The Great Hambino

For frame of reference, Falvey has pointed to Ty France as an impactful free agency pickup. I'd set my expectations somewhere in that realm

Four of those guys will still be in the bullpen, and unless they go on a somewhat-irresponsible spending spree, at least a couple of them will be counted upon for high-leverage. Averaging just over 4 runs a game is not good. And they're running essentially the same lineup back from the end of last year to start this year. That is absolutely an issue, albeit not the only one.

The 82-win projection to me seems unrealistic, but it's also calculated under unrealistic circumstances; that is, that everyone who was a free agent at the time that projection was calculated will remain a free agent. As teams sign those free agents, their win totals will go up, and because there's a fixed number of 2,430 wins to divvy up between all the teams, those standing in place will go down. It's likely that if they stand pat the rest of the offseason, their Opening Day win projection will be closer to the 75-77 win range. And I still think that's an overly rosy picture of the team. The bullpen will still be atrocious heading into the season. A couple quality additions might bring that up to mediocre, but by no means will it be anything resembling a strength. Bullpens can be rebuilt quickly or cheaply, but not both. All the failed-starter-prospects-turned-quality-relievers they shipped out the door last deadline didn't go through that transformation in the blink of an eye, it took some time for their roles to get sorted out. And if the master plan is to use their surplus of fringey starters to stock the bullpen, then it's beyond wishful to think that this is a competitive season. But they're acting as if it is. The more I think about this, the more I hate it.

I'm also not normally a fan of when High School and Musical get lumped together, but the vibes on this are very different. Closer to Community's parody of that show (also a Christmas gem) It's currently available on Prime

This argument is convincing enough for me to change my mind about Die Hard being a Christmas movie as opposed to an action thriller that happens to take place on or around December 25th. And if Christmas movies need to be PG, then I don't know what to call Bad Santa Or another underrated Christmas gem: Anna and the Apocalypse. On paper, a Scottish zombie apocalypse high school musical comedy doesn't scream "Christmas" but that movie delivers on every level

Until they actually sign someone for more than relative pocket change, I'll believe it when I see it. Could be that they decided now is the time to pretend to compete, could be pressure from MLB/other owners, could be they're gunning for all the participation ribbons Terry Ryan liked to brag about getting for being the runner up on free agents the fans wanted

Love, Actually has grown on me from unwatchable to annual viewing tradition. Its watchability has grown on me over time more than any other Christmas movie. Maybe any other movie, period

I'm including made-for-tv-classics as movies here Must Watch: 1. Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer 2. Bad Santa 3, Grinch (60s tv version) 4. Elf 5. White Christmas (the Bing Crosby one) I Don't Get It 1. It's A Wonderful Life (utterly depressing until like the last five seconds) 2. A Christmas Story (I guess you had to be there) 3. While You Were Sleeping (my wife doesn't even let me make fun of it) 4. Hot Frosty (at least my wife let me make fun of it) 5. No others come to mind, so I'll use this slot to mention that that "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time" is the worst song ever

I mean, it would certainly explain a lot

#3 pick. And all it took was nuking your bullpen for the duration of your Lopez/Ryan contention window (which you apparently still think is open) while simultaneously reducing fan morale to near-absolute-zero. Yay!

I guess Morse is sick of listening to Falvey's word salad too

If they're really not trading Lopez/Ryan/Buxton, then trading Jeffers makes no sense to me. It seems like each replacement option would either be more expensive or a downgrade from Jeffers. Trying to thread that needle, even if deploying those resources elsewhere, would be getting too cute. Things don't go well when Falvey tries to get cute

Not sure how you arrived at the conclusion that I was offended by Notre Dame's opt out. I merely stated that tacking a one-season ban onto it would end it immediately. Which it would. Certainly not as offended as you are by a team being left out in favor of a team with the same record that beat them head to head. Don't want to be left out? Don't lose multiple games. You have only yourselves to blame. At no point did I say that bowl games are what drives interest in college football. I said that erosion of the bowl season would over time have the effect of eroding the interest in football's middle class - to clarify, lower-tier power 4 and upper-tier G6 schools - since there would effectively be nothing for them to play for. Which would push us toward the eventual Super League of Big Ten + SEC + whoever they deem worthy - whatever they deem to be dead weight, leaving everyone else a glorified FCS. Maybe we're headed there anyway, but the bowls becoming more of an afterthought doesn't help keep things from going down that road. I just don't think the Super League model is in the best interest of most schools, players, or fans. Of course a Notre Dame fan thinks they're meaningless exhibitions - for the majority of fans that haven't chosen to latch on to a blue blood, they're the best we can reasonably hope for. I don't think it's wise to add a round of games when you're already facing a calendar crunch, but overall I like your calendar proposal

To clarify off the top, I'm talking about teams opting out en masse because they didn't get their way, not individual players making a business decision (more on that later) Tell me who made the Sweet Sixteen of last year's March Madness without Googling. Surely you can tell me who those teams were, otherwise it must be utterly inconsequential. I can't imagine your conference mates being too thrilled when their bowl payout gets reduced because you decided to take your ball and go home (I know this doesn't apply specifically to Notre Dame, but it does to literally almost everyone else). The TV revenue generated from bowl games is part of the overall ecosystem of TV contracts that drives interest in the sport, gets those sweet facilities constructed, gets alumni stoked (and by extension, those NIL collective coffers filled). Long-term, the erosion of bowl season would lead to continuing erosion of college football's middle class, which is ultimately bad for the sport as well as the players at large. As far as individual players opting out, that is certainly their right to gauge all the factors at play and make the best decision for themselves.. Not trying to take that away from them. But every opt-out creates an opportunity for the next man on the depth chart. More and more, bowl season is becoming a sneak preview of the following season. The extra few weeks of practice teams get by being in a bowl are also very valuable in kicking off that process. I've talked a lot about the financial incentives for networks, conferences, and schools. In fairness, the rules preventing this from extending to the players (it's my understanding that pay-for-play NIL deals aren't allowed, which is dumb if true) need to be abolished. If it's worthwhile financially for all the other stakeholders, then surely the players can be incentivized with bonuses to play in these games. That's only fair and they've earned that right. If they still opt out, well, that's their business decision to make. But really team/player/coach opt outs are all symptoms of the same disease: football's jacked up calendar. Signing day and the transfer portal need to be pushed outside of the postseason as much as possible. It's tricky if they're going to be beholden to semesters, so the best I can come up with is this: 16-team playoff starting on championship game weekend (conference championship games have outlived their usefulness) so that the semifinals fall on Jan 1. Now only championship game participants have their seasons bleeding into potential recruiting windows. Coaches are subject to these transfer windows as well, meaning there are penalties if you sign a coach from another FBS school before then. I'm open to other ideas, sorta spitballing here. It's not an easy problem to fix. But it needs fixing. And for the record, it was Florida, Iowa State, and Toledo. Didn't even have to Google it. (I Bing'ed it)

Edwin Diaz is signing a nice 3-year deal for $69MM with Evil Empire West Now where do the Twins pivot to rebuild their bullpen? Too bad Terry Ryan isn't around to tell us how "in on" Diaz they were

Probably takes them out of the running for the #1 pick. But I'm a pessimist

Could make for a nice full-circle moment thinking back to when Eagles fans got all grumpy when they drafted Hurts even though Wentz's extension was just kicking in

Wanna put a stop to bowl opt-outs? If you voluntarily opt out, then you're out of the posteason the following year too. Solves that problem real quick

Odd, since the TV execs with playoff games are the ones conducting this dog and pony show ... As to why they'd pass on Notre Dame, you could look at the conferences with networks under the ESPN umbrella, then look at who benefited from Notre Dame's exclusion If you really wanted to wander off into conspiracy land, think about the implications of what Bama's exclusion would do to conference championship games. They lost their usefulness once the playoff expanded past 4, divisions were dropped, and conferences blew up to an unmanageable size within an 8 or 9 game schedule, but they're still putting them on because everyone makes money from them. Teams would start opting out of those games and they'd be dealing with an even bigger mess than they are now. This isn't to say that it was some conspiracy that Notre Dame was left out. The committee had boxed themselves into an impossible scenario. If you stay true to resumes, head-to-head, and don't punish teams for playing the extra game, then Notre Dame should be left out. If you truly look at just the current best teams for the at large spots, then Alabama should be left out. If they were to follow their own internal ranking logic, then Miami should be left out. No matter who they left out, they were going to cause a problem. But ultimately, if you don't want to be left out, don't lose multiple games.

To me, what this ultimately highlighted is the nonsensical approach of trying to use traditional tiebreakers to determine the conference championship game participants for a single-division 16-18 team conference. The ACC ended in a 5-way tie for second place, and head-to-head/common-opponent tiebreakers are essentially useless in a scenario like that. Duke and Miami only had two common opponents while playing in the same conference. As a result, the team with three nonconference losses (including to UCONN - in football!) wound up sneaking in and setting off the chain of events that made the committee render their previous rankings a farce in order to apply some logic to the final standings. Other conferences already have figured out a better method. The Mountain West and American (I believe) have tiebreakers that go to CFP rankings or composite computer rankings if ties aren't broken by direct head-to-head. They do this because they know it's in the entire conference's best interest to have their conference champion be as highly ranked as possible and have that conference championship game provide the champ with the best possible win. The whole point of ditching divisions was to try to get the best teams into the chamionship games, but the resulting schedules broke the old tiebreaking mechanisms. Let's say Miami plays Virginia instead of Duke in the ACC 'ship and wins. Now they're the #4 conference champ, Tulane is now the #5 conference champ, and Notre Dame becomes the final at-large. This is a good point and I hope people don't lose sight of this. Before the playoff was expanded to 12, there were teams prevented from competing for a national championship that had done nothing wrong besides not being ranked high enough in the preseason - think 2004 Auburn. But now? If you don't get into the playoff, it's because you have multiple losses. That used to be an automatic DQ for national championship consideration. Now? If you want find someone to blame, find a mirror

I meant auditioning in front of a specific potential future employer today Looks like he'll fit right in!

Mariota auditioning for a potential future employer?

The theme of this game is "Where the hell has this been all year?"

As pessimistic as I've become about McCarthy, I don't see that as waving the white flag on him at all. Mechanics are something better drilled in the offseason. During the season, correct decision-making within the speed of the game is much more important. Acknowledging that they were trying to have him think about too much at once. If you're making the correct decisions and making them on time, that gives you more margin for error to help cover for whatever inaccuracies might be resulting from faulty footwork. Having said that, "Then what the hell were you doing with his mechanics all last offseason?" is a very fair question. The way they behaved in player acquisition, they clearly thought they had that in a good place. My working theory is that something in his injury and recovery subtly threw his footwork off, and they weren't able to diagnose it until it was put to the test under game speed that you can't truly replicate on the practice field. That's the optimist in me, anyway. KOC has been too good with too many other QBs to suddenly forget how to develop a QB. Maybe he's better at refining a QB's rough edges than he is molding a raw lump of clay, so his success with veteran QBs hasn't translated to a young rookie? I dunno

This reminded me of the time I was hanging out in the Gray Duck bar in left field and looked down and saw a brave hero YOLO one of those enormous Boomstick chili dogs all by himself