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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.

The way I see it is that MLB's profits or lack thereof are not of concern to the fans. We as fans simply have to look at the price and value of the various products being offered and choose what to consume. If MLB as a whole loses 10% or 20% or 30% of its revenue and value because of the RSN collapse, it means nothing to the fans. They are always going to try and maximize revenue no matter what. At the end of the day, they are going to resolve their differences and play 162 every year. And all 162 are going to be available on some sort of platform. They can try to squeeze more money out of loyal fans, but fans will continue to have the option of pirating the games or simply not consuming the product. And they can't go too far, or like you say, they risk become a niche entertainment offering. The product itself is as good as ever and there are plenty of seats at the ballpark. It seems to me like some MLB owners are still in denial about the RSN collapse. The amount of money that the Dodgers are spending depends on their RSN continuing to exist. Others are finding that with one push of the button, Comcast can move them to a premium tier and a huge fraction of the subscriber revenue evaporates overnight. Again, too bad. I've said this before, but perhaps the one aspect where I do care about MLB's revenue is regarding the Brewers' revenue with respect to the rest of MLB. And the Brewers got royally f***ed in the RSN era, so things can only get better for them from here. I predict that the Dodgers' RSN will fail and they will be forced into a massive salary dump by the end of the decade.

Nobody is saying that lithium mines are a panacea but they are certainly better than oil extraction and refinement. Showing these "scary" pictures shouldn't sway anyone. The water numbers sound bad until you do the math. A Tesla battery uses about 150 lbs of lithium, so one metric ton of lithium is enough for 16 EVs, over the entire life of the EV, so 31,000 gallons of water for 1 EV. Meanwhile, 1 barrel of oil is estimated to take 1,850 gallons of water to extract and refine, so if you assume a 50 mpg car uses 70 barrels of oil in its lifetime, that's 130,000 gallons of water. Obviously there are other components besides lithium that go into EV batteries, but my point is that it's probably a wash at best. And it's really about the CO2 emissions more than water, and EVs obviously save a huge amount of CO2, even if you are burning fossil fuels to generate the electricity because power plants are way more efficient than cars.

Parts is also a huge one. They will eventually be able to ditch many of their parts suppliers. It also will help that we found lithium deposits everywhere once we started looking for them.

The Volvo XC-40 has better cold weather battery performance than Tesla in my opinion. The XC-40 is pretty popular on the west coast but if they make a longer range XC-40 and get the price down a bit it will sell like crazy. I can understand why people would prefer a RAV-4 right now. It's worth noting that one of the reasons that Detroit is so pro-EV is that EVs are soon going to be cheaper to manufacture than ICE vehicles, which could be quite lucrative from a profits perspective.

Good thing in never gets cold in Norway, where EVs are now 90% of new vehicle sales. (81% full EV, 9% PHEV). Most people weigh cost vs convenience. Gas is roughly $8/gallon in Norway. So it isn't surprising that the US states with the most expensive gas prices are the ones that have gotten to around 20% of new vehicle sales being EVs. Which is honestly pretty incredible given they were a fraction of 1% just a few years ago.

I got a Tesla in December and have been driving it around in 10-20 degree weather this week in Seattle and haven't charged it a single time. Range is maybe 20% reduced but everybody knows that EV range is reduced in winter. It's still getting well over 200 mile range. No idea how it performs below zero...probably further reduced range but it doesn't get that cold here. Might be a bigger concern in the Midwest but my parents have an ID4 that they've been driving around in Milwaukee without any problems this week. All I'm saying is that it doesn't make the news when ICE cars have to get towed because they don't start in the cold, but Tesla owners having trouble with supercharging (due to user error) is suddenly a news story???

Thankfully ICE engines work perfectly in the cold and never have any problems starting on cold mornings!