owbc

I have a system that does about 10-11 MWh of annual production. It came with the house that I bought so I don't know how much it cost but I valued it at about $50K given that it's costing me $0 and saving maybe $2K of annual utility costs (with that number likely to go up in the future). So much of the install cost is associated with getting the permits, metering, electricians, labor, etc. Panels are cheap. They put a new roof on the house when they installed these panels in 2022, I assume in 15-20 years I'll need a new roof and when that happens it will just make sense to throw the panel replacement in with the roof replacement since they will need to be taken down anyway.

The idea that the St. Louis is a comparable market to Milwaukee is a new concept that just emerged in the post-RSN era. St. Louis outspent us by $70 million in 2024. They've had access to ~$50 million more than us in RSN revenue for a long time. That advantage has now evaporated and they suddenly have no more spending power than we do and possibly less. Imagine telling a Brewers fan 10 years ago that in a decade the Brewers would be dominating the NL Central and the Cardinals would be rebuilding and in worse financial shape. 2026 will be the first year since the Brewers moved to the NL that they will have a higher payroll than the Cardinals on Opening Day. I agree with you and TPlush that the big boys running away from everyone else is a huge problem. MLB is going to suffer. The deferred salaries will make this hard to fix. But some fixes will get implemented. Change will happen. The changes will likely benefit us. In the interim though we are very well positioned. We are thriving. We don't have to worry about our divisional competition overtaking us with a spending binge. We will continue to be a financially healthy organization and continue to win division championships. We will get our $20 million from the MLB TV deal like everyone else.

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/st-louis-cardinals/news/cardinals-get-brutal-40-million-update-after-new-tv-deal-mlb/aa72cd80821367f81f997d3a More good news for the Brewers — the Cardinals are expected to receive just $20 million from their TV deal with MLB, down from the $60 million they received last year.

The known biases of the projection systems are baked into betting lines. People won't be fooled again. The Brewers won't surprise anyone paying attention when their o/u is 89.5 wins. However, they've hit 90 three years in a row, so smart money would be on the 'over' again.

I don't think you are appreciating how revolutionary it is that 20+ out of the 30 markets are in the same boat on local TV revenue. Local TV revenue is the #1 reason why we're stuck in the bottom 10 of payrolls despite being 12th in attendance, getting extra postseason revenue, etc. The Brewers are bringing in record high TV revenue right now because of the national contracts. The local revenue is worth less than 25% of our TV revenue income. Our one and only interest is to secure more revenue sharing. I'm of the viewpoint that more instability is a good thing. Of course the Dodgers are going to fight tooth and nail to preserve their revenue. Deferring the money is surely part of that strategy ("We can't possibly change the system or we'll be broke!"). We are not going to win a pennant until there is a major disruptive change. 2025 was our ceiling in the current financial system. We need the ability to spend more RELATIVE to other teams.

I think it's wild that you would defend a system that gives the Dodgers nearly a half a billion dollars of more annual revenue per year. With that system specifically enabling them to sweep us in the NLCS because of all of the deferred salaries. Our local TV revenue is not going to be $0. It has exactly the same value that it had a month ago. Manfred has explained where this is going. We're now in a group of 13 MLB teams with local rights that are owned by MLB with that number likely to increase. MLB is going to package all of them and sell at once and we will receive an equal share, with no blackout restrictions. We're going to be getting way more than $20 million/year when that deal is signed and we won't be at a financial disadvantage with anyone else in that package. We're not the ones in financial doo doo. It's our competition. Look at Minnesota's situation. Look at Houston -- how many big contracts have they signed lately despite being the #6 TV market? St. Louis is in a rebuild. Atlanta has fallen off a cliff. Detroit can't afford to extend Skubal. We are heading toward a world where we will be close to a level playing field with mid-market teams that used to have a huge advantage over us. Once that happens, the momentum will be there to chip away at the big boys. I don't think it will happen in the upcoming CBA. More likely in 5-10 years. But it will happen eventually and we're way closer to that reality than we were 5 years ago.

I guess the Cards are in full rebuild mode now, this move was essentially punting the next two years. Cijntje was just showcased at the Mariners’ fan fest over the weekend…that call must have been quite a shock. I wonder if the Cardinals will have him switch pitch, it sounded like Seattle was going to have him focus on being a RHP.

Two reasons why this is unequivocally good for us: 1. We had the lowest local TV revenue in MLB, so if everyone drops by 50%, it means that we are closing the revenue gap relative to the competition. We had the least to lose from the old system. 2. Killing the RSN paradigm moves us closer to a world where local TV revenue will be shared equally amongst all the teams. That world is the one where the Brewers will be on a level playing field. In the interim, we'll have a situation where roughly 20/30 teams are stuck with MLB and the other 10 will be printing ginormous sums of money from their local TV contracts. In the past, we were stuck in last place because the mid-market teams were aligned with the big markets and nobody cared about the small markets. Now we're in a situation where the mid-markets and even some of the fairly large markets are on our side, fighting for a piece of the juicy RSN pie that the Dodgers/Yankees/etc are earning. That will bode well for us moving forward. For 2026, streaming Brewers games will be $19.99/month on the MLB app like it is for everyone else in this situation.

Hooray, we’re free!

The same debate is going on in my Mariners fan circle because they passed on Suarez in favor of Ben Williamson who is a 25 year old Joey Ortiz-style defensive specialist. Williamson in 2025: 295 PA, .253 BA, .604 OPS Durbin is better than Williamson so the Mariners would have valued Suarez as a more valuable add than the Brewers and they still didn't bite at 1/15. Suarez has been a plus defender historically. He still looked average to me in 2025 and I think you could assume average defense again in 2026. It's pretty clear that everyone ran the numbers and reached the same conclusion. Geno is one of the streakiest hitters on the planet. He went on a crazy bender with Arizona last year and then was god awful in Seattle, striking out 35% of the time. One critical grand slam in the playoffs justified the entire trade from Seattle's perspective.

It does suck to lose Freddy. Many fanbases are celebrating their additions and we’re talking about the subtraction of our #1 starter. That said…trade Burnes, win 93 and 97 in the following two seasons. Now our farm system is arguably #1 in MLB. Small markets aren’t supposed to be able to maintain success like this. I wouldn’t bet against us to win the NL Central again this year. What I would like to see is for us to use our prospect capital to make a good deadline addition.

It's TACO...for now...

Betting markets have it at about 75% TACO, 25% serious. So not as confidently TACO as one would hope...

I'm glad to see both of them get in. Also happy to see Felix Hernandez make a big jump. Ryan Braun (3.5%) falls off the ballot after failing to reach the 5% threshold. His career 47.2 bWAR, ROY, and MVP would have made for an interesting borderline case, but a PED admission is an automatic disqualification in the eyes of most voters.

Seeing “big market” fans complain about being poor melts my heart. Welcome to the club! Nobody listened to the cries of the true small markets for decades but now that Astros and Yankees fans feel poor we suddenly need a salary cap.

Agreed that salary cap is a pipe dream. The Brewers operate as a mid-market team salary wise, so I think they have a lot to lose if the ~10-12 teams that are consistently below them in payroll are given more resources or are forced to spend more. Equal sharing of ALL TV revenue is the dream, both local and national. We're moving into a two-tiered system with a few rich teams having a separate revenue stream from an RSN and everyone else fighting for scraps.

Seeing all the empty red seats in St. Louis is going to be delightful.

You have to assume that if Freddy is on the roster on the day that pitchers and catchers report in mid-February that we're taking the comp pick. They would have to be in real deep doo doo to be in a position where the clubhouse and fans would accept a sell deal at the deadline. It's much easier politically to make the move now, even if the return isn't much different than it would be at the end of July.

The Brewers are so smart in the timing of these things. Right when the top free agents are off the board, fans are thinking about buying tickets for 2026, and the media is putting out articles on offseason grades. All they have to do is look up the mid-to-large markets with "D" or "F" grades and tight pocketbooks and dangle that carrot. New York, Baltimore, Boston, etc....you know how antsy your fans are right now, they are mad that you didn't purchase a $200M free agent! What if I told you that for the cost of almost nothing (except a couple of young, controllable major leaguers that you are probably undervaluing), that you could have a #1 ace, get your fans pumped for 2026, and embrace "win now" mode! Meanwhile, Brewers fans will just collectively shrug their shoulders, knowing that management will find a way to be selling excess pitching by July again.

How often do we see a contract like this where the happiest day for the fanbase is the day the signing is announced and then it’s all downhill from there? Theres not a whole lot of upside in this contract. Bregman ain’t gonna have a career year at 32. If they are lucky they get their 3-4 WAR/year, but Cubs’ ownership didn’t magically become free spenders and they deferred salary to avoid the luxury tax. They are done spending.

They've wanted to do it for ages but there's always been 2-3 franchises involved in some sort of stadium/ownership problems and they need to dangle the threat of relocation for stadium negotiations. Now that the Las Vegas stadium is under construction and the Rays have a viable future in Tampa/Orlando, they have their eyes set on growth again. Especially since billionaires have plenty of money sitting around these days and there are a number of potential ownership grounds showing interest. I don't know that it will happen immediately, but I bet they have 32 teams playing by 2035.

32 with geographic realignment is long overdue.

The quarterfinals changed my view on the expanded playoff. Wow is it refreshing to see the scheduling and rankings biases exposed.

Crazy that we're a laughingstock during a time when the Big Ten is far and away the best football conference. At the current rate, the only way they might lose a bowl game is when two B10 teams are playing each other in the playoff. Edit: never mind, USC lost

The next step is clearly to decouple the athletics departments from the rest of the university. Money should not flow between the sports and academic sides of the university. Money probably shouldn't even flow from football to other sports except to cover shared expenses. As was previously mentioned here, my hope is that college football eventually splits from the NCAA and becomes its own league that competes with the NFL. Ideally the rest of the collegiate sports remain in the NCAA and go back to the traditional geographically-based conference alignment. But I wonder if that's even possible given NIL money is going to pretty much every sport these days.