caulfield12

There are no unions allowed in Texas…well, actually 9th least unionized in the US. “Texas' status as a “right-to-work” state means union membership isn't compulsory — not illegal. That said, Texas is one of only a handful of states that denies collective bargaining to public employees. So our employment contracts generally are dictated to us by our local school boards.“

Since those are the only players left at second (Tier B/C players), that would make the White Sox position even worse.

As predicted this week…now only another Vera or Colas in the greatest shape of his life one.

Well, except for 2/3 decades when the White Sox had legit World Series aspirations being wiped out…this organization seem to have the most impeccable sense of timing. Couldn’t manage to have this happen from 2009-2019, of course.

aka Norge Carlos

“When you have an extremely profitable, well-financed corporation (or team) owned by one of the wealthiest guys in the world, you know what, you should not be demanding wage cuts from your workers/players and cuts in their (health care) benefits. That’s just wrong,” _____________ said in an interview Wednesday. https://www.thethings.com/the-16-absolute-worst-sports-owners-of-all-time/ I'm also going to take issue with Poppy's characterization that all these owners would/could/should be doing great at almost anything they attempt. For every Mark Cuban in the NBA, there's Donald Sterling, the terrible situation in Phoenix (despite a great team), Portland, the Knicks under Dolan...not even sure what Daniel Snyder could do successfully.

Seager comparisons continue.... Next up: Vera or Burger's lost another 10-15 pounds, BMI down appreciably and second base starting job firmly in his sights.

Well, some would argue any crashes in-between...

It’s hard. In the past, teams derived 60-75% of their revenues from daily attendance, parking, concessions, etc. In the last twenty years (certainly decade or so), that number has downshifted to the 35-40% range. Ultimately, the fans still consume the product…but in ways which are much more difficult to immediately impact by so-called fan boycotts, especially due to the advent of RSN’s as well as MLB Advanced Media/BAM Tech. Of course, the more you keep the fans at arm’s length, the more difficult it is to keep Millennials and certainly teenagers engaged with the sport. As much as the strike in 94-95 was devastating, particularly to the Rust Belt, and then 2007-09, simply have a hard time imagining markets like Pittsburgh and Cleveland surviving a prolonged strike. Even Minnesota, Detroit, Kansas City…perhaps Cincinnati would all face massive headwinds.

But you kind of made my point for me. It would be like if Blackpink or Adele were capped at earning $2 million their first 3 years after debuting.

There's NOTHING in the record amount of job openings mismatched with job seekers for any position under $15/hour or even $20/hr in the US that would suggest this is being reflected by what's actually happening on the ground. And back to baseball...the equivalent of those earning under $15-20 in the MLB economy, anything outside of the first, second and occasional high bonus/lower round June draft picks, Pacific Rim players, Latin Americans under age 18, and all the players in their first 3 seasons don't generally enjoy much protection. Mike Trout in his second and third seasons in baseball recorded 10.1 and 10.2 fWAR seasons. He was pretty clearly one of the best players in the game already, but made less than $2 million combined his first three years. By Balta calculations, that would make him worth roughly $160 million to the Angels, not even including marketing/promotional aspects. What other industry can you think in the entire world that limits the very best performer to the baseball equivalent of minimum wage? If Mike Trout had a career-ending injury after his first three seasons, he would have had just $3.2 million (pretax, including his signing bonus) to his name. (That's a mere pittance compared to the CEO of Binance already being worth $96 BILLION when almost nobody in the world was even familiar with Bitcoin and Ethereum a decade ago when Trout was a rookie, let alone Doge Coin and Shiba Inu.) So does somebody who just happened to be in the right place at the right time (pretty sure the story involves a poker game) deserve that much more than Mike Trout, who was already the best player in the game in years 2 and 3 in his contract but wasn't rewarded for that performance until Spring Training of 2014 ($144.5 million/6 years).

One name you don't hear a lot about is DiPodesta with the Browns...where he's the "chief strategy officer." So much of that franchise has been about a meddling owner, power struggles in the front office and with Hue Jackson/Stefanski...and then things really blew up with OBJ and Mayfield playing hurt for most of the season. It's a huge risk to give up now on Mayfield, but it's also so hard to go out and find a franchise QB. Can he still be that guy?

Then you would clearly prefer your wife worked in Asia, where as soon as she turned 35 or 40 working (anywhere) in the airline industry...she would have been out of a job. And without unions, who is protecting those over age 50 or especially 55+ workers in the United States who are making up the biggest percentage of workers (mostly involuntarily, some due to Covid and preexisting co-morbidities? Now you can quote Ayn Rand back to me, supply and demand forces, equilibrium, survival of the fittest, but the fact of the matter is that America would only work well for the Top 10-15% of society and the rest would totally be screwed over in the labor relations picture you're painting. Now this might even work from a capitalistic perspective, but eventually you're going to run out of emerging markets to sell to if we continue to gut the middle class...not to mention we're now bordering on becoming a "failed democracy" because so many members of that middle class don't believe they have any where left to turn. As a former member of a teacher's union, I would have been more than happy to give up tenure (after 2-3 years of teaching) if they would have made it possible for teachers to somehow be compensated based on year to year performance, but how are they going to measure or quantify that...the worst teacher in the school could get the biggest raise if it was simply dependent on working with the top classes in any given school. So then if you look at percentage of improvement or whatever, well, that's even more complicated because the students already performing well will have a ceiling there. Beyond that, effectiveness of teaching based on a state standardized test score is increasingly challenged as a measure of teaching effectiveness. Just continuing to raise salaries based on years of service ends up with many older teachers simply clocking in and out until they max out their pensions (let's say at 60% of last five salaries), but then if you're going to take away union protections, are you going to be willing to raise salaries by 25-50%? Most Americans believe teachers are already fairly compensated, and get "too much" vacation time, for example...or don't believe the media narrative of teachers spending 5-10% of their salaries on student needs being unmet by their building budgets.

What was it, 2-3 weeks ago when the Chargers had the Chiefs on the ropes for most of that game and would have tied (and had tie-breaker advantage) for the division lead with two games remaining? Must be pretty heartbreaking for fans of both the Bolts and the Colts. And, man, that Carson Wentz is frustrating, isn't he? Chiefs must be elated to see LAC out of it already...really have no earthly clue who to pick to make it to the Super Bowl, seems 4-5 teams in each conference, if not more, have legit arguments.

On the plus side, potential promotional tie-ins with Viagra, Just for Men/Hair Club for Men and Depends.

Here I thought it was "employee-owned," like Hy-Vee grocery stores. I think the "average" male (according to most of the information available on-line) should be right around 38 to 39 years of age. That's also showing up in the late 30's demographic in this survey.

See Eastwood, Clint. Well, maybe until the last five years or so. Speaking of old/er, kind of sad news (perhaps exciting for Millennials) today for those who grew up collecting baseball cards in the 50’s through 90’s. https://theathletic.com/news/fanatics-to-acquire-famed-trading-card-company-topps-sources/CDjLZvg6E8uC/?source=pulsenewsletter&campaign={{campaignId}}&source=email&campaign=3474973&email_login=jewisler%40yahoo.com And the roughly 1/3rd being 50+ here reflects partially the nationwide average of 57 for those who list baseball still as their favorite sport. Another scary number for the sport is 80% over 30.

We MIGHT hear for a day or two some talking points in Congress about removing the anti-trust exemption, but that never amounts to anything in the end.

Always nice to knee-cap one of the five most important columnists in the sport. And surely he will go somewhere else and write only glowing remarks. It seems the US is turning into China. You're either with the ownership class/government, or you're an enemy of the state, so to speak.

The Royals were bad for thirty years but finally hired the right talent evaluators....but Ewing Kauffman ran huge payrolls in the 1980s considering that market size. Then David Glass of Wal-Mart fame tried to apply the same philosophies to a pro sports team and it took them decades to fix it. So not tanking, just a small are the team with worst first round draft picks than the White Sox from the 90's until around 2010-11.

Incredible depth at Ohio State…when their 3rd and 4th receivers are putting up those numbers with CJ Stroud the Heisman favorite if he returns. Strangely becoming the Oklahoma of the Big 10.

Probably can add USC and maybe Notre Dame....at least until Riley goes to the NFL.

Something like 13/18 semifinal games have now ended up with double digit losses...pretty deflating ending for Michigan. Just shows the gap between UGA, Bama and the rest of college football.

Just listed as one of the biggest surprises due to his age and walking away from so much money…he did have 3.7 and 4.2 fWARs two and three years previously, but hard to say he was retiring at his peak. And 2005-2007 was when Ortiz was arguably the most dangerous hitter in baseball…and the Red Sox did lose to the Indians 3-0 before CLE went on to face the Cubs. That said, Ortiz fell off but never quite to the same degree as Posey, of course largely due to injuries/positional risk (Posey) and probably/possibly Ortiz had PED’s in his favor and the increasing likelihood of getting caught.

Initially thought it was KYyLe23 retiring from his moderating fortunes to take a job with Marvel or DC Comics... Adding to the list above Gil Meche, Sandy Koufax and Lou Gehrig (one of those just doesn't fit, haha)