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The San Diego Padres are such an interesting franchise. Here they are spending like crazy to put expensive stars and prospects on the field, yet their entire base of support is basically a single county. Unlike any other team (except probably the White Sox), the Padres don’t have much of a fan footprint beyond their immediate trading radius. San Diego is not even a particularly affluent metro area, ranking about 17th among those in the US that have teams. But if 2022 attendance is any indication, it’s working so far. I still believe were it not for league-wide revenue sharing making up such a high share of team receipts, though, they couldn’t get very far with this strategy.

Hopefully. Good thing we didn't sign him to a 9/320 deal, right?

I hear ya, but that's really a serious question: who is this guy and why does he have so many followers who care about his opinions about the Tigers?

Florida also has so many people living there that it would rank 58th of 235 countries in population, nearly as many people as Australia and Taiwan.

Vireling had something closer to an 8% walk rate until September, after which he had an inexplicable 2 walks in 89 plate trips, so I'm guessing it's an outlier, and perhaps a response to the Phillies possibly asking him to put more balls in play (which if true did result in a higher SLG). He also had a 10%+ walk rate in AAA. I think he'll probably be 10%+ in Detroit after the Tigers work with him a bit.

Who is "Calico Joe" and why should we care what he has to say about the Matt Vierling versus Victor Reyes?

Pitcher gets two free throws over to first. On the third throw he’d better get the runner out, because if he doesn’t, runner is awarded second. It’s the possibility of being thrown out on the third throw that keeps him close. In the end I don’t think this will have any effect on runners’ leads.

Harris/Hinch must know something about Cisnero we don’t, even though his more obvious data points seem to conclude non-tender. They felt it was more important to pay him 3x the minimum than non-tender him and risk him not coming back on a cheaper or minor league deal. They wanted to keep him here and were willing to pay him to do so. I’m guessing it’s his demonstrated ability to limit hard hit balls. Last year Cisnero was the only pitcher with more than 50 batted ball events to not yield a single barrel. His prior three years all showed this metric ranging from pink to pinkish-red. They must believe they can do something about his walk rate and are willing to risk a couple of large on him guaranteed to try to fix it.

This strikes me as a pretty brazen effort to crash that part of the welfare state that doesn't benefit the people who vote for them.

Yes, let's be completely honest: totally agree.

Cooler take: most people aren't politically tuned in enough to tell the difference between the two. To anyone going just off headlines, which is probably most people, they look the same. It's obvious to you and me just how deep Trump's criminal and traitorous activity runs, but I think we're in the minority. I think most voting-age Americans who don't like Trump don't so because of his loudness and his bluster, and don't really understand or maybe even believe much of what they hear about his alleged criminality. I think this is in part because the media reporting on it have been so successfully demonized, and in part because a lot of what they do hear is comes to them as hot takes or as entertainment, rather than as vetted news stories.

Yeah, it's getting pretty embarrassing for him. One thing that sucks is that Biden will pay a heavy price for this, because of the way Democrats own up to things, while Trump, whose similar infractions are likely multiples times worse, will only increase in esteem for his, because of the way Republicans love to guzzle librul tears.

This is probably the most accurate projection for a roster six years from now I’ve ever seen, since there are a bunch of names I’ve never heard of! Although we might be hard-pressed to get Jonathan Hesson to put his lucrative obstetrics-gynecology practice at Ascension (fka South Macomb) Hospital in Warren on hold to join the rotation. EDIT: Ed beat me to the accuracy observation.

To clarify, my position is: I don’t get it, but the new regime must see something in him I don’t, so I’ll trust them. It’s not anything like: oh my god, they’re wasting my money on this palooka, fire Scott Harris. That said, if Cisnero shows clearly sub-replacement level early on, I hope they yank him right away before they waste too many innings on him, because innings are a precious commodity. I hope they don’t keep running him out there past his sell-by date hoping to get their money’s worth in a way they wouldn’t with a guy on minimum.

I hadn't considered that the whole thing might be a sham manipulation of the legal system to delay delay delay, but I guess that's possible.

It's a problem for wackadoodle conspiracy people to get and keep legal representation because they don't understand why lawyers have to follow established legal ethics and procedures.

My buddy has a habit I think is a little strange, although maybe it's more common than I realize. He goes to a lot of games with me, and we generally arrive 15 to 30 minutes before first pitch, tipoff, puck drop, whatever. Whenever we do, he immediately gets his one hot dog and mows through it, finishing it well before game time. Me, I like to wait until the game starts to get a hot dog so I can enjoy it while the game is in progress. I'm not sure how I came around to that, but that's how I happen to enjoy food at an event. There's something about the experience where I like them to go together. If I was hungry and wanted to eat before the event started, I'd go to dinner before going to the stadium. This came up again because we went to see a movie recently. I bought a medium popcorn and he bought a small. I nibbled on my popcorn here and there during the previews but saved the vast majority of it for the main feature. He tore through his popcorn during the ads and previews and was done well before the movie started. When I saw what he'd done I chuckled and asked him why he always finishes his food before game or movie time. He shrugged and said it's because he's hungry, but also, he doesn't like to be distracted by eating while the event is in progress. OK, totally valid. You do you. So that got me wondering how people here enjoy food during a game or movie—is it before the game/movie and you're done, or do you wait until during?

If ERA were the only thing that mattered, that would be fine. But there are warning signs: dropping strikeout rate; BB/9 pushing five across those four years, including over six last year; and that his FIP, xFIP and SIERA all substantially underperformed his ERA during those four years. Then, of course, there's his advancing age. But, like I say, they must know something about him I don't that justifies paying him 3x the minimum, so hopefully he delivers like a guy worth 3x the minimum.

I guess, although if a warm body is all they wanted, they had other options on their 40 for a third of the price.

Going Down is definitely one of my top 50 songs of all time.

I trust that they know what they’re doing with this guy although I don’t see it.

I’ve read that Stevie wrote it for Jeff as a favor for Jeff’s playing on Talking Book.