owbc

Maximizing profits and maximizing attendance are incompatible with each other. I think MLB attendance is doing fine this year, all things considered. It will be interesting if group sales recover, especially given all of the investment in group/party parts of the ballpark. As more companies go remote, will that mean more corporate outings? Or less because half of the employees are in other states? Baseball's revenue model has evolved toward TV. There are a number of teams that could be profitable with zero attendance. TV numbers have held steady for the most part. I think what is interesting about the Brewers is that they clearly have fans coming from long distances to attend games in person. The number of fans in the ballpark in the late innings in Milwaukee is way lower than other stadiums. That is the cost associated with the car-centric design of the stadium and the urban sprawl of the Milwaukee area and there isn't really a good solution to that.

An EV is already practical for almost every 2-car household in this country. Nobody needs more than one ICE car. It takes 2 seconds to plug in once you have the charger installed. And of course the EVs are far and away superior cars to drive due to their lower center of gravity and faster acceleration.

What is Hader actually worth right now? His Turnbow-like meltdown has erased all of his 2022 value--he's a replacement level reliever this year. I would imagine that any GM calling would be looking for a significant discount since there's no guarantee his problems can be solved fast enough to help with a 2022 playoff run.

Soto to Seattle is my prediction.

I'm heavily pro-nuclear but it simply isn't possible to build another nuclear plant in the US unless there are massive regulatory changes. By the time you fight through the regulatory red tape and lawsuits it's extremely expensive and time consuming. Wind and solar are way cheaper and faster to bring online. The grid can handle way more electric cars than we currently have and there are plenty of ways to get around the demand issues. Demand-based electricity pricing would solve most of the problem. Look at the supply/demand curves that ERCOT has been posting the last few days. There is a TON of supply available in the middle of the night which could be used to charge electric cars. Currently I plug mine in at home and forget about it, but if they changed to demand-based pricing I would simply set a timer and have the charger turn on at midnight. The main underlying theme is that there's no hope for anyone to be proactive about any of this, so we'll wait for everyone to buy electric cars (which is clearly going to happen, because they are superior to ICE vehicles and the environmental impact is lower even when you account for the mining). Then the utilities will eventually react to whatever is happening, likely by doing the above.

Add that one to the 'should have won' list but at least they got out of Minnesota with a split.

Too many good hitters on this team, no room for a guy with a 1.100 OPS in July.

Notre Dame isn't going to want to split the pie in any more pieces than necessary. If they get Notre Dame, I think they add Miami as well, but that might be it for expansion. The rest of the Pac-12 can sit in a third conference with the remnants of the Big 12 and the Big Ten can pick them up when/if they feel like it.

Is Burnes really a generational talent? He has 9.8 career bWAR. Certainly we can't discount that he's had a three-year run of exceptional pitching and won the Cy Young award. But, he would hardly be the first pitcher to have a short run of dominance and then fall off the face of the earth after age 30. We don't know if Burnes will become Max Scherzer or Rick Porcello. In my view, the Brewers can't take a $250+ million risk to find out.

The Brewers are probably going to be stuck playing in the wild card round even if they win the division. So it's not like it's that important to finish ahead of the Cardinals compared with years past. I like the Brewers chances in the WC round even if they have to play it on the road. Of course the dream would be that we take advantage of our easy division and finish with a better record than the Mets/Braves, but that seems unlikely.

Maybe it's because I'm also a Mariners fan, but I have trouble getting worked up by a random 2-1 loss in the middle of the season. Adames is the least of my worries, he's getting unlucky. He has a .255 XBA and is barreling the ball better than last year. CF is a huge, huge, huge black hole and they don't have a single elite bat, just a bunch of average to slightly above-average bats. Hopefully some of that can be solved at the deadline.

Keston is just going to have to do it all today.

He tried to hit the ball the other way on that popup...he should probably stick to pulling the ball.

Yeah I'm used to our centerfielders making that catch.

The Cubs are putting up a good fight. This rivalry is rarely as lopsided as it was last year.

Omar delivers your request.

How about a 450 ft bomb?

Sometimes it's helpful to be ignorant about the giant wall you are about to run into.

The Big Ten's strategy with the Pac-12 was clear--negotiate in secret and go for the jugular. Now they have the rest of the Pac-12 begging to join. They also gained leverage on Notre Dame, which they can turn into leverage on the ACC once Notre Dame is in. I agree with madbad2000 and think they will continue to target big TV markets with large numbers of Big Ten alumni. So I wouldn't be surprised to see Arizona added in addition to the Bay Area, Seattle, and Oregon (which is a unique case because of Nike). I continue to think that Miami (which has a stellar academic reputation) should be the first poach from the ACC. Remember that Nebraska is not in the AAU anymore. Duke/UNC/UVA would be my other three targets. Maybe I'm wrong but I feel like those three will prefer the Big Ten if they have a choice. The risk is that state legislatures are panicking and trying to make their schools come as package deals. An Oregon+Oregon State or Washington+Washington State or Arizona+Arizona state combo is not very appealing.

ND and Miami are the next two that the Big Ten needs to get. I imagine that ND sees the writing on the wall and any holdup is probably contractual. Miami is more of a cultural fit for the Big Ten than the SEC, especially if the new Big Ten is truly a “national” conference. Assuming we’re heading for mega conferences, it makes the most sense for the Big Ten to gobble up the 4 remaining Pac-12 programs of value (Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Washington). One could make a case for Utah and/or Arizona as well but I think the Big Ten is going to want to gobble up some ACC programs as well. What a nightmare for whoever gets left behind, but even with 60 schools there will be a few decent programs left to form a zombie Big 12 and ACC. Or, maybe the SEC will make a play for Pac-12 schools. But I imagine all of the Pac-12 schools will prefer to be in the Big Ten and the SEC will continue to poach mostly from the ACC and Big 12. That would be the best case scenario for creating two distinctly different conferences that will make for good rivals. The SEC will likely remain the better football conference once the dust settles assuming they pick up Clemson, Florida State, etc. But the Big Ten will be a true force. For non-revenue sports, I have a feeling the two big conferences will come to some agreement that is more reasonable geographically. It will probably be the easiest thing to work out compared with everything else going on.

There seem to be two primary pathways to upsets in NCAA football. One is early in the season because programs have not been properly ranked yet -- Florida State finished 5-7 last year, so it's hard to call any of their losses a true upset. Appalachian State over Michigan is the biggest true upset that I can think of since Michigan ended up being pretty good in 2007. It's pretty rare though...most of the time those early season games are little more than preseason warmups in front of half-empty stadiums, and it's not even a big deal if you lose since it doesn't factor into conference standings. The other scenario is a highly ranked team losing on the road in conference play. We see this all the time in the Big Ten and many of my favorite Big Ten moments have been Wisconsin, Iowa, Purdue, etc beating Ohio State, fans storming the field, celebrations that go through the night, and so on. That's the true beauty of college football. Conference realignment is likely to increase that second type of upset, which might be the biggest benefit to all of this. I feel like one of the arguments for an 8- or 12-team playoff field was to generate more high-stakes upsets, but whether or not that would actually work was kind of an unknown. More than anything I just want to move away from neutral site games, which I hope these big geographic gaps will help with. Wisconsin vs. Notre Dame in Chicago was underwhelming (it's too bad Lambeau was canceled but even that would have been no better than playing in Madison). Wisconsin@UCLA at the Rose Bowl? Sign me up for that one. And please, please, please make the SEC teams come north for first-round playoff games.

College sports has been only about the $ for a long time, but we’ve been stuck in this weird state with a conference system that was not designed for it. Not to mention the whole “amateur athletics” facade. This has been devastating for the majority of athletic programs out there. I can speak specifically to Washington State University, whose athletics program is massively in debt because they have to compete with UCLA, USC, etc. They still pretend that they have a football program that could make the Rose Bowl again. Realistically that dream died a long time ago and there’s no way to go back. After Cincinnati made the playoff I’m sure the conversation went something like “how do we make sure this never happens again.” The super conferences are about leveling the playing field among the big football programs (hopefully hurting the SEC dominance in football as well) and taking the pressure off of some of the mid-size athletics programs who have to siphon money from academics just to tread water.

This should be great for college football. Hopefully it means the end of non-conference games and neutral site games that aren’t bowls. It should also level the playing field among the top 30-40 teams and make playoff selection easier. The old system was a mess. Plus these California teams having to play true road games in November in the Midwest??? FINALLY. The fact is, there are way too many D-1 football programs and most of them are losing money. Time for some of these schools to stop pretending that they can play with the big boys. Basketball will be fine. There will be a couple of basketball conferences for schools like Marquette to play in. Better for them to not have football falling the shots.

Exactly. After 18 years this is Attanasio's organization and like any well-run business the machine reflects the vision of its leader and is no longer dependent on any individual other than Attanasio himself. Stearns is a cog in the machine like everyone else. If Stearns left tomorrow they've already had years to plan for his departure.

I'm a bit bummed that Washington isn't joining as well because I would like to see the Badgers football/basketball teams play in Seattle at some point. Hopefully the Pac-12 and Big-12 merge, that would be the best case scenario for the fans with the remaining teams. Otherwise are we going to have a "Pacific Northwest" division of the Atlantic Coast Conference?