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That's all I've been saying all along, and my evidence is negotiating common sense honed by years of doing it for a living. If you know your adversary has a floor and you offer them something below that, you already know they're not going to take the offer. So, why bother making the offer at all? One reason could be to appear to your constituents that you've made an effort. That's not as uncommon as some may think. Another reason could be you want to establish a foothold in case your adversary doesn't get the floor number they want, and then you can be in position to have your offer seen as competitive after all. But that almost never works because most people see an offer that is outside the range of their expectations as being inherently unserious, and perhaps even a little insulting. Not as insulting as if Al had offered, say, 5/100, which would have been a super obvious insult. But if your you establish a floor number and your adversary's first offer in even a closed marketplace is below that, before anyone else even has a chance to make their own offer, then why would you take it? It's true Correa did not get end up with his $300 million contract, but he did get an offer well above that from the Giants, and that was proof of concept that he was worth that kind of money. He did end up accepting Minnesota's 3/105 because that reset the AAV for a subsequent contract. And it worked, since his second contract with the Twins included six guaranteed years of over $30MM salary, which he would not have gotten from an Avila contract. If all his club options kick in, Correa will end up with $297.1MM over 11 years, which is better than Avila's 10/275 deal would have been, although somewhat short of his $300 goal, and well short of the $350MM the Giants were willing to pay him even after the Avila offer, and before his injury reduced his overall haul.

The debate is about whether Avila knew Correa would turn down the lowball offer. I think Avila knew.

I assume this set of photographs was taken in the southern hemisphere?

Thrice-divorced woman "found god" to try to outrun her sketchy past.

He's not exactly this generation's Tom Selleck, is he?

Raise the minimum age on the young kids but don't raise it on us. I like the way you think. 😉😁 I think raising the income cap is the perfect solution, and I don't care if it's unfair because it is supposed to be a wealth transfer program, not a government-run individual pension fund. I don't think it's any more unfair than funding unemployment insurance with workers' taxes. Raise the cap to a million dollars. That seems like it would go a long way toward cutting down the shortfall.

Do you believe it's only 2.7%? I don't. Not anymore.

Sure thing, raise the minimum age for benefits from 62 to 70. That way, instead of only 15% of people dying before they can start to collect, 25% of people can die before they can collect. That should save the program a couple of bucks.

This would be an interesting 180 twist because the way SSI benefits work now, the higher income a worker has, the higher their SSI benefits will be, so people who are the most likely to have built retirement wealth through savings and investing are those cashing the highest Social Security checks.

It's that belief that makes it so sacrosanct as a program, but that doesn't mean they can;t privatize and force everyone to take their payments in crypto. Social Security was always designed to be a wealth transfer from current taxpayers to non-taxpaying people in need, such as retired workers (or their survivors) and disabled people.

What are they going to do with same-sex marriages already on the books?

I quite like the bar-like conversations they have during rain delays. It's the chucklehead stuff during actual play that I am less enamored of.

Here's the rule: Prior to the 2020 season, if a game was terminated early due to weather before becoming official, the results up to the point of the termination did not count and the game was started over at a later date. But as part of MLB's health and safety protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, all games cut short due to weather before becoming official were resumed at a later date, rather than started over from scratch, during the 2020 campaign. The rules below remained in place. If a regulation game is terminated early due to weather, the results are considered final if the home team is leading. If the home team is trailing, the results are considered final if the game is not in the midst of an inning when the visiting team has taken the lead. If a regulation game is terminated early due to weather and the game is either tied or in the midst of an inning in which the visiting team has taken the lead, it becomes a suspended game that will be completed at a later date from the point of termination. Based on this, the game would have been suspended at that point and picked up again at a later day, meaning either Tuesday or Wednesday.

It’s definitely not the difference between an ace and a spot starter, but for the purpose of getting us through the rest of this year, I think Morton has a better chance to pitch us closer to the playoffs than Montero does. Once the winter comes, we’ll probably have seen the last of Charlie Morton, but Keider Montero will get another shot next season.

But we should be getting back Jobe to cover them! 🤪

The main point is that Avila made the first offer to Correa and it was well below Correa’s known floor, so it was a fair accompli that Correa would turn it down. The only real unknown is whether Avila knew going in whether Correa would reject it. Anyone who’s ever done even a little negotiating for a living would know Correa would reject it, and since Avila has done even a little negotiating as GM, I assume he knew it. I’m famous for not giving Al much credit, but I’m giving him credit for at least knowing that. The Harris offer to Bregman was more serious because it reportedly was the highest dollar figure of any team, as opposed to Avila’s obvious lowball effort, but who knows, maybe Harris was making an offer he knew Bregman would turn down, too. It was widely reported by national beat writers, including Olney, that Avila made the offer to Correa, and this entire debate is predicated on the fact of that. If you’re going to cast doubt on whether it even happened, or whether it was fake news instead, then we really have nothing more to debate here.

The game has evolved over time to where pitchers chase higher velocity and better stuff while exerting maximum effort more often, both in-game and offseason. They know they’re gonna have short outings, so they go balls out from pitch one, which is some thing pitchers never did before just recently. Pitchers also throw a lot more in the majors than when they do in the minor, where their workloads are managed more carefully, and they come into the bigs unprepared for the workload. One of the ideas being batted around is incentivizing longer starts by pitchers by having a double-switch rule where a team that removes its pitcher before end of fifth inning loses their DH. The idea is supposed to be getting pitchers to pace themselves early knowing they have to go longer than normal. It may or may not work, but that’s the kind of change Baseball is considering.

Greetings from beautiful Chicago, Illinois!

Then Jay-Z can sue, and the government will withdraw the video, and the song will have served its purpose.

He did end up getting an offer over $300MM after the Avila lowball offer, but that's not the point.

The Giants signed Correa to a $350 million deal after he had turned down the Tigers, so as of the day of that offer, Correa understood his own market value just fine. But even that’s not the point.

Harris wants the top prospects to be ready for the majors when they are promoted to the majors, and the Tigers have a process to prepare them, and especially after the Tork debacle of a few years back, I respect that.

In this case, it’s just logic. The price tag for Correa going into free agency was publicly reported to be $300 million. The Tigers were the first team to offer him a contract, and it was below that number. Therefore, the chances that Correa was going to take that deal before anyone else could make him an offer was zero. If there’s anything to debate further on that, it’s whether Avila knew Correa would never accept the deal, or whether he was too stupid to know Correa would never accept the deal. Personally, I think Avila was smart enough to know Correa would turn down the deal, but taking the other side of that proposition is defensible.

“Does this look exciting and thrilling to you? Do you have something to prove? Then come join us. We’ll be your new family …”

Sure I do. So do you.