gehringer_2

The conventional wisdom on this has run a bit past the actual numbers. The East is a grand total of 9 games under 500 to the west after about 300 interdivisional games. That's a little more than 1/2 loss per team or about a 48/52 winning percentage split.

I don't know if it's still possible to vote our way out, but for damn sure we voted our way in.

Ausar ended up on Jokic on the Nuggets 2nd to last possession and he just took it to the hoop like Ausar wasn't even there. Good Peter Principle example.

how many hundred years ago did Adam Smith describe the "tragedy of the commons"?

A couple of things I noted. I thought it reinforced that the org was moving too slow because they wanted to give people a chance to get with the new program instead of just cleaning house. The other thing fans should hear was the bit about how teams have to certify to the commissioners office that they have the revenue, not just the assets, to cover the expenses they've taken on. And maybe thirdly that under the ilitches, they don't budget for what they decide to sign, they sign up to what they've already budgeted.

"We have met the enemy, and He is Us." --Pogo, 1972

Yup. It's should be pretty obvious to anyone who has their eyes open, but the population is economically illiterate. The idea that capitalism is a real thing with moving parts and good and bad properties and sets of predictable outcomes is miles over the head of the average American who is conditioned to never think about these things in more than misty 10sec slogan sound bites. And there are billions of dollars being spent in every political cycle to create enough confusion to make sure the public stays just as ignorant as it is now. So we reach a point where even Joe 6 pack has realized the system is failing him, but he doesn't know why or how or what should be done about it. So you end up with a lot of very mad but very gullible voters.

capitalism is inherently concentrative. You can always make better investments when you can make bigger investments and capital will always concentrate. That's a feature. So if you don't want to end up in a banana republic, you need to support strongly progressive taxation and robust government expenditure on human investment and inheritance taxes. This is not a matter of political philosophy, it's a matter of economic reality. Of course, it is also one that the rich do their damndest to obfuscate by casting it wrongly as a matter of free market philosophy and personal liberty, and at that they have been extremely successful since 1980.

can't easily sculpt a ball in mid air though. Maybe if you put it all in a big magnetic field.....

or that they all even agree on whether they want to play together. (Sttrangely enough I've been rereading The Brothers Karamazov, so I'm in a mode to question all fraternal claims....😉)

They're just thinking ahead. It will make perfect sense when the NFL has gone to 24 games and the Superbowl is in April. SPTTINSTATMF (somepeoplethinkthereisnosuchthingastoomuchfootball)

but that's the other twist here. Lets say the Devils look like they aren't going to be very good going forward and you are the team that signs Quinn to a 6 or 7 yr deal. Is he then going to spend all his energy lobbying you to bring in his bros from NJ as their contracts expire? Is that going to be good for your team? Are you going to do it even if if isn't to keep your star happy? It's all speculation but it's just another thing that needs to at least be in the back of your mind if you decide to deal with a guy with siblings in the league who has already said he wants to play with them.

are they up against the salary minimum?

look again. if that hand looks white to you, you spend a lot of time in places a lot sunnier than MN.

Inside baseball. Look at the hand at the 30 sec mark. The women may have been white, but the guy flipping off the car whose voice you are probably hearing is black. If you are white, you don't get to comment on the use of the word between blacks. That's just the way it is.

They aren't quite the same kind of player - which probably makes them a better pair. I don't think Edvinsson can match Seider's wheels. Mortitz is an exceptional skater for a big man so wouldn't see Simon matching what Moritz can do as high man on the PP for instance, but I agree he's becoming a real force. Good stick and he's gotten to be a very tough match for anyone to take on at the boards.

HaHa- they get the 2 least likely points of the 10 available in the 5 games before the break.

I am not putting an antenna back up on my house. OTOH, I'll be thrilled to dump DirectTV if I can get the Tigers somewhere else.

3b is Keith's. The only question is whether he can close his platoon split down closer to where it was in '24 (when he had no platoon split) and play there full time, or whether he'll remain on the long side of a platoon there. I'll aslo disagree with a lot of the apparent consensus that assumes Baez is going to fall back to utility status. I don't think that is likely. I think the probabilities are highest he ends up nearly fully time, though possibly with a lot of his PA's coming as the CF if McGonigle make the team.

FWIW: this from the freep today: MLB media getting into the hockey biz?

we have mark sense ballots and machine readers. The ballots all get collected in the base of the reader as permanent records. The funny thing is we've had these for years now, and there is a privacy sleeve the ballot goes in so you can carry it over to the reader and feed it in, but the sleeves have never actually worked so you could feed the ballots in without having to pretty much take them out first - defeating the purpose - and that part never changes. the biggest virtue of this system is that recounts are really easy as you can just run the ballots through another reader for verification.

Kids nowadays......

really, what's more boring that another post about how boring this off-season has been. ...what?..wait....nevermind.

tell you what, if in this environment, Hakim Jeffries isn't clever enough to find a way to peel one rep off the other side, it will go down in history as a real fail of democratic party leadership.

It's more than that though. There is internal pressure from other owners. Owners don't want any of their brethren to operate at a loss even if they could afford to because it undermines franchise values across the board, and the loss of a franchise to financial failure is at this point is considered too traumatic to allow. The ownership club would much rather have franchises like the Athletics just limp along as 2nd class citizens than let them get over-extended and have to shut them down or worse, take on their liabilities.