owbc

I tried to watch it but I just couldn’t bring myself to keep it on for more than 5 minutes of the 2nd half. Too painful to watch.

Colgate put up a good fight, Davis did enough when it mattered. On to Sunday.

What a wonderful start to this tourney. There are few teams I enjoy watching lose more than Iowa.

The odds of at least one of Hiura/Yelich having a bounce back year are quite favorable I think. I don't know which one it will be. Hard to project a lineup when you know there are going to be 75-100 different combinations plus we know Stearns won't be afraid to pull the trigger in a trade in April or May. I'm looking forward to seeing Cutch and Adames interacting. Going to be a fun clubhouse.

The main reason I want robo umps is to get the "MLB Gameday" interface up on the scoreboard. I think it will greatly enhance the viewing experience at a game.

I like it as well. I know many here have PTSD from the JBJ contract but Cutch fills a need for us and the guy is about as well-liked as they come. If this is like a 2/20 deal I’m all for it.

Seattle might be the favorite to win the NL West by the time this week is over.

The Phillies got 4 oWAR out of Cutch for $50 million? Yikes. I feel like Cutch is going to want to be on a contender and we might be his best bet. Plus you are getting a well-liked veteran. I wonder if he could be had for 2/$15M or so + some incentives. That would be a good price for a guy who crushes lefties. Plus TT's splits favor righties. So he compliments what we already have.

LSU is a big mystery with the coaching shakeup. It will be interesting to see how they look in round 1. They should beat Iowa State. I hope they get to the Auburn matchup in Chicago. There would be plenty of red in the stands for that one as well.

Getting here makes the season a success for Marquette. Beating UNC would be a cherry on top. Then you would have a 'nothing to lose' game against Baylor.

I think the Mariners' arrogance was actually from the team president, who had to resign about a year ago. Dipoto is probably the flippiest of the flippers, but his strategy seems to be working given the #1 or #2 ranking of the Mariners' farm system. However, it could easily fall apart when the budget expands, as it did in San Diego. I feel bad for the Twins more than anything...all that regular season success with zero postseason wins to show for it. And for some reason those futility streaks are especially tough to snap in baseball. It's definitely in the players' heads in the postseason.

Realistically how many games does Cruz start at DH? 60? The guy is a pure slugger and the Brewers could benefit from his bat.

What is Logan Morrison up to these days?

Implemented rule changes: DH -- fine with it 12-team playoff -- support No tiebreakers -- support so postseason can start sooner 9-inning doubleheaders -- support No ghost runners -- I bet this comes back in the 11th or 12th inning at some point. I would rather reduce the number of players on defense to 8 in extra innings (presumably this would mean a 2-man outfield). I have no interest in watching extra inning games where guys try to hit a solo HR off a series of relievers throwing 100 mph. Proposed for 2023: larger bases -- strong support shift ban -- several ways to implement this, opposed to the "2 on each side" approach but would be more open to requiring infielders to be banned from playing in the outfield. pitch clock -- strong support (limit throws to 1B as well please!)

Several MLB parks have been converted to TopGolf driving ranges recently. Not simulated, but actual hitting of golf balls from the stands to the field... https://press.topgolf.com/2021-12-21-2022-Topgolf-Live-Stadium-Tour-Transforms-Iconic-Stadiums-into-Pop-Up-Topgolf-Entertainment-Venues

Hopefully single-admission doubleheaders. One can dream, right?

I'm pumped. Time to get that Kris Bryant to Seattle deal inked and start the season. I applaud them for getting it done and for playing 162. The only thing I resent is that I had really good seats for Opening Day and now I have to go through getting tickets again and clearing my calendar.

Because it benefits the owners financially and they are using it as a bargaining position to get what they want. You also have former international signees who want the system to stay because it brings a lot of money to their country and communities regardless of how well those players perform. These 16 year olds get their bonus straight up which means more people benefit within their country. A draft will suppress that influx of cash and put a cap on earnings for the vast majority since it will have hard slotted bonuses. The top prospects will still get their millions, but those players towards the middle and bottom will be phased out of their life changing money comparatively. A 16 year old with a $100k bonus has changed the trajectory of their whole family in the Dominican Republic, et al whereas MLB teams throw that around pretty easily to hopefully hit on a gem. A draft will limit that for the vast majority of players. I guess I don't know where the draft slots would fall, but only seven of the players the Brewers signed in the most recent signing period got $100,000 or more. Most got $10,000. In contrast, only one of the draft picks the Brewers signed out of I believe 14 or 15 got less than $100,000. At the end of the day it's a complicated and significant change, not something you want to be considering at the last second. Plus there were strong objections (or at least strong concerns) from many Dominican players. It's a shame because it looked like we might have been able to get a deal prior to this becoming the big point of contention.

I guess I assume that the pitch clock goes both ways. It's actually a "ready for play" clock that both the batter and pitcher need to abide by. At least it's that way in my head. Back in the seventies, Mike Hargrove was called the Human Rain Delay for his routine. He would be speedy compared to the Ryan Brauns of the world. Daniel Vogelbach steps out and has an entire conversation with himself between pitches. The reason Suter can go faster is because he doesn't throw as hard. If you are throwing 100 mph you need to recover after each pitch. It is very much to your advantage to slow the game down. In Suter's case, it is to his advantage to throw batters off of their routine. It has been hypothesized that a pitch clock will increase offense and reduce strikeouts for this reason.

They were trying to reduce the distance between 1B and 2B to increase stolen bases. I believe there was also a design change to the base itself (a "ramp" on the edge?) that was supposed to make it easier for runners to stay on the base when sliding. It looks like the base itself resulted in a 33% increase in stolen bases but the step-off and pick-off limitations were more successful at increasing stolen bases. I think most baseball fans would agree that increasing stolen bases would be a big plus for the game. I also thought the size change was a smart way to do it without altering the gameplay itself.

I can hear the discussion in the clubhouse now. "Since we won't make the playoffs this year, lets not win too many games so we get our cash bonus." Now suddenly you will have about 12 teams not passing that threshold every season. No matter what you decide there will be an attempt to manipulate it. Promotion/relegation seems to work the best, but that's never going to happen. Let's look at it from a Brewers fan perspective. Are we being rewarded for being a small market team that is run well and tries to be competitive? I would say no. Pittsburgh, Miami, etc. are being rewarded with high draft picks and revenue sharing money for not being competitive. I think service time is the root of the problem. It takes 3-4 years to turn around a losing baseball team, so there really is no incentive to spend during that period. You can't build a winner from free agency. If you're a cheap owner, you can drag the "rebuilding" on even longer. Draft lotteries are a great start, but I would throw all 30 teams into the lottery. Make the whole thing random. Or use some metric that gauges organizational success. What if gate attendance determined draft order among non-playoff teams? That would be a fun way to get owners to encourage fans to come to the ballpark.

I think we're getting somewhere with these comments. New revenue is available (playoffs + new national TV contract), the players negotiated with the assumption that they would get a piece of the new revenue. The players' offer works out to an (estimated) $5.5 million per year per team and a salary increase of somewhere in the 1.5%/year range if you extrapolate from a couple years ago to a couple years from now. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/just-how-far-apart-are-the-league-and-the-mlbpa/ Given the new revenue sources, the owners have an obligation move toward the asks of the players. The asks of the players did not appear to be unreasonable. I'm not saying the owners should have accepted all of them, but they should have been willing to move a bit closer and try to reach a middle ground compromise. Instead, they lied to the media about progress being made and tried to sneak in other changes at the last minute. They also were incentivized by a desire to cancel April games to pay less salary, which was a slap in the face to the fans. I also tend to write off most of it as labor negotiation stuff that will be forgotten once there is a deal, but the intentional canceling of games (which was obviously planned even going back to 2021) really bothers me. I was looking forward to the first 'normal' Opening Day in 3 years. It's a big disappointment and it fits into the narrative that I already had about Manfred and the owners' intentions, which isn't good.

Their salaries have been dropping while revenue has been increasing. The MLB proposal would further increase the gap between revenue and salaries. MLB could accept everything in the players’ proposal and have extra money left over given the TV revenue increases that are locked in. If the players’ piece of the pie is smaller, that hurts them.

if owning a team was not profitable the owners would open their books and show all the world what a money pit it actually is. The fact that they dont tells me that the information would NOT benefit their cause if made public. My point was more that trying to guess profits by looking at valuations isn't a great strategy. Retail is currently full of companies with multi-billion dollar valuations whose profits are shrinking every year. I'm not saying owning a team isn't profitable, just that I don't think we know how profitable it is. And it probably fluctuates a lot year to year. My guess is that it is more like a cute toy for most owners, yes they make some money on it most years, but not something they are really depending on to make money. Exactly, that was the point Manfred was making when he said that investing in the stock market is better than investing in an MLB club. I don't disagree with that, but the message that came across to the fans was simply that owners are simply trying to maximize the return on their investments. Which is a really sad and disappointing message to get from the commissioner of baseball. Especially because it's not an isolated incident -- literally every decision Manfred has made as commissioner has been about maximizing probability. During a tenure when the product on the field has noticeably deteriorated. Bud Selig recognized that what is good for the fans is good for profitability. Attendance was one of the metrics that Selig cared most about. Manfred is not concerned about whether baseball is "healthy" or not. He is solely focused on how profitable baseball is in the short term. The means to achieve that goal can mostly be summarized as "cutting costs". Manfred and the owners are fully entitled to that perspective and ultimately, yes, on the surface this is all about a labor negotiation which will eventually be resolved. Maybe they are right that the fans will come back, certainly the NFL has not only survived but thrived doing things that could be considered far more evil than anything MLB has done. And to me I guess that's the big question -- are baseball fans different than NFL fans? Will they react differently?

The total net worth of the Forbes 400 was $47 billion in 2015. In 2020 it was $179 billion. That's a lot of money to compete for a finite number of major men's sports franchises. I think what many are forgetting here is that the net worth of billionaires has been increasing at an absurd pace. That's part of why I laugh at the whole "millionaires vs. billionaires" thing. The difference is a factor of 1,000. That's like comparing someone making minimum wage (~$30K/year) to someone making $30 million per year. I think $1.3 billion is way low. I bet the actual number would be closer to $2 billion. It sounds like the rumored NBA expansion fee is going to be at least $2.5 billion and possibly more. If you were selling your house right now, would price based on a comp from 2-3 years ago? No way, you're adding 20-30% to that number or more. What the owners need to remember is that these pro sports teams are billionaire trophies. Manfred has complained that they are relatively poor investments. Duh. They are trophies. You can't run them like Amazon. And they can cash out at any time, but none of them have.