gehringer_2

LOL - Thumb war at High Noon!

right - but when this happens you have a team of 25 players operating at low salary for 2 guys in NY making 40 million. If that is what the union wants, fine - *some* guys are getting a bigger % share of total revenue, but not the average player. The base thing is that I don't agree with the contention that top salaries drag up any other salaries. I haven't seen it. Guys are the bottom make the minimum, which is not tied anything at the top, and it seems like the cost of mid level players - say like our example Schoop, do not seem to have gone up in proportion the top contracts being given to stars, though I could be persuaded I'm wrong if someone had the figures to make the showing.

Shrub was strong and healthy - probably more so than any US Pres in my lifetime - and also a disaster as POTUS. And I was dumb enough to vote for him once.... Reagan was in excellent condition for a man of his age until the dementia hit. OTOH, FDR managed WWII with one foot in the grave...

they could have done worse.

that's one way to put it....

I know you reject it. () but if in all these years the the CBT being what it is hasn't caused teams 100 million away from it to approach it, what mechanism changes that now? Things like the streaming deal are certainly part of the answer if the revenue is more evenly distributed than overall revenue now - it's moving things in the right direction. Not speaking of you or anyone in particular here, but there seems to be a view that small market owners are just sitting on some big pot of money and it's their fault they don't spend more, but that just doesn't seem to square with the facts. 1st, if it were true small market teams should be fetching the highest purchase prices because they are so profitable - that certainly isn't the case. The second arg is it seems odd cheap owners only buy mid-market teams. If it's just random greed I would have thought that by now some cheapskate would have bought the Yankees or Dodgers and run them like the Pirates so he could pocket even more money, but it's never happened.

absolutely, But to analyze conventional wisdom, look for available data. Compare football or basketball to baseball. In those sports, almost all teams have payrolls at or within striking distance of their caps, but not in baseball. Doesn't that argue that there must be some other situation that constrains many baseball teams other than the existence of the cap (de facto or otherwise) that is not constraining basketball and football teams -- like that the revenue situation is so different in baseball than in other sports? Are we to believe that baseball owners are some different kind of breed than other sports owners? Why would they be? I don't see how you fix the overall revenue split to the players without working toward a more equitable revenue split. All the cap increase does is allow a few teams to pay more, while leaving competition even more screwed. That's good for a few players, I don't see how it's good for players as whole. I think the fair counter question is why doesn't the union see this if it's so obvious, and personally I think it's because the union is well captured by the richest players who do benefit - as a sub group - from a higher cap. You also have the 'aspirational fallacy' at work. In the same way many lower economic group people defend the rights of the rich in politics because they think they might be rich some day, many more players than ever will probably beleive they will be stars.

the really dangerous one that the conservative on the court are pushing is that state legislatures are not bound by their own state constitutions. I seriously doubt that is anything the founders had in mind.

when COVID crashed the world economy, the drop in the price of oil drove frackers off their fields. As the economy came back, supply was low so prices rose. Prices have to increase to the point where producers back start up again. Price elasticity of supply and demand - Econ 101. The US federal government has had little to do with this - it's called market economics, and this market has done exactly what any market would do under the circumstances. On top of that war uncertainty has added some additional premium of course. And it wasn't the US gov that invaded Ukraine either.

That sounds like one of those -- "people are saying" args . Just because wisdom is conventional does mean it can't be wrong. The first may be right but the numbers argue that the 2nd simply does not follow. The evidence appears overwhelming that more teams spend to their revenue than to the CBT number.

exactly, which is why I don't get why people are dumping on Ilitch for voting against the CBT increase, which is a vote for more revenue sharing. The small market team owners seem to be the only ones who understand that the CBT number is a fantasy argument, if teams don't have the income via more revenue sharing, they can't increase payrolls to any level where the CBT would be in play. He's doing the right thing for his own fans if they want to see their team be able to compete long term. To the teams on the coasts with big money the rest of league looks like the Senators did to the Globetrotters, basically schedule fodder, it's fine with them if midwest teams never compete. Meanwhile the top players like Scherzer, who seem to control the union, are all looking for the their big paydays from the rich teams, so they don't care about competitive balance either but they're glad to play the oppressed serf card over the CBT.

right - fracking is very low capital, low barrier to entry compared to other oil production methods. It comes up and goes down much faster with price than things like offshore where there are huge capital costs that delay entry and sunk costs that delay exit.

will be hard for Putin to keep that one a secret from the relevant people - if true....

any chance this guy is related to the other General Gerasimov?

Obvious move but how dumb do they think their own public is? They don't think the average Russian sees through the fact that only bad news gets suppressed? I hope all it does is allow rumor of how bad it is to run past even the reality.

too bad, he seemed to be playing better at the end of last season but it doesn't seem to be there anymore.

I'm really losing hope for Zadina - he doesn't seem to have any skill at placing a puck in traffic, whether that is a pass in traffic or a shot on goal anywhere other than the goalie's chest.

I believe in the NFL the cap adjusts automatically to maintain a constant % of revenue split. It's the no drama solutions we can only dream the two sides getting to in baseball.

haha.. When i was flying a lot (like more than twice a month ) I soon realized that there was a small fraternity of the burned out who I would wait with on the concourse until the last boarding section was called even if our seats were in 1st class.....

Missed stuff about the back. Never good for any athlete, let alone a hockey player.... Had Covid also - but again I didn't much about how badly.

right - risk free. That's the key. It's not like the Wings are going to lose some valuable asset making a roster spot for him given the composition of the current team.

as always, when the Russians screw up, the long term danger is the West decides to overplay its hand and regrets it later. There is a huge emotional need to be punitive to Russia right now, and deservedly so, but the West's has to remember their fight is not in the main with the Russian populace. Revenge that goes beyond Putin is not a long term win.

exactly. Not matter how you slice it it always comes back to the ball. It is it advantageous to try to pull the ball *despite* the extra outs the shifted fielder makes now, because, and *only* because the HR/AB is as high as it is. Teams are not losing OBP because they have to, but because they want to.

hey, those old Lenovo's were money. They don't die. I still have a T420 (~2010 ) that's set up as a music server.

LOL - when ever I hear this my mind goes right to the Monty Python "Life of Brian" sketch "What have the Romans done for us?" Let's see, Dems have had to rescue the economy twice after the GOP put it into disaster, provided tens of millions of Americans with health care they lacked, ended participation in one of the endless wars the GOP started, repaired international security arrangements that the GOP was well along the path to shattering, and is the party working against the interests of racist white nationalists. Yeah - I guess all those things are too unAmerican to countenance - that is if you have a Trumper's view of what you want America to be.