owbc
-
Posts
9,904 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
2
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Events
News
2026 Milwaukee Brewers Top Prospects Ranking
Milwaukee Brewers Videos
2022 Milwaukee Brewers Draft Picks
Milwaukee Brewers Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits
Guides & Resources
2023 Milwaukee Brewers Draft Picks
2024 Milwaukee Brewers Draft Picks
The Milwaukee Brewers Players Project
2025 Milwaukee Brewers Draft Pick Tracker
2026 Milwaukee Brewers Draft Tracker: Picks & Bonuses
Store
Downloads
Gallery
Everything posted by owbc
-
Three close family members got laid off in the last year. All business/MBA types, tech or tech adjacent. Two have found new roles, one has been unemployed for nearly a year (but is notoriously picky). Consensus is that job market picked up in Q4. Some slowdown now for the holidays but I think we're way more likely to see hiring pick up in January rather than a string of layoffs like last year. It's definitely not like the golden times of a few years ago...and there is a lot of tension about evolving hybrid/remote work arrangements that hasn't fully fleshed itself out yet. Hoping for the best for you @LouisEly!
-
It's bad to have Yamamoto and Ohtani on the same team. First, the obvious one of never seeing Ohtani bat against Yamamoto. As well as robbing a fanbase of the opportunity to get excited about signing an international superstar. Instead, all of that excitement just goes to seeing if the Dodgers win 105 or 110 games before getting bounced in the postseason. If the NBA is any guide, people love to see the superteams lose, and it happens quite frequently. But in MLB we'll probably get writers moaning about how MLB's postseason format is unfair to the Dodgers. -
If you use the $700M figure then you have to inflation-adjust the $/WAR figure. I think it's pretty widely accepted that this was a market rate contract and it never turned into a true bidding war because Ohtani had already picked the Dodgers as his preferred destination.
-
If they did indeed hit the "soft landing", it's an impressive achievement. I assume rates will sit in the 5% range for a bit until there is either a recession that drops them back to zero or more inflation that causes them to go up further. Consumer confidence seems to depend on whether you are getting f***ed by high housing costs in a low wage job or not. I don't know what to think of that. The average consumer doesn't seem to have any interest in curtailing their spending. Personally I think stocks are going to continue to rally.
-
Isn't the entire concept of taxpayer funded stadiums based on the idea that a big chunk of that investment is going to come back via player salary taxes?
-
I don't think that's true. Between Ohtani, Freeman, and Betts, the Dodgers are pushing a billion dollars (in today's dollars) in dead weight in the 2035-2045 timeframe. Additionally, MLB salary inflation has slowed considerably in recent years and will likely continue to be slow moving forward since the era of lucrative RSN deals is pretty much over. A top-5 payroll in 2010 was in the $150-$200M range. These days it is somewhere around $250M. In 10-15 years it might be $350M-$400M at most (assuming that big markets like LA can still extract $200M/year from their local TV rights, which is far from guaranteed). So the Dodgers have potentially tied up nearly a quarter of their projected payroll in the late 2030s. That's not enough to make them a poverty franchise, but it would absolutely cause issues. Unless they are even richer than we think they are, which I guess is totally possible given their ridiculous TV contract.
-
One has to admire Ohtani for using his leverage to make this work. In terms of achieving his two primary goals of getting paid and winning a championship, he couldn't have orchestrated it any better.
-
I do wonder if the other shoe will drop for the Dodgers down the line. In theory their finances are fine until 2038 when their $8 billion TV rights deal expires. And surely the revenue that they initially bring in from Ohtani will keep them afloat for a few years. But this isn't a $1 million/year deferral like Bobby Bonilla, this is some serious cash that they will own Ohtani in the 2030s-early 2040s when his ability to add value to the Dodgers is long gone. And given what's happening with bankruptcies, that RSN money is far from ironclad. Some teams have seem most of their RSN income evaporate overnight. In the short term, the Dodgers are going to be the late-90s Yankees, but this isn't coming without considerable risk to the long-term financial health of the franchise.
-
The real people who need to put an end to this are politicians in states with high income taxes. As many have pointed out, the main reason this works for both parties is that Ohtani can dodge California taxes on the deferred part of the contract. So he's not taking as much of a pay cut with the deferral as one might think.
-
I don't understand what you're saying.
-
I'd rather have the money go to the players than the owners. Nothing makes me happier than knowing how many of these billionaires feel poor after having no hope of signing Ohtani. While having to address a TV/RSN crisis that is of their own making. I talk to people my age (millennial) all the time who say they are baseball fans but don't watch the games because they don't have a cable account, so no TV access. Here's my optimistic take -- in 10 years most MLB fans will enjoy easier TV access than today with no blackouts.
-
The Dodgers are going to be celebrating “Shohei Ohtani day” in 2050.
-
His name and bat alone is probably worth $300-400M. One wonders what kind of pitching incentives are going to be in this contract... I do think the Mariners are crafty if they did offer him that rumored 1 yr / $65 M contract.
-
I'm just glad it wasn't the Dodgers. And it makes sense that the team that got him has the highest TV viewership in MLB and no concerns about RSN problems.
-
I agree. The bigger cities also tend to be loaded with transplants. No offense to Wisconsin, but it's not a destination that people move to, other than Madison which is always churning people because of the university. Wisconsin is also up there in the 'state pride' rankings -- people who live in Wisconsin are proud of being from Wisconsin and cheer for Wisconsin sports teams. Texas is the only other state I've visited that is comparable. We've had that debate on the forum before with some arguing that one can't be a fan of multiple teams, but anyone who is a transplant knows that you tend to keep your hometown team and gradually pick up the local team as well, especially if the local team is not a rival of your hometown team. I don't think it is especially unusual for different sports to have different fanbases. NFL and MLB have the most overlap. The NBA audience is younger, diverse, urban, international. I've worked with a number of Chinese colleagues who have heard of Milwaukee because of the NBA but know nothing about any of the other American sports. Milwaukee doesn't have an NHL team but in my experience that is another sport that attracts a completely different demographic in many places.
-
The NFL obsession is off the charts in Wisconsin. Ive never been anywhere else where it was so far above the other sports.
-
Once Ohtani signs the floodgates will open.
-
I agree that it would be harder to pull off, but not impossible. As noted above, they have figured out the WBC and the fans love it. if you dangle a playoff spot as an incentive then I could see teams moving around their rotation to win those games. As with the NBA, they don't really need to change the schedule much at all. Draft 4 pools and then play 'best of 3' series using the existing 3-game series in the schedule. Best series record wins the pool. Then, just set a flex week in the schedule in late summer to play the semifinals and finals, everyone else plays their regularly-scheduled games. All four semifinalists automatically win all postseason tiebreakers in exchange for having to play an unbalanced schedule. The tournament winner gets the automatic playoff spot which is the 3rd wild card if they wouldn't have otherwise made the postseason as a higher seed.
-
What is the prize for winning the NBA one, other than the bonus for the players? Does the winner get a playoff spot?
-
Exactly, they are just keeping open the possibility that he gets outplayed in spring training and there's no reason to put unneeded pressure on him to immediately live up to the contract. Realistically, the odds are >90% that he'll be in the lineup on Opening Day.
-
His struggles are almost entirely mental. No shortage of talent, he's just trying too hard. For that reason he was easy to cheer for and quite popular with the fans in Seattle. A change of scenery to a more hitter friendly ballpark will help. Kelenic was being shopped last winter as well and I was hoping the Brewers could find a way to flip Wong for him, but we ended up with Winker instead. I assume we would have needed to take one of these crappy contracts to get him and we don't have the payroll flexibility that the Braves do. Plus we don't need outfielders anymore.
-
I appreciate you talking me off the ledge here, but in the end it depends what they do with the money in free agency, which remains TBD. In my view the Mariners shouldn't need to operate with a Milwaukee Brewers level of frugality, but that's the situation their fans are stuck with. Given their salary constraints, the Robbie Ray contract is an abomination...and they are now rumored to be interested in Matt Chapman because even with their newfound $30 million savings, they are still rumored to be out on Soto and Ohtani.
-
What would you do if you lost your right fielder to free agency and your left fielder is a 24 year old coming off of a 2 WAR / .745 OPS age 23 season with 5 years of team control remaining? Would you use him to dump $20M in salary, thus creating vacancies at both corner outfield positions?
-
It makes more sense than Ohtani since it would fill the hole they just created. I strongly feel that Kelenic is a late bloomer and they just sold low on him…and especially since it was to the Braves who know what they are doing.
-
The Mariners are clearly going to make some sort of expensive acquisition but I have zero confidence in it being a smart one. What kind of idiot GM gives away Kelenic for $20M in salary savings?
