caulfield12

Bienemy's got the best nickname (Sleeping With the Bienemy), had to totally rebuild his receiving corps over the last couple of seasons, went through 3-4 different running backs before settling with 7th rounder Pacheco and was facing one of the best defenses in recent NFL memory. Meanwhile, KC has a strong defensive line (Jones was ill), but are not exactly brimming with All-Pros across the linebacker group and secondary. They do have a LOT of younger/athletic players with potential...but it's apples and oranges to compare the two. See what happens if you give Mahomes AJ Brown and Davonta Smith, to go along with Kelce. The NFL would be totally wrecked.

Benintendi must be the quietest, most unremarkable "biggest contract in team history" in recent memory. I thought about including the Astros and Braves with the Dodgers and Rays as the two best franchises, but too much water under the bridge, especially with Houston. The Guardians are nudging closer to that Top 5 spot if they can just hold onto their arbitration years talent, but that's not on the GM as much as the ownership group.

We might want to actually find legit catchers and 2B...but there's always the end of ST waiver wire to go dumpster diving in. Brujan would be a start. Rick Brunson, maybe not. https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=brunso001lar Or this former 1st rounder for DET in the 90's...9th in first round.

But you couldn't really hate the Royals, right? If it was that easy to be a fair weather fan, I would just denounce/renounce my allegiance (as an alum) to Iowa fb and bb, because the odds of winning a national championship in either revenue sport are much lower than that of the White Sox winning the World Series. Probably below zero with James Ferentz around. In fact, one of my best friends from high school (orthodontist now) sent both of his kids for free on SAT-based scholarships to Alabama and adopted them as his favorite team even though he went to Northwestern and Iowa Dental School. So that's even more sacrilegious. Like being a Warriors' fan the last decade. The Sox simply need to start over with a clean slate...across the board. That's the only way fans will really come back. Everyone used Epstein as a counterexample in the past when I made this argument (backed up by Liptak's piece), but Hahn not being able to ever play baseball well or truly understand the sport from a player's perspective has handicapped him greatly...especially on the talent evaluation side. The only way to overcome that is to run a Top 2-3 payroll.

Sports are very simple. As a fan, are you satisfied your team did everything it possibly could to compete? The Eagles just experienced a terribly bitter loss, but they put the best team out on the field they possibly could all season...totally rebuilding (and fast!) after their last Super Bowl win. They simply got out coached by a master...who was highly motivated (along with his tremendously loyal players) in a match-up with the organization that infamously gave up on him. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-rumors-padres-sign-top-international-prospect-ethan-salas-orioles-interested-in-michael-wacha/ Just freaking try to compete. The White Sox haven't had a legit All-Star catching prospect (not accepting Collins here) of their own in decades...so go out and get one. Luis Robert is the only occasion other than Abreu in the last decade plus where they were the aggressors and successfully signed a potentially great player. But you have to consistently go after great players with the conviction you can sign them and the willingness to back it up with real money and not just loophole contracts that create the illusion you've got a seat at the table.

If that's the case, why are the White Sox seeing a 25-30% fall off in season ticket sales...and the Padres sold out all their available season ticket packages by January 25th? What is the equivalent of the White Sox beating the Mets, Dodgers and Cardinals in the post-season? The Yankees/Astros, Cubs, Red Sox, etc.? And by the lack of playoff success metric, the Dodgers and Rays have been terrible the last decade...yet they are universally regarded by most as the two best franchises for various reasons. The only WS championship for LA since 1988 was in the tainted strike-shortened year. Zero for the Rays. And the Braves went to the postseason constantly in the 90's and 2000's and only recorded a single title. Indians also zero, etc. Would the Chiefs be considered a disappointment too if they only had one title (instead of two) after five consecutive AFC Championship appearances (all home games)??? Context counts. If the White Sox beat two teams that significantly outspent them in the post season...let alone their own division...it would be considered a minor miracle.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/35630053/2022-2023-mlb-offseason-grades-all-30-teams Anyone with an ESPN Insider sub? Guess the Sox got anywhere from a C- to an F...depending on how generous Schoenfield was feeling. Did we again manage to be ranked last, denied Hahn offseason championship #4? https://www.soxon35th.com/mlb-insider-gives-the-white-sox-a-disappointing-offseason-grade/

Even Benintendi (see Pollock), look at his FG numbers the last three seasons prior to 2022. He has a lot to prove with that new contract, which is now somehow the biggest in team history. Lynn, always comes down to health/weight/conditioning. Lambert and Lopez, hard to expect both to out or over perform like last season.

Well, except for three post-season series victories, a 50000+ sold out fanfest along with Soto, Tatis, Jr., Bogaerts, Machado, Musgrove, Darvish, Snell and Hader...pretty much exactly the same. And maybe the competition in the NL West is just a wee BIT stiffer... However, that's a great selling point for all those ticket agents desperate to generate some commissions, though. Just switch the years around in the way one perceives the two respective franchises. And let's not forget the White Sox have unlimited financial flexibility at #12 in current MLB payrolls, while the Padres simply have to be tapped out, right? No way they can afford an extension for Soto AND a new deal for Machado simultaneously, right? Meanwhile, Sox looking to dump Giolito and Anderson over the next two seasons....arguably two of the top 3-5 most popular and/or identifiable members of the team. Without Anderson, it's basically Dylan Cease and Luis Robert's unfulfilled potential. Montgomery might actually be third, with Colas 4th...unless one is a huge Eloy or Vaughn fanboy.

FA. Didn't realize Giants dumped him in the off season. Watch him end up with the Twins or Guardians.

Madrigal/Kimbrel/Pollock, Moncada and Grandal are the obvious ones. Crochet I guess. Abreu gone. Losing Rodon for nothing. Hendriks and Clevinger money frozen. Not sure exactly how Benintendi offsets all of that...

That's a bit more dramatic because the result is faster (like penalty kicks in soccer) and still more dramatic, especially when you have to go for two. Not to mention all the additional head injuries from playing even longer games or getting injured when excessively tired.

"Lawyers for Bankman-Fried maintain the defendant did not use a VPN for any improper purpose. "[O]ur client used the VPN to access an NFL Game Pass international subscription that he had previously purchased when he resided in the Bahamas, so that he could watch NFL playoff games," his lawyers wrote in a separate letter to Judge Kaplan." https://finance.yahoo.com/news/prosecutors-raise-concerns-over-ftxs-sam-bankman-frieds-hidden-internet-access-122411999.html

That's assuming the road team scores....as they still have the advantage of knowing exactly how many runs they need. That said, there are a lot of games where they end up in the front of the pen eventually and give up massive crooked innings or just give up 3-4-5 and the home team is sunk psychologically. From 1957 to 2007 in MLB, home teams won 54% of games but just 52% of extra inning games, for example. Thought this Quora comment from 2020 season was pretty prophetic... "I think it’s yet one more terrible idea by commissioner Rob Manfred, a person who clearly does not really understand, appreciate, or care about the game of baseball. All he seems to care about is speeding up the game, simplifying it, and homogenizing its unique characteristics to make it more convenient and less interesting, partly for financial reasons I presume, and based on the “crackpot” theory that more young fans will flock to the sport if it can become more like other sports that take less time, involve faster-paced scoring, and have less complex rules. I don’t think butchering the game with the kinds of “innovations” he’s mostly been proposing are going to improve the game in any way, nor attract new and younger fans. Instead, the changes are just frustrating existing fans and devaluing the game for those who truly understand and love it I guess I can kind of understand the rationale of trying to speed up the conclusion of extra-inning games in a shortened season. But just starting with a runner on second who didn’t earn his way on there seems so artificial and arbitrary. Why not have the catchers just arm wrestle for the win after the 11th inning? Or shorten innings after the 10th or 11th to just two outs each. I don’t think this shortened season should count as a regular baseball season anyway. There won’t be enough games to determine meaningul division leaders and playoff winners. I think instead it should be played as a special “exhibition season” which will have its own playoffs and championship series at the end. However the results should forever be listed separately, as a different class if achievements during an oddball special case season, rather than pretending that AL and NL pennants and a World Series trophy earned this year count the same as those earned in any other regular season. From this point of view, if they want to use some cockamamie special rule to shorten extra inning games just this year, I guess it’s not the absolute worst option. But I’m pretty sure if they do it will just be used as a “back door” way to shove the same “innovation” down everyone’s throats in an upcoming regular season as a permanent change. I’m not one of those people who say nothing about baseball can ever change. It’s changed before and will change again. But a lot of Manfred’s ideas for “improving the game” to give it broader appeal are just idiotic “time-savers” that dilute the game and introduce more randomness to the outcomes, without yielding appreciable benefits of any kind."

Or let's just make it bases loaded, lol.

Why not put runners on 1st and 2nd? That would be a lot more interesting strategically and make games even less likely to end in a tie. Or runners on 1st and 3rd.

A year ago it would have been close to unfathomable that the face of the franchise, MLB The Show, Field of Dreams game walk off hero and the face of the sport for young African - Americans would be getting traded away.

Balta won't like that one. "The league should be embarrassed about an element of the game Sunday, but that would be the quality of the field, not the refereeing. Likewise, although the Eagles would have loved to have seen Bradberry get away with a holding call with the game on the line, they lost this game because they couldn't stop the run, they let Toney take a punt 65 yards to set up a touchdown, they handed the Chiefs a touchdown on a fumble recovery and they allowed the Chiefs to go 4-for-4 in the red zone. They also committed a penalty at exactly the wrong time, even if that penalty yielded an unsatisfying finish." https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/35649198/how-patrick-mahomes-chiefs-played-perfect-second-half-super-bowl-2023-nfl-win-jalen-hurts-eagles Excellent X's and O's breakdown of the game, key plays and how Jalen Hurts is changing the NFL. Very detailed.

There are a lot of articles out there about how Mahomes had all the new acquisitions working out with him together in the off season in order to bond together...as well as how much Reid has helped to rebuild the confidence of unwanted guys like Toney with high potential in the right environment. Mahomes himself has remarked numerous times how not having Hill to lock in on as his favorite target has forced him to become so much better at falling back to second, third and even fourth options on his reads. In the near term, the massive contract for Chris Jones and the eventual decline of Kelce will be the biggest issues...but Mahomes has built in something like $31 million of payroll flexibility into his deal to help the team out, just like Brady agreed to with the Patriots. Always thought the Chiefs had too many young defenders and too many injuries in the secondary to win this year, but they somehow made it work despite getting carved up on the first half. Bolton was everywhere. Jones didn't even make much of an impact after being sick most of the week. Really thought they were cooked not going on 4th and 3 (Butker missed FG) then that huge scamper up the middle by Hurts on 4th and 5. The fumble return for a TD and Eagles' coaches on both sides playing things too conservatively...as well as special teams breakdowns, turned out to be key. That and the Eagles secondary having no solutions in the second half...both TD passes to Toney and Moore were nearly carbon copies that even Paul Konerko or Grandal could have scored on. Never would have imagined Philly defense would be nullified like that by Chiefs' OL.

Now up to 80 mph on his throws after working out at Drive like during the offseason. Also wearing a new sensor on his belt that detects fences and/or netting from ten yards away and starts beeping progressively louder as he nears aforementioned obstacles.

Did they announce this to dump unpopular info the day after the Super Bowl when nobody is paying attention or to actually protect the health of pitching staffs?

https://dknation.draftkings.com/2023/2/12/23586782/nfl-free-agency-2023-chiefs-list-of-free-agents-juju-smith-schuster-carlos-dunlap-orlando-brown The crazy thing is the changeover at the receiver position in the last couple of seasons. This was supposed to be a rebuilding/retooling season where Buffalo overtook the Chiefs. McKinnon and Hardmon are possible losses on the offensive side, but look at the impact Moore and Toney made on the game. They're only going to get better, same with Pacheco...drafted in that same 7th round as Purdy.

“If Dylan Cease, Lance Lynn, Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech, and Mike Clevinger all start 30 games, everything in the rotation ought to look hunky-dory. But if there’s an injury or two, things get dark — and I mean in the Darren Aronofsky sense — very quickly.” “The White Sox did so many things well while building up the team, but they face-planted as soon as it was time to compete. Once the fun began, the discipline in the team’s decision-making disappeared. Want the 1980s manager for no reason? Sure! Need to solve the problem of two of your best young bats both essentially being designated hitters? Split the difference and have neither of them be the DH! Surely all that money you were going to use to sign Manny Machado will go towards other budgetary needs? Nope? Well, you’ve got Leury Garcia.” https://www.soxon35th.com/fangraphs-zips-projections-reveal-clear-white-sox-holes/

Montgomery being groomed by TA7 to be the next Sox star SS...not to mention the Indiana roots and basketball similarities between the two. CHICAGO -- "Colson Montgomery interacted with shortstop Tim Anderson when Montgomery was called up a couple of times from the Minor League side to big league Spring Training last year..." Colas in best shape of his life again...has cut his body fat percentage to 3.8%, time to 1B out of LH batter's box now top quartile in league and even has demonstrated a willingness to fill in for Crochet this year as short reliever.