gehringer_2

I actually liked the computer strength of schedule rankings. The current system is too heavily weighted by previous year bias of what teams were in the recent past. For instance I'm sure every voter started out taking a win over MSU as more meaningful than a win over Purdue. With the portal allowing teams in the 2nd tier to rise and fall very fast, getting rid of the human memory element makes even more sense. But we won't get back there because it puts schools under too much pressure to schedule better teams and no-one wants to do that!

Ross has gone off the deep end on pretty much everything. 'nuff said on him.

this is how I would set up the post season tournament as wel. Puts it back to 8 teams so you get three full rounds. You still have some scheduling issues if one series goes 7 and the other goes 4, but that's not as bad as the current bye is. But practically speaking, they simply won't back down the number of playoff teams.

and who would have thought that not having Purdue or Illinois on the their West schedule would end up being such an advantage for OSU? Their road sched the rest of way is nothing but PSU and then they have M at home so the everything is as aligned for them as it's ever likely to be.

I've come to look at the playoffs as just another tournament. The only problem to me with the current playoffs that they make too big a deal out of the winner. If I ruled the world, the team in each league with the best record would get a diamond ring and a $1M per player 1st place prize, and 'tournament winner' would get the trophy - period - and of course all the media adulation they can stand...

Michigan and Tennessee each have only one signature win so far, and in each case its value will end up depending on what that opponent does the rest of the way. Right now Tennessee gets the benefit of the much higher confidence in Saban vs Franklin, which is certainly fair enough, but still subject to revision if 'Bama does continue to falter and PSU rights the ship.

it just means you have to do away with an explicit wild card round and just have the highest seeds start playing the lowest seeds from the get go. The problem isn't really that however, it's that to do a balanced (no byes) schedule playoff requires 8 or 16 teams and the majors don't like either of those numbers. Just go ahead and do the inevitable and bump the playoff to 16 and the problem is solved - or not!

I don't think you want to take pitchers out of their regular starting schedule or ever give an everyday hitter a week off, so it's a detriment on both sides of the ball. I don't think there is any doubt the long layoffs hurt. But that helps scramble the odds and randomize the outcomes, which increases the value of the last playoff spots, and overall the leagues probably like that.

Tigers aren't without hope. I would count Turnbull's return, Skubal possibly mid-season, Greene and Tork improvement, Wentz and Colt Keith as reasonable hopes. That is 6 roster spots of possible improvement. If Harris brings in 2 or 3, the level of upgrade could be significant. For all of those things to go right would be about are rare as the consistency of things that went wrong in 2022, so we are due a little better luck. That much? Who knows? But to excel in a particular baseball season is, as often as not, driven by an ample dose of good luck.

true enough, but it still means that if a 65 win a team pays 9 million/win out of the gate on their rebuild they are going looking at a 225 million payroll add to get to the playoffs (assuming 90 wins). From a $30millions base payroll like we've seen some teams bottom out with, that might be conceivable, for a team with a payroll already at >$100M, it has to be a depressing prospect.

I think between the all the conference shuffling and the portal, it's getting harder to get a read on how good teams are anymore. That said, Stroud does seem to be awfully good.

Wins 90 to 95 might be worth $9M, but clearly wins 0, to say 80, cannot be because we don't have teams with 800 milllion payrolls. So I might argue the Twins did not get their money's worth because their team turned out not to be close enough to good to take useful advantage of 5 high cost marginal wins (i.e make the playoffs). I have to wonder if the revenue value to Minny for 78 vs 73 wins covered Correa's value in absolute economic terms either.

They still haven't shown a lot of talent going over the safeties' heads, but it was also not a very good day to be throwing the ball long in A^2. And interestingly enough, Harbaugh saying Monday that JJ had to run more was not a just a media feint, he did run it more to good effect.

Willi is right up there for sure, but I thought I'd pick from players whose failure cycle had completed and were gone. 🙄

Xi is either crazy or getting really bad advice from his medical science people. Xi doubles down on zero Covid It's not going to go away, he needs to get his country's immunity rate up to where he can accept that it has become part of the background 'normal flora' for the human speices so his country can get on with its life. Given the state of understanding of the virus today, Zero-Covid remains a completely foolish and very economically costly windmill tilt. Seems like Xi may intent on proving he will be able to run China into the ground faster than Putin ran Russia into it.

Fair choice, but for me it was Niko. A player whose limitations were completely obvious to everyone *except* Al Avlia from pretty much day one. He encapsulated poor pre-acquisition scouting, inability to raise a player's level, refusal to honestly evaluate current talent, and commitment to looking for the wrong player profile in the first place - all in one.

I thought Veleno had played better than Sutter - I might try Zadina and Veleno together as defensive checking line.

Only a game and 1/3 but he had hardly made his presence felt so far. Still would rather not lose him!

I was watching to see late in the game if, as is typical in the NHL, a team that is down tries to 'take it' to the other team and if the big line's ice time would increase in the last few minutes. The answers appeared to be 'yes' on the second and understandably 'no' on the 1st. 🤔

I think it's more likely than not that the ADept has any number of plans waiting for Administrative review/approval. I don't imagine Mary Sue was willing to commit the U to anything on NIL policy as an interim Pres. Ono officially started yesterday - if the U is going to have a policy, the clock on the decision started yesterday. While it's possible that it's been Harbaugh refusing to 'get with reality' I would put my money on it being more likely that it's been institutional paralysis since Schlissel's unceremonious firing. Harbaugh tends to be all in for the players on most issues - his early support of the portal as an example. Not claiming any insight but just from observation I wouldn't think he has a problem with the players getting a bigger piece of the pie - at least in principle.

NJ had the jump the majority of the time early but this is one of those games that wasn't quite as lopsided as the shots. Too early in the season for it to mean much but still good to see the Wings getting stronger as the game went on in the 2nd game of a back-to-back. Vrana has a great scoring touch, nice to see the Wings have someone besides Larkin who can flat out fool a goalie. Wings D still making too many terrible attempts at outlet passes. I think at one point Lindstrom made three in a row that were directly back to a NJ player.

All that plus a $100M to Jimbo gets you 1-2 in the conference....

NJ has been able to get them scrambling in their own end a lot, haven't looked very organized. Big line has played well, not so much any of the others.

NJ succeeding in getting a lot of pucks into the slot in front of Neddy.. Wings not getting much from the #1 line.

wings PP starts the season 0/5.