owbc

It could be worse. Rhys would literally be the best hitter on the Seattle Mariners. I'm not even joking, he has a higher OPS than any qualified hitter on the Mariners roster.

His statcast page is brutal: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/james-paxton-572020?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb

The main reason I said that is because it's an extremely difficult time to be a kid and a parent. For many reasons. The word I would use is probably "obligation" instead of "purpose". And I don't mean that in a bad way, I just mean that it ultimately doesn't matter if I get any sort of personal fulfillment out of child rearing or not, but I damn well better do my job and take care of that kid to the best of my ability. I know a number of childfree individuals and couples...some by choice, some not. They are doing some pretty sweet stuff. One couple retired at age 40 (FIRE for the win!) and is selling their place and hiking the PCT next summer. Another does a ton of volunteer work for nonprofits that I would never have time to do. A third is a closer companion and caretaker to my daughter than anyone else besides her myself and my wife. Anyway, in an attempt to keep this on topic, my main point is that nobody should have kids because of some societal obligation to train our replacements and caretakers for when we are old. If the government thinks we need more young people then there are millions of them who would be more than happy to immigrate.

At least there is scoring in this one.

I watch almost every year. This one wasn't particularly memorable other than the national anthem, a perfect fit for that sterile and generic ballpark in Arlington. Everybody disagrees on what the proper format should be. I thought the bonus round change was a really good one, there are pros and cons to both timed and untimed formats so I like having both. If I have to critique, I would say find a way to (1) make it more fun and (2) give us more monster dongs. Some of these guys were trying too hard or only swinging at 75-80% to save energy. I would give huge bonuses for 450+ ft home runs, that's what we really want see and Ozuna was the only one who was trying to hit the monster bombs. Also, MLB, please, please, please cancel the ASG in 2028 and have the big leaguers in the Olympics instead.

No. There is also an upper threshold. Judge and Ohtani hit too many home runs, they have to act like they have been there before. No celebrations allowed for them either.

I'm curious what the OPS+ threshold should be for home run celebrations? Is it 100? 105? Also, is there a different threshold if it's the second HR in the game?

I’m fairly optimistic about the future, I think we’ll probably figure out many of the problems facing us. We’re likely going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, for instance. But I think there are plenty of humans on this planet so I don’t feel any obligation to replace myself and my spouse with 2 (or more) children and governments need to start planning for that.

Thank you for your service Dallas. Well worth the dollar.

As a millennial...I think the people not having kids are the smart ones. Everybody sees what is coming. If you think it's going to be bad for millennials, imagine what it will be like for Gen Z and Alpha. What you describe above is a pyramid scheme built on the premise that the planet has infinite resources. It worked for a few generations post-Industrialization but it's over now. We ended up having one kid but we were seriously considering having none. And we are one of the lucky ones who could actually afford the daycare costs of a second kid if we wanted to. Eventually it will need to be recognized that we either need to come up with a degrowth strategy or massively increase immigration. As for rate cuts...I'm fine with keeping interest rates steady. The economy needs to continue to detox from the zero rate environment. Low rates aren't going to change the fact that AI is starting to erode the job market.

I think you're underestimating how fast a new technology can take hold, especially when the government uses incentives to speed it up. And the range + battery capabilities of the current generation of EVs is the worst that they will ever be. I agree that range anxiety and longevity are both concerns that are holding people up right now, but that won't be the case for long. Especially since the driving performance of EVs is far and away superior. Once the price and range are similar to ICE cars, it's over. China EV sales (including plug-in hybrids) are up to 50% of new vehicle sales after being under 5% in 2020. The US is currently around 6-7%. So we should have no problem of hitting the government's 50% goal by 2030, even if we adopt slower than China which will likely be the case. Norway was a little slower, they went from 1.4% in 2011 to around 90% currently. But the technology now is quite a bit better than it was 5-10 years ago. The average lifespan of a car is 12 years. So there will be more EVs/plug-ins than pure ICE cars on the road in the US by 2040. By 2050 they will be under 10%. I strongly agree that urban areas should be reducing car usage but there's no sign of that happening in the US at this time. I disagree that adding chargers will be difficult. Level 2 chargers are no different than running power to an oven or dryer. Superchargers are mostly going to be along highways, they aren't needed much in cities.

I do expect them to make a tactical pitching move. The Sewald acquisition by the D'backs last year was a really smart one.

Does it really matter? We had about the greatest starting pitching advantage one could dream of in Game 1 of the wild card series last year...and we lost to Pfaadt and a parade of relievers. And then Peralta had a poor game 2, which finished us off. Our path to the World Series in the current postseason format is to win the wild card series by any means possible and ride that momentum to a series win over the #2 seed who has been sitting on their butts for a few days waiting for an opponent. I'm also of the opinion that bats are more important than pitching these days. Every playoff team has pitching, not everyone has the hitting ability that we do. Assuming we're going to be hosting the wild card series again, we know one can win games in that series with short starts followed by tactical usage of relief pitching. Then we knock out Philly or LA in the short series and hope that another wild card team did the same to the other top seed. Then, in an ideal world, we would be playing the Mets or Braves or Padres in the NLCS, which are winnable 7 game series.

Which costs time and money??? It's not hard to see what's going to happen...eventually EV sales will gain critical mass (as has already happened in several other countries), they will naturally become cheaper than ICE vehicles to manufacture (whether they actually sell for cheaper is another matter), and chargers will start appearing everywhere. About 5-10 years after that, gas stations and ICE maintenance shops will rapidly disappear and/or pivot to EV services. ICE drivers will be the ones with range anxiety when gas stations stop selling gas and only have chargers instead. It will become difficult and expensive to get simple things like oil changes done. That will leave collectors and enthusiasts as the only ICE vehicle owners. I'm guessing that probably won't be until the 2040s or 2050s, but the trajectory is pretty clear. I don't know where you get the idea that the battery needs to be replaced. EV batteries are so good that they are starting to be repurposed for solar storage after being used in cars. Even my old Toyota Prius hybrid battery was 15 years old and still working fine when I sold that car.

I haven't driven a Rivian so I can't comment on the technology, but Tesla is light years ahead of everything else I have driven in terms of technology. It's like using an iPhone while every other car out there is a flip phone. EVs are basically smartphones with wheels, so it's a race to see if big tech can build car factories or if legacy automakers can build tech. It's just an incredible travesty that Musk has derailed Tesla with his stupid Cybertruck, they could have become the largest automaker in the world and they still might, but they are headed for the toilet until he is out of the picture. Which I bet happens within a year or two once the Cybertruck has time to fully flop. They have also made some poor decisions on FSD (using cameras instead of lidar) which has put them behind Waymo and some of the Chinese automakers. Rented a BMW iX earlier this year and found the tech to be incredibly complicated and clunky compared with Tesla which is a shame since that thing is like a $90K+ car. We also used to have a plug-in Audi Q5 and traded it in pretty much entirely due to the technology sucking, plus it had pathetic storage+legroom because of the necessity of having both an ICE engine and a battery. Hated the technology in that car as well, it makes me angry just thinking about how the bluetooth never worked properly with two phones in the car. The Volvo XC40 that my wife drives also has outdated technology but at least Android auto works most of the time. Toyota is obviously all-in on hybrids right now...I think it's a very smart strategic decision in terms of selling practical cars that make sense right now, especially for people who don't have the ability to add home charging. If you do have charging, I can't imagine why you would buy a plug-in hybrid given the price and quality of EVs like Hyundai/Kia/VW options in particular. My 70 year old parents recently needed a new car, they are loyal Toyota customers and have a Rav4 but they ended up buying a VW ID4 and getting a home charger installed. They've had it for like 6 months now and I don't think they have ever used or needed a supercharger.

Isn't Amazon / Bezos the biggest investor in Rivian? They are everywhere in Seattle. The R3 will be massively popular with the Subaru crowd if they can get it out fast enough. I think the biggest issue right now is there is a race against the clock as pretty much every automaker is going to release EVs in the $30-45K price range in the next 2-3 years.

That was fun!

It should have been a warning sign when the Mariners needed a spot start and they went with a guy with the build of Bartolo Colon over Keuchel.

I wouldn’t rule it out

He made it 2+ innings longer than Axford did in his return.

Strong agree...but I do empathize with the reality that the current run is going to end at some point and it will look like a failure if we don't get at least another NLCS appearance before we miss the playoffs again. I think it's fair to want a splashy deadline move this year, but it's not going to happen in freaking June and the expanded playoffs have really put a damper on the deadline hot stove.

His numbers aren't terrible for PCL standards...I'm guessing the Mariners had to let him go to avoid some sort of contract clause triggering that required them to promote him. They have been using a #6 and #7 starter lately with Woo having injury issues so he must have been pretty low on the pecking order. I do find it interesting that the Brewers and Mariners both saw something in Keuchel since they are two of the better organizations in MLB at evaluating pitching talent. So this could turn out to be a smart move for the Brewers if they end up needing Keuchel to fill a few spot starts.

Really happy for the Panthers, they seem like a great group. McDavid will get his cup next year most likely.

These are all essentially career contracts unless noted: Corey Seagar: 27 at signing / $325M Francisco Lintor: 28 at signing / $341M Trea Turner: 29 at signing / $300M Xander Bogaerts: 30 at signing / $280M Carlos Correa: 28 at signing / $200M (6 years) Dansby Swanson: 28 at signing / $177M (7 years) Willy Adames: 29 at signing

5/130 is a pipe dream for Adames. His next contract will be for the rest of his career production. With a younger guy like Ortiz, you are not buying his entire career worth of production. You are buying out the arbitration years and giving him financial stability. Even if the ship has sailed on it being a highly discounted deal like Chourio's, there is still plenty of opportunity to come up with a deal that works for both sides. Then again, we don't have to sign any longer term contracts to anyone. Adames probably wouldn't be here right now if he didn't have a down year in 2023 that reduced his return value. Otherwise he would have been traded already.