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I believe corporate greed is out of control and employees need to be paid a middle class wage. I wish we were as concerned about $40,000 a year employees getting exploited than $600,000 athletes. Why is it ok for one corporation to make billions and not another? Merck employees earned $138,000 in profit per employee. Give everyone a $38,000 a year raise and you would still have most of those profits. We're losing middle class wages and arguing that baseball teams are too profitable.

Apple $55 billion in profits, 154,000 employees. They could easily afford a $100,000 bonus to every employee and still earn $25 billion in profits. Bank of America's 140,000 employees created over $27 billion in profits but because they can go work somewhere else we don't care about their meager salaries. They all should received $50,000 bonuses. They are the reason the owners are making so much money. American corporations are exploiting us and we're worried that baseball's minimum wage is unfair at $600,000.

NATO should not do this unless there is an attack by Russian forces on NATO forces somewhere or there is a resolution supporting military action by someone like the UN. Since Russia has a UN Security Council veto, the security council authorizing such military action is unlikely. NATO should not join in a war against Russia directly without specific cause. NATO should not be the aggressors. If we think this is Bloody, marching to Moscow and conducting regime change there would be monstrous.

Ukrainian President Zelensky is Jewish. And his grandfather had two siblings, killed by the Nazis. Looking for the grain of truth in this lie leaves me uncomfortable at best.

MLB.TV is set to automatically on Tuesday if you're a subscriber, so unless you're extremely confident that a CBA deal is reached Monday, you might want to consider canceling.

the new Madrigal?

Exactly. Why isn't the players union fighting to represent minor league players? It seems like that's an even bigger need.

Sure, if you ignore the subpoverty minor league years.

They don't make poverty wages for years. They generally get 2 or 3 years then go home as hometown celebrities who sell insurance or tend bar. This labor dispute is about owners and major league-ready players. $600+ starting salaries are very good. Hey...if $700k would get done I say do it. This poverty-wage argument is just silly.

The Walton family is not looked at kindly across America. Fuck off with the "job creator" bullshit. You get league minimum if you can make it to the bigs. The overwhelming majority of players don't make it and get paid poverty wages for years. This isn't the real world. It is a group that is exempt from anti trust law. Pro sports in the US live outside the real world man.

Sir, this is a baseball forum and a thread about baseball’s owners locking out their players.

Exactly. The players keep compromising, the owners have not. Any more compromising and it is a loss for the players. Meanwhile Amazon racks up record profits and their employees remain severely underpaid. Minimum salary at Amazon should be $60,000 a year. Jeff Bezos is greedier than JR.

They dumpster dove at the local Krispy Kreme

Zach Britton says they aren't even close so I'm guessing the players wanted some nice Boston Creme and the owners brought day old bagels.

They were supposed to meet at 1:00 est. It's been over 2 hours. No news about the meeting. Wonder what kind of donuts they brought.

And if he does manage to somewhat rebound and reaches 160IP, then the fucker sticks around for 2024 at $20MM. I sincerely hope he's long man out of the bullpen/spot starter.

Couple of things here. I think adding a left-handed power bat is critical to help us in the post-season not necessarily to get us there. Come October we will be facing tough RHPs and we’ve seen our guys get exploited by them far too frequently to ignore the need. In terms of where we add said player, I’m open to anything but the current holes are in RF & 2B. Just seems unlikely to free up a different spot to add a left-handed bat and I don’t see us investing heavily in 2B when the position can be addressed fairly cheaply. As such, that leaves RF as the best place to acquire said player. On the pitching side of things, I love our 1-2-3 from a regular season perspective (Giolito, Lynn, & Cease were all top 20 in fWAR last year), but I do wish one of them could step up and be a true ace come October. Unfortunately given our poor farm system and an unwillingness to go beyond five years for free agent pitchers, it’s going to be challenging to address that issue right now (and realistically there are no aces left in free agency anyways). The bigger concern at the moment is the back-end of the rotation. I was pretty pissed last year with how Kopech was used and it’s going to limit how many innings he can throw this year. If you have had four studs in front of him and enough depth behind him, I think you’d be fine with him giving us 140 innings as our #5 this year. The problem is that our #4 starter is Dallas Keuchel who is coming off a terrible year and whose stuff has been declining for multiple seasons. Is it possible he rebounds? Sure, but I really don’t want to bank on it. To be honest, the only way I see us missing the playoffs is if a couple of our big three starters get injured and suddenly we’re relying on Keuchel, Kopech, Lopez, and one of Lambert / Stiever to keep us afloat. We need another arm we can count on, even if that forces Keuchel to a long-reliever role. We also need another starter that can be counted on for the playoffs and that can’t be Kopech due to his innings limits. We aren’t going to be able to replace Rodon, but we definitely need to add a #3 type if we’re serious about winning next year.

NATO will have to grow a pair and accept the risk of a nuclear reply.

Seems the only thing the owners are really unified on is their collective unwillingness to compromise on anything.

Given the cavalcade of shit that's going on in Ukraine, the fucking cheerleading for Putin done by one side of American society, and the joke of the (snicker) "negotiations" between MLB and MLBPA, I think this is a tasty diversion. Here's my take on your list of needs: Given THIS, where the SOX were 6th in wrc+/10th in slg% v. RHP, I agree that this is "a need," but I don't actually think this is the top need. Also, it seems oddly specific to need v RHP power to come ONLY from RF. Why not find v. RHP power at another position? Specifically mentioning RF locks you into one guy in FA, and is a leading question when asking "what do we need." Given THIS, it shows that the SOX just lost 4.9 fWAR from the starting rotation. Honestly, this is a fucking disaster. This is a big hole blown into the hull of a ship. Losing 4.9 fWAR is a problem, and it doesn't much seem like there are any solutions in-house. To me, this is the biggest need in this team, unless you relish the idea of 30 starts from Keuchel, and wish-and-pray that Kopech can miracle his way into 140+ IP this season. Or wish-and-pray that Lopez has actually figured it out. Agreed that 2B is a desperate need. I don't want to further expend meager trade assets getting one. Just use good, old fashioned American Dollars to find cromulence here, even if its a platoon solution. Trading away Kimbrel, and ALL of the malignancy that is his obese salary, AND getting something in return probably isn't happening, in all honesty. If the roles were reversed, and the White Sox did not have a closer/were shopping for one, NONE of us would be clamoring for Kimbrel, AND all of his salary, AND give away a piece. Unless another team suffers catastrophic injuries in their bullpens, Hahn's probably gonna have to either eat some of Kimbrel's obese salary, and/OR send a piece alongside Kimbrel, and/OR accept getting Jack and Shit in return. Given THIS, I don't think that the SOX can afford to spend much more on the bullpen. WITH Kimbrel's idiotic salary on the payroll, the Sox squander 25.1% of the payroll on the bullpen. Even if Hahn works a miracle, and trades away Kimbrel and ONLY has to eat $6MM of his obese salary, the SOX will squander ~20ish% on a bullpen that was 2nd in fWAR, but 29th in IP. IOW, incredibly ineffective asset allocation. For me, I'm thinking the hierarchy of needs are: Find SP depth that can help paper over the loss of Rodon's 4.9 fWAR, the aging shittiness of Keuchel, and the ill-prepared/un-stretched-out Kopech. Sucker some other team's GM to eat as much of Kimbrel's stupid salary as possible, so that: Cromulent solutions at RF and 2B [think ~100-ish wrc+ and positive DRS] at reasonable prices that won't luxury tax-fuck this org can be found, and then: Find vs-RHP-slugging, regardless of position; it doesn't "HAVE TO" be at RF, thus opening up more and creative possibilities. Find affordable depth for the BP that doesn't further handcuff the team. Now, assuming 162 games played, AND assuming that Robert plays > 68 games, Grandal plays > 93 games, Jimenez plays > 55 games, and Leury plays < 126 games, and there are fewer non-OFers trying to play OF, some of the deficits vs RHP and shitty OF defense can be abridged a bit. But, as we read this right now, there are no in-house AND tested replacement options for Rodon's 4.9 fWAR in the rotation.

This can be simplified even further. The owners proposed a luxury tax line of $215 million. Players are at $245 million. Until that thing gets closer to $230 million, there will be no baseball. I think they miss half the season or more at this point. There's no reason for the players to fight in order to miss like 22 games and cave basically. If they want real change, this drags into the summer.

You know, when the Germans stop bombing Pearl Harbour.

I figured Ramos would be around 20 considering ZiPS has him as a 3 WAR player in 2024 with 31 Homers in 530 PAs. I can't wait to see what he looks like this year when he's (hopefully) healthy. I was hoping Fangraphs would include Ramos on their "Picks to click" in 2023 list, but no such luck.

History is not littered with guys like that. In Kelly’s case, adding fat will have to become the sole reason he is good, judging by his career to this point.

I mean, it's so fucking obvious. Without making it political, there's one side of the aisle that's all too happy to Putin's lackey and Putin's b****. It also extends to that same side's media types as well. Within a few generations, they've gone from: "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall" To "I identify with Putin." We really need a fucking draft in this country.

It was decommissioned over twenty years ago and most equipment removed. It's mostly symbolic.

Not true.

Best way to explain this is via a comparison. Obviously, the situations are flipped here in regards to power dynamic. 1. Mexico says "hey, California and Texas have large, historically Mexican populations." 2. Sends over insurgents, which start causing trouble. Also, Mexico has a massive army in this scenario that just happens to camp on the border. 3. US responds, Mexico goes "woah, the US is genociding innocent people of Mexican descent!" 4. Mexico recognizes California and Texas as their own nations. 5. "Actually, Texas and California just want to be a part of Mexico all along!" 6. Suddenly, Mexico decides to invade all of the American west, saying it is has always been culturally Mexican and has no right to exist. Map of Mexico's historical borders for context.

There are already four NATO members that border Russia.