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R&D is always more expensive than the products themselves. It's an investment in staff and people as well. While the costs are minimal compared to a players salary, as I've said before, they're also costs that require an investment in innovation which is much more affordable to teams with more funds. Additionally, a huge issue with not having approved data and vendors is that a team could technically pay a provider or person to ONLY provide services/data/etc to their team which would be another big issue. I never said this area is where teams gain the biggest edge, but it's another area where teams with more resources come out on top exasperating the inequality issue in baseball.

Ya, framing stats are a bunch of hooie. Useless.

Royals are small market but Chiefs are big market. LOL, the mental hoops you will go through to continue one of your long winded arguments is good for a laugh in the morning for sure! LIP, every sport has bad owners. You're never going to get rid of all bad owners. Difference is baseball stacks the deck against those teams much more.

Of course you don't, meanwhile teams like the Bucks and OKC!! in the NBA can win titles and retain all their talent, and teams like the Packers and KC have dynasty like runs in the NFL. People like almagast and Westeddy just come into these threads to disagree with me at length, regardless of the logic put in front of them. It's an illness.

Championships in baseball are the byproduct of a playoffs which is much-more luck centric than the NBA playoffs (for example). Division wins and playoff appearances are what drive parity in a sport like baseball. The parity is no where near the same. The correlation between money spent and wins is significant in baseball. Therefore, baseball has less parity given that it has no salary cap and money drives wins/losses. This is very basic math. Using World Series wins as the indication of parity, in a sport with a 162 game regular season, is obviously not the way to asses parity.

Can I just say the WestEddy/Almagest circle jerk is just hilarious to watch in every thread.

That's if you trust those numbers . How does one determine if it's a ball outside the zone that, if framed properly, it COULD have been called a strike ? Or is it that balls in the zone are being called balls by bad umpires ? If you set up low & inside and a pitch hits the zone high & away and called a ball is that a knock against the pitcher the catcher or the ump ? I think most people quoting framing stats and using them seem to trust the people doing the video checks to determine these things. Also don't veteran catchers and pitchers get more favorable calls than younger ones ? There's so much going on between pitchers, catchers ,umps and location and the speed & shape of pitches that I'm just not going to blindly put my faith into fairly new defensive stats that seem to always be changing. Are there comprehensive videos on youtube out there that shows us how a rookie catcher gets such a bad rap for framing or any catcher for that matter ? They catch thousands of pitches . Seems like a lot of tedious work looking at how a catcher frames every single pitch and determining what is the catcher's fault as opposed the pitcher or the ump on close calls. When a catcher has to move his glove too far its practically impossible to actually frame a pitch. Youre judt.lunging to actually catch it especially on a fastball. Sinkers and split finger pitches or sliders and other breaking pitches with a lot of movement make a lot of umps and catchers look bad. Also pitching staffs on a rebuilding team or team cycling through a lot of pitchers transitioning from AAA are all getting used to each other. There's a lot dynamics going on based on familiarity between catchers pitchers and umps. Sometimes a catcher will set up low and away , the pitch is thrown perfectly hit the spot and the catcher will barely move his glove and it might be called a ball because the ump is setting ump over the catchers inside shoulder. Do catchers with a bad rep for framing get dinged because reputation becomes a self fulfilling prophesy with statisticians ? Who are the statisticians ? How do I know they are impartial ? Do they do testing where 10 or more of these guys all look at the same videos and grade each pitch and see how they differ? It all seems very subjective. Maybe their methods are flawed.

Have you seen him play? Lotta warts in Zavala’s game. Defense in center ain’t one of them.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/12/angels-re-sign-yolmer-sanchez-to-minor-league-deal.html Gatorade coolers rejoice.

That's where you find Dallas-Arlington-Ft.Worth in the in-between zone of large and mid markets for baseball (#8-12)...impossible to imagine them anything but Big with a capital B for football though.

Diplomat is awesome and you are right on Ozark…so good but lost its marbles at end. A couple episodes in - landman is outstanding.

I have a thousand posts. Michelangelo likes me. Who the f*** are any of us?

I'm trying to factor in popularity, revenue and neighboring captured markets (beyond just physical market size, which is why the Royals are still a small market to me), but sure. We can call them small as an example. That makes it two teams and four total championships since 2006 for small markets in the NFL. Hell, add the Saints too if you want. Three teams, five championships. Doesn't change the point. If I go back through the MLB list and just rank them by pure market size, then the Rangers move to mid market.

Who the f*** this monkey?

How is Kansas City in any sense not a small market franchise for football? What is the differentiator? Nashville KC and Cincy would be at or near the bottom...in the 20's. Buffalo's success would never impossible in MLB. Ofc thru also wouldn't be opening one of the best baseball stadiums, either, with Pegula/Rich money. Also hard to consider CLE as mid market IMO. They too are getting a shiny new fb stadium eventually. 37 Milwaukee 922K PACKERS 40 Las Vegas 834K RAIDERS 43 Jacksonville 757K JAGUARS 50 New Orleans 664K SAINTS 54 Buffalo, NY 613K

I'm not saying Zavala is the answer...I'm saying it's too soon to completely give up on a guy who is two years younger than Braden, has an elite eye (ranked fifth in walks in all the minor leagues over the two-year period 23-24) and made significant progress hitting last year.

Big market teams have won 13 of 20 NBA championships since 2006. Only four of them were small market teams. In the NFL, only one small market team has won (Packers in 2010). Eight won by large market teams and eleven by mid market (KC counts as a mid market for the NFL). So yes, you DO see this in other sports.

It's reading tea leaves...but all actions make me think that they think Robert is a longer term option. If it was all about money...decline the option. If you want an asset...trade at least years deadline. Honestly it's not ridiculous to think they have him penciled in as their CF for the near future.

? The offseason is still going on

I need to buy some swag.

I wonder why Getz didn't trade Robert this offseason. It's a lot less controversial to trade his salary now while the Bears are still in contention. Seems weird to keep one star on the team (as well as Colson) when the Sox still are not on paper considered contenders. Dump him now and it's a sidelight to the Bears. Seems weird Jerry would elect to pay him rather than dump him to the Mets for prospects.

So, by your logic, the Brewers should be sold because they can't get past the big market teams to make it to the World Series. The Guardians should be sold, too. In fact, using this litmus test, about half the league (all smaller market teams) should be put up for sale. The Rays just got sold. What if the new owners can't get past the big market teams, either? Force them to put the team up for sale again? The Pohlads tried to sell the Twins and ran into issues with their $400M in debt. Two things can be true: their are some bad owners who just don't want to compete (Reinsdorf, Nutting, Fisher) and there's a systemic competitive balance problem in the league that is only getting worse.

I think BJ is an excellent coach - but the online was significantly upgraded year over year. 4 out of 5 new starters with 2 of those new starters being tops in their position in pro bowl voting right now (Thunder and Dalman).

Fun with statistics. We can cherry pick which ones to use to further our argument. Here's another way to look at the disparity problem in MLB by looking at all the recent World Series winners: 2025: Dodgers - BIG MARKET 2024: Dodgers - BIG MARKET 2023: Texas -- BIG MARKET 2022: Houston - BIG MARKET 2021: Atlanta - BIG MARKET 2020: Dodgers -- BIG MARKET 2019: Washington - Medium Market? 2018: Boston - BIG MARKET 2017: Houston - BIG MARKET 2016: Cubs - BIG MARKET 2015: KC - Small Market 2014: San Francisco - BIG MARKET 2013: Boston - BIG MARKET 2012: SF - BIG MARKET 2011: St. Louis - Medium Market (at the time, small market now) 2010: SF - BIG MARKET 2009: Yankees - BIG MARKET 2008: Philadelphia - BIG MARKET 2007: Boston - BIG MARKET 2006: St. Louis - Medium Market It's almost always the same top 10 or 12 big market teams that win the World Series. All but 4 times going back 2 decades. You just don't see this in the other major sports.

How do you account for it being impossible for the Tigers to keep Skubal, the Pirates to keep Skenes, the Rays to keep any players over $10 million, etc.? They need to have something like a franchise tag. Which would be anti player movement, as well as limits or controls on international free agents 25 or older. The owners definitely have to allow for a $100-125 million payroll floor. In return, lesser tax penalties for higher payrolls, but forcing those top market teams to share/split more of their local broadcasting revenues. You can’t have teams with billion dollar media deals and the bottom 10-12 teams all earning $20 million per year or less.