers still won 96 games that season. Throw in 2017 when Boston had 93 wins and the Brewers had 86 and we're getting awful close to the 10 year mark. Why are Boston's choices any more or less relevant than the Brewers' choices when it comes to success? I think it's pretty fair to say that Boston would really like to have Quinn Priester back on their team after his performance last season. They just didn't have the patience or know-how to get that type of production out of him. It's not because they're trying harder to win than the Brewers are.

Q1) Correct, this is only for in market Brewers fans. Q2) Correct, the $200 option is also only for in market Brewers fans. Out of market fans would pay the $150 subscription and be subject to local blackouts when the Brewers play a team in your market. If you're in a market where another team's in market plan is available (like the Twins for example) I'd assume you'd also be able to get that team's version of the $200 plan so that you could watch (nearly) every Brewers game regardless of which team they're playing. There are still going to be National Exclusives (like the Apple TV games) that won't be shown on MLB.tv. Unfortunately it looks like you're out of luck since the Pirates aren't one of the teams being offered for an in market subscription.

I imagine if something happened and the Brewers found themselves in need of more options to start at 1B at the big league level they'd do what they did last season and make a trade. Their depth is league wide.

A lot of this can just be chalked up to "pay attention to what I do, not what I say." They retained Bisaccia, he's not going to say, "We decided not to fire him, I don't really understand why because I think he's terrible." "Do we need wholesale changes (at the CB position)? No." There's an ocean's worth of semantics in that statement that leaves a lot of room for changes to be made.

Right, in no way was I suggesting that coaches are or should be the driving factor in player acquisition but in my mind it would make sense there might be meetings about guys they're looking at in free agency. It's not out of the ordinary for coaches to become GM down the line, it doesn't feel like their input would be of zero use. Coaches watch film, they're (hopefully) not stupid.