If I’m a big market club ready to win it all, I offer him 3 years, $210-240 Mill. No way I get drawn into years 5+
If he can turn down 80 Mil, more power to him.
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The thing about bad contracts is that it only takes one owner to fall for the agent’s sales pitch. I don’t think it’s a very efficient market where the winning bidder pays $1 more than the next bidder. On these big free agent contracts they tend to pay millions and years extra to outbid the next guy.
Let’s go Mets!!
They got a 1-2 year window to win it all. DeGrom will be gone and Scherzer will have retired after the 2023 season.
Checking Wrigley off the list with some great seats. Fuck this wind though. If anyone is watching, I’m probably the only person wearing maroon in the whole ballpark.
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I’ve mentioned this before, but MLB has messed up their new seeding rules.
I’m not speaking about this year’s teams in particular. I’m talking in general. But, this year’s teams fit the mold.
My premises are, again in general and per league, the #1 seed will be a better team than the #2 seed (both are division winners who get a first round bye), and the #4 seed (top wildcard) will be a better team than the #3 team (worst division winner). If the above premises are true, again in general, it’s better to be the #6 seed (worst wildcard) than the #5 seed (middle of the three wildcards).
So if a team is #6, they’ll play #3 in the first round (all on the road), and if they win, with the new fixed bracket, they’ll play the #2 seed (with the #2 getting the home field advantage, but only if the series goes five games).
While a #5 team will play #4, and then #1. Which, again in general, will be better teams than #3 and #2 respectively.
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If you get deep dish anywhere, go to Pequod’s
Yeah, the new seeding format is dumb. They’ll never do it, but top seed should get to choose their opponent.
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I think the easiest way to fix that is to make it so that the #3 seed goes to either the top wild card or the worst division winner, whichever has the better record (other one gets the #4 seed).
How about… #5 @ #3 (worst div winner) and #6 @ #4 in the first round and scrapping the fixed bracket in the second round?
MLB has said they are not going to seed wildcards above division winners. This makes a certain sense, as they do play an unbalanced schedule and a team should “get something” for coming in first. AFAIK MLB hasn’t said why they went to the fixed bracket this season.
If I was made the mad commish, I’d do this…
Get rid of the divisions, resurrect the major league American Association, raise the International League to major league level, distribute the teams to make two 8 team and two 7 team leagues, bring back game #163 to break league first ties. Continue interleague play. Get rid of the fixed bracket.
The four league regular season winners would get a “pennant” right there, and a first round playoff bye. The eight runner up teams with the best records would be the wildcards, with ties broke by tie-breakers. Seed them by record, the pennant winners #1-4, the wildcards #5-12. All playoff series are best 4-of-7.
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AL: Red Sox, Tigers, Yankees, Twins, White Sox, A’s, Orioles, Guardians (the original 8 AL teams).
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NL: Braves, Cubs (two surviving original NL teams), Giants, Phillies (1883 NL expansion teams), Nationals, Mets, Rays, Marlins (ET modern expansion teams)
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AA: Dodgers, Pirates, Card’s, Reds (all from the historical AA), Brewers, Astros, Rangers (all CT modern expansion teams)
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IL: Blue Jays (only non-us team), Angels, Padres, D’backs, Rockies, Mariners (MT and PT modern expansion teams), Royals (odd modern expansion CT team out)
It’s a terrible ‘role model’ problem, agreed. But that’s not the root problem.
The problem is that PEDs are a race to the bottom situation. The only way to deal with these kinds of situations is through collective action. Outside authority won’t get the job done. In fact, almost always any outside authority will have an interest if furthering this race to the bottom instead. Which is exactly the case with the MLB owners. They aren’t ruining their own bodies, but they profit more when their employees do. Their tradeoff is more profit by the race -vs- less profit when the race generates bad publicity.
I lay the blame on the MLBPA. What they should do is self-police. Make up their own standards and tests. Enforce it themselves too.
Did you just split the Dodgers/Giants rivalry?
They haven’t always been in the same league. In fact, the first time the Giants and the (not yet called the) Dodgers met was in the 1889 World Series. I’d also be getting rid of the rivalry which will ultimately overshadow it: Padres vs Dodgers.
My new league setup was just an example of one way to divide teams up. Which was simply first by history, and then second by time zone. I was thinking of expanding at the same time with Montreal and Portland OR (both in the IL, and moving the Royals to the AA). I’m not really tied onto my example.
Sure, coming up with a list of rivalries to preserve and basing it off of that makes sense. That’s not an easy list to compile I’ve found. Confounding factors are what I call “unrequited rivalries” like Padres-Dodgers, and what I call “transient rivalries” or teams that are rivalrous for something “in the news” right now -vs- “historical rivalries”, which to me at least, are mainly geographical.
Of course, none of the above factor in competitive balance. Such considerations c.1968, is what led to millions of kids flunking geography, as the NL put Atlanta and Cincinnati into the west, The NFL doubled down on that with Atlanta in the west too.
My point was really about getting rid of the “three levels”, and making the byes go to all (and only) first place teams. In the NFL I’d do the same thing. Assuming keeping the 14 playoff spots, I’d get rid of the divisions, and seed the conference winners #1-2, and the next twelve best records #3-14. Granted, the seasonal rotation doesn’t work out so well in the NFL case.
Cole perfect through 4 on like 44 pitches
Judge finally got to 61.
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That pitch was belt high right over the plate lol. He took a crazy good pitch to get to 3-2.
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Sammy Sosa has 3 of the top 6 HR seasons of all time, all of them ahead of the highest ever in the AL
none of them led the NL that year
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And all I remember of him is drunken Harry Caray yelling “Sammy” “Slammy” or some butchering of “Sosa”
SAMMY SHOOSHER!
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as a cubs fan all I remember from harry is the 7th inning singing and mostly being drunk nothing he said of course
for Sosa, I was watching the game the time Sosa hit one that landed on Kenmore
that’s the street behind waveland ball went very very far to say the least maybe even farther than kingman’s but kingman’s hit a porch and sosa’s was just on the street so kingman’s was far more memorable
and of course hill’s rooftop blast is up there