owbc

Inject those Counsell shots into my veins.

Several NHL teams have switched to free broadcasts in the last year or two. Vegas and now Utah come to mind. Seattle also recently announced they are dropping out of the Mariners' RSN and will be free over the air locally and free regionally on Prime (no added cost). Of course any national broadcasts will still require subscribing to other services. The common denominator for now seems to be relatively new franchises (or relocated teams) who need to build a fanbase, as well as a sport like the NHL where local broadcast revenue is quite small. That is why I'm hopeful the Brewers will be one of the first in MLB to make their broadcasts free, since the Bally contract isn't exactly lucrative and it would be to their advantage to get more eyeballs on their broadcasts.

I’ll just say that many in the weather community feel this way as well. In my opinion we’ve moved beyond the time that humans at the weather service should be manually drawing warning polygons that trigger these alerts. The technology is there to make them much smaller and more targeted with more automation.

Will the bat speed data be one of the rare analytics that helps hitters more than pitchers? Or will pitchers just use this information to further exploit hitters who have slow and/or long swings?

I would put it in the "very good but not elite" category for now (top 5-10 in MLB). I could see them regressing to "above average" (top 10-15 in MLB) but they are certainly no worse than that.

Not to be a Counsell defender but he had his hands tied today with their bullpen availability. I don't think today is the day he's going to get grilled by the media.

Cubs fans are not enamored with Counsell's bullpen management LOL.

Old school baseball. Love it.

MVP

It's hard to hate on Counsell because he's clearly a nice guy and a good person, but I also hope his tenure in Chicago is a complete disaster. He's going to get rightfully booed in Milwaukee, but I don't think the boos are going to be as angry and passionate as other villains like Manny Machado. At least not after the first series.

Mets fans have basically blamed this one on Alonso's poor sliding ability. It's not the first time.

It's intentional. They are copying the Oakland A's playbook to lobby for a new stadium/relocation.

He's probably glad that he doesn't have to deal with this umpiring crew again today.

Yeah it's pretty brutal, especially with how he was raking to start the year. He's already a hall of famer if he retires tomorrow, but I agree that it's disappointing to see that he won't get as high up the career WAR rankings as he could have gotten.

Astros DFA Jose Abreu and he's actually accepting the assignment. I didn't know it was mathematically possible to have a negative OPS+

The forum is certainly on the quiet side this year. I thought there might be a bump from the site purchase but it seems like it's just kind of chugging along as it has been. Which I agree is not necessarily a bad thing. I just don't think there is much in the way of growth potential there, old school forums aren't exactly a preferred medium for young people and the IGT is never going to compete with the likes of /r/brewers. But those of us who do participate tend to be big forum fans which is what keeps us coming back year after year. So I would say that making major changes has little upside and potentially significant downside. I would vote to let it chug along. There is the option of considering a medium other than a forum -- this has been done in the past, for instance there were a couple years when we had a fairly active chatroom (maybe 10-15+ years ago) that had more traffic than the IGT. Maybe discord is the modern equivalent of that?

I'm fine with him OPSing in the .600-.650 range all season with regular playing time. I suspect he'll climb above .700 by the all-star break. If not, then we can re-evaluate, especially if we are in contention and there is a better option.

2:04, which matches the fastest Brewers game of 2023. The games tend to get longer as the season goes on and offense increases. Today might end up being the fastest of 2024.

Doesn't matter how good your offense is, you have to be able to win close games. Especially to prevent a couple of bad games from snowballing. Great stuff.

Chance to steal a win here.

I said we got what we paid for. If we needed something better than a .650 OPS then we shouldn't have signed a guy with a sub-.700 career OPS. Not defending Melvin at all here, all I'm saying is that Yuni B showed up every day to play in 2011 with a positive attitude and put up a performance that was right in line with his career averages. I liked his smile. He seemed like a good teammate. One look at the guy told you he wasn't born to be a shortstop, but he just did what was asked of him.

That's a shame. I loved the guy, he seemed so happy go lucky despite being the worst regular starter on the 2011 team. Never really understood the hate for him, we got exactly what we paid for. Oh well, we'll always have his home run in game 1 of the NLCS. (I had apparently blocked out of my memory that we brought him back in 2013 and somehow let him accumulate -2.7 bWAR...)

Nobody can accuse this team of not pouring it on.

We'll know something fishy is up when Ohtani decides to retire from baseball and play basketball for the LA Clippers.

This is a pretty nice summary (from /r/baseball on reddit): The prosecutors presented the evidence they have against Mizuhara: Ippei set up Ohtani's bank account for him since his arrival to the US. Ippei was the one responsible for making all purchases for Shohei to help him get settled in the country. Within a few years, Mizuhara changed the settings on Ohtani's account and linked it to his phone. He has had full access to Ohtani's accounts since that time. Prosecutors have forensic computer evidence in the form of IP addresses and location data that show all transfers and bets came from Ippei's house and devices. -Prosecutors have multiple call recordings with Ippei and the bank where Mizuhara is pretending to be Ohtani and is authorizing large wire transfers -Prosecutors confiscated both Ohtani and Ippei's phones. They read every txt message and communication sent between the two over 7 years. There were zero instances where betting or wiring money ever came up. There are thousands of messages between Ippei and the bookmaker, including texts where Ippei admits to stealing from Shohei -All of the gambling winnings that Ippei made were transferred into his own bank account and not Ohtanis -The bookmaker has admitted to prosecutors under oath that he knew Ohtani was not a client and that Ippei admitted the truth to him. -Ippei didn't just steal money for gambling but for multiple other leisure purchases, including over 325k to buy baseball cards on ebay -Prosecutors have every bet slip that was made with the bookmaker. They number in the tens of thousands. Ippei did not make any bets on baseball. Ohtani did not make any bets at all nor was he aware of Ippei's betting.