gehringer_2

right. It's 100% musical chairs/greater fool at this point. Keep riding as long as possible but woe to the last man off. History has shown that sometimes you can keep this going a lot longer than than anyone would ever think, but like I said, you need a certain level of mystery or uniqueness or something on which people can hang their belief that 'this is something different, the old valuation rules don't apply." You could do that as long as Tesla was a unique product. It would certainly be a new thing if they can keep that valuation ball in the air once the uniqueness is gone.

And just to note, the underlying assumption here that Musk cares if Twitter is profitable, or is even buying it as business vs a vanity play, is tenuous at best. Musk is in a odd place. His wealth is based on largely on Tesla, but he's stuck. He can't cash out much of Tesla because it will crater the stock value. But the truth is, and Musk must know it as well as anyone, is that Tesla's valuation can't sustain. And it's way worse for Tesla than for other tech companies about which this has been said but which still don't some down because very soon, Tesla is not going to have anything unique about its product, nor unexplored about its market. There are hundreds of thousand of competitive E-vehicles starting to roll off non-tesla production lines even as I type this and the revenue to valuation ratios of the companies making those cars is nothing like Tesla's. So something has to give - and it isn't going to be Ford or GM or VW stock going to $500/share. Telsa is like Bitcoin but with no way to keep the mystery that feeds the overvaluation going.

Yeah, that guy.

so really, it comes back full circle. Is this a job for Elon Musk or better for a Mitt Romney? The question mark, and it's a fair one, is that Musk has no previously demonstrated competence is this particular business skill. It's a known unknown. So as an investor (or user), there are a lot of question marks - of course if he buys everyone out and takes twitter private there won't be any more investors and that will be that! 🤔

MI GOP also forming up a circular firing squad in the wake of their convention.

I think launch angle will be a more complicated analysis for Cabrera. When you inside out the ball the way Cabrera does, you tend to hit it in the air more. At this point in his career, this is his preference as he has more time (ball can travel deeper and that other analyst drivel). To combat that, they are pitching him inside more now, on the theory (and it's the conventional one for any older hitter) that he can't get around and take the ball to left as well. But when you go to the pull field you don't get the loft you get going to right as naturally. When he goes to right, he drops the bat head under the path of the ball. Going to left, he tends to swing level or down on it more. Observationally, I would agree that it looks like Cabrera has stung a good number of hard grounders to short and 3rd so far this season. Long story short, I would bet that with Cabrera his launch angle will correlate with his R/L field %. You can see the evidence for this in that teams often shift Cabrera to the pull side on the IF and the opposite side in the OF. Though when Cabrera is 'on' he can beat that on the ground to right anyway. Which, BTW, can get you to the HOF.

The fact that employee costs are high doesn't necessarily mean there are too many, they may just be well paid - esp near the top (as you already noted). That's a bit more complex to manage than just firing 20%! Not clear exactly what that $3 billion includes but if it's the ordinary Cost of Sales number, for a non-manufacturer you might actually expect direct labor to be half of it so that's $200/k per year per employee, (we were were using $100k in project estimates over 10 yrs ago). So maybe high, but it also depends some on what the employee skill profile is. Flip the analysis around - the issue is that revenue is low and it's not clear where any growth comes from, which is no doubt why the board was so quick to bail. Like many business that create a new field, the question of whether income ever reaches a competitive ROI on the application of labor and capital required isn't answered until the business model actually succeeds or fails. It's quite possible - maybe likely - that Twitter as currently structured is not a sufficiently profitable business. Maybe you can solve that by finding a way to keep doing what you do at much lower cost. That is the standard US Business school hammer to every struggling business nail. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just proves the business model wasn't sustainable to begin with and the business has to morph into doing something different or die.

he'll have to be quick though. An extended period of firings will paralyze an organization (I remember I had friends at Ford when management at went to a forced termination system meant to remove low performers, it put the company into a productivity stasis and forced WCJ jr to step in and fire the CEO that had put it in place..)

I know it's old news now when we see the lights finally go on inside the head of ex-GOP intellectuals, but this is still a spot on bit of analysis by Jennifer Rubin even if she is nearly a decade late in getting there.... https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/27/gop-no-longer-a-party-movement-impose-christian-nationalism/

I think the idea is just around the buzz being all over the place when it comes to Musk. A more interesting commentary among the many I've skimmed over was to the effect that what Musk is really good at is assembling his own teams of managers, and in Twitter he's going to inherit one he clearly doesn't think much of. That gives him two choices: bring this one up to his speed and viewpoints, which given his difficult personality may be hard for him, or fire everyone and bring in new people, which will at minimum create short term chaos. Should be fun times.

I would guess not much if Mize or Manning is out very long. Faedo's 26, he's over 500IP NCAA + MiLB. If he does continue to handle AAA hitters, there doesn't seem much of anything to gain for him at AAA.

Update: Olson came out and got one out in the 6th but surrendered another run. In the second game of the 7inning DH. Wolf: 5ip, 4H, 0R, 2BB 7K. Parker Meadows 2/5 2B, BB for the DH.

My guess - Akil needs to back off a touch and trust his strength - I think he's just out of control with his swing and he can't get the bat on the ball.

Faedo: 5IP, 4H, 0R, 0BB 8K Olson: 5IP, 2H, 1ER, 0BB, 5K, HR

right. Dan talking about run scoring being down around the league - probably a lot of northern cold weather - at any rate ignoring that, 5 runs a game has been the average in recent years. But when you don't score at all we all tend to overfocus on runs allowed, even if they aren't that bad.

Faedo and Olson both with strong starts so far tonight.

this is so similar to last season it almost freaky. A couple of good games the first week then into the tank. Just the cast has changed. Last April it was Cabrera, Jones, Mazara, Goodrum, Reyes that all slumped out of the gate.

3 black hole rule. I've don't think I've ever seen a productive MLB offense with 3 hitters all really in the tank. Baddoo is currently hitting 114, so there is your three.

You can wonder how Gretzky would have fared in a Scotty Bowman system, though I guess Brett Hull worked out in Det under him. The other question is who did the wings have to play Messier for Gretzky?

sure, the thing with relievers is that actual results in baseball have so many randomizing inputs that results can remain stubbornly divergent from a pitcher's peripherals for a long time (see: Valverde, Jose). Neither Fulmer's velo nor command were great last night, but conditions sucked and he got out of his inning so I'm not going to complain until he doesn't have better peripherals under better conditions.

Jason Thompson, Fidrych and Frank McCormick are all younger and debuted in '76. Thompson was 2 months closer in age, but Fidrych made his first start on Apr20 and Thompson didn't play his first game until Apr 23, so I guess mine would be Fidrych Apr 20, 1976. McCormick's first game was not until July.

At worst, if Haase believes there is no-one behind him, he stays close enough to the 3b line so runner 3 can't get past him and holds the ball until someone gets there to back up home or until runner 2 forces him to throw to 2nd. Point is, he doesn't have to hurry - has lots of time for help to arrive - relatively.

LOL - Reuters already reporting speculation that Musk might back out of twitter deal...... https://www.reuters.com/technology/investors-fret-over-potential-musk-u-turn-44-bln-twitter-buyout-2022-04-27/

Gazprom starting to cut off Europe with Poland and Bulgaria. I see this as good news bad news. Sure, it pressures those publics, but much more importantly, once it's done, Putin's quiver is empty. He will hold zero additional economic leverage. Once each country that is cut off makes whatever adjustment they can and will make, Russia has nothing more, and that much less income.

UMich drops mask mandate for the classroom for spring term but not for any winter term classes finishing late. Don't ask me how they decided to split that hair!