owbc

Brewers...please distract me from the boatload of misery that is the Mariners and win the division tonight. Thank you.

It's a miracle that Miller Park got built at all. A lot of other ideas got thrown out there, but getting the ballpark at all, in the same location with the same set of parking lots, was a miracle. To get the entertainment district off the ground, someone needs to throw at least a couple hundred million at it, it's not going to happen organically. A new parking structure to replace the lost surface parking would probably run $50-100 million by itself. It's not going to happen. Running public transit to the current site would be even more expensive and wouldn't make sense unless Milwaukee is planning to build a light rail network, which is definitely not happening anytime soon. The Brewers have clearly done the math and decided that it's not only economically unfeasible for them, but that it's also politically unfeasible to even ask for pubic investment to get it off the ground. I also agree that the Brewers will want to move in the middle of the century and they don't want to be stuck in the valley with whatever stuff gets built around the stadium. I think they will want a downtown Milwaukee ballpark at that time. No other location makes more sense than their current one. Target Field is an interesting comparison. On one side is downtown, the basketball arena, and a vibrant entertainment district. On the other side is basically a bunch of highways and a dead zone (although there are some cool breweries along otherwise-deserted streets and they are currently expanding light rail in that direction). The closest Milwaukee equivalent would be to put it north of Fiserv on the old Park East parcels. I know it's too soon to talk about demolishing the current stadium, but it feels like we're going to be spending a ton of money to delay the inevitable. I wish they could find a way to spend like $100-200 million to get the clamshell through 2035 and spend the rest on a downtown stadium.

I'm impressed at the balance they were able to get with the new rules. I was watching the A's/Mariners game last week and the A's seem to run recklessly -- they had two runners thrown out at 2nd in the same inning, Only a handful of really fast guys are racking up the big stolen base counts and it remains difficult to steal 3rd base.

Stolen bases counts are similar to the '70s and '80s but obviously home runs were lower back then. It's the first time we've had high levels of both power+speed in the game at the same time and it's awesome.

The WC games aren’t sold out so the Cubs fans can just buy from the Brewers website.

Definitely a hangover game.

How early is too early for a position player to pitch?

The Cubs are in a complete free fall now. https://x.com/JesseRogersESPN/status/1705060426109640935?s=20

The coaches are the stars in college football and Coach Prime plays the part better than the rest of them. I love it. He’s probably going to get trounced by Oregon and USC…but if he wins one of those games or even plays them close the hype train is going to keep rolling.

I suspect that the Brewers' logic on keeping the parking lots is correct. A big reason for the Brewers' high attendance numbers is the ease of access via highways from long distances. The Bucks surely draw more from Milwaukee itself and their entertainment district is within downtown. Building another district from scratch would be tough -- at the very least one would want to start with streetcar connectivity which would be quite expensive and largely pointless at the start. Really what would be needed is dense mixed-use residential buildings and I just don't know if the demand would be there when Milwaukee has a variety of established neighborhoods already. We'll see how this lease goes, in the 2040s it might be time to have the discussion about a downtown ballpark.

To be fair, there is one team in our division right now that is going through an epic collapse at the worst possible time.

Good for Wainwright, he earned this one.

It's not easy to barrel up this offspeed junk, especially since he seems to be hitting the corners with it.

I think the takeaway here is that these teams have used a variety of strategies. Baltimore was the only true "tanking" franchise. Cincinnati and Seattle largely got better through trades, not drafting. Minnesota has mostly coasted through an easy division given their failure to win a playoff game during that stretch. And personally I think Arizona lacks a strong enough roster to maintain their current success and they are far from a lock for the playoffs. I think the owner is the most important piece. That's the one constant that you have. That's the person who sets the culture more than anyone else. Stearns is going to have to navigate an inexperienced owner who desperately wants to win. It's not going to be easy. He also has to build things from scratch again. He's competent for sure, but there's a lot of luck involved in this world and New York is not Milwaukee. Mets fans will not tolerate a couple of years of losing to build things up like the Brewers did in 2016-17. And even that 2018 Brewers teams was ahead of schedule.

I could not figure that one out, I usually "cheat" by looking up rosters and trying to guess who it could be without clicking on their profile. Greinke's Cy Young year was really something, 242K!

Do the Brewers discount tickets on weeknights in September? I was at the Mariners game on Monday night which had a crowd of 37,000, but more than half the stadium was discounted to the $10-20 range. They do that for pretty much all weeknight games when school is in session.

He sure looks like he can play tonight. I’m all for trying to do this, but it’s tricky because the Rockies (if they are smart) are going to want at least one decent prospect back in exchange for eating salary.

We'll be heavily favored against anyone if we get home field advantage and have Burnes-Woodruff-Peralta lined up against the WC3 team. Then we'll pray that the bats show up. In the event that doesn't happen, I think we match up better with Philadelphia but agreed about their tendency to be clutch in the postseason and my painful memory of what happened the last time we went to Philly in the postseason. Going to Wrigley is a scenario that would be fun but seems unlikely.

The New York Mets are hiring David Stearns as president of baseball operations, sources familiar with the situation tell ESPN. A monumental addition to the organization, Stearns, 38, will take over officially once the regular season is over. The new era of the Mets begins soon.

The only number he has to beat is 83, which is Owen Miller's OPS+. Donaldson should be able to do that in his sleep, while hitting under .200 and striking out in a third of his PAs.

Anybody can look at Baseball Savant and easily see why they swapped out Miller for Donaldson. A corner infielder below 10th percentile in hard hitting categories isn't going to last long in the bigs. Now we'll see if Donaldson plays like he has something to prove or if he's counting down the days to hitting the golf course.

The thing that's especially sad is that WSU has a huge football fanbase and they are a pretty good draw on TV. Top half of the Pac-12. They have a huge following in Seattle that rivals UW. But if Boise State hasn't been able to land a spot in the Big 12, WSU is definitely not going to either.

Exactly. I happen to know a couple of people who work for WSU. Their athletic department has been in a dire financial situation for a long time. Even with the Pac-12 money they can't keep up and the reality is that they have been heavily subsidized by the other schools in the conference for a long time. It's a credit to the passion of that fanbase that they have been competitive in the Pac-12 but they are better suited for the Mountain West.

I’ve been in Seattle long enough to adopt the Mariners but I was never, ever going to associate myself with our local NFL team. I gradually lost interest in the Packers with time especially as Rodgers turned into a whacko although I still sort-of pay attention to how they are doing. After we got the Kraken I started following the NHL in the winter, between that and baseball I have the whole year covered.

I love it. I usually do stuff that I would never do on a normal Sunday like hike a popular trail or go to Costco. I haven’t watched an NFL game in years.