bmags

No, equal pressure from US (i.e. NBA fans, government, public pressure) that acquiescing also may have consequences. Their TNT/ESPN deal was 24 billion to 2024/25. Do you want to try and make up that revenue by growing an a market that you could lose with a tweet from one of your many outspoken athletes (that is part of your brand) or try to protect the US market and try to expand in places with less restrictive governments?

They won’t, if they can square the circle they will. But it’s why equal pressure in US will help.

What data set is this connecting to?

Thanks, I really need age though. I don't know if they hit 1800 IP at age 33 or 29. Considering the lower IPs thrown I'd guess it has started to occur later in a pitchers age. I'm not advocating that aging curves don't exist, but that those that pitched at a high level and consistently higher IPs were not more likely to fall off due to "mileage", and in fact were better bets. But that's not in perpetuity, there is an age where decline hits. But for Bumgarner we are talking about the age 30-33 seasons as the real bulk of the contract you'd need him for.

I have to say that while I initially was upset with way NBA handled it, at this point it may turn out they may very well have worked behind scenes to prevent brash firing of Morey, then after a way-too coddling press release, silver puts out the press release affirming nba staff and players rights to expression. China says that's not allowed for China, and to this point Silver is saying they will live with the consequences. We'll see what happens next. The idea of china continuing to dictate what stands individual Americans can take (on media not even accessible in china) for access to their market is absurd, and I would hope there can be some solidarity shown by other companies if NBA really starts getting restricted, but I won't hold my breath. This is easy for me to say, but yeah, if nba players/coaches aren't going to be able to criticize anything in china without the chinese government intervening then: https://slate.com/culture/2019/10/china-houston-rockets-nba-controversy.html While I support players ability to get their fair share of the wealth that accumulates in the NBA, I don't particularly care if they are 50 millionaires or 100 millionaires, and so yeah I'd really hope we see some stand up here for what is right. That said, I get why this would be scary. If it was a player that stepped in it you'd have the players union, because it was Morey it makes it all pretty crazy.

See I actually think this is a really interesting idea. One of the huge gap behind this set of older prospects that's about to go from AA to AAA, is in a make or break year. We have this nice foundation of great young players. We have a 4 more in Robert, Vaughn, Madrigal and Cease that everyone feels comfortable as a part of that. Is that enough? Can we get by with just these tier 2 free agent depth? Do Vaughn and MAdrigal need to be exceptional and not just starters? With early struggles, how many additional years are we waiting for this team to be at 90 wins with depth signings and this core? The prospects for trade we have will not be that interesting in 2 years. The ones behind that hopefully will be in A+ showing something and could be used as barter.

Oh, that makes more sense. Yeah if we could try to avoid it. It would be an interesting discussion but these things tend to devolve faster than expected.

gonna guess its rutherford. edit: it is not.

I'd definitely say walker is above Basabe from a potential perspective. Adolfo is tantalizing, but he's produced so little save for age appropriate years in good offensive environments. I hope he turns it up this year because the combo of his arm + power + looking the part makes it hard to not get excited. Walker is a little bleh to me but players like that can turn out better than expected when some part clicks.

Are they same age and level?

You should read up on the nets my man!

That’s probably true but it’s even more of a reason to me they need to stack elite players. And there is big unknowns with some of those guys. The talent accumulation should have never really stopped but having now seen them give up on international talent and inability to produce from beyond round 1 in the draft this is a decent path forward. Now a trade of Vaughn AND cease is too much for me but assuming it could feasibly be one of Madrigal or Vaughn or cease I’d be in.

I doubt it, but it would be good to know the packages.

But that's the thing, they would have broken down by the time they hit an age 29 free agency. Garland at 20.7 fWAR is the low side (largely also an innings driven phenomenon, not performance). Considering him starting to pitch by age 20, there is probably a way to categorize average fWAR to get around it, but it's fine he'd be in it. Shields at age 29 was also at 20 fWAR, but was averaging around 3.5 fWAR per season compared to Garlands 2.

White with Sato and WCJ with Young finally have excellent vets to learn from. One of the best situations we've put our young players in in a while. Lopez is a great teammate, but thad can teach WCJ a lot on filling the statsheet and effort. But yes, two goals for this year: - Development of Young, WCJ, Lauri, Lavine in a roster that now has multiple smart and savvy basketball players - Health. Health. Health.

I don't buy this. I can't claim this idea of, I don't know, "Workhorse Ace" or whatever I'm giving Bumgarner is well-defined. I get that. But I just picked a handful of some of the best workhorse ace pitchers I can remember in the last 20 years. Some I misremembered as workhorses (I totally forgot Chris Carpenter was a dave duncan special), but it certainly doesn't convince me that there are 5 felix's for 1 verlander. I looked at the following pitchers: Josh Beckett, Chris Carpenter, Bartolo Colon, Halladay, Felix Hernandez, Cliff Lee, Mussina, Pettitte, Price, Sabathia, Shields, Verlander, Greinke, Scherzer, Kershaw, Lester, Hamels. Players like Sale were left off because he's only 30 now. By age 29 (bumgarner's age season), this group averaged 31.6 fWAR (Bumgarner has 31.3). The average IP was 1476 (Bumgarner was 1829)*. If I could do a really good baseball reference search I would probably set a min WAR of at least 20 and IP of at least 1200 by age 29. But obviously this was handpicked list. In terms of IP and debut, Bumgarners closest peers are Felix, Greinke, Kershaw, Sabathia and Hernandez. That group (including Hernandez, but minus Kershaw due to age) averaged 12 WAR over that 4 year period, Kershaw has 6.7 in his first two years and keeps pace. I because this was a subsection of pitchers that I can remember being long-term successful, it isn't a great sample. But I'm not convinced it's obvious that there are 5 felix's for 1 Scherzer. These guys being so successful are already outliers. It doesn't mean their 30s will be as successful as their 20s or close, but it may very well mean they will still be quite productive.

I'm going to be honest, despite being in the realistic offseason thread, for the next two months I'm much less interested in what I see the sox doing compared to what I'd like the sox to be doing.

Yeah more the wall part. I don't really think the nl/al thing is a big deal, Kershaw wouldn't have mid 2 eras in the AL but still would have been a top pitcher. For me I just wouldn't put darvish on Bums level. I probably need a way to categorize this pitcher that I see makes Bum the reliable one but for me Darvish is a lot like Strasburg in that they were very productive and dominant but were the ones who could not provide that consistent 180+ IP. Bum's unrelated-to-baseball injury was the only time he couldn't make that. To me that's actually a sign he will continue to provide value, not that he is "maxed out". But I guess I would need a list of pitchers performance who averaged like 180+ or more innings over their first 6 years and see how they did since 2000?

Yeah I feel this too, it snuck up on me. Definitely was more buzz for hawks in preseason than Bulls getting back into camp. But bears/cubs, maybe it starts in earnest as preseason games start. I do think fans could embrace this team more than last few years, thad young and sato are really likeable on court players. They've had a lot of players just insufferable to watch in parker/blakeney/dunn

Can someone give me a good example of this? To be honest I've sort of hardened in my mind recently that some pitchers hit an age and threshold where this miles argument doesn't hold water for me. The board was celebrating how Verlander was done because he was overused. I suppose Price would be the best example of this (in terms of being used a lot then falling off in big payday)?

So how do we mean this? I took it literally as in guys I will make sure to check box scores every night/get excited on pitching nights. But it sounds like it's actually identifying which guys are in make or break years, where if they don't have a good year it ruins them as a prospect. Is that right?

His velo recovered this year compared to last.

I'm totally with you. I am not in this for a "he may love playing for Ricky so much that he just can't imagine playing elsewhere!"

So cease/Collins and Sosa? I’m interested. Cards also signed Goldschmidt long term.

I understand many do not think it’s fair to categorize the Cuban/NPB exports differently in operations as they are functionally the same group, and I get it. But the Sox clearly prefer the “less risky” older players from professional leagues than the signings of the 16-18 year olds I am typically speaking about with the international signings. But the Sox have done basically nothing from the latter for quite a while and my take is that they have a CW in the building that those players are too “risky” and don’t want to justify spending millions on a group of 16 year olds when 80% wont make it out of Aball.