owbc

Any key injuries and they are toast, but if they can make it to the postseason healthy they have as good of a chance as anyone. Like @patrickgpe says, there are worse places to acclimate to a new coach than a west coast trip where they would have lost most of the games anyway.

There are some strip mall taquerias around there and my wife got a cheap mani pedi after a baseball game once. Good paletas also like I mentioned above. Some people enjoy venturing around a Spanish-speaking area like that. I probably wouldn't hang out around there after midnight but it didn't seem that bad.

I think that one is a similar distance but I haven't been there. The Rangers/Royals one is even farther away. I seem to remember that getting there is fine but it's annoying to hit rush hour traffic on the return, especially if you are trying to make a dinner reservation.

In the last decade, the Astros have dominated the AL and the Dodgers have dominated the NL. Besides those two teams, nobody has been to the LCS more than twice in the last decade. I don't really know what to say about the franchises that are either poorly managed or not really trying or both. All sports have such franchises and no system is going to help them. So the biggest issue is perhaps with the Astros and Dodgers, who have both been mowing down decent teams in the early rounds of the playoffs. In other sports, they might have found themselves in salary cap hell by now, but in baseball they have been able to build off of their success and gain even more of an advantage. But for every Astros and Dodgers team, there are a bunch of others who made two LCS appearances in a short span and then faded back to mediocrity. That's probably the ideal setup from a fan perspective. So I guess the question comes down to whether superteams are going to continue to eat up like half of the LCS spots or not...

We've been alternating years recently...not going this year. Scottsdale seems to have the most stuff going on, good dining options along with a pretty robust nightlife if you're into that kind of thing. Also lots of nice hotels in that area and some hiking options. Now that I have a kid we go to one of the hotels that has a nice pool which keeps her happy. The botanical garden and zoo are pretty good. I agree that Salt River is the nicest of the ones that I've been to -- spacious but still intimate. Nothing to do around the complex unless Medieval Times is your idea of fun haha. The Brewers are so lucky to have Maryvale which is an awesome facility and centrally located...not an area with hotels but if you're not afraid to put on your gringo tourist hat and walk into some Spanish speaking places you can have a good time after the game around there. We found a paletas place last time which was perfect for a postgame snack. Sloan was basically a giant zoo of Cubs fans, there were like 15,000 in attendance for the Brewers/Cubs game that I was at. I probably wouldn't go back there, it was too crowded and didn't feel like a spring training atmosphere. The Mariners/Padres facility is my least favorite, it's outdated and way off on the west side. However, it does have a Portillos and a Culvers nearby, which is a big plus for those of us that do not have such luxuries near our current residence. I know there are differing opinions about Phoenix...for me it ranks near the bottom of US cities that I've been to. It has sunshine and baseball in the spring and it's easy+cheap to fly to. Everything is too sprawled out and you end up spending half the trip driving around avoiding the other maniac drivers and wondering who thought it was a good idea to build such a place in the middle of the desert. But just writing this still makes me want to scratch my baseball itch and not wait until Opening Day.

So it's pretty much like any other parking lot with pay-by-phone except instead of having someone manually check the plates they have some fancy car with a license plate reading camera that drives around and automatically checks against the paid list.

I assume the Royals plan to get that investment back in taxpayer dollars for their new stadium.

To me the biggest challenge is filling those ~200 innings with pitching that is above replacement level.

Having had some time to think about this, I think the Brewers organization deserves some kudos for continuing to take a long approach to success and making a move that sacrifices some short-term success in exchange for what will likely be longer term benefits. And they were smart enough to wait to make this trade until they had inked Hoskins which certainly softens the blow of this move. I would say I'm still bummed about this trade at the current moment -- it's just a few weeks before spring training and I wanted a "last dance" season where we would be heavy favorites to win the division. However, I'll bet if I look back at this post in February 2025, I'll be happy we made the move. Right now it hurts a little.

The problem with picking us to not win the division is that you have to pick one of the Cubs, Reds, Pirates, or Cardinals instead. They need to close gaps of 9, 10, 16, and 21 wins, respectively.

Honestly my instant reaction was…well, I guess we couldn’t afford that Hoskins contract after all.

FuboTV has the DVR in the cloud...I'll often start watching a sporting event on my TV, then pick up where I left off on my iPad or phone.

Voters are definitely weighing the peak years more than they used to (vs. counting stats). If you like seeing guys elected to the hall, it's a good sign that Mauer and Helton got in.

That's not true. They don't have infinite money. We (roughly) know their numbers from the Forbes analysis. They needed to defer Ohtani's contract in order to afford both him and Yamamoto. Otherwise they would be running in the red.

Sometimes guys get overlooked in Y1 when there is a crowded ballot. Many of the voters that tend to vote for borderline candidates have full ballots so they run out of room for the fringe guys. Since K-Rod survived Y1, it will be interesting to see if he can build some momentum.

We really, really, really do not like to sell low. Can always move them at the deadline if we really want to and the return will probably be similar to the offseason. But I agree, it does feel like a bit of a transition year -- a "last dance" for the old guard as well as the start of the Chourio era. "Rye"s "Hops"-kins was meant to be a Brewer.

Exactly. 1. The RSN era has f***ed the Brewers. 2. Revenue sharing does not make up for that. 3. What matters to the fans going forward is the delta in revenue between us and other teams -- which is what makes me optimistic about how things are evolving.

Maybe a Milwaukee writer will give him a sympathy vote.

If you’re not a first ballot, it takes time to build up the votes. That’s the fun of HOF ballot tracking which keeps us entertained in the offseason. Wagner will be in next year.

Carter is more impressive because not only does he have a higher K rate than Hiura, but he maintained it over more than 2.5x as many PAs before getting booted out of MLB. Jose Hernandez is over 10% lower than Carter LOL.

That would have been an interesting signing. The dude's arm is close to falling off, but not quite there yet.

It certainly helps that every single person who has ever coached basketball would gladly take the Bucks job right now.

Clearly there was more going on behind the scenes than the Stotts situation. It's not a good look for a black head coach with a 30-13 record get the boot, so something serious must have been going on. I'll bet defense wasn't in the top 5 reasons. Perhaps another perspective is that Giannis signed his extension, so his tenure was a success, right?

Not all of us...there are several ways to get a free MLB.tv subscription. Although the value is starting to decrease as games get plucked to other streaming services. I guess my problem is that I also watch the local team so I'm still stuck with the same problem as Brewers fans in Wisconsin. The Brewers games are the easy one. My understanding is that Manfred has made ending blackouts a priority -- as MLB fans in certain spots like Iowa are obviously in a bad situation. They can't do it overnight but it will happen sooner rather than later. I don't worry about it too much -- nothing can possibly be worse than having to pay for a full cable package (or FuboTV in my case) to get the local RSN. I think it also helps that I'm a millennial, so nobody in my demographic has cable anymore and most of us are already subscribed to the streaming services. So a $20-30/month add on would be great, then I can ditch Fubo and save $50/month. And they also know that many in my generation or younger will just resort to pirating if they make it too difficult.

I chickened out after like a week and went back to SP500 index funds. Tech companies are clearly going to crush their Q1 and Q2 earnings like they did last year and it seems like crypto investors are diversifying away from BTC right now.