owbc

As enjoyable as that was, the Cards gotta lose another game. I suspect it isn’t going to be that easy to snuff out the black devil magic. Saw that Mets loss coming a mile away. Feels like they are done. Toronto seems to be playing under too much pressure as well. We’ll see if either of them play better tomorrow. An early deficit for either and they will be toast. Cleveland has quietly been really well for a while now and I expect they will move on. Steven Kwan needs to be a household name. Going to be interesting to see how this new format goes in the divisional series. Likely some pitching mismatches coming with the wild card teams having to start their #3 or #4 in game 1. I hope at least one of the WC teams can get through to the LCS.

The Cards have imploded!

TB-Cleveland game 1 was a pretty good game. It had some elements of a typical postseason game (great pitching, HRs providing the offense), but the pace was fast and it never got dragged into a bullpen chess match. 2:17 time of game. I love when both starters go 7+. The pitching doesn't look as good in Phi-St. Louis. Quintana is laboring but he put up three zeros so far. As a Seattle person I'm obviously very excited about the Mariners-Blue Jays game this afternoon. It seems like Seattle is probably a year or two off of being a serious threat, but they have been playing loose after clinching and have a significantly better bullpen. Padres-Mets should be a good one as well. The pressure is all on the Mets in that series. Hoping to see Hader close out a win for the Padres.

Does anyone know how much the positional adjustment would (approximately) reduce that WAR number? Assuming Yelich puts up the same numbers in 2023 at DH (or hypothetically, 1B), I'm guessing he would drop below 2 WAR.

As others have noted, the hat is pretty bad and overall the look is somewhere in the lower half of the City Connects that we have seen so far. However, I love the powder blue and "Brew Crew" was the correct choice for the front lettering. The Brewers made it difficult with their recent rebrand stealing some of the potential options.

The purpose of the strategic reserve is to buy low and sell high, so I don't have a problem with it. I do think we've made some terrible strategic decisions in this country when it comes to handing the transition between fossil fuels and renewables. We haven't been as dumb as Germany at least, but we haven't ramped up renewables and EVs fast enough to compensate for dwindling investment in oil production. Personally I'm happy that I don't buy much gas anymore, because I agree that the price is probably never going below $4-$5 again except maybe in this nasty recession which is now inevitable.

OPEC did not vote to directly cut production, they cut the production cap by 2 million barrels/day which still leaves current production 1 million barrels/day short of the cap. It was more of a symbolic vote than something that will actually move the needle too much. The Russian oil is still making it to market and probably will continue to do so.

My biggest reason for 2023 optimism has nothing to do with us, but rather because of what the Cardinals are losing. They are going to have some work to do to get back to a 90 win projection...they over-performed at 93-94 wins this year.

The revised grade has to be an "F". We're a small market that has limited playoff opportunities and they gave their spot away to the Padres while ruining the clubhouse vibe. Our rivals celebrated on our field. What a disaster. I still support what this club is doing but it was definitely a valuable lesson in the unintended consequences of analytics-based decision making.

I can’t believe they actually did it. Kudos to Wisconsin. The program is heading in the wrong direction. How many disappointing seasons in a row has it been now?

Classic.

MLS is largely a pyramid scheme. Existing owners are mostly making more money from expansion fees than gate or TV revenue. Only a couple of the MLS franchises are profitable -- Seattle, Atlanta, and maybe a couple of the new teams that are still drawing well. The franchises also have to pay money TO the league in order to fund operations. The league has enough momentum and rich owners to carry on, but if they really wanted to be successful in the long term, I agree they should be more innovate (at least from an American sports perspective). Unfortunately, nobody is going to pay a $100 million franchise fee that comes with the risk of being relegated to the NWSL, but one can dream... As for stadiums, again, this is America, part of owning a pro sports team is that you have to get the local taxpayers to build you a stadium. You don't want to be a tenant at some other billionaire's publicly-funded stadium.

They might be able to get the first game in tomorrow but it will be close. The weather on Sat/Sun looks better but not a guarantee, still some rain around. They should probably keep trying to play the doubleheader every day this weekend until they get it in.

I know it take like 5 miracles to happen, but I had a fantasy of the Brewers celebrating on the field in St. Louis after winning the WC round while ending the careers of Pujols, Molina, and Wainwright.

The Marlins pitching staff has a (slightly) better FIP and ERA+ than the Brewers this year!

The Mariners were smart to get the papers ready quickly after bringing Castillo over from Cincinnati. It's a big change to go from a team that is tanking to a team that is just entering a competitive window. Castillo just noted in his press conference that he saw the clubhouse chemistry and "had to be a part of it". The Brewers obviously don't have the money to throw around that the Mariners do and their competitive situation is different. The clubhouse situation is also different. My instinct would be to wait and consider a deadline trade of Woodruff in 2023.

I decided I would turn this on if it was close at halftime. I did not turn it on.

Are you sure it was a millennial??? The Femmes were all over alternative rock radio when I was growing up in the 90s/early 00s. I can see someone who is like 20 or 25 years old not knowing who they are, but it would be crazy to me if 30-somethings don't know them.

Stealing this thread to talk about Aaron Judge's chase for 61. I know there's the usual Yankee biases going on with Judge, but I'm loving the excitement in the baseball community over the last few days. Baseball is such a local/regional sport that I find myself wishing for more moments to unite us all together. Judge seems like a good guy and there's something especially impressive about him having the greatest "contract year" season of all time. I'll be following him tonight

I'm fine if I never see Houser or Alexander pitch in a Brewers uniform again. Out of the current arms, I would want Lauer to be the last one in the rotation in 2023.

Hahahaha. Why???? Even a Level-2 at a gas station is pretty much worthless. I sometimes use Level-2 chargers at restaurants or in parking garages, that gets me up to a full charge in 2-3 hours (I have a plug-in hybrid so a full charge is about 20-25 miles in EV mode). Edit: from a web search it appears those 120V chargers were installed back in 2011, probably as a publicity stunt. They recently installed a Level-3 charger for the first time.

I would guess that the most likely scenarios would be 10-6 or 11-5 with the Phillies going 7-9 or 8-8. I don't see how the Brewers do any better than that given the terrible back end of their rotation. The Phillies and Padres are both known for their ability to choke, so it's a good set of teams to be chasing. If the Brewers get in, I bet it's more of a choke job by the opposition than a Craigtember 12-4 miracle. It would be fun to get a little closer just to make things exciting.

I have no doubt we're going to see the 2-man outfield but the big question, for the reasons you note, is how often? It's really hard to bunt and hit line drives to the opposite field, but it's not that hard to hit opposite field popups. And the reward being higher is a big deal. It will be easier and more lucrative to exploit. There are so many fun nuances to playing an outfielder in the IF. Having thought about it a bit, what I would probably do is bring my LF in to the 3B/SS position and shift everyone else over. You would want your CF to still be in CF for speed and you would want your regular infielders on the right side where ground balls are most likely to go. Your outfielders are also going to be wearing outfielder gloves and they hopefully can make the longer throw over to 1B from the left side. Having the LF on the 3B side also helps with the pitch clock, since you might want to change up the shift mid-AB and you are only going to have 15 or 20 seconds to get everyone back in position. Gotta sprint back to LF if you decide to drop the shift with 2 strikes! As the picture above shows, you probably want your left-side infielder playing right on the grass so that they can cover as much of LF as possible. But that creates a new problem, since your LF probably isn't going to be very good at charging ground balls hit to the wide-open left side of the infield. There are a lot of slow MLB players who are good bunters who will have more opportunities for bunt singles. Carlos Santana recently got a bunt single on one of those extreme shifts -- he can't beat out the bunt if it is a regular shift, it has to be the extreme one with nobody to the left of the traditional SS position. Conclusion: play your utility IF/OF guy in LF if you want to shift, otherwise don't bother. 2-man outfields will probably be rare. Better to give up more singles than risk giving up more doubles.

Castillo got through 6 and the Mariners have an elite bullpen, this will be an easy one for them to close out.

3-run bomb for Carlos Santana, 6-0 Mariners. That should be plenty.