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Self-driving cars can't come soon enough. Distracted driving is a problem everywhere. So is lack of turn signals. The driving in Miami was by far the worst that I ever experienced, anywhere. Wisconsin drivers are generally pretty good, but they easily get ticked off, don't do well in heavy traffic, and don't know how to zipper merge (maybe that's changed in the last 6 years?). From what I recall, everyone would try to merge too far ahead and then not let people in who were actually following the rules and staying in their lane until the end. Seattle has the best drivers of anywhere I've lived, but the awful traffic more than makes up for that.

21+ movie theaters are the best. Might cost a couple dollars more, but well worth it for the assurance that kids won't ruin your movie. Plus assigned seats and alcoholic drinks!!!

So far in 2016 strikeouts are at a record pace and batting average is at 40-year low. We are getting very close to 1 in every 3 batters striking out. I know most of us (and MLB) would prefer for things to naturally balance themselves out, but if the trend continues there will be action soon. Strikeouts are boring. I think it's generally accepted that expansion helps hitters more than pitchers, but I haven't seen any data to back it up. There was a big jump in offense in 1993 but not so much in 1998. Plus the background trend was already on the upswing. There probably isn't much difference between AAA-MLB at this point...teams are constantly swapping players and it doesn't seem to make any difference which .210 hitter is batting 8th or 9th. Brooklyn is another very good option, but market rights would kill that one. In fact, any expansion including Montreal could easily be killed by markets. Look at the A's situation...an easily solvable problem ruined by stupid market rules. Why would Rogers want another Canadian team when they commonly drawing > 1 million viewers for regular season Blue Jays games? A team in Charlotte would hurt the Braves.

Montreal is the only reasonable option right now. They have huge numbers of baseball fans, far more than any American city without a team. They've proven this by consistently drawing ~50,000 to exhibition games over the past 3 years. The issues with the Expos in the late 90s were unrelated to the level of baseball interest in the city. In fact, the issues with the Marlins are quite similar...Miami is another city with huge baseball interest that can't seem draw at the gates. It's almost like the Expos had the same owner or something. As a Brewers fan, I'm opposed to every other US option. Additional teams will only serve to further dilute the pool of revenue that the Brewers depend on. At least international teams offer the potential to grow the game.

I was hoping this team would at least not suck for a week or two. Oh well.

The tourney projections have to look at the big picture which is understandable. Wisconsin should be a 6 based on RPI or KenPom. But I agree that there's no way that Wisconsin isn't one of the top-25 teams in the country right now. Meanwhile, the first half of the Purdue game was a shootout...way too many easy looks for Purdue.

This story is pure gold. I feel bad if the dog died, but the cover-up was fantastic. The PR team must have been patting themselves on the back for the averted disaster.

I don't understand why they are being punished so much for losses that happened 2-3 months ago. Win 10 of the last 11 in the Big Ten including three against top-10 teams and STILL no top 25? Are you kidding? Right now they should be a 6 with a chance to move up to 4 if they beat Purdue and pick up a couple wins in the B10 tourney.

Track definitely shifted a bit north at the last minute. However, this storm never looked that impressive on the models. Sounds like the media hype machine has gotten out of control. I saw posts a week in advance of 12"+ totals from ONE model run. That's highly irresponsible.

Looks like pretty good model agreement that Milwaukee will get mostly rain from this. Madison is in the area of high uncertainty and will likely change over to rain for at least part of the time. Areas like the Dells and Appleton are a good bet for 8" or more. It's a pretty fast moving system so I think the highest totals will be around a foot or so.

Actually thought it said "minor league coach" when I first saw the news. Surprised to hear he's still playing. I guess it'll be entertaining if he makes it to the big leagues, but I can't imagine he will contribute anything of value. Loved Cappy in 2005 though.

Oh yeah, the music industry that tried to sue their customers rather than admit the inevitable. At least MLB is smart enough to avoid calling people thieves just for wanting to watch their content. Funny how nobody steals music anymore now that it's available for a fair price. And the number and quality of artists/genres is better than ever.

I refuse to reluctantly accept this, I think it will be a major loss to the uniqueness of baseball and accomplish nothing of value except to make the game less interesting. If the goal is to increase offense, lowering the pitching mound is the most obvious solution and it's amazing that it hasn't been done yet because of the potential to reduce injuries. The DH does nothing to reduce strikeouts. The DH does nothing to reduce the impact of overly dominant relief pitching. Plus, who are these DH hitters going to be? Probably near-replacement level .600 OPS fill-ins. It's not like there are amazing hitters just waiting to play MLB if only the NL would allow the DH. At least pitchers have an excuse for being awful hitters.

Baseball on its way to becoming the only programming that isn't easily available to stream online. Since I got 100 mbps Internet, I can stream just about anything in HD with no lag or buffering, ever. I can watch 4 games at once on my laptop. There's no reason for me to ever subscribe to cable/satellite again. Myself and many, many others have been streaming in-market baseball games for years. I've done it for the last 5 MLB seasons so this is nothing new. It's easy to set up a VPN or find another source. I'm not complaining, I'm just waiting for MLB to catch up to the inevitable.

Not everyone wants to pay nearly $1,000 per year to watch sports on TV. I watch sports on my laptop using free streaming websites. The quality of the free sites has gotten considerably better in the past few years. I'll be happy to start paying again when sports packages are offered at a reasonable cost. But for now, the alternatives are a much better option than going through the expense of buying a TV and cable package.

Indications are that MLB is working behind the scenes to improve things. Local streaming on Fox Sports Go will be a nice improvement this year, assuming the deal goes through (haven't heard anything about this in a while). If that happens, you won't need a VPN to stream the Brewers locally if you have a cable password. The single-team out-of-market streaming option doesn't seem like much of an improvement although they haven't released the price yet. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop on cord cutting. I think we're getting close. It's getting easier for non-sports fans to get everything they need via streaming without a cable contract. Although sports are incredibly valuable to advertisers, the fact remains that non-sports watchers continue to subsidize sports channels in cable TV packages. Eventually MLB is going to have two options--1) accept lower revenues initially in exchange for making games more easily available, or 2) have a prohibitively expensive TV/streaming package that only appeals to diehard fans. With the increasing cost of cable and blackout rules, they are already headed down road #2. Plus it's almost impossible to get businesses to sacrifice revenue now in exchange for some unclear future benefit. The idea of "casual" sports fan may disappear entirely from MLB if things do not change. Just look at the NHL after they started getting ignored by ESPN. Because of the high value of advertising during live sports events, it is my opinion that MLB streaming should be FREE--all 30 teams and no blackouts, period. The best way to grow the sport in the long term is to remove all barriers to viewing.

Jim Edmonds is the biggest snub this year...hard to believe that one of the best centerfielders of our generation is off the ballot so easily.

These storms with complex thermal profiles are difficult to predict. It doesn't take much to change the precip type considerably. Snow was the better outcome to be honest, freezing rain can create serious problems. Big win for the Milwaukee area if you like snow. The American weather model (GFS) correctly predicted the colder airmass and farther southeast low track, but the European model is usually more accurate so the forecasters went with the warmer model.

It's hard to say how much attendance will be hurt by poor projections. It's bee a while since the Brewers were unanimously picked to be near the bottom of the division. The Wrigley North effect will help with attendance like it did in the early 2000s. There are 9 Cubs home games this year which should boost the numbers by a few hundred thousand. I'll go with 2,293,468.

The current model has resulted in record viewership numbers (thank Canada as well...): http://lastwordonsports.com/2015/10/20/mlb-viewership-numbers/

Mets-Cubs is such a great matchup and needs to happen.

Oops...wrong Portland... Upon further review, Portland does not have a MiLB team, although there is a single-A team in the suburbs.

Information on the Internet appears to be dated, but I think this stadium may have been converted to a soccer-only facility around 2009. That's correct. Portland does not have a AAA team anymore. The Timbers (MLS) converted the old baseball stadium to a soccer-only facility. Portland now has a AA team (Sea Dogs) that draw about 5,500 per game.

Now is the time to add a team to Canada--interest in baseball is at its highest point in 20 years with Toronto's success. Vancouver has plenty of baseball fans--and they are fans of the Blue Jays, not the Mariners. The Toronto-Seattle series in Seattle is full of Jays fans that drive down from Canada. However, I can't imagine that Vancouver would get a team ahead of Montreal. There are plenty of baseball fans in Montreal that would support the team if it had proper ownership and a new stadium. Remember, the Expos didn't even have a television contract in their final years. The exhibition games in the last two years have drawn 45,000+, indicating that people have moved on from any previous grievances with MLB. Also helps that Selig is gone. Las Vegas is almost certainly getting an NHL team, so MLB would be wisest to see how that goes first. I can't see Portland being successful. There isn't enough population and it's already a sports-saturated city for its size. Mexico City would be a good candidate to expand into Latin America. I could see that team drawing large crowds on the road in US cities with large Mexican-American populations. Bigger issue is securing funds for a stadium...lots of opportunities for corruption. Would be a huge risk/reward scenario. New Jersey would be the only other realistic option IMO, but that just seems so boring compared with the possibility of international teams.

Good riddance. After that Seattle Times piece, he should have been fired the next day. Instead, he was given another two years to completely cripple the franchise.