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Sure, but he sounds like that, right?

Joe Buck was never much a baseball guy, anyway, so definitely no loss.

I remember watching it as a kid, too, and liking it, basically because it was written at a single-digit-grade level.

I still think it’s the Queens accent. He has a lower-middle-class working-with-his-hands accent that people of modest education and means really respond to. If he had the same ideas and talked like Bill Buckley instead, then he’d be Bill Buckley redux.

Well, what do you expect from a guy who pinned this to his Twitter account …

You'll get no argument from me that teams are not tanking just for the draft pick. I think there are other reasons that can't be addressed with tweaks to the draft. I think there's a systemic problem of too many organizations skimping on operating costs over the long haul that experience both great profits and capital appreciation, and Baseball, i.e., the owners, who benefit directly from that part of the equation, have no interest to addressing that.

The owners must think draft lottery is an OK way to address that problem, because the alternative would be to enforce the spending of revenue share dollars on improving the product on the field, and that would just be a fridge too far for them.

COVID is not apes. Duh.

“Civilians are going about their business in Kyiv. There is no war. Only an operation to restore peace for the people against the aggression of UkroNazi nationalists perpetrating genocide of the Russian-speaking population.”

I took it out this morning, so it's safe to go back in.

I think one big reason is that even when they put the cheapest team on the field possible, backed by the cheapest resources they can manage to keep the enterprise afloat, they can still make money hand over fist from all the revenue sources all big league organizations enjoy. Perhaps not all tanking organizations do so for that reason—some might still be doing it for the future draft picks, such as they are—but I do think some organizations are skimping on the product and still clearing big profits.

Tanking is not necessarily only about draft picks.

I know someone here who will enjoy this story.

I've been told repeatedly that there's no such thing as tanking. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see five teams win 100 games and five others lose 100.

I don't think at least one of those guys feel bereft.

I'm getting a little concerned that Ilitch is going to stand pat, or pick up no more than a Nova-level warm body at minimum wage. All the good guys are flying off the board.

Contrast thus with Claude Rossman of the 1908 Tigers, who was 26 going on 27 when this picture was taken:

Why go for it if you can make just as much money not going for it? I guess.

If C Trent is to be believed here, they might give Castillo away for peanuts.

Ok, let’s do ties after 12 and a point system, two for a win, one for a tie. Make it so. 😉

FWIW, it did shorten the average number of extra innings played.

If they start it in the 11th inning and never in the playoffs, I can be talked into it.

I think this part is worth highlighting because I heard a man on Fresh Air last week sometime, I forget his name, but he worked at State with a Russia-Ukraine portfolio under Obama. He actually rigned the day Trump took the oath. The question came up of whether he thought Putin had changed, and if he is even sane anymore. He answered yes, Putin has changed, but not that he has became less sane or anything like that. It's more that Putin has fallen more deeply into the same track that basically all long-time autocratic leaders eventually do: they become wildly hubristic, and believe they can accomplish much more than they actually can. Couple that with the fact that he has surrounded himself with loyalists who don't dare tell him hard truths, and it makes sense that he totally believed that the West was weak and divided and would basically stand aside and let Russia take over Ukraine with nary a shot fired, since they'd be welcomed as saviors by the people there.