WestEddy

The point it proves is that yours and Caulfield's made up narratives are not true. MLB didn't tell the As that their level of spending was embarrassing. There's an actual reason why the As are spending up.

I feel it's appropriate to say - sorry for your loss, Mark.

Right. They're spending to keep their revenue sharing. They're not spending because they've "seen the light" and now understand that bro-dudes will like them if they spend their billions to buck up these bro-dudes' manhood with sports victories.

He always seemed like the nicest guy. RIP.

I agree. I hate Ricketts on principle, but he should be basking in good will for 2016, and subsequent beatification of "Wrigleyville". And they all just hunker down and cry poor. I consider myself fairly liberal, but I completely understand a guy owning a business, and just spending what he can to get customers in the door. Spending $450M on a guy like Tucker seems performative, even if he does produce. "Look at how much I want to WIN!!!!" Just so bro-dudes can feel mighty while taking credit for other men playing baseball and winning games. But he shouldn't be worrying about $10M, or an extra year for a reliever, or whatnot.

That guy was an enigma. My lasting memory of Rios was, man on first, 2-hopper up the middle into center. Rios jogs up to the ball, and sets to hit the cut off man. He then notices the runner having rounded third, and on his way home, scoring from first on a single. Rios' shoulders just slumped, like, "no fair".

But I think the current model is to be gifted acres of prime city land to develop for free. He doesn't want to buy in a popular hood for market to develop it beyond it's inflated price.

Yeah, but that happens. We got Alex Rios like that. We wouldn't have signed a guy like him on the open market, maybe JR would balk at the price tag, or Rios would choose a team with a better image - but we grabbed him on waivers. So...gifted? We got a pitcher in a way that pitchers become available. He couldn't right the ship in NY, and they traded him. Like Keith Foulke to the As.

Then every single world series has been "gifted" to the winners through trades other teams made with them. LOL.

Life is a perpetual rebuild.

In 2012, at their nadir, the Cubs went 61-101, and they drew 2.8 million. Rickets is the worst.

Not South Sudan?

Isn't it that in all sports? I hated the Indians during the 90s. Every year, they seemed to clinch in Chicago. They traveled better than Notre Dame. Oh, I hated those fuckers, waving their AL Central Champs banners while beating the crap out of us, boasting about their 455 sellouts. After 2005, they're just pathetic. I even root for them when they're in it. Like an old man you used to be scared of, and now you bring him bagels. I hated the Steelers in the 70s, the 49ers in the 80s, the Cowboys in the 90s. And they were all great for the game. I was in Belfast around 1987. Went to some "hidden" bar, the bar tender was making fun of me for being American, while wearing a Raiders t-shirt.

I'm amazed the people who talk this way even watch sports. Are the best run NASCAR teams supposed to drive slower to make it fair?

Sure they are. But if British Soccer were 12 Leicester Cities, nobody would give a s%*#. It's Manchester United that gets people's attention going. (I guess it's Manchester City, now)

I think that for a window, if we wanted to have a certain Cuban player, all we had to do was pay them. All things being equal.

By exploiting their baseball workforce? Think outside the box, man.

It got them a lot. Alexei, Abreu, Robert... And if JR were more aggressive, they might have been able to do with Cuba what the Dodgers are doing with Japanese stars, right now. The model's been established.

That's silly. Tampa Bay regularly is in the post-season race. St. Louis used to be until recently. I believe the "giving up" is just posturing. The Yankees and Dodgers have a wider margin to mess up. Rickets - dude doesn't admit that "profit" is a line item in their budget. So, yeah, after they pay out profit bonuses to the partners as dividends, they "break even".

Why? Without looking it up, I'm guessing the Dodgers have maxed out the set penalties (international pool, draft picks), so at this point, all they're doing is paying dollars to spend dimes. And if Sasaki, Yamamoto and Ohtani are bringing in the money to pay those overage fines, they're really setting themselves up to be the team for which Japanese kids dream of playing for decades. You're already braying about the Dodgers signing an African player. Anybody else could build a baseball diamond in South Sudan, and start training kids to play baseball. If the Padres weren't in an ownership fight, and maybe spent a little more judiciously, they'd have the money to sign Tanner Scott. They're also going to lose Jurickson Profar to somebody with their dithering, and we'll all cry that baseball is broken, again. The Dodgers have built the prospect machinery to add their initial round of free agents to, then build a brand in Japan. That's exactly what MLB wants.

Everything doesn't have to come back to a Getz dig. I think Preller has written a bunch of ill-advised contracts. Hosmer and Myers are just two big examples. Is Bogaerts a bad contract? If 2024 was a blip, maybe he bounces back.

The Eric Hosmer and Jake Cronenworth contracts were unforced errors. Wil Myers? I guess that's what "trying to win" looks like. San Diego had every opportunity to be right there in some of these signings.

The earlier start times save money on lighting. They also ensure workers get home earlier, and are more productive the next day.

I don't know if this deserves a new string. For the last few weeks, my brower will refresh, or something, and I go to this page: https://www.soxtalk.com/forums/?app=core&module=system&controller=ajax&do=instantNotifications&csrfKey=10d66629f674db7bc25c7d32b97f9e00&notifications=0&messages=0 I end up having to cut everything out after "forums" to get the site back. Just information for you guys.