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I think Carpenter is too much a platoon guy and an iron glove to be a linchpin piece for a championship team. He’s a primary DH, a fourth outfielder, and a potent bat off the bench for that kind of team. That makes him a a 400- or 450-PA platoon guy, not a 650-PA core guy. I think I’d be surprised to see a 30-year-old Carpenter be considered part of the 2028 core. I suppose Tork and Riley could be linchpin pieces but I don’t think that’s a fait accompli, especially for Tork, who still looks like he has too many holes in his game to be that guy. He has over 2,000 plate appearances across four seasons in the majors and has barely cracked 2 WAR for his whole career. That might be good enough for the Avila Tigers or even a bubble team, but not a team striving to play on Halloween. As for Riley, I think this is a pivotal year to prove he can be that consistent five-win All-Star for the next half a decade so he can be signed long-term to be a championship team leader. Dingler has potential to be a Freehan type as long as this year wasn’t his outlier. MLB didn’t think he was good enough to be listed on their Top 100 show, although that’s not super meaningful, either. If he follows up this year with the same or better, I’m gonna get awful excited. If we have those nine guys in the lineup for 2028, meaning zero moves by Harris in the meantime, I think this board would have a hairy conniption.

Salary cap doesn't mean anything for competition unless they have a tight salary floor along with it. After all, any salary cap wouldn't even affect something like 20 of the 30 franchises, so theoretically they could continue merrily underspending to their hearts content and just bank the loot.

Is this really what Trump wants?

Ever hear of the cube root rule? What is the Cube Root Rule in politics? The Cube Root Rule in politics is a principle that suggests the optimal size of a country’s legislative body (e.g., parliament or congress) should be roughly the cube root of the country’s population. This rule is often used as a guideline to help determine the appropriate number of representatives in a legislature to ensure effective representation and governance. How the Cube Root Rule Works: Calculation: According to the rule, if a country’s population is PPP, the ideal size of its legislative body SSS should be approximately S=P1/3. For instance, if a country has a population of 27 million, the optimal legislative body size would be about 300 members, as 27,000,0001/3 = 300 Rationale Behind the Cube Root Rule: Balance of Representation: The rule aims to strike a balance between having enough representatives to provide effective representation for citizens and not having so many that the legislative process becomes inefficient. Historical Observation: The rule is based on empirical observation of various countries, where many legislative bodies approximate the cube root of their populations. Scalability: It provides a scalable approach, meaning as populations grow, legislatures should expand at a manageable rate, avoiding the extremes of overrepresentation or underrepresentation. Cube Root Rule in practice in the US:

Could this possibly be one of the reasons Trump has a hard-on for Colombia?

I'm really starting to think Trump wants Greenland because of Mercator. Nobody tell him about Africa, OK?

She sounds like a true blue American! I'm like that, too. I never watch TV during the day except a sitcom during lunch. I too feel like it's being lazy!

That sure could happen, although I do think the lawsuit route would also provide less friction with The People, because it would seem more plausible. Although subtlety is exiting their quiver pretty quickly, too.

The Hedy Lamarr doc is simply incredible. It is on Netflix right now. This trailer doesn't really do it justice.

I applaud your effort here although you may need to workshop this one. 😉

I hope you are right. I would say I think you are right if I am going today. A lot can change in four months, though, especially if Trump pulls US pull out of NATO and then takes Greenland from a NATO member by military force. NATO and the US could be at literal war by then.

My intention has been to go to Europe this spring because, ironically, I had put it off last spring because I wasn’t sure how the Trump thing would go over there, and it had been looking like it was going to be OK to do so this year. Now I’m not so sure about this spring.

I’m with you on zero credit card debt. I’ve practically never carried any, training myself to avoid it by carrying Amex charge cards instead of interest-charging credit cards, and going without instead of going into debt. It’s been good training for managing my spending during retirement. I have only one credit card, a high-quality Chase bank card, and again, I pay it off every month like a charge card and pay zero interest. I use the card for (1) convenience; (2) points (cash value of 1% of spend); (3) benefits like automatic warranty extensions; (4) protections in situations like travel and car rentals mishaps; and (5) running interference against dodgy vendors trying to screw me out of refunds, and I did so just this week against the streamer Britbox, which offers zero human contact on their side. I don’t know how much longer Chase and the majors are going to provide these advantages, since the more powerful and concentrated industries become the less customer service they feel compelled to offer, but I’m going to take advantage of them while I can. I would advise anyone to read the benefits guide that comes out with their credit cards at least annually and get familiar with what they are and when to leverage them.

I’m fine with requiring people to keep money in their funded retirement funds or else pay a substantial penalty for taking any out, as long as they are getting government-provided tax benefits for the purpose of funding retirement.

Congratulations to Eric Adams, Trump’s next chair of the Federal Reserve.

His lights were already out before he went.

I started crapping out at the 1:50 mark. I was gone by 2:35.

There’s no accounting for taste.

I don’t know exactly why it surprises me that he is running as a Democrat.

Looks like this was a bad week to buy stock in Thirtysomething.

A bigger roster would degrade the quality of big league play because, by necessity, they’d have to conclude players on the roster considered not good enough to make them now. So would expansion, for that matter. The $64 question is, can the game withstand such quality decrease? Meaning, is the quality of play high now, versus historical norms? I think it is, but it would be more so with more balls in play than there is now.

Cobb was never in the clubhouse, so that licks half the problem!

I just used 2/28 and 2/35 as an example, rather than my personal benchmark for signing him. I was going off memory and didn't remember that MLBTR is projecting 2/38. So let's revise what I said earlier to this: I believe if hypothetically the Tigers offered Bassitt 2/38 and the best of the usual suspects offered him 2/36, he'd take the 2/36. I think in a case like that, we'd have to go way bigger, something like 2/44 or better, to win him. Which, by the way, would make Bassitt way more highly-paid than Skubal, whom they are trying to pay $19 million. Imagine how well that would go over in the clubhouse.

That's because they are not religious or spiritual Christians. They are cultural and political Christians. Difference.