RedRamage

On one hand I get that altered stats for players who spend many games in Coors isn't ideal... but on the other hand I don't think we've seen any super "sacred" numbers (ie, HR/season, career hits, etc.) getting approached. Add in that both teams need to play in the same conditions and to me it's just one more home field advantage thing. You build your team with an eye to whether it will play well in your park because you play half your games there. You alter park conditions (long/short grass, harder packed or "softer" dirt) to the preferences of your players. I see Coors as no different.

Its crazy to me how much time has past and just how old I'm getting! 🙂 The Rockies are a "young" team and yet have been around for over 3 decades now. They haven't won it all yet, but they did make it to one World Series. Also lost in the NLDS three times, so they've had some measure of success. Only 9 winning season in their 32 (completed) season, but even in the bad years they were still often competitive. Only seven times prior to 2018 did they have a wpct lower than .450. They only ever finished below .400 once in that time... they first season. In 2017 they made the playoffs but lost in the Wild Card. In 2018 they made it to the Divisional round but lost. After that peak they starting falling off... rapidly. In 2019 they won only 71 games... 20 fewer than the previous year. 2020 was covid... which is hard to put any statistical importance on... but they finished .388... their worst wpct ever up to that point. 2021 saw only a very slight improvement over 2019, winning 74 games. But then they dropped again in 2022 with 68 wins. 2023 was only 59 wins, 2024 was only 61. And now 61 wins seems like it would be an amazing accomplishment.

Last year we witnessed a record breaking season in terms of losses for the modern era of MLB (1901+). The Chicago White Sox lost 121 games. This topped the 1962 Mets who lost 120 games (the previous MLB record) as well as our own 2003 Tigers who lost 119 games (the previous AL record). If we look at winning percentage though the 2024 Sox were only the 5th worst team in the modern era. They finished 41 and 121, giving them a .253 wpct... this was better than the 1904 Senators (.252), the 1962 Mets (.250), the 1935 Braves (.248), and the 1916 Athletics (.235). This year we may be witnessing a season to destroy all those others: The 2025 Colorado Rockies. As of May 28 the Rockies still having broken double digit wins. They are 9 and 47. The '24 White Sox, thru 56 games, were 15-41. The '03 Tigers were 16-40. The Rockies winning percentage right now is .161! More than 70 points LOWER than the worst modern era winning percentage. The Rockies are on pace to win just 26 games. That would be 136 losses. 15 more losses than the White Sox had last year. To avoid topping the record 121 losses the Rockies would need to go 32-74 for the rest of the season. That doesn't seem like it should be that hard but 32-74 is a .302 winning percentage. That's nearly double the pace of winning vs. what they've done so far. Working in their favor, both the '03 Tigers and the '24 Sox had a pretty good last month of the year. Because other bad teams are likely playing younger guys to see what they have and better teams might be resting stars to prepare for playoffs September can be a month to make up some ground. The White Sox went 10-15 in Sept last year, a .400 wpct. The '03 Tigers went 9-18 in September, a .333 wpct. But even a September boost seems unlikely to keep the Rockies from setting a new record in terms of losses and worst wpct of the modern era. A few last notes: The Pythagorean W-L for the Rockies so far is 12-44. This is still a dismal .244 wpct and projects to only 35 wins and 127 losses. The Rockies have already had three 8-game losing streaks. This seems bad but it's actually a bit better than the Tigers did in '03. That year we had two 8-game, two 9-game, a 10-game, and an 11-game losing streaks. The Tigers clumped their wins more than the Rockies have so far. Four times we won back to the back games and we had three 3-game and one 4-game winning streaks. The Rockies have only had back-to-back wins once so far. About two weeks ago the Rockies fired their manager Bud Black, who was 7-33 (.175) on the season. Since then interim manager Warren Schaeffer has gone 2-14 (.125).

Re: Defense: I agree that they should be better given healthier players, but there's also the potential drop off with a new DC so it might be a net zero change. Now I don't think there will be much of a drop off given that the new DC has been around the team, knows the players, and probably won't dramatically change the scheme. But there still will be differences so there is always a possibility of a negative effect due to the change. Re: Offense: I'm concerned that there's a much bigger risk of a issues here as the new OC is coming from outside of the organization and there's at least some talk/rumors that he's not as run focused as we might like. We're still very talented offensively so I'm not expecting the team to fall off a cliff, but again... there will be differences even if Morton isn't as "run shy" as the scuttlebutt seems to think he might be. Even if the "drop off" is only like 10% for both sides that still means a slight decrease in scoring and possibly a net zero improvement for the defense vs. end of last season. Combine that with a brutal schedule and that could be enough to see the Lions slip a bit and end up more in the 10-11 win area vs. 13-14 wins. Still a good season, but possibly not the best in the NFCNorth type of season... certainly not the best in the NFC.

I dunno if I'd say I'm stressed out, but my concern resolves around a new OC and DC. I think the team is fine, as long as injuries don't stack up like they did last year. I don't think anything and recover from that many major injuries on defense, so getting those players back will be like a massive upgrade to the defense as it stood at the end of last season. But we're about to find out how much of the Lions great offense was Ben Johnson and how much was Dan Campbell. Time will tell.

Sorry, I know I said I was getting off the soap box, but just wanted to add some raw data because I'm sure one of the question will be: "Is there really a need to balance the playing field? How lopsided is it right now?" There's probably a million ways to answer that question but here's one. I looked back over the past 30 years for the number of teams each team has made it to the World Series. Given 60 teams played in the World Series, perfect distribution would say each team shows up twice in the past 30 years. OBVIOUSLY we're not going to see that because of MANY factors including that over just 30 series we're not going to see perfect distribution even if all other factors were equal. Still, for what it's worth, here are the numbers: Arizona Diamondbacks 2 Atlanta Braves 4 Baltimore Orioles 0 Boston Red Sox 4 Chicago White Sox 1 Chicago Cubs 1 Cincinnati Reds 0 Cleveland Indians 3 Colorado Rockies 1 Detroit Tigers 2 Houston Astros 5 Kansas City Royals 2 Los Angeles Angels 1 Los Angeles Dodgers 4 Miami Marlins 2 Milwaukee Brewers 0 Minnesota Twins 0 New York Yankees 8 New York Mets 2 Oakland Athletics 0 Philadelphia Phillies 3 Pittsburgh Pirates 0 San Diego Padres 1 San Francisco Giants 4 Seattle Mariners 0 St. Louis Cardinals 4 Tampa Bay Rays 2 Texas Rangers 3 Toronto Blue Jays 0 Washington Nationals 1 2 teams have five or more appearances: Yankees and Astros. 8 teams have 3 or 4 appearances 6 teams have 2 appearances 6 teams have 1 appearance 8 teams have 0 appearances 33.3% have MORE appearance then average 20% have exactly average 46.6% have LOWER than average Instead of the expected bell curve that's higher in the middle, we have a upside down bell curve that's higher on the edges.

Next: Cap/Floor for baseball... Again, I can see an argument saying that there shouldn't be a cap on how much a player can make or that we should penalize a team that does good marketing and therefore has more money to spend. And I can see some value in that argument. However, we've seen salary caps be effective in leveling the playing field in other sports and I appreciate that aspect. If we have a contest to see how many balls we can throw into a bucket with the most times getting a ball in the bucket, if I have 100 balls to throw and you only have 10... I probably going to win the contest more of than not, even if I'm not as accurate as you. I feel the same applies towards sports. If my GM has a $300M payroll to work with, more often than not my team is going to be more successful than your team, who's GM only have $90M... even if your GM is better than mine. Now, if we're going to set a cap and we're going to require sharing of media revenue, we also need to set a floor to ensure that the teams getting the benefit of the revenue sharing aren't just pocketing the extra loot. Is the floor the most effective method of ensure a club fields a competitive team? Probably not, and I'd be open to exploring other options (such as investment in player development, scouting, training camps in other countries, etc) but there has to be a clear and definable method to the other options, one that can be easily checked and verified by the league to again ensure the receivers to the revenue sharing aren't just pocketing the profits and not caring about the team they put on the field. A salary floor is one easy method to do this so I'd argue for that, at least until we can find a better method. Okay, I'll get off my soap box now.

I 100% agree that this (and the rest of your post) are true, but I don't think it's precludes the idea of a cap/floor. Rather it further highlights the needs for a cap/floor along with better revenue sharing... at least in my humble opinion. One one hand the Yankees and Dodgers (to pick on the usual suspects) should be lauded for building the following that they have. Granted, they've had the benefit of playing a large market, but so have the Mets and Angels, and they don't have have quite the following the first two teams do, so it's not just the large market that have made them successful. So yeah, again, on one hand it's hard to argue that they've been TOO successful and therefore should be punished by having to give some of their money to other teams. On the other hand if MLB consisted just of the Yankees and the Dodgers (and maybe 2 or 4 other teams) it probably won't have nearly the following it has and those teams would have the fan following that they do. The Yankees and Dodgers need the other teams to play against. The YES network isn't going to be successful showing the Yankees playing scrimmages against themselves 162 times. So on the other hand I think it's very reasonable to say that the Yankees success (in terms of media revenue) are in a significant part because of the other teams in the league and therefore it's reasonable that they should have to share that revenue. The debate, in my mind, is not IF, but HOW MUCH should be shared.

That's the part that I think people miss when comparing big vs. small markets. It's not just that you have enough money to sign the big names... it's that if you miss on them you're not handicapped for the next 5 years. How many times over the years have we said something like: "Well, when player-X is off the books, hopefully Ilitch will be willing to spend more." Now I know this is an oversimplification, but there is truth to it.

Agreed 100%.

Answering my own question because I like to hear myself talk (or type): Probably not entirely no... telling someone they can only earn x-amount of money because you want to make other teams remain competitive is a bit anti-capitalist. So is there a way to make it more fair? My humble suggestion (which likely has a million holes in it) would be to: Set a salary cap, and a salary floor. Pool media deals... maybe something like 75% of media revenue goes into a common pot with 25% remaining with the original team. Cut up and distribute the media pool: 75% goes to teams, 1/30th for each team. 25% goes to players, not sure how to divide this up (evenly for each? based on years in MLB? I dunno) But this goes back to owners needing to open some of the books up.

Get a good team in a big market = better media deals = more revenue to spend on the team = better team in a big market = better media deals = ... It's not quite as simple as saying that the small markets don't have the media revenue to compete, but I do feel that's a big part of it. I've always felt that not having a salary cap is kinda like letting some players use PEDs, and in fact letting the most successful a player gets letting them have more PEDs. It creates an uneven playing field for front offices. You could be the best GM out there in terms of picking players, but if the other guy can just throw more money at players that you want AND not suffer the same draw backs of making a mistake on a contract, you're not going to be as successful. Now again this is only part of the problem. You have to have owners who WANT to win and are willing to pay to win. But a salary cap would at least level the playing field a bit. But is it fair to players?

https://www.detroitlions.com/video/2025-lions-schedule-release Interesting... as someone not from Detroit I didn't recognize all the places, but cool to see some landmarks of Detroit that I did know. I do think they missed out on an opportunity though... they should have had the Bengal/Lions game in front of Comerica Park.

I honestly have a very hard time seeing the Lions signing Rodgers. I think they'd avoided plenty of talented players because of culture fit questions, and Rodgers isn't the QB he used to be. The dude is 41 now and I know QBs can usually play longer than other positions, but still 41 is old. So you have a guy who's talent level is declining and who's about as far from a culture fit as I think you can get outside of criminal activity... I don't see it.

That doesn't surprise me at all. There's sound logic there, at least looking at this from outside the organization. The Lions defense was obviously the issue last year and you're two biggest stars there are unproven right now. McNeill probably won't be starting the season and Hutch is a question mark whether he'll be 100%. Next it's a road game for the Lions, so GB gets some advantage there. Now add in that the Lions just lost both of their main coordinators and you'll expect that there will be at least some work figuring out how the new DC, and especially OC, want to run things. Add all that up and yeah... I'd probably lean towards the Pack having the slight advantage as well. From the Lions perspective this is great bulletin board material: Coaches to the players: "They don't respect you. They don't respect Dan Campbell. They think it was just AG and Ben who were running things here and make it all work. They think that now that those two are gone you're all going to fall apart."