gehringer_2

IMHO, the biggest issue for baseball fandom is too much player mobility. Whatever they come up with needs to allow players to get paid without having to move to do it so teams can build their identities long term around their stars. Perez has identified the issue but his proposal does nothing for teams not paying the tax, and they are ones losing their players.

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

which means it was almost cetainly not random.  I wonder if putting Brinkman clean-up was really directed towards Cash?

I vaguely remember being a bit disappointed that the line-up had not changed that much.  I was only 9, so I didn't understand random samples, but when I heard he picked the line-up out of a had, I was expecting something more bizzare.

Mid Summer Sunday day game, Billy was probably too hung over to care what he was doing.

9 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

$10,500 profit sharing checks for GM hourly workers this year.

GM has been kind of flying under the radar under Barra. That's probably good.

5 minutes ago, buddha said:

the years are long, but the number is good in an expanding cap for a guy like chiarot.

the wings - and the league - value physical defenseman more than the analytics crowd does.

chiarot on your third pair next year is not bad.  in 3 years i suspect he'll be in grand rapids a lot.  at least i hope so.  

A good number of Dmen who learn to pace them selves play OK to their late 30s, and even if the third year is a bust, it will be less than 3% of the cap. In general I do worry about Yzerman not leaving himself enough room to make a big signing when a Hughes or McDavid hits the market, but not enough to worry about this deal.

3 minutes ago, buddha said:

if you think that tells you everything i would question your curiosity.

i also question just how much you actually know about soccer

My objection to soccer is purely philosophical. It's the fact that we have our arms available instead of tied to our locomotion with hands with opposable thumbs at their ends that makes us what we are. Any activity that denies the use of the arms strikes me as being somewhat sub-human.....😉

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

Remember the Superstars competition back in the 1970s?  Kyle Rote Jr dominated and the baseball players usually embarrassed themselves.  That tells me everything I need to know.  

LOL - it's nice for baseball players to be athletic - it means they will run and field much better, but athleticism is only marginally connected to whether a guy can figure out where a baseball coming at him at 98mph is going so he can put his bat there.

16 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

 The only way to make it "reasonable" is for fans to stop going to games and purchasing tv packages. 

the latter has already happened to the degree we see the RSN's failing.

9 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

You have any comment on the top advisor to the President of the United States called Alex Pretti a domestic terrorist three days ago, but now says mistakes may have been made?

Or are we gonna talk about Chuck's religious views?

40 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

You hate religon we know....

religion? do you think they asked if they were practicing or not in the roundups in Germany or Armenia or Rwanda? The fascists don't care about what your religion is or whether you practice it, and the American Christian right wingers don't care what you are either if you are anything outside their own cult (theirs being one of the most excluding theologies out there). Religion is never more than a convenient construct to define what groups will be the targets for redirecting the anger of the masses in a failing society. It's all about picking a target that is easy to identify, the 'why'  of that identification is purely incidental. All that matters is that there is an elite who needs to deflect from their own corruption and greed, an intellectually lazy or economically exhausted mass who'd rather not be reminded about their own failures, and a set of identifiable targets the elites can persuade the masses are the cause of their problems. Religion never matters in and of itself. It's nothing more than the sieve.

9 minutes ago, buddha said:

.....is becoming more popular than baseball nowadays

one could write a book on all the likely reasons for this, most of which are bad, but it would have to start in a different forum.....😉

Short version would be that I don't think the state of organized youth baseball is enough to keep MLB from becoming more niche as well.

1 hour ago, buddha said:

bad loss.

hopefully missing edvinsson doesnt do them in for this tough stretch before the break.

Playing Colorado twice without him is not a happy prospect.

1 hour ago, buddha said:

(even if hockey is a much more exciting sport than baseball by a wide margin...)  🙂

apples to oranges though. It's like comparing Bach to Led Zeppelin, they function in different spaces.

The entertainment value in baseball doesn't follow as much from raw excitement like hockey, as from the slow tension builds the you get at times like a critical 10 pitch AB or as a pitcher starts losing command and digging himself a hole in a one run game, or whether a relief pitcher can work his way out of a 2 on no-out jam. Individual plays can be exciting but are more the icing on the cake than the main events in a baseball game. Baseball is more 'interesting' than 'exciting' - or at least a very different kind of 'exciting.'

14 minutes ago, buddha said:

ok, need a big third period.  losing at home to the kings would not be great.

yeah - 10 shots through 40min, Wings had better have been banking their energy for the big finish.

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

One problem with them is that they both sounded alike.  I couldn't tell which one was talking.  So, I imagine they would do better separately.  

Exactly. I guess it must be like the sense of taste - they say some people can taste all kinds of things others can't, or raising one eyebrow, but some people just have zero sense of detail/texture for how things sound. Get a couple of them in the right executive positions and you get dumb audio decisions like pairing Rizz and Rathbun. They were doomed from the get go.

19 minutes ago, romad1 said:

NRA is gonna fight him on this one. 

why would Putin send the money for the NRA to do that?

27 minutes ago, Shinzaki said:

SY will have as many as two more chances to get Hughes...when the Wild realize this summer that he won't sign with them, they will possibly want to move him.  When they don't sign him and he becomes a free agent, Sy can swoop in and make him an offer.

 

this is true.

"The Conference Board's long-running consumer confidence index fell 9.7 points in January, to 84.5, from a revised 94.2 in December.

    The steep drop was seen across both survey respondents' assessment of the present situation and their expectations for the future.
    The index is now below even its level at the depths of the global pandemic, when unemployment peaked at nearly 15% (it was only 4.4% in December)....

.....American consumers are on edge and deeply pessimistic about the outlook, despite robust GDP growth and a relatively low overall unemployment rate."

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-macro-01172560-fb8d-11f0-8de3-51b8195e6ff0.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosmacro&stream=business

It would be nice if they would just ****can GDP and start using median family income as a better national economic health marker. Axios makes it sound like people's perceptions are at odds with their reality. They most certainly are not.  GDP may look good, but GDP doesn't buy anybody's groceries.

Alex Vindman announced for the FLA Senate seat

37 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

I still refuse to get in bed with Crypto.

 

 

I think the world would be better off without crypto, but from an investment standpoint, Bitcoin is fundamentally no different than gold. It's a thing with a limited supply whose intrinsic value has nothing (or at least little) at all to do with the price it is traded at. Gold is only worth $5000 as long as there are people out there who believe it is, Bitcoin is worth exactly what is it as long as there are people out there that believe it is. One difference is that since culture has valued gold for thousands of years, even if the assigned value was largely cultural fantasy, you may have higher confidence that people will continue to hold their strange belief that a lump of soft yellow metal holds value beyond the price to mine it. If crypto hangs around long enough, and becomes culturally inculcated enough, then it may reach a point where people can have as much confidence in it as in gold (already has for some obviously). OTOH, if people stop believing in crypto's value, it could lose all it's value tomorrow, which could be worse for an investor than the price of gold collapsing to the price to mine it - as that does provide a floor. But on the other hand, crypto (at least Bitcoin) is better than gold in one respect, because when there is a long term run up in the price of gold, people will find ways to mine more, which will force down the inflation adjusted price while in theory, the absolute quantity of Bitcoin is supposed to be capped for all time. Between that and the cost to secure it, it means gold is seldom a good long term play. Gold fans point to gold outpacing inflation long term, but you generally have to back to before the price was controlled to see a big positive result. If you allow for the fact that the price was artificially depressed before the Bretton Woods system was abandoned and start the comparison clock  in ~1980 after the inital post price control run up, total returns on gold through last year barely outpaced inflation, and since most people that own it have to pay to store it, even that increment is questionable.

In any case, I don't own either, and I'd be pleasantly amused if crypto were to collapse and disappear, but while I once believed that was inevitable, I would no longer bet it will happen.

The funny thing is that so many people believe this different than good old dollars. But it isn't. Crypto is not different than dollars in the sense that it's value is exactly what people believe it to be. The big difference is that since the Federal Reserve is able to control the numbers of dollars in circulation, they can actually try to keep it's value controlled (whether they do  or do well can of course be argued) whereas you at the total mercy of the animal spirits of the investment mob  (and/or mining discoveries in the case of gold) as to what your gold or bitcoin holdings are worth each day.

1 hour ago, Tenacious D said:

I applaud your effort to steer the conversation back to Tigers baseball talk. I thought I had stumbled into the Wings forum.

with the same guy is running both shows, the way one side is run can always inform what you can expect on the other side.

3 minutes ago, oblong said:

That has me wondering what the operating cost of a typical red wing game vs Tiger game? I was once told by someone who worked in “event” at Comerica that having the stadium lights on for a vent in the Tiger club was a few thousand. That’s simply the DTE initial charge to turn them on.  Like the cost of ice and maintenance vs the turf and crew at Comerica.  

A baseball stadium is physically larger - more of it is outside where sun and weather take a their toll, it takes a bigger staff to operate, and most significantly, does not bring in anything like the outside rental income LCA does (this may be the most significant difference), A baseball team also has a bigger minor league operation, much more travel expense. So the amount of revenue left after all that is probably a lot more attractive for the Wings, which is likely what the difference it the estimated value of the two franchises reflects.

24 minutes ago, oblong said:

Why is that my problem to solve?  If the players don’t get it then the owners just pocket it.  Costs will not go down if salaries went down.  The NHL doesn’t bring in the revenue that MLB does. That’s why tbeir players make less. 

 to pick up on the NHL/MLB comparison, Google tells me that the Wings generate ~$250M in revenue and the NHL salary cap is $95.5M, leaving the Wings ~$150M to cover non-salary expenses and pocket the rest. OTOH, the Tigers are estimated to have $325M in revenue and the luxury tax limit in $224M leaving ~$100M for expenses and profit, which are probably much higher for a baseball team than a hockey team.

But of course the Tigers are not near the lux tax limit, payroll last season was closer to $150M, which means they had roughly $170M left after payroll.

So if any/all of these numbers are anything near reality (and who really knows), I have a feeling it may not be a coincidence if the Tigers and Red Wings are operating with a relatively similar revenue-payroll number.

1 hour ago, Screwball said:

Great question, and my quick answer is I have no idea. Here's what it looked like today. Daily 1 minute chart. It took a **** at 12:04 just after hitting the daily high of $117.7. 

 Went down to 101.7 and has recovered some since. Still trading as I type this.

I don't follow the metal trading much, but it's different. Physical price vs. paper price and all that. Seems the gold people follow the Comex exchange. I will bet you one thing though, some make a **** load of money, and others got their ass handed to them.

It moved 10-12 percent in about 3 1/2 hours - to the downside. That's a huge swing in a short period of time. Then again, as a trader you are looking at this hockey stick and know damn well it won't last forever - what is your plan to pull the rip-cord? That's on you.

Some of the day/swing/metal traders today might have took a beating, especially with leverage/margin.

and it's all funny money. For all the downside excitement, if you bought Friday you are still ahead.

12 hours ago, chasfh said:

I was honestly asking for a clarification since so many people seem to suggest he doesn’t care about the roster or about Avila’s guys he’s inherited, but rather, only about hoarding prospects he himself is responsible for or something along those lines. I just wanted to make sure you meant what i read in your post. Thanks.

I think Harris cares enough about this roster and about winning that he is willing to keep Skubal to try to win this year, rather than trade him for more of his guys he can hoard.

I don't buy the narrative that Harris has any issue with the players he inherited at all. I think he been perfectly fair and rational in how he has handled everyone in the system since he arrived - both his and the prior picks. Nobody's been dumped, there have been no fire sales , no-one has been fast tracked that didn't earn it. I think he has tried to get as much out of everyone for the purpose of winning games that he could.

17 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

My son never had any interest in playing ice hockey but I had a really good friend and his son played. He used to tell me how expensive it was as well as all the very early morning practices. 

I'm seeing a more complaints that the cost is pricing middle class kids out of youth hockey.