owbc

Anderson with the 1.000 BA.

Great defense on both sides...nice play by Arcia

This Marlins game feels like the start of the movie Major League.

I honestly have no idea how he did in spring, I'm referring to the fact that his career bWAR is negative.

Unfortunately the Cubs are probably due for a bounce-back year. But all the pundits predicting them to be World Champions? No way. They are the third-best team in the NL on paper and will hopefully have to fight a close battle for a division title again. I also hope that skinny Schwarber continues to be a bust.

Best day of the year--glad we made it though another offseason! Watching the Brewers at work today, then off to Mariners opening night tonight. Will be fun to see the reaction for Ichiro.

Best day of the year--glad we made it though another offseason! Watching the Brewers at work today, then off to Mariners opening night tonight. Will be fun to see the reaction for Ichiro.

I'm going with the Bucks, spring 2019.

Nah, I'm glad he got out and managed to get himself a World Series ring before retiring.

Wins: 77 Playoffs: No All-stars: Yelich Pitcher of the year: Anderson Surprise: Thames puts up better numbers than 2017 Disappointment: Braun I see .500 as the high water mark given the current rotation and major holes at 2B and C. The Braun experiment is a huge question mark, I see it ending poorly (injury most likely). The back of the rotation is not going to win many games and the rotation is one injury away from disaster. They will be sitting just under .500 at the deadline and will choose to sell rather than make a run for the WC. On the plus side, this team will score some runs and be fun to watch. Maybe Nelson will be able to contribute. Maybe the starting pitching will over perform.

RIP Ray King and Wade Boggs.

Miley pulled with an injury after fielding a bunt...TBD how serious it is.

This thread is why any smart athlete should give only boring, canned responses to the media. Marshawn Lynch had it right.

Just looked at the schedule...wow. Three nasty conference road games (Iowa, Michigan, PSU), plus the historically troublesome road game at Northwestern. That mid-September Iowa game could end up deciding the winner of the west division.

It depends a bit on how far you go obviously. 9-10 home games with double or triple normal ticket prices that will guaranteed sell out with a lot of standing room tickets is a ton of revenue. You can't really plan for making the world series though. I would like to think a team would justify adding some of that revenue to a future payroll though. Teams get very little of the ticket revenue except for games 4-5 of the DS and games 5-7 of the LCS/WS. About 2/3 goes to the players and commissioners office and the remaining 1/3 has to be split equally between the two teams. Home vs. away doesn't matter, always split 50/50. So the Brewers end up with a maximum of 21% of the ticket revenue from a wild card game and 17% from other games...except the ones mentioned above which do not go to the players pool, then I think it's 42.5%. Other revenue such as game-day parking, merchandise, and concessions are harder to quantify, but likely worth far more than the ticket revenue because they do not have to be shared. The positive feedbacks on the following years' revenue are probably the greatest benefit.

Reminds me of those middling T-Wolves teams with KG...they lost in the first round of the playoffs SEVEN years in a row. Bucks are well on their way to matching that at this pace.

If I had to put money on this outcome vs. the field (meaning at least one of those teams not winning their division), I would bet the field. It happens more often than not in MLB where the odds on favorites, even heavy ones, don't all come out on top. That said, if I had to bet on the most likely specific 3 NL teams to win their divisions, those would obviously be the 3. If we give all three of these teams an 80% chance of winning their respective divisions to start the season, that gives nearly a 50% chance of at least one being usurped. The Nationals are the least vulnerable and the Cubs are the most vulnerable (lowest projected wins and smallest difference between the 2nd and 3rd place teams).

Our group got in 5 minutes after the start. Not sure what our priority number is yet but we're hoping to get the chance to buy all 41 games. I figured they would hit 10,000 today but the 25,000 number is just insane.

And who pays for these contracts? Taxpayers who fund the universities? Boosters where the best players will go to whoever has the most money? Students through student fees? This is ridiculous. This all started because the kids want it both ways. They want free school, free food, free healthcare, free housing, etc (which comes to tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of their time there), all while being treated as celebrities at schools that, lets be honest, the vast majority of them would never in a million years be able to get into if they weren’t good at sports. And even if they could get in they’d never be able to afford it. Then on top of all that they want to be paid too. Yes the NCAA makes money. So what. That’s how life works. Companies make money off the backs of their employees. These kids are NOT victims so can we please stop treating them as such. Anyone caught accepting money should immediately lose all eligibility AND be forced to reimburse the schools for their scholarships. . Any coach caught paying players should be banned from coaching at the college level. The reason this is so prevalent is because the rewards far, far outweigh the risks. If the kids don’t like the rules then don’t play in the NCAA. Why should the taxpayers have to fund the coaches then? What makes the coaches more special than the players? Maybe the coaching jobs can also be unpaid internships for NBA jobs? If the coaches don't like it, too bad, there are plenty of coaching jobs in Europe. I'm saddened by these opinions. These players are part of a multi-billion dollar industry and you expect them to work for free? And don't even go into the education. We all know it's a joke. They are "strongly encouraged" to get worthless degrees so they can spend more time practicing sports. The facilities are another byproduct of the billions of dollars that could have been paid to the employees. "How life works" is that if people don't like the status quo, they try to change it. Just look at the front page of the newspapers this week. As a PhD student, the university pays me more than these student athletes. And yes, I have gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of benefits including free healthcare and tuition, and I take advantage of the facilities offered to me by the university. I get this because my research makes the university money. I don't see how the athletes are any different.

An open bidding war is most fair to the employees, but I agree that some degree of competitive balance is good for the college basketball industry as a whole. However, it's not clear to me that the competitive imbalance would be more under an open system than the current system of the top schools paying/giving incentives to players under the table (which will undoubtedly continue in some form or another). It's also worth acknowledging that unlike a ~30-team professional league, a certain degree of imbalance is actually desirable in college sports. To me, the more complicated issue is the redistribution of wealth from men's football and basketball to other scholarship sports, as well as the Title IX implications. But lets look at the current system for what it is--predominately black male football/basketball players from underprivileged backgrounds are subsidizing the scholarships of predominately white rowers/swimmers/volleyball players/etc from privileged backgrounds. So that injustice will eventually need to be resolved anyway, regardless of whether college athletes get paid or not.

Except all players and sports aren’t created equal. Another problem that student housing you won’t give them a lot of times is paid for by athletic boosters to put those kids worthy of being paid in them. That’s the problem. Paying them is waaaay more complicated than people want to make it. I’d be in favor of them having the ability to make money off their own name if they can. Trying to get school to pay them outside of their tuition and board is one slippery slope of problems. Huh? No other sports league has a problem paying different salaries to different players. This is the easiest problem to solve in the world. The schools offer contracts and the player picks the best one. Done. Just look at college coaching contracts. Is there any cheating there? Do the coaches get paid market rate for their services? Does it make us uncomfortable to think how much coaches in an "amateur" sports league are getting paid? This whole naive notion of college athletics needs to go down the drain, the faster the better.

The NIT seems like a long shot unless by some miracle they beat MSU.

I like the general idea that MLB is willing to be creative with possible rule changes. It's important for baseball to continue evolving. I could see this rule being implemented in the all-star game. Maybe instead of changing the batting order, one could simply start at any point in the batting order (e.g the leadoff spot). A more realistic rule change would be to allow a certain number of players to come back into the game after they have been removed. It would make things a little more interesting for lineups after the DH is inevitably implemented in the NL.

From what I read it will be fines only. Not sure if that's on the individual players or on the team. I can see the Red Sox and Yankees just telling their players to go ahead and make as many visits as they want. They'll cover the fines. So Yank-Sox games will still go 4 hours. The enforcement is the threat that if they don't get the game times down, the pitch clock is coming next season. Attendance in the 8th inning or later of most MLB games suggests that about 60-70% of MLB fans would prefer a shorter game. I'm sure MLB is working with TV ratings data as well and knows what percentage of fans turn off the TV before the game is over.

Bingo. Cut out some of the ads if you want to shave time off of baseball games. Otherwise these little pitch clock/mound visit changes here and there are merely superficial and won't amount to much if any change. It irritates me how much this myth gets thrown around. The time between innings is EXACTLY the same as the 1970s. It's not the problem--and it's being strictly enforced now. And we're not talking "5 minutes". The games are 30 minutes longer than they used to be--again, for the same number of pitches and commercial breaks. There might be unintended consequences but it's been made clear to the players that 2018 is their last chance to avoid a pitch clock. So I think they will likely follow the rules. I'm not sure how much it will affect regular season games but it will make a big difference in the playoffs.