RedRamage

Mexico loads the bases in the bottom of the 8th, but Italy gets out without allowing any runs. On to the 9th. At this point it would be nearly impossible for the US not to advance. It would require an amazing top of the 9th for Mexico to get back into the game. But even if that happened that helps the US because a high scoring game hurts both teams runs allowed quotient. Mexico would need to score a bunch AND it would need to go into extra innings AND it would need a LOT of extra innings AND Mexico would need to win for the US to be eliminated.

If Italy wins, even if it's 15-14, the US advances. If Mexico wins, then it gets complicated.

Now the only real danger is extended extra innings with low scoring. Seems unlikely.

Column 1, Row 0... Need more runs!

Sweet @Edman85! I was thinking about fumbling around with this but wasn't sure if I'd get all the math right.

So browsing youtube and I think found my answer. Unfortunately it's kinda complex but it seems it boils down to runs allowed divided by outs. Turns out a very similar situations is what played out in pool C for determining second place. This video does a REALLY good job of explain it so I highly recommend watching it a moment, then look at my numbers below. So, if I'm doing my math right (and that's a HUGE if!) then: Mexico - 0.101 (7 runs allowed over 69 innings.) USA - 0.157 (17 runs over 108 innings) Italy - 0.123 (10 runs over 81 innings) So, if Italy wins, then USA is runner up and advances because USA beat Mexico head-to-head. But, if Mexico wins then it goes to the runs allow quotient, and if I'm understanding correctly things could get very interesting. If it's a super high scoring game, then that helps the US, but if it's low... particularly if Italy doesn't score a lot, then Mexico would win the first tie break and they'd be Pool B champs. At this point I think they start over with the tie-breaker rules... that is they'll compare USA and Italy and the first tie breaker is head-to-head... that means USA it out. So, we should be rooting for Italy tonight I guess... or at the very least if Mexico wins we want it to be a shoot out with lots and lots of scoring.

Later today 2-1 Mexico hosts 3-0 Italy. If Mexico win then we'll have three teams at 3-1: Itally, who only lost to the Mexico. Mexico, who only lost to USA. USA, who only lost to Italy. Anyone know what the tie breaker rules are then? On a side note the WBC got the final pool games scheduled nicely for the most part. Pool A's final game decides between Cuba and Canada will decide which of those teams advances, as well as which team is the pool winner and runner up. Pool B's final game, as discussed will decide then same. Pool C's final game was meaningless. Pool D's final game between the DR and Venezuela will determine the winner vs. runner up.

Saying the "the cap is fake" isn't specifically saying the cap isn't real... just that there are way to play around with it to make it feel like it's not as strict as it could (should?) be. I mean the point of the cap is to prevent a handful of teams from just buying up all the talent, but if a team can just buy up all the talent and pay them next year or the year after or the year after... and oh by the way three years down the road that contact that eat up 5% of a teams cap will only count for 3% of the cap then so it's not as much of a hit. In the end all teams are still playing by the same rules so it's fair. It's not like only 1 or 2 teams know about or can use these tricks. So I'm not complaining that teams are cheating or whatever. Just that it feels like these loop holes make the cap far less of a solid limit and much more of a numbers game that you just need to plug in the right formula rather than actually make sure the contacts stay under a certain limit.

And this is why people say the Salary Cap is fake. I mean if you can just so easily adjust a few things and BAM, 32 million (more than 10% of the Salary Cap) is freed up, then I find it hard to argue against those people. I get the feeling that the Salary Cap rules are as convoluted as the Tax Code is here in the US. It's starting to feel like all the deferrals that are happening in baseball. None of it is real money anymore. It's all just kicking the can down the road and when the road ends? Well, just build more road and kick the can more.

I don't think I'd close the door, but he's gonna have to eat a lot of crow if he comes back... not sure he'd be willing to do that. He was very nice and polite about how he said it, but there doesn't seem to be much doubt about what happened: Lions wanted him to take a pay cut and/or be a backup. He didn't feel right about that, now he'd have to come back to Detroit taking a pay cut and/or be a backup. Maybe I'm putting too much in the wording of his statement, but it doesn't sound like he was terribly happy or understanding of it and just said: "Okay, let's just call it quits now before we start arguing and yelling and ending on a worse note." If he's said something more like: "The Lions asked me to take a lesser role. While I understand their position from a business stand point I still believe I have many games of high caliber football left in me and I've requested a release to test the FA market." To me that feels more like "I'm gonna shop around but I'm open to coming back if I can't get a better deal." But again: Y'all know me... I'm probably putting way too much importance on specific phrases and words.

And the signature may or may not have been with an autopen.

WHAT? No... NFL GMs never lie! You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

I won't be astonished. Holmes does NOT reach based on position. Now, if it's like the OT on the board they have rated 2 and the LB on the board they have rated, the sure... but if they see someone they better even if it's not a position of need, they'll take that over the OT.

I don't think this is completely true. Just with the eye test I felt the same way but I know someone posted some stats to show that there was a marked difference in the defense's performance when he was on the field vs. when he wasn't. That said, the legal questions are still a major unknown... and unfortunately there isn't any sort of client-employer privilege where Arnold could be completely, 100% honest about his involvement or non-involvement without worry that that could be used as evidence against him. So even if he tells the Lions he was 100% not involved in anyway they still have to figure out if they can trust him or not.

To me this doesn't give the full picture though... not your fault of course Tater, but I think we need to include all the potential losses until it's confirmed what's happening with them. Granted a number of them are minor bits that can just be replaced with a warm body, but a number of them also aren't: Unrestricted free agents DE Al-Quadin Muhammad. TE Anthony Firkser. CB Arthur Maulet. CB Avonte Maddox. S Daniel Thomas. DT D.J. Reader. LB Grant Stuard. CB Jalen Mills. LT Jamarco Jones. WR Kalif Raymond. RT Kayode Awosika. LB Malcolm Rodriguez. DE Marcus Davenport. CB Rock Ya-Sin. TE Shane Zylstra. C Trystan Colon. LB Zach Cunningham. LB Zeke Turner. The ones I bolded there I think you have to make every reasonable effort to resign because without them you're potentially missing a starter or first level of depth. (You could probably talk me out of Reader if you tried hard.) The underlined players are ones I'd like to have back for depth at a reasonable price tag. (You could probably talk me into upgrading Raymond to bold for return man if you tried even a little bit.)

If we can get him for backup money I wouldn't be opposed. I get the feeling that he's gonna want a place where they has a legit shot at the starting position though.

Ditto. This is a big loss imho. I'd rather have Lopez than Reader at DT honestly. Hopefully McNeill is healthy, Williams steps up, and we get something out of Levi or Pascal... Man for that money though...I really wish they'd retained him.

Dang... we should have signed Mohammad before things got crazy.

I like to pretend this isn't the case though. 🙂 Seriously though, I do get that... I fully understand that pricing isn't done just to cover costs. If 90 out of a 100 people will buy my product that $10, I gross $900. If I drop the price to $9 so I can get 7 more of those 100 customers I end up only grossing $873. The math doesn't make sense. However... There are other options besides this. There are, shall we say, more complex but cheaper methods of getting the content. How willing people are to pursue those other methods is dependent, in part, on the price being charged. Now, I'm sure this isn't any big news to MLB or the Tigers. I'm sure this knowledge is factored into the calculation. I just hoped that perhaps with a (hopefully) more efficient, competent production with (hopefully) lower costs that the calculation would show a lower price would be as profitable. For example, if I lowered by price in my silly example above to $9.5 and this got me 95 customers, then I'm grossing $902.50. If I can lower the cost of producing my product enough that I can lower the retails I could make more money in the end. As I said, this isn't anything ground breaking and I'm sure far smarter people than I have looked at all the numbers and done the calculations and decided on the best price point for profit... I was just hoping Bally/Fan Duel, when they did the calculation, had to factor in higher production costs so the new calculation without them would return a lower number.

I suspect that others are feeling similar to me, but of course I can't say for sure. Six months ago I thought of Bally/Diamond/Fan Duel/whatever as being incompetent greedy bastards. Between the crappy app and talk about always seeming to be one slight step away from bankruptcy, I felt like they HAD to charge a high price because they could barely operate as that high price point, let alone at a more reasonable monthly rate. I had hoped that a more established, stable, capable company like MLB media would be able to provide the same, or better, without having to go as high in the monthly charge. And yes, I fully get that that hope was silly, but it was still there. I guess I viewed it a bit like this: Fan Duel is a crappy apply pie maker. They don't know how to cut up apples well. They spill a lot of ingredients all over the place. They turn on the oven hours before they're ready to start baking and end up burning 1 out of every 10 pies they make, having to throw it away. Therefore they need to charge $20 per pie to cover costs. MLB Media however is much more efficient. They get more usable cuts from every apple, take care of ingredients well, watch their pies when baking and only turn on the oven when needed. Their costs are lower so they should be able to charge $16 per pie and still cover costs, but their charging $20 instead. Obviously this is all conjecture on my part and maybe I'm making a load of really wrong assumptions here.

To be fair it's been a bit since I was a cable subscriber who added on the extra to get the RSN, but I seem to remember it was more in the range of $10-15 more and I did some other channels that I'd occasionally watch. I suppose I need to really look at it more on a per game basis... I figure I watch maybe 10-15 games a month (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on when they are on and what time I have). So let's say 12 games per month at $20 per month... that's only $1.67 per game... less if I watch more games. That's really not terrible. I'm sure I spend more than that per day on various drinks... and it's far less than going to watch a 2-hour movie (not that I really ever do that). It still sucks to think of paying another $20 per month for yet another subscription.

Think they'll accept a depth OL + a 4th this year and 7th next?

Yeah, but it wasn't $20 extra per month just for one channel.

I think Glasgow was more a of a necessity than a desire. I've heard reports that Ragnow's decision, while not a surprise, also not known about before FA. I heard some guy on the Locked on Lions... can't remember who the beat guy was... say that the Lions gave Ragnow as much time as he needed to make his decision, but sorta realized after the fact that they gave him too much time and had to scramble a bit to work out what they were going to do when the decision was made to retire. (This came up with the discussion of Decker possibly retiring and the guy basically said: The Lions learned their lesson with Ragnow: Give Decker time to make his decision, but not too much time that it limits their ability to navigate the off season successfully.) So, all that said: I agree that the Lions should have moved on from Glasgow, but I don't think the Lions felt they could move on last year.

I'm hoping that Decker has enough in him for one more good, productive year. I'm not expecting great things from him, but if he can at least be, to quote Sean Baligian: gaverage (somewhere between good and average) I'll take it as it'll give us more time to sort out a crumbling OL.