The Great Hambino

Don't put this kind of stuff out there, they're gonna get confused and wind up drafting Justin Lebron on Saturday

In the analyst booth bonanza, three is company, four is a crowd I'm fine with the occasional novelty broadcast. It's a long season and watching on mute if you have to for a bit isn't the end of the world. But if they are keeping this up for the rest of the series, then they should make Morneau and Denard take turns or something. They certainly don't need both of them - in fact, you could argue that you don't really need either of them as they try to one-up each other in putting us to sleep. It was like a podcast with an extra guest where the rhythm is off and they can't help talking over each other

I'm preparing for a deadline with very little activity from the Twins. They're not gonna sell because they think they're competitive - and in the context of this rotten version of the AL, they actually might be if you squint hard enough (and depending on your definition of "competitive"). But they're not gonna meaningfully buy either. It will be a seller's market with so few teams truly out of contention, and I think all the uncertainty about the future regarding the CBA will cause teams to be more hesitant to pull the trigger than normal, and the Twins profile as one of those teams to me. The future uncertainty makes teams shy away from players with multiple years of control. As a result, rentals become more expensive. And with there being more buyers than sellers, the available rentals get even more expensive. It's a recipe for minimal player movement. And after all, this is the same franchise whose trade deadline haul when they were actually in a position to go for it consisted of Sam Dyson and Sergio Romo. Also the same franchise that remembers it blowing up in their face the one time they sorta-kinda went for it in 2022 My only question is are we going to get some quotes about how they were "totally in on" guys that went elsewhere, or will they go full-blown open letter. Been awhile since we've gotten one of those - I'm sure the draft has been sitting on some PR intern's drive ever since the "go big or go home" quotes dropped in the offseason

There's the rub. PKs are an entertaining but not terribly fair way to decide advancement, but there just isn't any better solution. It's like choosing ADP for payroll services - they suck, but every other alternative sucks a little bit more (mini work-related rant on a holiday weekend I needed to get off my chest) The most interesting alternative I've heard is the team that has the most corner kicks advances, since that's a pretty decent indicator of which team has been more aggressive and controlled the game more. But I feel like if that were in place, it would create really weird play where teams are trying to create corners instead of scoring goals, so it might cause more problems than it solves

I've been of the mind that the players should be finding ways to fight against service time manipulation since it effectively allows teams to exploit loopholes to extend free agency out as long as possible. But I think I've come to the conclusion that teams will always use whatever levers they can pull to manipulate it no matter how it gets calculated. So, instead of fighting against service time manipulation, players should be fighting to get service time removed from the equation altogether. Peg free agency to some fixed time that can't be manipulated, such as age or years since signing their first professional contract. There's a lot of different forms this could take, with Rule 5 eligibility as a current example - different timelines depending on your age when you were acquired, but there's nothing teams can do to change their eligibility date once they've signed that first contract. Now there's no longer any incentive for teams to manipulate service time. Anything that incentivizes teams from putting anything other than the best 26 healthy players in the organization on the active roster should be removed. You're not holding your top prospect down at the beginning of the season unless he really needs the seasoning if there's nothing to be gained from doing it.

For those advocating that they trade this season for bullpen help, I have a few questions: 1. Who's the highest-quality prospect you're willing to give up for a bullpen piece? 2. What does that quality of a prospect tend to get you historically in trade? 3. Is that level of reliever going to meaningfully change their chances at a playoff run? 4. If you don't like the answer to #3, does that change your view on whether they should be buyers? I don't know the answers to these myself, but I feel like I'm not willing to go far enough on #1 to make a difference on #3. Maybe the equation changes if you're getting a nonrental, but then you're committing to an even higher prospect cost.

A cycle built for two?

I feel comfortable putting a pitch that lands on the wrong side of the outfield fence on the pitcher

Yor-damn

The early voting results have Buxton in and most of the Blue Jays imposters taking a shellacking - only Vladdy Jr is in a starting position (not counting Clement and his automatic spot) While this system does add a level of protection from a fanbase from completely flooding the starting lineup 2016 Royals-style, it has resulted in a lot of boring, uncompetitive races. They really ought to sub Dirk Diggler Dillon Dingler in for Kirk at the very least

I don't think you're bad, stringer

It was kinda weird, he started reaching for the tap, then looked, then tapped. I guess you gotta complete the process of the tap

Take both just to be safe

Just being a good teammate, setting up Gomez for an easy save sitch

I thought the expansion to a 32-team knockout round would result in a bunch of boring squash matches It's still early in the round, but I've been very wrong so far

And their jerseys are sponsored by Oxy. Synergy! Got prescribed them after hip surgery once. I can see how they could become a problem

Using the baseball-reference calculation of WAR, there are three Blue Jay finalists with negative WAR (Kirk, Springer, and Jesus Sanchez), two more with WAR less than 1 (Vladdy Jr and Gimenez) and the overall vote leader that gets a starting spot automatically with WAR of exactly 1.0 (Ernie Clement) For reference, Kirk and Sanchez have the same WAR as Tristan Gray, who is not an All-Star finalist Could you imagine if they ever tried to put actual tangible meaning on the All-Star Game by, say, awarding homefield advantage in the World Series based on its result? Wouldn't that be insanely stupid? Good thing they'd never go and do something like that

Touche

Sounds like someone has never tasted Miller Lite

1. If it comes with a cap, then their decreased revenue comes with decreased expenses. The Dodgers could potentially come out ahead on the bottom line even with increased revenue sharing if their payroll bill is cut in half 2. The owners are fighting for this because they think franchise values will explode if they get it. They've decided that the trade-off is worth it. I don't think they'd be putting out their aggressive push for a cap so publicly if the heavy hitters weren't on board with the plan. And even if they aren't on board, they know that they're outnumbered, and their franchise value and revenues will crater if they don't have anyone to play against 3. Since this is all subject to negotiations between big market owners and small market owners as well as between the league and the players, it's not hard to see a scenario where there are certain carve-outs that allow the big markets to retain a larger portion of some types of revenue. Maybe media rights are pooled but gameday revenues are retained, for example. Plenty of ways to skin that cat

If you're a painfully slow runner, the least you can do is NOT GET PICKED OFF

I actually think it's more likely that the roster looks depressingly similar after the trade deadline. Ownership is pot-committed to the idea that this team is competitive. Furthermore, as demonstrated in Tom's offseason comments, they operate under the midguided notion that maintaining the status quo constitutes doing something for the fans. So as long as they're close enough to a playoff spot to feign contention, they're not selling off anything meaningful. They think keeping Ryan around will drive increased attendance, even though that doesn't make any sense. If they already weren't drawing a crowd with him on the team, why would simply keeping him drive any meaningful change? This was the thought process behind holding onto their most valuable trade chips in the offseason (keeping Lopez/Ryan/Jeffers/et. al. constituted "doing something for the fans"), and I don't see why they would change their thinking now. They're also not going to be willing to pay the price necessary to make meaningful changes to the roster in a positive direction (it's looking to be an extreme sellers market if the entire AL can convince themselves they're contenders). This is a franchise that has made nothing but incredibly marginal additions at trade deadlines even when they are legitimately contending, with the exception of the disastrous 2022 deadline. And now, they're less than a season away from some potentially game-changing rules in the CBA that could make actual contention more realistic (read: less expensive) from their POV. If they weren't willing to make any sort of investment at the beginning of the season, I don't know why they would now. So they can't sell without ditching their narrative, and they won't be willing to buy. That's the recipe for a holding pattern. It's not what I want to see happen, but it's where I think we're headed. They might flip a low-rated prospect for a marginal rental reliever so they can say they "tried", but not much of anything beyond that. As noted philosopher Marlo Stanfield once said: "You want it to be one way ... but it's the other way."

After watching the defense displayed in this series, that play by Tovar was like finding an emerald in a pig trough

Regardless of what I think ought to happen, I think this true given the nature of CBAs being the product of negotiation and not some emperor's decree. The leveling of revenue distribution will drive competitive balance more than any other factor ... as long as those revenue-sharing recipients actually invest these receipts into payroll. And as revenue-sharing recipients have shown with their behavior, they won't do this if they aren't forced to do so - they'll simply pocket it and ride the gravy train to profitability. So in essence, you're just taking money away from teams willing to spend it and giving it to teams that won't. That's why the CBA is written so that players have to approve changes in revenue sharing, and why they pushed back against increased revenue sharing in the last round of CBA negotiations. In order for players to agree to increased revenue sharing, they have to have assertions that the barnacles of MLB ownership are forced to spend it. There's your floor. At the same time, the owners aren't going to agree to a floor with some real teeth in it without a major concession coming their way. There's your cap. So is floor/cap theoretically necessary for meaningful revenue sharing? Not necessarily. Is it necessary to get it through a negotiation-driven process? I think it is. Along those lines, I find it very hard to believe the cap we arrive at will be a hard one if derived through negotiations. I don't know what MLB would have to offer to make a hard cap palatable to the players - 60% of gross revenue? A floor approaching 90%? Would that even be enough? Would MLB ever agree to that even if it resulted in a hard cap? I don't know. So some soft cap with enough levers and exceptions that there can be reasonable debate over it even constitutes a cap is the most likely landing point in my eyes, assuming no one hits the big red button and nukes the sport

My understanding is that they presented the floor while including a bunch of costs like health benefits that are normally never considered to be part of payroll in other sports that use a cap or any context in which payroll is normally discussed. So a $245MM/$170MM floor (or whatever it was) was really overstated by about $20MM on both ends in terms of how payroll is almost always discussed. Furthermore, their claim of a 50/50 revenue split came after removing certain costs from the calculation, so they were really talking about less than 50% of gross revenue going to the players. Deliberately misleading on both fronts. This is all with the caveat that I didn't, like, read through their entire proposal myself or anything. My understanding is based on the mild-to-moderate amount I've read about it.