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I had the same issue last year, this year I remembered to cancel a few months ago so I wouldn't get charged. Automatic renewals are annoying but maybe if you complain enough they will give you a refund.

Yes, he probably should have given it back, but it's too late now. We have to move on. The award is obviously tainted and has basically been taken away in the minds of most people. Going forward, you just have to remember that he already served his punishment. The suspension is over now and he's back to being a legitimate player based on the rulebook.

Globe looking chilly...http://icons.wxug.com/hurricane/2014/201401.gif

If an El Nino develops as expected later this year, that would increase the odds of a warmer winter in 2014-15. It would also be good for the drought problems in the Southwest. Nobody really knows if this winter was a one-time thing or if there will be more in the upcoming years. Meanwhile, it looks kind of chilly in the next week but it actually could be worse. The coldest air never really gets a good push to the south and ends up staying near the Canadian border. Also, there is a good chance of a major snowstorm in the Midwest in the March 2-4 range. It's hard to say where the biggest impact will be at this point so stay tuned.

We discussed this a few months ago, but since some people are still saying the Brewers somehow might not make money this year: Why can the Brewers payroll go up $25 million this year? Because they have an extra $25 million in revenue coming in that they didn't have last year. Forget the local TV deals, the real money for the Brewers (and just about everyone else) is in the National TV deal which starts this year. Nobody knows exactly how much the Brewers are getting from the new deal, but it's up to $50 million per season because the deal is worth $1.5 billion per year, split equally 30 ways. That's a net gain of $25 million per season since the new deal is double the old deal. In other words, Garza, K-Rod, the future Segura contract, etc. are all covered just with the extra TV money with plenty of money left over. Now--some other teams haven't spent this money yet. Mark A. is a good owner and is investing the extra money in his team right away. Other owners might be waiting--some of the contracts are going to be incredible next year when some teams are sitting on two years worth of this money. Finally, some owners will just pocket the money--I doubt the Marlins payroll is going to climb much. My feeling is that eventually the market will force everyone to spend money and you will see everyone's payroll climb. Local revenue is going to keep falling behind, but fortunately it doesn't matter as much thanks to Selig's progress on revenue sharing.

This year reminds me of 2004: 24-6, B10 tourney champion, projected around a 4 seed--but they ended up getting a 6 seed in exchange for going to Milwaukee. In that case the higher seed probably would have been more helpful than getting the pseudo-home court advantage. I'm just happy they made it through the mid-season slump. Two tough games coming up--it would be nice to get one of them but I have a feeling they will both be losses. The committee will like the Badgers' RPI and SOS numbers. The nonconference schedule will help bump up the seed as well. A #4 seed seems reasonable if they finish 4-2 in conference.

Payroll only matters relative to what other teams are spending. Inflation adjusted, it's not the highest payroll in team history. A $100 million payroll in 2014 is the same as $92 million in 2011, $88 million in 2008, or $73 million in 2005. They will never be in the top half of the league in payroll under the current revenue system and most likely will hover somewhere around 20th as they have for the past decade. The good thing about inflation is that it makes the contracts from a few years ago look less burdensome now. Melvin's long term extensions and arbitration buyouts were mostly brilliant. They've managed to save enough money to be able to continually bring in mid-range free agents, which is not something that every small market team is capable of. So by that measure, the TV money arrived at a great time in order to avoid feeling the squeeze that we feared would come in the years after going "all in" in 2011. So of course the Brewers are in good financial health. So are about 25 other teams. Money is flowing right now in MLB.

Jeter's one of the best players of our generation. You don't get 3,000 hits by accident. I think most people now realize that he was a below-average defender. But I'm a sucker for the jump throw and the flip play and "the dive". He was lucky to play for the Yankees, but he made the most of it.

It looks like Raleigh fared as bad as Atlanta did last week. Lots of pictures of gridlock and abandoned cars. The snow is much worse on the roads down there--part of the issue is the lack of plowing and salting--but another issue is that the ground isn't frozen so they end up with black ice under all of the snow. There are several other issues--cars don't have traction tires and those areas have many more hills than Wisconsin. It only takes 1/2 inch of snow to make it impossible to get up a hill if it isn't salted. The models have been trending a little colder with the Midwest warmup next week. It still looks like a few days above freezing but most of the precipitation will still be snow--possibly some freezing rain as well.

Glad to provide you all with random weather facts and things... Madison went below zero again last night for the 26th time this year. That's just ridiculous. It looks like the pattern might shift to something warmer around Valentine's day. The extreme cold is hopefully over for this year.

Those are good questions. It's believed (but not proven) that fluctuations in the deep ocean thermohaline circulation are responsible. But you are right--ocean currents are driven by the atmosphere: wind, temperature, and salinity (precipitation-evaporation). So it goes both ways in a feedback loop. That's why it oscillates. The important thing to remember is that the ocean is much slower to respond to changes than the air. It only takes about two weeks for air in the jet stream to circle the globe. So if the ocean temperatures change, the jet stream adjusts quickly. On the other hand, the ocean currents move very slow, so it takes a long time to "flip" the pattern back. El Nino/La Nina switches every couple of years because it is driven mostly at the surface (but again, nobody can reliably forecast when it is going to flip). The AMO also doesn't guarantee anything about an individual month or winter, it is best seen when averaging over several years. The Pacific Ocean has its own set of variations--in fact the warm north Pacific might be more to blame for this winter than anything in the Atlantic. The whole system is super complicated so basically people just look at the ocean temps and then go back and find previous years with similar ocean temperatures and see what the weather was like in those years. Sometimes that works, other times it doesn't.

There were some ice age predictions (including from at least one scientist at UW-Madison) in the 70s but even then, most of the predictions were for warming. Nobody really knew for sure at the time. As for the relatively warmer winters (in the Midwest) from 1920-1955, that is a real trend and shows up in other climate records such as the ice cover on lake Mendota: http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~sco/lakes/mendota-dur.gif The 1980-2010 range has far less ice duration than any other period. Now, here's a plot of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) which is a 20-40 year cycle in Atlantic sea surface temperatures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amo_timeseries_1856-present.svg Notice any similarities? The AMO hasn't yet switched to a cold phase (nobody knows how to predict when that will happen). But it does affect the jet stream and helps to explain why the 1970s were so cold in Wisconsin. The AMO And the AMO wasn't discovered until 1994, so nobody knew about it in the 70s.

A medical issue is the only logical explanation. It seems that the Brewers might have a reduced offer on the table, but Garza is now entertaining offers from other teams again.

Technically those people are correct. The polar vortex is nothing new, it just refers to the polar jet stream. I have no idea why the term went viral, I guess it sounds cool and the media likes buzzwords these days. It probably has nothing to do with global warming.

In other news...Chipper Jones started a forest fire http://i.imgur.com/vnuNFJp.png

It still seems like it will happen, the Brewers just wanted the physical before they agreed to some of the incentives. Garza is a solid pitcher. The price is high, but not that high considering how much money is out there. This is a big deal for 2014, since some of us (myself included) had very low expectations. I just don't want Garza to end up as another Suppan.

No on Fielder and Hoffman. Both should be on the walk of fame though, along with Sabathia, Jenkins, Cirillo, Sheets, and Weeks (eventually). Braun is a tough case. Right now it makes me sick to my stomach to think that his name and number would be next to the other Brewers legends. That will probably mellow out with time if he can show he can still perform at a high level without cheating. Even without the PED stuff, I'd like to see him get to the World Series. I know baseball is a team sport, but there's something not quite right about retiring a number of a player who didn't at least win the pennant in Milwaukee.

Now that we have options, Francisco should be dumped immediately, he's already been a repeated failure at the major league level for several years. He displayed absolutely nothing last year that would indicate potential for improvement. His 18 HR were mostly luck, just blindly guessing and hacking away. There's too many 1B options now and the weakest candidate needs to go. Overbay is ancient but at least he can be platooned and has an average glove. Reynolds is the only one out of any of the options who has at least a slim possibility of putting up positive WAR on offense--although I won't be holding my breath for some magic resurgence. Halton showed nothing last year and Morris is heading the wrong direction. An Overbay-Reynolds platoon makes the most sense. They can go with 4 outfielders at the beginning. It's unlikely the 2B platoon will last. Finally, I expect the 'OOOOOOOO' chant to come back--make it happen Wisconsin people!

Since the polar vortex is now a fun buzzword: Polar vortex part 2 coming to Wisconsin on Tuesday. Polar vortex part 3 coming to Wisconsin on Thursday-Friday. Polar vortex part 4 coming to Wisconsin in about 8-10 days. Possibly part 5 sometime in the 12-14 day period. The first two are not especially cold (highs in the single digits above 0 in Milwaukee). The second two might be more impressive, but it's too early to tell.

It's probably going to have some issues at first, but replay had to get done. It was inevitable. The command center works well in the NHL and it's better to have multiple people looking at the video replay than a single "5th" umpire. 90% of the replays will be easy. It only takes 10 seconds to see if a player is safe/out or if a ball is fair/four/caught/etc. If it takes more than a few looks, the call on the field should stand. The one thing I do take issue with is allowing the umpires on the field to initiate reviews at any time. This will be trouble. If a manager uses up his challenge and another questionable call happens, he's going to run out on the field and ask for another review. It will lead to an argument if the umpires refuse. Think about it--the Brewers will probably never again lose a game because of some stupid safe/out call that everyone knew was wrong. After about half a season it will be completely natural--and then we will start wondering why we still let the umpires screw up ball/strike calls that could be reviewed tennis-style (automatically, on the scoreboard) in less than 15 seconds. We might even see that before 2020!!!

The TV revenue issue is very interesting. I hope the small market owners put up a fight. Things will be much different with Selig not around, it's tough to predict how that will play out. As we have discussed in a previous thread, there is also the possibility of the cable-sports bubble bursting. The bulk of the Dodgers' TV deal (and hence player salaries) will be paid via subscriber fees by people who never watch baseball. That's not sustainable--and people are already showing their displeasure by dropping cable in record numbers. If people keep dropping, the remaining subscribers have to pay more. I don't even know anyone my age (late 20s) who has cable--everyone watches Netflix or finds stuff for free online. Furthermore, there have been rumors that Congress could step in and end blackout rules which would open up the possibility of MLB.tv being available in local markets. Many have also floated a-la-carte TV which would also destroy the big TV revenue deals since only a small fraction of subscribers would pay for baseball.

I saw a rumor on the JS comments that the Bucks posted a 0.0 TV rating--that can't be true, can it? There really is no reason to win another game the rest of the year, they are guaranteed a top-4 pick if they have the worst record. If they even drop to the 3rd worst record, they have almost 1/3 chance of missing the top-4. The only thing that can be gained is experience for the current roster.

Now that I look it up, Wil Myers did end up winning rookie of the year. So it's fair to say it was a great deal, one that they should unquestionably have taken. But I do think it hurt their chances in 2013, the deal was for 2014 and beyond. But now they are talking about trading David Price. So if they trade him, they will really be playing for 2015 and beyond. And so on.. So all I'm saying is that there are disadvantages to the full out small market approach, and I'd rather see the Brewers hang onto certain players for longer if they can.

Nice move. Same numbers as Ike Davis at a fraction of the price. Also, Francisco struck out once every 2.8 PA last year, while Reynolds was 1 K per 3.3 PA. So Reynolds would actually be a reduction in strikeouts...LOL.

I still don't think the Brewers will be significantly affected by this latest salary expansion. Almost none of the success from 2007-2011 was a result of free agent signings. They had no chance then at the big free agents like Sabathia and Fielder and they still do not have a chance at similar free agents now. The Brewers may not have a favorable local TV deal, but they have tens of millions of extra revenue coming in starting in 2014. They will be highly profitable in 2014 if they keep the payroll at the current level. They are getting a huge extra sum from the national TV deal and teams also share 1/3 of local TV revenue, so they bring in a few million per year from the Dodgers' TV deal as well. This money will eventually be spent on mid-range free agents or arbitration buyouts, just like it has been for the past 5-10 years. They will still be around 20th in payroll--somewhere on the border between small and mid market. Meanwhile, the grass isn't greener on the other side. The "sustained success" small market teams are repeatedly getting booted out of the playoffs in the division series. The Brewers are the only small to small/mid market team to make the LCS (in either league) in the last 5 years. So while I would like to adapt some of the strategy from the A's/Rays, I do not want to see the Brewers being a real "small market" that trades away all overvalued talent to save money and perpetually plan for the future. The Rays had a serious shot at the World Series last year, but they sure could have used an extra starting pitcher with extensive postseason experience--but they traded him away in December 2012!!!!