gehringer_2

She doesn't look at all like one but this is common trait in sled dogs/nordics. They may go get a ball once, after that it's "I brought it back for you once, why did you lose it again?" or they go get it and just keep it so you can't lose it again.

but which part is questionable? I was only interested in AAV calc. In Ohtani's case the payment structure has been pretty widely publicized. The other notable thing is that as huge as Ohtani's deal seems, if you took them both all back to 2008 dollars we probably paid Cabrera almost as much. IF Ohtani can return to the mound he's a bargain.

this is the interesting question. Assume you have a RHH at 1b whether it's Torkelson or a replacement - then what? You are playing Keith, Greene, Meadows pretty much full time and you hope you are playing Jung full time, and Carpenter is playing against RHP. So that leaves C and SS and those are about the hardest spots to find a power bat and a good RH OF is not going to want to come here to take the short side of a platoon with Carpenter. The hardheaded thing to do is trade Carpenter and find an everyday RH power OF.

Here is Ohtani's Spotrac page. Sportrac says the AAV for the playing years is found by taking the Net Present Value of the total contract and dividing it by the playing years (the first ten in this case). The NPV of the $700M over 20yrs is $461M so the AAV is $46M/yr. I'm not sure what the luxury tax numbers in the deferred part the chart are supposed to mean. They don't say what interest rate is used and I haven't bothered to try and back it out but $461M seems like a reasonable NPV for that deal. (EDIT: the int rate for the NPV calc is just a hair over 3.0% or more likely exactly 3% and there is some fee or adjustment not in my calc) https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/player/_/id/24661/shohei-ohtani NPV Table for Ohtani contract: intRate 3.00% Year Yearly Payout NPV 1 2,000,000 2,000,000 2 2,000,000 1,941,748 3 2,000,000 1,885,192 4 2,000,000 1,830,283 5 2,000,000 1,776,974 6 2,000,000 1,725,218 7 2,000,000 1,674,969 8 2,000,000 1,626,183 9 2,000,000 1,578,818 10 2,000,000 1,532,833 11 68,000,000 50,598,386 12 68,000,000 49,124,647 13 68,000,000 47,693,832 14 68,000,000 46,304,691 15 68,000,000 44,956,011 16 68,000,000 43,646,612 17 68,000,000 42,375,352 18 68,000,000 41,141,118 19 68,000,000 39,942,833 20 68,000,000 38,779,450 total 700,000,000 462,135,150

the other question is whether the Yankees even care how far over the threshold they are - the franchise has money to burn.

I suppose, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes to me to go big with a young player than go half way with an older one. I just think you are more likely to get burned in the latter case. To many guys don't really hit at all after 31/32. You might get burned worse if the young guy comes down with some career ender, but you are so much more more likely to get a good number of good years I think the total value vs dollars risk is going to be lower overall. Seems counter intuitive to spend more to get less risk, but that's how I would go. Plus given a steady 2.5% inflation, the last year on a 10yr deal for an unproductive player comes at a 28% discount, that time discount at 6 yrs is only 16%.

Really don't like the college setup. I'll take the current NFL scheme any time. Sudden death after each team has had the ball once makes sense to me and if you get steam rolled for a TD on the opening drive, that's a decent justification to lose as well.

Tracy Smith. His prior stop was ASU. Spenser Torkelson comes to us courtesy of Tracy Smith.

Bregman will be 31 next season. I don't want to go more than 2yrs - 3 max for guy at 31 and that almost certainly won't land him. Soto is a pipe dream, but coming up on his age 26 season he's only one year older than when they took on Cabrera and Cabrera's 1st contract value was fine. You might get 8+ good years from Soto. By the end of a deal that long it won't seem so bad even if he's fallen off.

there are all kinds of questions there. Harbaugh was strange, but was that part of what worked for him or was it really just that any ex-NFL QB/NFL Superbowl Head coach is going to have so much cred with young players that his eccentricities aren't going to hurt him? So does Moore need to communicate differently - you betcha. But at the same time there is nothing he can do to have Harbaugh's NFL resume, so it's about as apples and oranges as it can be.

that was weird. Collinsworth obviously forgot the rules. Tirico just ignored it.

jack has made 25 starts in 5 of 7 full seasons, and both years since the injury - he's actually reasonably healthy for a modern pitcher. But not to worry - Chas is right - we won't see him back.

and I'm already PO'd at Subaru because every time you start the car the radio turns on.

Darth Vader's light saber is extinguished. James Earl Jones has passed away at 93. https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2024/09/09/james-earl-jones-dead-star-wars-lion-king/75149628007/

Lions once had a guy named Bill Munson - could throw a football through a brick wall. He wasn't very good either.

I miss Tampa being a divisional rival. 4 team divisions are too small.

LOL! 3/12 hip actually but it is due in the next couple of years!

The difficulty with hiring any assistant is that the way most teams are structured, assistants all have a piece but are seldom involved in everything - so until they succeed or fail as a head coach it's damn hard to know if there is some gaping hole in their skill set that is going to doom them in the top job even if they were all world in the piece they were doing. OTOH, if you pick right, you get younger, more energetic (and cheaper!) coach and set yourself up for a longer run than if you shop the used head coach rack. So it's lower cost risk, lower floor, but potentially high ceiling. And part of it is they are keeping their options open given the likelihood of change. Why put $100M+ on the table to a guy like State did (and just barely escaped from) if you don't know if he's going to be a good fit for where things are in 3 yrs? Maybe you hire the best recruiter in the country and then we end up with a HS draft? Buddha likes May, and that's cool, but he and Moore are still both hedged bets.

One of the things that players have said about Harbaugh as a coach was that he had a nearly infinite attention to fine detail. One of the things you notice immediately with Warren is that he just hands off the ball. JJ did a fake/feint on every single handoff. How much difference does that make? Maybe none 99.9% of the time (esp since he doesn't run much), but if it holds one LB a few milliseconds one time, it's worth doing because it's completely free. Just a detail. Moore should be at least be in a little better situation compared to when Lloyd retired because Harbaugh and 'his people' won't still be around sniping!

it dovetails with the Dusty May hire in the sense that there was no idea to make a high profile, high cost, higher risk hire. Retrenchment.

you can make a reasonable argument that he was cut off at the knees out of the box because of he was hired so late - so next year will be his real recruiting test, and realistically, where the team is two years after that - if they give him that long.

TBF on this point - when you have zero deep threat, both because your QB has not demonstrated he has any accuracy deep and because you don't have any receivers that have proven jump ball take away skill, that is going to leave the middle pretty clogged up for the TE passing game. JJ was a singular level talent who could look the D off his TE and then come back and deliver an accurate high speed ball to him in close coverage. I think the UM TE game was always as much about what JJ could do as anything else. Harbaugh would bring in grad transfers for the o-line, and coupled with the COVID eligibility extension they ended up with a really old O-Line - which is a great strategy if you can work it. Older is almost always better for O-Linemen. It is a good question why Moore appears to be going the opposite way.

US Gasoline consumption peaked in 2017 (https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mgfupus1&f=a) The combination of fuel economy standards, EVs, remote work etc, will all continue to steadily push consumption down in the future. Refiner's will give up margin to keep refineries running at efficient capacity factors. It's not going to be a pretty future if you run oil refineries. That's why the "majors" have sold off so much refining capacity to independents recently, who will have no assets to go after for clean-up after they go bust and walk away from messes left behind.

The Fed rate cut could help a lot - not because it will make much economic impact on voters other than those house shopping, but because the cut will get a lot of press and the press will be that rates were cut because inflation is down.

IDK - the public's perception of economic conditions lags a lot. Prices might have been stable for two years but you go to buy a car and then you get the sticker shock well after the fact. Surveys have also shown that people simply to do not see the raises they get during inflationary times as the counter balance to price rises. Universally people still see raises as relating to their personal worth and not as part of general economic re-adjustment. Just stupid human nature. I could be wrong, maybe it will cut no water with people, but I think the dem's best case is don't try to minimize or deny inflation - make the case they it was factors beyond all control and then show that affected the whole world and that the US/Biden admin did better than any one else with it.