owbc

Really sad. It’s amazing how little fanfare this has gotten given it is the largest mass layoff in American history by far. Most of what I’ve seen has been personal stories like this. Lots more to come as government contracting companies go under. I have a family member at one at a 5,000 person company which is prepping to file for bankruptcy.

C+ Despite the grade I’m fine with the offseason, the reality of our finances is what it is. I’m glad we hung onto Hoskins and the Williams trade is a “wait and see”. I would have liked to see us make at least one more move with some high upside but it seems like the trade market has been pretty quiet and when 93 wins is your baseline you don’t necessarily have to shake things up too much with a fairly young team that should see some individuals have career years in 2025.

Switched to Hulu after November price increase. It’s been fine, all these services are basically the same. MLB season will be interesting, I’m currently boycotting paying for my local team (Seattle) until they make it easier to watch so might be sailing the high seas this year or watching more Brewers, which is free with MLB.tv through my season ticket membership.

Right, your company is screwed, but the markets won’t feel that for a while. Honestly good for Canada — they can’t win this fight on economic might but if they unite and boycott US made goods it will give them real leverage.

The markets mostly see this stuff as negotiating tactics for now. The real damage being done is going to take some time to filter through.

More the latter I think -- specifically the common assumption about where AI is going to go in the next 5-10 years. It's also about the dynamic between the buyers and sellers of AI models and chips as well as between open source and proprietary models. The assumption prior to this week is that the only way that these giant LLMs are going to get better is with more data and more compute -- basically building giant data centers with Nvidia chips that are so energy intensive that they need their own nuclear power plant. Microsoft has been throwing their weight and dollars in that direction, not to mention their stake in ChatGPT 4o. On the other side are the users of AI who clearly stand to benefit from this development. That's Meta and Apple. Meta's AI model is open source -- they were actively trying to encourage a startup like DeepSeek to make an innovation like this, which will eventually lead to cost savings. Apple hasn't invested much in AI relative to the other big players so the common assumption here is that they made the right call in not throwing hundreds of billions at an AI model that isn't any better than what a startup can do at a fraction of the cost. --- Personal take is that overall it isn't that big of a deal and I don't think anyone is all that surprised that somebody figured this out (possibly by stealing OpenAI data, but that doesn't really matter because OpenAI stole most of that data first). With hundreds of billions at stake it's a guarantee that people are going to figure this stuff out. None of it gets us any closer to AI replacing knowledge workers -- so maybe 5 years from now we just end up with cheaper AI that isn't much better than the current LLMs.

I think that’s an outdated line of thinking for the most part when it comes to China. In the case of DeepSeek, we’ll know in a week since the model is out there for anyone to verify. American CEOs also run their mouths with outlandish claims…

Right, so to me the question becomes how long the middle market fans put up with the current situation. We’ve seen this in the NL Central — the Brewers are better run than the Cubs/Cardinals, so as the spending gap has shrunk, we’ve found our way to the top. I get the impression that those fans are not going to tolerate the status quo, which is likely that the Brewers continue to rack up division titles, with no ability for the mid-markets able to spend their way ahead of us because 5 teams are hogging all of the good free agents and leaving scraps for everyone else. I guess we’ll see though.

This news seems especially bad for Nvidia and OpenAI but the average Joe should benefit from cheaper, open source AI. America should probably accept that we’re not going to be the gatekeepers of AI and more broadly that our science and R&D is rapidly falling behind China.

Right, nobody knows what they will follow through on and to what scale. But overall the policies and current events will lead to upward price pressures in my opinion. There certainly doesn’t appear to be much if any effort to lower prices.

The current situation is of great benefit to the Brewers. The mid-markets are feeling the declining TV revenue the worst, especially the ones that own or have majority stakes in their network — because they are directly losing revenue vs. being locked into a contract where a third party is losing money or going bankrupt. The Brewers have closed the payroll gap with many of those teams. Mid-market fans are fed up. They could play with the big boys during the luxury tax + RSN era and now those days are over and it’s back to a handful of teams that have a huge revenue advantage. I think the rule changes and expanded playoffs delayed things a bit but if revenue and salaries decline then there will be pressure from both sides for change at the next CBA. Keep an eye on attendance and TV ratings in markets like Minnesota, Seattle, St. Louis, and Baltimore. I think there will be appetite for change soon like there was when the Yankees dominated in the aughts, it’s just a matter of how far the pendulum swings before both sides have motivation to change the rules.

30% of our lumber comes from Canada which will be 25% more expensive on Feb 1 if the tariffs go through. So that’s a third of the CPI that is potentially affected, but it would probably take a year or two for that to start affecting inflation. Food prices are in trouble because of bird flu. Maybe we’ll change the policy to stop culling infected animals? That will surely end well. Medical services are going to increase due to the ending of various price caps that were put in place by the previous administration. If new cars go up and people shift to used cars, that causes used car prices to increase. Again, likely 1-2 years for that to start filtering through the market. Not to mention that the fed will be watching this and will be more likely to raise rates as a result. Unless Trump finds a way to intervene there and force lower rates…then we’ll have bigger problems on our hands.

Yes and the impact is far from instantaneous, the changes reverberate through the marketplace. Right now what is being proposed is blanket tariffs on everything from Canada and Mexico. Whether they go through with it or not is anyone’s guess. In other news, the S&P 500 had a good week. Early signs are that big tech is going to benefit tremendously from this administration.

Inflation is clearly sticky for a number of reasons and the economic agenda for the next administration is to remove the debt ceiling and extend tax cuts. Unclear if Congress will allow it but that’s the goal. The fed wants 2% inflation, so to me the odds favor rate increases in 2026 unless a recession is triggered. Your suggestion that fighting trade wars, deportation, and climate-related pressures won’t cause inflationary pressures is wishful thinking. The question is again, how much is talk and how much will actually become policy?

My mind went back to my childhood and going over to my grandpa’s house and often he’d be in his garage and Ueck would be on the radio. My grandpa would always say “How about them Brewers?” And we would be like “They suck!” Even though we couldn’t get Ueck a title, he went out with the franchise riding an all-time high of success. And we can still win one for Ueck in 2025.

Speaking of the Padres, it sounds like the flight for control after Seidler’s death has gotten ugly. Only a matter of time until the payroll dump happens…

If my employer lowballed me and I had 29 other companies who were interested in my services, I’d be gone the next day. My actual performance is irrelevant in that equation.

That’s an incredible way to experience your first hockey game. For what it’s worth, most hardcore hockey fans would say that sitting on the glass is something to do once. When you sit a bit higher it’s easier to see plays develop and you can keep track of play on both sides of the ice. If you sit higher I think you’ll also find more people paying attention to the game, since the first few rows are more of novelty seats.

Seattle apparently offered Carlos Santana more money than Cleveland, so they appear interested in spending at 1B. They will probably try to re-sign Justin Turner next. If that doesn't work out, I could see some potential interest in Hoskins. Dipoto likes to unload dead contracts, which would make him potentially interested in clearing Haniger's money and opening up that roster spot. Locklear looked overmatched by MLB pitching in 2024, but he's young and likely projects for a Rowdy Tellez-like career. He's currently considered the 10th ranked prospect in Seattle's system. Personally I think Seattle would prefer to send more cash back and/or a lower ranked player than Locklear. In which case I think the Brewers would rather just eat the Hoskins contract since they need to get a 1B back and Haniger is entirely dead money, he would never actually play for the Brewers.

I think Hoskins’ upside is likely more than whatever return we would get to unload his contract. But if we can find a sucker to pay most of the contract then I’m all for it.

Didn’t watch but checked the halftime score and saw it was going as expected. Hopefully Ohio State meets the same fate tomorrow.

They need to ditch the neutral site if they want to make the tournament matter more. It could have been fun to host that at home.

This and the other linked fangraphs article don't even take into account the value of stolen bases, which have gotten much easier since these pieces were written. I think the Brewers' strategy is pretty obvious -- above all they want top tier defense in the key positions -- SS, 2B, CF. Since you're not going to find many undervalued elite defenders with high slugging percentages, they are chasing high OBP speed guys who can play defense at an elite level. So Caleb Durbin. My personal opinion is that you can get away with the above but this is basically a formula to have an elite offense with a 15th-ranked slugging pct. If you're bottom-10 in slugging you're not going to be good no matter how many times to get on base and steal second. So they need to get slugging from corner positions.

Tucker is absolutely a 1 year rental, but you’re getting the full year over a deadline acquisition and he is as big of a piece as you can add.

The Mariners fan half of me is glad to have him out of the AL West. The Brewers fan half of me knows that he's going to do something to hurt us.