Brock Beauchamp

The reason for the disparity is because the NFL formed and became a large sporting league well after baseball. MLB and its teams started forming many of these bad policies before a Superbowl happened. And once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's bloody impossible to put it back in.

While I'm really down on the Twins and their offseason, I also try not to listen to literally anything Jim Bowden says or writes. It has served me quite well in life.

This is pretty much where I’ve landed, too.

Well, that's certainly a curated list you put together there. Funny how things like age-based free agency and the universal DH are under the "owners" category when they're the ones who will leverage those two things against other things that benefit ownership. I also noticed you completely excluded the players' focus on de-incentivizing tanking, which makes the owners a boatload of money and is really bad for the sport and its fans. Frankly, how do you not see just how skewed your viewpoint is here? You're literally crediting the owners with things they'll agree to but don't actually want because those things cost ownership more money. They're open to negotiate on those points but you can't possibly believe they won't be asking for a pound of flesh in return for it.

They won't, which makes all of this so difficult. In almost every situation, no matter which side of this conflict "wins", the fans end up on the losing side.

They literally own the baseball team. Owners can allocate funds how and where they please within the confines of the law. They choose to allocate X percentage to minor league players in pay, housing, and food. If the will was there, they could find the money, they don't do it because they don't want to and don't have to (which is where blame on the MLBPA factors into this conversation). Money from any number of sources within the organization could be re-routed into the minor leagues. It's weird how the general public threw a fit about the treatment of minor league players during COVID and owners magically found money to marginally increase pay and housing costs. If all of this was predetermined and all numbers are fixed, how'd that happen over the course of just a couple of weeks?

Once money comes into play, (ie. lost revenue from missed games) I suspect things will become far less antagonistic and something will be done quickly. Which helps ownership, as the rest of free agency will be a slapdash cluster****, which will almost certainly result in many players receiving less than they would in a regular offseason. What pisses me off to no end is that as of right now, it appears there has been no good-faith attempt to negotiate and prevent this from happening. While I suspect ownership has a slightly larger slice of the blame for that happening (it's more in their interest to stall than it is the players), I think the players are contributing quite a bit to this mess as well.

Somehow the system quoted the wrong post. I have fixed it. I take issue with your blame about MiLB pay and how you allocate that blame, not the distribution of revenue.

I'm all for limiting player contracts as long as we limit ticket prices, television subscription costs, and owner profit at the same time. The players earn the money they do because the money is there to do it. People have shown a willingness to pay $50 for a baseball ticket and $10 of their cable subscription to watch baseball. Limiting what the player earns without also limiting what ownership charges US at the same time just turns the billionaires into super-billionaires but doesn't fix the increasing access problem baseball has with its fanbase.

Yep. No one buys a floundering business that is bleeding money and keeps everything as-is. At this point, I just hope The Athletic can maintain most of what it is right now and stay afloat.

You really need to stop deflecting blame from the owners for literally everything. I've been *very* vocal about my dislike of the MLBPA and their willingness, nay eagerness, to throw minor leaguers under the bus for their own benefit but the owners are not blameless here. There are loads of reason why it's in ownership interest to pay, house, and feed minor leaguers better and they simply don't do it because no one is making them do it and MLB ownership rarely does anything that costs money unless someone forces their hand. All the parties with power have very willingly contributed to the abysmal treatment of minor league players; let's spread the blame around fairly for it.

I hope it works out for everyone involved. The Athletic is a fantastic service.

I knew I was forgetting something. Yeah, service time manipulation needs to end. It should be easy enough to accomplish in a couple of steps: - Require a minimum call-up time, just as there's a minimum re-call time now. Maybe 10 days? 15? That fixes the reliever and spot starter shuffle problem. Teams can still shuffle rosters but the players are compensated much better and teams must be more mindful of how they're shuffling players and for what reason. - Reduce the number of qualifying days for one season to something like 120 days with no season-to-season carryover. If a player is called up on June 1st but spend the entire rest of the season on the MLB roster, that's roughly a full season of service time. Then it resets the next year and if that player spends another 120 days on an MLB roster, he gets another full season of service time. Front offices would still be able to game the system but it'd be a lot harder and a lot more detrimental to on-field talent to do so.

It's an interesting thing to contemplate, as the inequity in rules makes sense on a lot of levels but definitely has its issues. I think implemented a world-wide draft captures a lot of the problems with international signings, though I'm not sure how leagues such as NPB and KBO would feel about such a thing. I think they'd push back hard on their best talent flocking to the States at age 18.

1. Increased revenue sharing 2. A salary floor in the $80m-100m range 3. A shorter path to free agency based on age A lot of us don't agree with on much but I see these three things brought up constantly, which makes me think these things all improve the sport in some way, shape, or form.

Which Ober do you expect, though? He struggled mightily early in his 2021 debut. His first ten starts: Date Tm G GS GF CG Rslt Dec DR IP H R ER BB SO HR HBP ERA FIP BF BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip Pit Str StL StS GB FB LD PU Unk GSc IR IS SB CS PO AB 2B 3B IBB GDP SF ROE aLI WPA acLI cWPA RE24 DFS(DK) DFS(FD) May 18 to Jul 25, 2021 MIN 10 10 0 0 5-5 W-L:1-1 5.1 43.1 42 26 25 13 45 11 1 5.19 5.36 182 .251 .308 .521 .829 .277 733 66% 18% 9% 0.52 24% 7% 0 48 ---% 2 3 0 167 6 3 0 2 1 3 .91 -0.460 .14 -0.07% -3.36 107.90 202.00 His remaining ten starts: Date Tm G GS GF CG Rslt Dec DR IP H R ER BB SO HR HBP ERA FIP BF BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip Pit Str StL StS GB FB LD PU Unk GSc IR IS SB CS PO AB 2B 3B IBB GDP SF ROE aLI WPA acLI cWPA RE24 DFS(DK) DFS(FD) Jul 31 to Sep 24, 2021 MIN 10 10 0 0 7-3 W-L:2-2 5.1 49.0 50 19 18 6 51 9 0 3.31 3.84 197 .265 .284 .460 .745 .313 743 68% 16% 14% 0.54 21% 10% 0 53 ---% 1 0 0 189 10 0 0 5 2 0 .93 0.532 .00 0.00% 6.62 150.65 270.00

Can Parker Hageman hit a 100mph fastball and can Dan Anderson catch a 100mph fastball? Courtesy of the Killebrew 100 MPH Fastball Challenge, they both have the opportunity to try. View full video

Without looking, name even one of the characters that died. Which means the sacrifice wasn't significant. Sure, it made sense, but what *actually happened on screen* made it appear Baba Yaga set up the elf to give birth, then took her baby to free herself from prison by triggering an massive grief event on an epic scale, which makes way more sense than what ended up happening. I thought that was actually a really clever way for the demon to free herself and I was into it. Having that sucked away (never mind Baba Yaga's completely punchless return to her domain) felt like the show was knee-capping itself and making the story worse every minute events continued to unfold on-screen.

Remember when we all hated Selig? Man, what I'd give to have him back compared to what we have in Manfred.

I agree, though I'm a lot less confident in Ryan. Ober went through lineups multiple times, pitched back-to-back against the same teams, etc. I'm more confident his stuff is legit, provided he stays healthy. Whereas I still have lingering concerns that Ryan's secondary stuff just isn't good enough and he'll ultimately revert to a one-trick pony. I'm still optimistic he can be good, there's just more concern surrounding him in my eyes.

The conflict dragged on without ever being in doubt and the show is increasingly trying to be Game of Thrones. The final scene ruined a bunch of what came before it, as it made no sense for the final reveal to have killed the child while it made all the sense in the world for the Baba Yaga character to have done it. Also, the Witcher battle looked to have real sacrifice involved but the stakes turned out to be zero and everyone walked away. I don’t mind the over-arching story but felt the show worked much better using the monster of the week format.

Painfully accurate analysis.

Happy 2022 to every person in the Twins Daily community! Yes, we all bicker, debate, waffle, argue, and steamroll each others' opinions. But now is the time to step back, take a breath, and acknowledge just how much we share in common with one another and how much we care. We've all shared arguments, bickering, animosity, and grief amongst us. So maybe instead of focusing on all those things, let us take a moment to celebrate the fantastic thing we've all come together to create here, if only for a moment. Happy 2022, each and every one of you! And I hope every single one of you is back in 2022 to tell me how much I was wrong about Lewis Thorpe... again... going back all the way to 2014.

The Witcher? Yeah, I really enjoyed the first four-ish episodes.