gehringer_2

Off season training has gotten crazy - Keller is (was!) throwing 97 in his 1st ST game.

what? You mean the convict cap with the yellow stripes wasn't your favorite?

Schoop looks like he's lost a little weight.

Riley Greene singles then goes brain dead on the bases.

correct data, but that isn't the spin I would give it. It's standard Russian operation procedure to try to beat a civilian population into submission when the probability of winning on the battlefield starts to waver. And Putin is more than glad to go that route because we have to remember that he draws his understanding of state morality in a straight line from Genghis Khan. All decisions have complex antecedents, but I would guess this fact figures higher in Putin's decisions right now that whatever he is thinking about the US. It can also be read as sign of relative desperation because the last thing his generals want is to give the West a real world look at his best/most secret capabilities.

he just kicks back and hits the Cruz-control while recharging...

so, there's a question. How does an agent get paid on an opt-out contract? If he gets paid based on an annual cut, and the guy opts out but can't sign as good a replacement deal, that means the agent is out money also I suppose......which would mean he gets shorted if his client makes a bad decision down the road?

Boyd isn't going to be ready until about June - I think Avila wants depth for April if one of the Kids stumbles. Could be a little understandable over reaction to last April, but on the other hand they also have a bunch of near ready guys trying to prove themselves in the minors that give them a chance to maybe have another pitcher ready to call up by mid season - one of them might provide the same depth for the later part of the season Boyd would have.

The Phanatic finally caught up to Nick. 5yrs/$100M to the Phillies.

LOL - What did the Tigers offer again(?!?!?!)

This is good. if any of the young guys like Wentz are looking good at mid season, a guy like Pineda would probably draw a good trade return.

I'm pretty much at a loss as to why Willi Castro is still on the roster. Must be a helluva practice player.............

Cueto is probably toast.

right. The fans' complaint really should be that as baseball has evolved it has ended up as a cockeyed, backward way to run a major sport which has left pretty much everyone with bad incentives (at least from a fan perspective)

How much is Petry going in the booth this season? Love the guy but really am not going to be able to stand listening to him try to be a broadcaster. Shep is bad enough. The two of them together? Please.....

Dan just blew right through the compression settings on his mic!

I wonder how much kevlar is packed into that parka?

or a short version is maybe you *should* feel reticent to speak in public when you don't know what you are talking about! 🙄

1000 OBP already.

Lee noted the other day that one of Avila's traits is that he tells you what he is going to do - the other day Al said his only objective is to put the best team on the field from day one and that April wins are just as important as Sept, so he doesn't care about service time or other games. I think based on his history of doing what he says so far he's probably not lying.

Torkelson's walks allowed him to keep up a good OBP even when he wasn't hitting much at points last year - that should make it easier for them to let him work through slumps when they happen instead of having to send him back to AAA.

the league based revenue is pretty well known and player costs are pretty well established, Those things alone provide a decent basis for establishing whether a team *should* make money or not. I suppose any owner can run such a sloppy operation that they lose money because they are lousy business managers, but those cases, if any, are not the same thing as claiming that the economics of owning a baseball team are actually bad for any of the teams.

👍

Not too far back I had some numbers on team revenue - I've already forgotten the totals but it struck me that the teams with the bottom payrolls (<$70M) are definitely making money that way. My guess would be that the only teams that ever lose money in a given year are small/mid market teams that go into a short term salary over-extend like the Tigers did. The lux-tax prevents the rich teams from spending enough to lose money, the cheap teams are guaranteed enough income to make money as long as they stay cheap.

A half of peck? A short bushell? A mere stere? A non-populous pack? A compact corps? A most limited legion?