sabretooth

I think sabr people as a rule place far too much emphasis on avoiding costs and far too little emphasis on winning. I'm really tired of some in the analytical community and their wannabes sounding like shills for cheap-*** owners. If that's changing I would welcome it.

Most good relievers in any given year weren't so good the year before, are good for that one year, then not so good the next. Really good teams know how to grab/tinker/milk/discard the one-year guys. Usually by getting them to improve their slider and use it a lot, then their arms wear out throwing it too much. Sometimes it's more bread-and-butter like helping them locate their 4-seamer, which for most relievers seems to be a here today gone tomorrow proposition.

I agree with everything but the accident part, as least as far as "good" bullpens go. It takes a lot of luck to go have a **great** bullpen like the 2006 Tigers, but they had a pretty good bullpen after 2006 because they did a pretty good job drafting/scouting/developing/trading/releasing guys, better than they did before 2006. My point is that if the Tigers want to win, they need to do more than grab castoffs, chant the name of Chris Fetter, and pray for luck. And just because FA relievers are more risky than position players, doesn't mean that they are not needed/worth it (they are needed, to some extent), or that some of them aren't reliable (some of them are). We should aspire to become the Rays and Cards and Astros, who do a really good job at developing bullpens without spending much $$....but unless we become one of them (we might, but I really doubt it with AA at the helm), we are going to need to acquire a reliable FA reliever or maybe two in order to become a winning team.

Simple, because that post with your lede: "Hey, now this could be interesting" in the context of the disucssion reasonably means "this is possible". I don't know why you are aggravated by my *"guess"* that you feel this is possible. I didn't mean anything personal by it I assure you. My original response to your Bernie post was laughing at Bernie for calling other people oligarchs. You asked me to clarify and I did. I'm going to honor Biff's request on this by stopping public discussion in this thread on the topic of Bernie. As I said, I really don't have any personal stake or interest in the anti-trust matter, that wasn't what piqued my interest....so while that topic is certainly appropriate for this thread, it's not interesting enough for me to go further about it. Cheers

I will honor Biff's request to drop the subject, but to answer your question, no, I didn't "wait"...I simply didn't see your post until this morning.

If Sanders and Congress are willing and able to undo the MLB antitrust exemption, then by definition that would mean that they have more power than 30+ billionaires. I don't know if they have the will and capacity to do that, but the fact that it's an open question in my mind is what I'm talking about. You may feel that the above is impossible. My guess is that Chaz feels that it is definitely possible.

I was being sarcastic, but really, Sanders gets to toss that term around about baseball owners but we can't apply it to him, huh? Sanders is arguably the figurehead leader of a powerful and ascendant political movement whose principle aim is to vastly expand the power of government beyond it's already massive scope, and he is one of a small/elite class of 50 US Senators -- in his case, he will have that Senate seat as long as he wants it. He is also chair of the Budget Committee now, with significant influence over direct US government outlays equal to 1/4th to 1/3rd of the largest economy in the world. That is enormous power wielded by a member of an uber-elite class. No amount of ill-fitting clothing, funky mittens, or bad hair can change that 😃 A struggle between Sanders and MLB owners would be a struggle between uber-wealthy and uber-powerful people (yes, yes, he's a lot less wealthy, but a lot more powerful)....you want to cast it as class warfare, an extension of the class warfare that you have consistently imposed regarding the division of billions between the MLB owners and the players. I get it, you dislike and distrust people who have amassed wealth and power, unless apparently they accomplish this feat as life-long liberal politicians, or athletes, then it's awesome. I pretty much don't give a damn about any of them one way or another, though it should surprise nobody if I say that I don't like Sanders' political agenda (putting aside the MLB anti-trust issue completely for a moment), because I think ihs agenda is bad for the country and for the larger world. For what it's worth, I don't have a strong opinion about the anti-trust issue, but I don't trust that Sanders represents my interests or those of the public in this case or pretty much any case.

LOL....takes an oligarch to know one I guess.

Awesome

YES

Dude, this is the funniest thing I have ever seen

Damn straight I will move on. What the bleep should any fan care about how these guys divide up these billions? I am just amazed at how some good people can insist that there exists a kind of moral agency on the part of fans to defend the interests of ballplayers, like they are starving waifs or refugees or the princess from the Kingsmen movie.

Why do I get the feeling that the owners want to shed themselves of unprofitable early-season games

whoops, sorry 🙂

You didn't mention the NL-to-AL dropoff effect, which usually impacts hitters significantly/negatively, at least for their 1st year. Miggy had one of his worst years (before he aged and was injured) in 2008.

yeah, the use of the word socialism in the context of describing MLB is strictly an ad hominem effort to discredit any argument made based on free market principles. Also, the MLB anti trust exemption shouldnt exist, but if were the cause of the MLBs predominance in baseball, that wouldnt explain how the NBA, NHL and NFL got to the same relative position in their respective sports without the exemption.

...all of this over some stupid unwritten rule BS....Howard should be upset at himself for the state of this team, not projecting his problems on other coaches. Unwritten rules are excuses for losers to act self-righteous as if the violation of the unwritten rule somehow overshadows their failure.

I agree....I have loved the Howard hiring from day 1, and I was shocked at his outbursts before, but this is insane...in a short period of time he has turned into Bobby Knight without the legendary results....and frankly results don't matter to me when a coach is lashing out like this repeatedly. He needs to go. I realize this will suck for U/M basketball on several levels, but I cannot cheer for a guy who thinks he can physically threaten people when he gets upset about something. I realize that Gard grabbed him, but it was very momentary, and Howard grabbed Gard's sweatshirt and started to yank Gard towards himself like he was going to jack him up. Then they were separated and Howard had plenty of chance to reset himself or walk away, and instead Howard lunged back several times and swung his hand. Just insane. Howard needs to go.

That is a real shame.

Those LA fans are predictably chill...can you imagine if that were Detroit? Lions fans would be apoplectic at a Championship.

Yeah, WCFS might have viewed the people around him as abstractions, he seemed almost autistic in his lack of comprehension about his role in making the Lions successful for the region and legion of fans, and almost relished his prickly/aloof relationship with the public. FWIW, WCFS never struck me as a gimlet-eyed businessman who tried screwed people over.....more as an incompetent heir who wanted people to respect him and wanted a legacy, but could never do the right things to make his one signature venture, the Lions, work as a winning franchise. Despite his historic incompetency vis-a-vis winning, the Lions still have an amazing and loyal fan base. That's more of a compliment to the loyalty of Lions' fans than anything else, and the effect of Barry Sanders, and the investment in Ford Field, which is a very fine facility.

That's pretty cool....I was never a WCFS fan as an owner at all, but I love to hear this kind of thing. I hope he was that way generally speaking.

This is the way I see it as well.

Barry and Calvin quit with years left on their contracts. Stafford requested a trade. Huge difference. There are different owner/mgt actors in each instance and many years in between each instance too. I respect you as a thinker and individual. But I have a beef with what you are saying here. It's politically tempting to pull the lever and label some historically incompetent rich white people like the Fords (who are very unpopular around here, especially with ME) as racists. Who is likely to defend them? Especially when the black players in question are beloved and had an arguably legitimate grievance (good people differ on this point) about how they were handled. It's just so easy to go there.....that's one of the reasons why this weapon should not be used except when there is specific evidence of personal racial prejudice on the part of the accused. It's wrongheaded in my opinion in this case, absent such evidence, to assume racist intent. I am not trying to defend the Fords in any way.....I would say this about anybody in their situation, unless there was clear evidence of their bad will towards minorities. To the best of my knowledge, there is not.