gehringer_2

one could write a book on all the likely reasons for this, most of which are bad, but it would have to start in a different forum.....😉 Short version would be that I don't think the state of organized youth baseball is enough to keep MLB from becoming more niche as well.

Playing Colorado twice without him is not a happy prospect.

apples to oranges though. It's like comparing Bach to Led Zeppelin, they function in different spaces. The entertainment value in baseball doesn't follow as much from raw excitement like hockey, as from the slow tension builds the you get at times like a critical 10 pitch AB or as a pitcher starts losing command and digging himself a hole in a one run game, or whether a relief pitcher can work his way out of a 2 on no-out jam. Individual plays can be exciting but are more the icing on the cake than the main events in a baseball game. Baseball is more 'interesting' than 'exciting' - or at least a very different kind of 'exciting.'

yeah - 10 shots through 40min, Wings had better have been banking their energy for the big finish.

Exactly. I guess it must be like the sense of taste - they say some people can taste all kinds of things others can't, or raising one eyebrow, but some people just have zero sense of detail/texture for how things sound. Get a couple of them in the right executive positions and you get dumb audio decisions like pairing Rizz and Rathbun. They were doomed from the get go.

why would Putin send the money for the NRA to do that?

this is true.

"The Conference Board's long-running consumer confidence index fell 9.7 points in January, to 84.5, from a revised 94.2 in December. The steep drop was seen across both survey respondents' assessment of the present situation and their expectations for the future. The index is now below even its level at the depths of the global pandemic, when unemployment peaked at nearly 15% (it was only 4.4% in December).... .....American consumers are on edge and deeply pessimistic about the outlook, despite robust GDP growth and a relatively low overall unemployment rate." https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-macro-01172560-fb8d-11f0-8de3-51b8195e6ff0.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosmacro&stream=business It would be nice if they would just ****can GDP and start using median family income as a better national economic health marker. Axios makes it sound like people's perceptions are at odds with their reality. They most certainly are not. GDP may look good, but GDP doesn't buy anybody's groceries.

Alex Vindman announced for the FLA Senate seat

I think the world would be better off without crypto, but from an investment standpoint, Bitcoin is fundamentally no different than gold. It's a thing with a limited supply whose intrinsic value has nothing (or at least little) at all to do with the price it is traded at. Gold is only worth $5000 as long as there are people out there who believe it is, Bitcoin is worth exactly what is it as long as there are people out there that believe it is. One difference is that since culture has valued gold for thousands of years, even if the assigned value was largely cultural fantasy, you may have higher confidence that people will continue to hold their strange belief that a lump of soft yellow metal holds value beyond the price to mine it. If crypto hangs around long enough, and becomes culturally inculcated enough, then it may reach a point where people can have as much confidence in it as in gold (already has for some obviously). OTOH, if people stop believing in crypto's value, it could lose all it's value tomorrow, which could be worse for an investor than the price of gold collapsing to the price to mine it - as that does provide a floor. But on the other hand, crypto (at least Bitcoin) is better than gold in one respect, because when there is a long term run up in the price of gold, people will find ways to mine more, which will force down the inflation adjusted price while in theory, the absolute quantity of Bitcoin is supposed to be capped for all time. Between that and the cost to secure it, it means gold is seldom a good long term play. Gold fans point to gold outpacing inflation long term, but you generally have to back to before the price was controlled to see a big positive result. If you allow for the fact that the price was artificially depressed before the Bretton Woods system was abandoned and start the comparison clock in ~1980 after the inital post price control run up, total returns on gold through last year barely outpaced inflation, and since most people that own it have to pay to store it, even that increment is questionable. In any case, I don't own either, and I'd be pleasantly amused if crypto were to collapse and disappear, but while I once believed that was inevitable, I would no longer bet it will happen. The funny thing is that so many people believe this different than good old dollars. But it isn't. Crypto is not different than dollars in the sense that it's value is exactly what people believe it to be. The big difference is that since the Federal Reserve is able to control the numbers of dollars in circulation, they can actually try to keep it's value controlled (whether they do or do well can of course be argued) whereas you at the total mercy of the animal spirits of the investment mob (and/or mining discoveries in the case of gold) as to what your gold or bitcoin holdings are worth each day.

with the same guy is running both shows, the way one side is run can always inform what you can expect on the other side.

A baseball stadium is physically larger - more of it is outside where sun and weather take a their toll, it takes a bigger staff to operate, and most significantly, does not bring in anything like the outside rental income LCA does (this may be the most significant difference), A baseball team also has a bigger minor league operation, much more travel expense. So the amount of revenue left after all that is probably a lot more attractive for the Wings, which is likely what the difference it the estimated value of the two franchises reflects.

to pick up on the NHL/MLB comparison, Google tells me that the Wings generate ~$250M in revenue and the NHL salary cap is $95.5M, leaving the Wings ~$150M to cover non-salary expenses and pocket the rest. OTOH, the Tigers are estimated to have $325M in revenue and the luxury tax limit in $224M leaving ~$100M for expenses and profit, which are probably much higher for a baseball team than a hockey team. But of course the Tigers are not near the lux tax limit, payroll last season was closer to $150M, which means they had roughly $170M left after payroll. So if any/all of these numbers are anything near reality (and who really knows), I have a feeling it may not be a coincidence if the Tigers and Red Wings are operating with a relatively similar revenue-payroll number.

and it's all funny money. For all the downside excitement, if you bought Friday you are still ahead.

I don't buy the narrative that Harris has any issue with the players he inherited at all. I think he been perfectly fair and rational in how he has handled everyone in the system since he arrived - both his and the prior picks. Nobody's been dumped, there have been no fire sales , no-one has been fast tracked that didn't earn it. I think he has tried to get as much out of everyone for the purpose of winning games that he could.

I'm seeing a more complaints that the cost is pricing middle class kids out of youth hockey.

We are seeing the result of Trump having chased so many reasonably sane people that used to be in his orbit out of it. Oddly enough probably none with worse result than Ivanka, who being family was someone he would actually listen to, and who, despite being a spoiled wannabe, doesn't to seem to have inherited the Trump crazy gene. Of course that's no doubt the very reason she has gone to earth this term.

two counter points. The first was already mentioned - you can probably have Edvinsson for his whole career, you are only sure of a season and a half from Hughes. If you can remove that uncertainty you do drastically change the math - no argument there. Unless Yzerman or Vancouver tell us, we can only speculate how close they did or didn't come to what deal. But aside from that, you also have to look at differentials - who is he taking off the ice? The biggest improvements come when you replace the worst players on your roster with better ones. In this proposal you take Edvinsson off the ice, so you don't get half the incremental gain you might from taking a 2nd line forward or a 2nd or 3rd pairing Dman. Practically speaking, I believe you get better results team wise replacing a bad player with a good player, than replacing a very good player with a great one. Of course if you can replace a bad one with a great one, you are golden, but you can usually only get that when you hit on your own draft picks. All that said, I think Yzerman probably did all he could to make the for Hughes - but the cost was ending up too high.

Sort of chicken and egg though. The Wings fill the house, season-ticket holders know if they give them up they don't get good seats. It's easy to get good Tiger tickets because not enough are already taken. But attendance $$ isn't even the biggest financial driver anymore - it TV ratings. It's always reported the Tiger TV ratings are good, but either they aren't that good or the market just doesn't return enough $ out of those ratings to raise the value of the team.

you'd have thought that would have reversed with the Tigers making two consecutive trips to the playoffs, but it seems the fans have been slow to embrace this Tiger team. I don't know if that is a baseball in general problem or just something about this Tiger team, or maybe just the messed up TV access situation.

speaking of big strong Dmen, the network guys were comparing Sieder to Chris Pronger the other night. They didn't mean to be insulting but I were Moritz I'd be insulted. He's just as good and does it without being a dirty player.

IDK, in his 1st term I'd have believed this to be likely. With his increasing unhingedness, I'm less optimistic. If it does happen, it at least means he still has some connection with reality.

people love to bitch about the people mover and Q-line, which admittedly are poor shadows of what urban transit should be, but in the land General Motors you have to start somewhere.

another piece just came across my inbox about the bond markets from Axios/Bloomberg, pointing out a big shift in what is happening in Japan. Interest rates are finally starting to rise there - the long period of deflation ending. This is affecting bond markets everywhere, including the US, because the large carry trade out of Japan driven by ZIRP there was supporting bond markets everywhere, including the US.

LOL - that should send Nolan Finley right off the deep end! He wrote an OP-ED immediately after the JOA ended bitching about working for Gannett and Al Neuharth in particular. Also probably means they want to buy the other paper to close one down despite the current statements to the contrary.