mtutiger

Worth noting that DSG owns a minority stake in YES...

They have screwed around with kickoffs and extra points a lot over the past 10-15 years. Moving yard lines for both, but also restrictions on how far back the kickoff team can line up as well.

Worth noting that Mize's new college buddy who is camp, Trey Wingenter, also had TJ and Back Surgery in succession as well. Something Auburn was doing with their pitchers or purely coincidental?

Even before the back injury news, it seemed like the default position was that he would be unlikely to see action this year. Especially given that Turnbull was knifed around the same time of year that Mize was and didn't make it back last year. If both surgeries can recovery any of his stock, that would be a plus at this point.

They didn't get a lot of publicity or attention, but on the development side, I am interested to see what (if anything) comes from the new coaching staff hires. Particularly on the pitching side, the fact that they have a coach on their MLB staff who is an expert in kinesiology seems like a big deal given all the injuries they have sustained over the past few years.

A solid goal for this club is to try and claw back to somewhere around where they landed in 2021.... it's not a good roster, but some movement toward the mean for some of the 2022 underperformers + adding back in some of the 2022 injured (ie. Meadows, Turnbull, possibly Rogers) + some better performances from some of the younger players with the bats gives them a decent chance to get somewhere into the 70s IMO. If they manage to do that, and in particular if both Greene and Tork more establish themselves as big leaguers, it improves their outlook beyond 2023. Obviously, all of that may not come to pass, but it's a possibility.

ZiPS has them at 71 wins.... so the average of the two seems like their baseline to me.

Bingo. The problems that the Tigers have extend beyond the owner and his indifference (perceived or otherwise) to spending money on free agents. As far as this team's outlook in 2023 is concerned, hate to beat a dead horse, but the ability to outperform expectations largely would lie with the performances of those who were on the roster in 2022.... there weren't any free agents, even big name ones, who were gonna move the preseason outlook beyond 75 wins, let alone 80. It just is what it is.... I would hope that in the future they spend more money as they get closer, but regardless of fans patience, this wasn't the offseason to do it.

100%. But the inverse is true as well..... That's the sort of aggravating thing about the discourse about this team going into 2023.... the default setting for most fans (at least online) seems to be that this team is worse than 2022 and will lose 100 games, when the band of possible outcomes is maybe a little wider than they are giving it credit for.

That matches with what I've seen as well... Most people on here would call me liberal, yet I've never liked the guy for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which that there's a natural aversion to people who command cult-like status like he does, but also that he's bombastic and projects a level of arrogance in everything he does. All traits that remind me of another figure that I've never liked as well... I don't know enough about the car industry to speak to it, but I will say that it's hard not to imagine that the bluster around GM putting a hold on advertising on Twitter has to do with them being a competitor of Elon's. He once had the EV sandbox to himself and that is no longer the case.

But I was reliably told by Joe Rogan that all liberals LOVED Elon Musk before he bought Twitter... lol

"Buttplug" is now trending on the Twitter dot com. In case we are wondering how the level of discourse is going these days on that app

At least on the freight side, railroads aren't struggling right now. Intermodal business in particular (ie. containers) is robust and they have market superiority over trucks in that sector, among others

They also didn't have roads in the 1800s to interact with... much of the danger presented today (not all, as evidenced by East Palestine, which appears to have more to do with mechanical failure on one of the axles) comes from roads interacting with rails. Not to mention the type of commodities being shipped back then... not a lot of vinyl chloride back in the 1880s. If you look at the numbers, those interactions with roads are getting safer, but that is because a lot of grade crossings that were built with the technology of the time back in the 1940s-1970s have been upgraded to signalized crossings. A lot of technology exists now that didn't as well... aside from upgrades to traditional gate arms and signals, grade crossings in higher density areas can now be designed more pedestrian friendly with gate arms and emergency exit gates to allow egress for people trapped inside a grade crossing after the signals go off. Again, a lot of the dangers are preventable and the industry needs to do more and needs oversight. But it's not like the problems didn't exist in the past, in fact they were worse.

I'm waiting for the day that he removes the ability to mute or block him... You just know it's coming...

Correct, Texas does not have a state income tax. (Property taxes are another matter, but that's a tradeoff multimillionaire athletes will make, particularly if they live somewhere else in the offseason)

FWIW, people around the org and local media think the new stadium / facilities are the best in baseball and are a draw as well. (I dont know personally, it may just be that standard "everything's bigger (better) in Texas mentality that everyone projects here lol)

We are compounding old bad decisions with good decisions by offering federal grants to railroads to improve grade crossings and through State DOTs doing analysis and inventory of grade crossings to optimize which are the most dangerous and require being made grade separated or which ones should be upgraded to being signalized. And the railroads themselves do kick in dollars as well to upgrade intersections. But lets be practical. Over 200,000 grade crossings in the United States, 90,000 private and some subset which are equipped only with passive warning devices (ie. crossbucks and/or stop signs). Let's say that there's a need to signalize 120,000 crossings (estimated from FRA numbers), with an the average cost to signalize a grade crossing in the United States of $400,000. That math gets you to $48,000,000,000. Again, all good in theory, but with that price tag, who is paying for it? The government? The railroads? We can be idealistic all we want, but practically, getting to an end goal like that is going to have to be an incremental thing.

The keycard / points of egress discussion is kinda like mental health and shouldn't be taken as a serious proposition until we actually see the appetite to fork over the money to the thousands of school districts who would need to update their buidlings / property in order to meet that standard. It's just not gonna happen, it's all about taking a knee and running out the clock on the discussion (at least until the next high profile shooting anyway)

That was pretty much the Uvalde playbook....

What editor thought this was a good idea? Jesus

And cut funding for mental health....

And as mentioned earlier, $500 million dollars last offseason won them eight more games. Eight. Even with the acquisitions this offseason, their modal outcome is still probably fourth place.

Isn't part of the problem that there's a finite number of options who are realistic short-term improvements as well? Chas has beat this drum a lot and he's spot on about it, it's easier said than done to land guys on one year deals. Brandon Drury and Jean Segura are both people who would have been short-term improvement options but ultimately got multi-year deals. Michael Conforto and Mitch Haniger, who are even a step beyond those guys, got multiple years. You even have a guy like Jurickson Profar still out on the market because he wants multiple years as well. Old friend Tucker Barnhart, somehow, got a multi-year deal. I understand the lack of patience that fans have, but it's not just that he has more patience, it's also that trying to gain 25 more wins in one offseason is really ****ing hard, and I don't think it's a realistic proposition on free agency alone. It requires advancement from the rest of the roster. There aren't really any shortcuts around that.