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They could not implement the 90% floor in a vacuum. They would have to also implement significant, almost close to total revenue share among the teams as well. The owners might be all hedge funds and billionaires who can “afford it”, but even so, it would be unreasonable to force their entity to operate at a loss by enforcing a 90% floor in place where the market can’t support it. On the other hand … It could be fairly conjectured that by forcing all teams to spend to 90% of a cap, that would result in their getting better players they would not have paid for before, which would result in more interest, which would result in bigger crowds and greater local and regional marketing partnership interest, which would result in more revenue that would support the Pirates and Rays of the world. So, maybe it’s not as clean as all that after all. The only thing I know for certain is that inertia in the face of proposed change is always the easiest path.

100% Tarik Skubal ain’t going anywhere in 2026, and 50% he ain’t going anywhere after that.

That works for some hitters, mainly line drive hitters. It could also work situationally, such as grounders to second base to get a runner from third home.

This might be a little closer to how I fell about all of it. It’s hard for me to get my arms around the idea that none of this was designed in some way, if even haphazardly. Maybe that’s only because, like most people, I am subconsciously uncomfortable with the idea of the randomness of chaos being in control of the cosmos. But I’m with you on, like, really, who cares how I feel about al of it? Why do I have to explain to defend it on demand? Christians have tasked themselves with the unceasing objective of converting everyone they ever meet to their religion. Talk abut a thankless task, but, also, mind your own damn business and I'll mind mine. I think you might have been the guy I said this to on the old board: evangelical Christianity was never designed as a live-and-let-live religion. It’s a get-in-your-face religion which, right there, clues me that it’s not about how they comport themselves in the world, but how they impose themselves on the world. It’s about controlling you against your will. That’s a key reason I have no use for it.

Try telling that to the young.

Charlie Lau is dead going on 42 years, so he doesn't qualify as "is". Your statement implies there are organizations currently not on board with "stand up straight" today. That's why I asked.

I can concede only that I acknowledge the evidence I have considered is more suggestive of no deity than yes deity. Beyond that, anyone else is free to be as certain as they like, of course, but I simply believe there is no way to prove there is or is not a deity or deities, let alone which deity is in control. Absent that, any decision I or anyone else might make to believe that there is or is not a deity can be nothing more than an article of faith.

Is there any example of any organization that's not on board with 'stand up straight'?

Disagree. Anyone who can turn policy on its head 180 degrees by musing thoughtlessly can screw up the country arguably worse than someone who has to put any time into it.

I'm not agnostic because I am afraid to admit I am atheist because I fear family or peer pressure, or fear violence from Christians around me. Neither my family nor my community swing that way. I am agnostic because I think it's literally impossible to know with certainty what the deity situation is. I can't bring myself to consider myself atheist because, to me, that requires the same conceit of certainty that evangelical Christianity entails. Speaking just from my experience on the ground (and explicitly excluding this forum), both evangelicals and atheists have always been glad to tell me exactly what they believe (and what I should believe) with identical energy and sense of purpose, and each side makes me uncomfortable with their self-professed certainty and ardor. There's only one possible way we can discover the truth, and once we do, we won't be able to come back and tell anyone what that truth is. I acknowledge that certain beliefs are probably closer to the truth than others, and that the evidence we have at hand to date seems to suggest lack of deity, but again, I'm loathe to profess any certainty about any of it. I just don't think either atheists or religionists can know for a fact who or what god/gods is/are or isn't/aren't with any certainty, and I'm suspicious of anyone who professes that certainty in any event. But more importantly, to me anyway, I don't feel I am required to pick a side either way and defend it with either my heart or my life. At least not yet.

Or those who say they are Christians because it makes them look cool and tough, but don't give a **** about or may not even be aware of any of the messages of love and empathy Jesus professes, which seems obvious to me when you read stuff like this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/is-empathy-a-sin-some-conservative-christians-argue-it-can-be

I can see senile Trump talk everyone around him into military action in Switzerland which, not for nothing, is NOT in NATO. There's a lot of money to steal there he can split with Putin et al.

I had wondered how much stance contributes to the elevation of swing and miss over the years. Remember guys who used to hit like this? They almost never struck out.

Super interesting.

World War ONE! Zone Rouge: An Area of France So Badly Damaged By WW1 That People Are Still Forbidden To Live There

OK, this one is flat out dishonest. Portugal has nine different former colonies with larger economies than they? Sure, if you include China, India, Japan, and Canada, all of which had very small portions controlled by Portugal, and then you compare the economy of the entire country against Portugal's.

Really interesting map. Nobody wants to hurt no kangaroos. Is Switzerland really all that safe? Seems like being in the middle of Europe puts it at mortal risk regardless of its neutrality policies.

There's a correlation between this and which countries I most want to visit.

There's a western civilization argument somewhere in here.

Map Showing The Range Of Israel’s Jericho III Nuclear Missiles

I agree that McGonigle will start the season in Toledo unless he proves he is bulletproof on a process basis, and chances are he won't. I don't think this will be a cynical case of manipulating his earning power to save a few bucks, but it sure will be positioned that way, here and elsewhere. I also agree that McKinstry deserves a chance to show he can repeat, unless his mechanics completely break down in March. I mean, I would bet real money he won't repeat it, but he has certainly earned that opportunity to prove it coming into the season.

I have really ramped up my usage of LLAMAs just in the past few weeks, because it finally dawned on me when it makes sense to use search like Google versus a LLAMA like ChatGPT: Use Google when you need to know simple facts like who, what, where, when. Use ChatGPT when you need deeper explanations along the lines of why or how or does. Still, always check against original sources before you act on its advice on important matters. I’m now moving on to comparing the various LLAMAs versus one another, so I rigged one of my laptop browsers to always open to six main LLAMAs: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity, and Meta AI. My plan is to occasionally run the same queries along different subject lines on all of them to see which ones provide the best answers and whether different LLAMAs are better than they others depending on subject matter. I will probably end up paring it does to a couple, but out of the gate, it looks like ChatGPT is the leader on breadth of “knowledge” and ability to filter results in an understandable way, and you can specify limits to its output within the query to defeat digital logorrhea.

Atheism and agnosticism may not be in the same certainty-of-belief bucket, but are they all that different as they relate to established religions, which involve choice of deity?