caulfield12

How? Not played Moncada?...and it's not like any of the complementary or transition roster fillers that season (2018) turned out to be any good. I suppose they could have forced more young pitching to the big leagues...but none of them were really ready or even close other than those already acquired via trade.

Because the player's union tends to have reps that have more experience...and they are the ones the press most frequently goes to for quotes. In the same way, a first or second year teacher isn't going to the media and bypass their own union reps with 15-30 years of prior experience in dealing with administration/negotiations. And Giolito's still not really making big money...yet, fwiw.

The most obvious point is to have your 10-15% that you play around with in individual stocks, but the majority of investors under $10 million should be in just a few diversified index funds or ETFs, even though they're far less exciting. The last year or two, all the media coverage was Cathie Wood and ARK, but she might have the worst returns of anyone in that space. I really took a temporary hit on my Chinese stocks...which demonstrates no matter how much you know about a country, you can never underestimate Black Swan events like a government attempting a once every 30-40 years takeover of an entire economy that was previously humming along like none in modern history. I've had to learn about delisting and try to forecast that Alibaba, Ten Cent, and JD will be worth ten years from now. I committed a slightly different mistake 20 years ago, going after all the hot tech names after being disappointed with a relatively conservative fund that was getting trounced. While the individual stocks back then tanked (bought JDSU at $110, didn't get out at $140) and rode it all the way to the bottom as a write off. Recently, sold TSM way too early...at $90, still tripled money, and got out of Berkshire Hathaway (still a very solid return over 15 years) and plugged it into China. So not trusting my intuition to do anything but leave it in Vanguard, Fidelity, Oakmark, Legg Mason and Bill Miller Funds. And the one thing I did right was never selling low on any of those funds that got killed in 1998-2002 or even in 2007-08 or March 2020. And not being that interested in bonds or precious metals...missed out on Bitcoin but that's the case for most I imagine. If anything, should have added last year (John Deere from my hometown or Boeing) but at least we sold our family house for a tidy profit. Downside is no house or car if I can ever get back to the US to visit...sigh.

Now if only he could help sort out that current mess at Memphis...

Watch Garfield in Tick, Tick...Boom!!!

Going to have to report this to mods for malicious libel and slander...especially the Parkman one. Not sure you will receive the desired reaction from Ray Ray, however.

My goal is to defeat Ron and take over the world by trading laugh emoji's with Tray, who's actually a really good guy! Everyone would be satisfied with THAT Rodon, if we could get at least 150+ innings out of him, is the answer to the question. And I'd actually put pretty even odds between Scherzer, Verlander, Kershaw (whatever the eventual deal turns out being) and Rodon who gets the biggest bang for their contract dollars in terms of fWAR/$$$.

Depends on whether or not it's an elastic good or not. A good example is the cost borne by producers vs. consumers in the current trade war with China, not to mention the inflationary impacts on prices. Abstract A recurrent finding in estimates of the gate demand for sports events is pricing in the inelastic portion of demand. With few exceptions, this finding has either been ignored or (rather poorly) explained away. In this paper, the recurrent outcome is detailed and the explanations given by past authors are... https://www.jstor.org/stable/25151279 OAKLAND — A’s fans are not happy. Not only have their team’s dwindling postseason hopes taken a hit this week, season-ticket holders on Wednesday received an email from the team announcing ticket prices for the 2022 season would go up — way up — and that a fan-favorite A’s Access program would not be reinstated. On top of the uncertainty surrounding the team’s future home, the news did not sit well with fans. Fans vented at the ballpark and on social media, but haven’t heard from A’s president Dave Kaval, who did not respond to requests for comment about the hiked season ticket prices on Thursday and Friday. “Just crazy to see raised prices that much with no investment in the team, fan experience or commitment to stay,” said Bryan Johansen, a longtime season ticket holder who sits in left field bleachers, who said his season ticket prices jumped from $456 in 2019 to $840 in 2022. Will MacNeil, a longtime season ticket holder who sits in the right field bleachers, added, “I guess A’s ownership lost a lot of money during the pandemic. I don’t really believe it. But we have a billionaire owner. It really kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth going why is this happening.” ..... Others wonder if ownership is gouging fans to make up for financial losses during the pandemic. Frequent Coliseum attendees have grown accustomed to higher prices around the ballpark for the 2021 season — higher individual ticket prices, $30 parking and pricey food and beverage options. ..... “The price hike to me says this about ownership,” Guo said. “They’ve calculated that there are die hard fans that will come no matter what…What possible reason would anyone have to buy season tickets in advance when there is the flexibility of just doing single game tickets next year? Zero benefits. Unless we sign up by October, in which case we get a replica (Matt) Olson jersey. Does that mean he’ll still be on this team next year? We laugh.” ..... MacNeil saw his prices jump from around $1,100 in 2019 to $2,050 for the entire 2022 season. MacNeil plans to renew his season tickets, but fears the already tiny Coliseum crowds will shrink even more next season as more fans are priced out. “I know this is going to hurt our fanbase quite a bit as I know it will probably price some people out,” MacNeil said. “Which is a shame. I mean I’m almost priced out with the new prices they’re implementing.” “A’s Access is very much missed, as $14 beer hurts,” MacNeil said . (for Greg775) https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/09/24/as-fans-balk-at-season-ticket-price-increases-for-2022/

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/32918902/report-mlb-payrolls-drop-4-percent-2015-levels

If a tree falls during a lockout, will anyone hear it? Btw Ron, you would have been a lot of fun as a debate judge. Not!

He has a very solid arm for LF. RF, below average....usually throws in the 84-86 MPH range. He generally throws to the correct base and hits the cutoff men, which makes a huge step up from Leury's much better arm but inability usually to take advantage of it. Trading him NOW makes little to no sense, because you're not valuing him as a 3-4 or even 5ish fWAR bat, same with Jimenez. Of course, that would require putting up Yordan Alvarez or healthy/peak JD Martinez types of numbers. The big question is how close he could come to doing that in 2023-25.

Right. Whether you work as a front office member, groundskeeper or vendor, you have a number of realistic career opportunities or at least some decent options. For professional baseball players, simply saying move to Mexico, Japan or Korea aren't realistic alternatives for the majority.

Minor league owners would never have dreamed of getting involved in player accommodations...at least back in the 90s. Maybe the wealthier AA and AAA teams that could leverage that housing to extract player appearances at schools, charities, hospitals and special events/promotions. At best, I would go with Hispanic players with limited English to help with a landlord, and we all had a few rooms at LA Quinta due to a promotional tie in, but not for long term stays.

This wasn't directed at you, btw.

Why are you so bitter towards players and sympathetic towards owners. This is like being on the side of Mr. Potts in It’s A Wonderful Life. Are you also more sympathetic towards banks and mortgage lenders than individual customers…or for-profit universities and student-loan originators? Aren’t the fans or taxpayers the ones who suffer the most, in the end? Or should we all become minor league baseball owners? Now, for a select few A teams, like Clinton or Burlington, that might have been possible to do with a few million. Of course, without teams now, those markets are worth less than zero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_Supply_Stadium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Hendricks I guess we can applaud multi billion dollar companies financing stadiums so that pretty soon there will be no professional baseball played in Iowa, except Des Moines. That would mean the elimination of five markets…all because of Ayn Rand and “market forces.”

A-Rod as well…largely because there aren’t many billionaire players yet. They can be part of an ownership group, but usually not the lead investor, Wayne Gretzky, for example. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron, etc. You’re talking numbers in the mere handfuls with the necessary capital.

According to a quarterly filing by team owner Liberty Media with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Braves’ debt as of June 30 included $297 million from the construction of Truist Park (formerly SunTrust Park), $206 million from the construction of The Battery Atlanta mixed-use complex adjacent to the stadium, $30 million from construction of a spring training facility in North Port, Fla., and $185 million for operations. The Braves’ debt load has increased from $559 million at the end of 2019, with the additional borrowing used for operations and for ongoing construction of the second phase of The Battery. That phase is expected to cost $200 million by completion, with about $95 million in additional debt funding remaining, according to Liberty Media. One way for the Braves to pay down debt could be the offselling of some parts of The Battery. The team sold the 531 rental apartments in the development in 2018 for $156 million. https://www.ajc.com/sports/atlanta-braves/how-the-braves-accumulated-718-million-in-debt/43R3KBSGIRFAJMIQ55QBFMS63M/ Sounds like a lot of creative accounting…just like if Amazon, Wal-Mart or the Reinsdorfs combined their company’s real estate ventures (tax write-offs) with baseball ops. This is also why fans totally get fed up, when they’re priced out of tickets for sports because of complicated debt financing that still benefits owners in the long term. See Cubs’ fans in a similar predicament with Ricketts off field investments.

This is not even true since the 1980’s, with much higher worker productivity leasing to tepid salary increases…at best. Now it’s more a calculus of how much they can exploit workers until a breaking point is reached, with older workers frequently retiring involuntarily after 55+ and the Millennials increasingly likely to take their services elsewhere. Part of it is salary-based, part of it is how owners value their contributions. (cue arguments from those who assert this youngest generation is lazier, e-sports-sports addicted and prefers to stay at home rather than working diligently to “get ahead”)

Somewhere around 44% of the billionaires and owners' class inherited their money. (I can't separate the data for China, but they have even more billionaires than the US and 90%+ of those are self-made, so the numbers in the US would be closer to 60-65% inherited.) They were just born luckier. So why would you side with them over players...the majority of Latin Americans coming from close to abject poverty in the Dominican or Venezuela....when they haven't even had to lift a finger to earn their positions, like Reinsdorf's kids? There are 2,604 billionaires in the world, and 55.8% of them are self-made. That’s according to the Billionaire Census published Thursday by market research firm Wealth-X. Taken together, self-made billionaires have a total of nearly $5 trillion. Another 30.9% of billionaires made at least some of their wealth themselves, according to the report, while 13.3% inherited their wealth entirely. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/wealthx-billionaire-census-majority-of-worlds-billionaires-self-made.html

And which MLB franchise is worth less now than it was on at mid-summer, 2020? Even the A's and Rays will get massive premiums on current cl valuations when they sell for relocation purposes... Also, guess we will see similar testing changes soon for MLB...an outdoor sport with even less physical contact. "The NFL will stop mandating weekly COVID-19 tests for asymptomatic vaccinated players, according to memos distributed Saturday that described a major shift in the league's approach to the pandemic. The new protocols, which take effect next week, could allow the virus to spread undetected through locker rooms, and could increase opportunities for infected but otherwise healthy players to participate in games. The NFL and NFLPA announced the "more targeted testing plan" in a statement, along with "more flexibility" for players "to attend meetings virtually" and opportunities for "high-risk players" to opt out of the remainder of the season."

Omicron is rapidly overtaking the lockout as the prevailing concern as we approach mid-January. They're going to have to dramatically change the testing procedures and protocols like the NFL and NBA are currently attempting to do on the fly or there won't be a viable spring training. https://www.yahoo.com/news/im-student-cornell-university-over-141329913.html Things are starting to move much faster than bureaucrats can react in real-time, and seemingly no one wants to take responsibility...leaving things basically up to fate.

One problem is that Tom Holland (and his significant other) gets lost in the redemption arc for the careers of Tobey Maguire and particularly Andrew Garfield. It felt like a bit too much fan service…but what can one realistically expect at this point? And why would the equivalent of Alex Jones consistently get their news updates in bright lights at Times Square?

What is the risk when your initial investment increases 20-30% per year in value regardless of what happens?

Baseball has actually done a great job protecting and expanding their revenue streams, especially for a sport where those who list it as their favorite are 57 years old already. That’s not the ideal target demographic for marketers, to say the least. Look at all the challengers and challenges. Minor league baseball…that’s always been there, of course. The Internet. Social media. Netflix. The rising cost of cable and satellite t.v. College, high school and NFL football towards the end of a season. Golf has been a lot more popular since Tiger Woods, NASCAR had its run, mixed martial arts, now the biggest thing around the world is e-sports. Disney+. Hulu. Home theatre systems and increasingly affordable big screen t.v.’s. The list goes on and on. Fewer and fewer African Americans engaging with the sport. 4 1/2 hour games, shifting and bullpen over reliance. Instant replay. Cue Greg rant about concessions and souvenir prices for good measure. If nothing else, 6.8% inflation guarantees rising costs…with everything likely going up at least 10-15% regardless of the lockout.