Random Baseball Musings

[Guest]

Right, I'm saying you should absolutely count San Jose and the rest of those burbs. Not doing so would be like removing Naperville and its vicinity from the Cubs' market because as the crow flies they're closer to US Cellular than Wrigley.

[ConstableRabbit]

Right, I'm saying you should absolutely count San Jose and the rest of those burbs. Not doing so would be like removing Naperville and its vicinity from the Cubs' market because as the crow flies they're closer to US Cellular than Wrigley.

Kinda. Naperville is a lot closer to Chicago than San Francisco is to San Jose.

 

ETA: Then again, if we're including Valpo in Chicago's DMA...

[Guest]

Right, I'm saying you should absolutely count San Jose and the rest of those burbs. Not doing so would be like removing Naperville and its vicinity from the Cubs' market because as the crow flies they're closer to US Cellular than Wrigley.

Kinda. Naperville is a lot closer to Chicago than San Francisco is to San Jose.

 

Yeah it's not an exact comparison(although travel time to the city from the two is comparable), but what I'm getting at is that San Jose has to belong somewhere, and it's very much not its own media/baseball market and it definitely belongs to SF/Giants more than Oakland/A's for the purpose of comparing market sizes. You could also add something about income disparity making a further push in SF's direction too as that'll impact things like sponsorships/advertising, TV deals, etc.

[seanimal]

to exclude san jose from the equation is about as arbitrary it gets. the san francisco 49'ers play in santa clara, also known as the town that borders san jose to the north and northwest

 

so no, the houston metropolitan area is not "many millions" more people than the bay, ffs

 

if we use statistical areas, for instance, there are two million more people in the bay area than in the houston area

[seanimal]

Right, I'm saying you should absolutely count San Jose and the rest of those burbs. Not doing so would be like removing Naperville and its vicinity from the Cubs' market because as the crow flies they're closer to US Cellular than Wrigley.

Kinda. Naperville is a lot closer to Chicago than San Francisco is to San Jose.

 

ETA: Then again, if we're including Valpo in Chicago's DMA...

 

it's not a lot closer, it's 15 miles closer, and it ignores geography. saying san jose isn't part of the san fran-oakland metro is like saying evanston and tinley park are not part of the same metro area

[OleMissCub]

 

so no, the houston metropolitan area is not "many millions" more people than the bay, ffs

 

:roll:

[ConstableRabbit]

Right, I'm saying you should absolutely count San Jose and the rest of those burbs. Not doing so would be like removing Naperville and its vicinity from the Cubs' market because as the crow flies they're closer to US Cellular than Wrigley.

Kinda. Naperville is a lot closer to Chicago than San Francisco is to San Jose.

 

ETA: Then again, if we're including Valpo in Chicago's DMA...

 

it's not a lot closer, it's 15 miles closer, and it ignores geography. saying san jose isn't part of the san fran-oakland metro is like saying evanston and tinley park are not part of the same metro area

You say just 15 miles, I say over 40%.

 

Evanston and Tinley Park literally border the city in question, so that's a gross simplification. You can certainly combine them and we are talking about baseball in this case, but it's not that cut-and-dried. The US Census applies a similar approach to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Detroit and Ann Arbor, Buffalo and Rochester, Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Austin and San Antonio, Denver & CO Springs.

[NonProfitCow]

The Phillies are a special kind of terrible

[seanimal]

Right, I'm saying you should absolutely count San Jose and the rest of those burbs. Not doing so would be like removing Naperville and its vicinity from the Cubs' market because as the crow flies they're closer to US Cellular than Wrigley.

Kinda. Naperville is a lot closer to Chicago than San Francisco is to San Jose.

 

ETA: Then again, if we're including Valpo in Chicago's DMA...

 

it's not a lot closer, it's 15 miles closer, and it ignores geography. saying san jose isn't part of the san fran-oakland metro is like saying evanston and tinley park are not part of the same metro area

You say just 15 miles, I say over 40%.

 

Evanston and Tinley Park literally border the city in question, so that's a gross simplification. You can certainly combine them and we are talking about baseball in this case, but it's not that cut-and-dried. The US Census applies a similar approach to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, Detroit and Ann Arbor, Buffalo and Rochester, Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Austin and San Antonio, Denver & CO Springs.

 

it's not a gross simplification; it's pointing out the silliness of excluding san jose from the discussion, especially for the purposes of this conversation. the methodology used by the census creates a distinction that is irrelevant here; because the bay area is a multi-nodal population network doesn't make it any less of a unified population area than the houston metro. but that's why i pointed out the statistical area construct, because it's the more appropriate reference point

[Little Slide Rooter]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Colonel

 

The Hanshin Tigers have their own Billy Goat...Colonel Sanders!

[Guest]

Man, it's just silly to not consider San Jose part of the San Francisco/Oakland metro area. As Sean said, it's all unified.

 

Same thing when the Census Bureau doesn't consider Riverside/San Bernardino part of the LA/Orange County MSA.

[JennieGarthAlgar]

I've never cringed so much as I did during OTL's piece on pitchers getting crushed with line drives to the face/skull. The Kevlar hat inserts seem like a no brainer, not sure what can be done about the face.

[Derwood]

I've never cringed so much as I did during OTL's piece on pitchers getting crushed with line drives to the face/skull. The Kevlar hat inserts seem like a no brainer, not sure what can be done about the face.

 

Pitch from behind a batting practice net duh

[Cubswin11]

Brewers fired Roenicke

[ctcf]

Brewers fired Roenicke

 

He actually leaves with a winning record: 335-313, .517

[mul21]

Weird timing. Between picking up his option and winning a series, seems like they could have done it a little differently.

[BCVM22]

Craig Counsell is your new Brewers manager, per Rosenthal.

[Cubswin11]

Change for the sake of change, I guess

[XZero771679666304]

Change for the sake of change, I guess

 

Based what little I've read, Mark Attanasio seems to be under the delusion that they have everything they need, and he doesn't understand why they are losing. I think he's laying most of this at the feet of Roenicke, and Melvin to a lesser degree. I think he thinks the Brewers can still compete this year.

 

The best thing that could happen for the Brewers is if they continue to tank to the point that management is dispossessed of any notion that the current roster should be kept together. That team's window is firmly shut, and they need to burn it down.

 

Or I could be wrong and they want their long term choice in place when the returns from the fire sale join the team.

[Little Slide Rooter]

The Brewers are in a similar situation to ours when Epstein took over. They have a middle of the pack at best farm system. They have:

 

Lucroy and Segura, and to a lesser extent,Nelson, Fiers, Peralta, and Davis are quality building blocks, especially seeing as Lucroy and Garza play two of the toughest positions to fill. But for the same reason, they're their best bet as trade chips.

 

If Carlos Gomez and Garza stay healthy, they could bring back something of value. But those are big ifs.

 

ARam, Lind, Lohse, and K Rod could be useful rentals, but they probably want to move before the market picks up.

 

Then there's Braun. Braun's 31. Braun gets hurt a lot. Braun can no longer benefit from whatever he may or may not have benefited from in the past. Braun's contract was not structured with any of this in mind. Braun is owed $96MM through (ironically) 2020. Does someone with deep pockets pick up a significant chunk? Does a smaller market team offer enough of a player return to justify the Brewers eating the rest of the contract?

 

But then what? The Brewers don't have our market. They don't have the Cardinals fans, whom I'm told are the best in baseball. If they completely tank for the next few years, and fans turn their backs, how long before we're facing the Indianapolis Brewers?

[XZero771679666304]

They're not going to compete for playoff spots over the next few years whether they fire sale or not. They don't have the talent or resources to stand much of a chance against the Cards/Cubs/Pirates in the short term. So they can fight in futility and be simply bad for several years, or they can fire sale and be awful for a couple years. Their fans will recede into the woodwork for a while, but they're fair weather, and they'll come back if they get good again.

 

Gomez and Lucroy are the two big trade chips they have, and they need to cash them in. They're also the ones the might stubbornly hold on to, but they're not young kids anymore, and both will reach FA soon. If they get serious about re-infusing the club with young, premium talent, they're the ones who will have to go. Unfortunately for them, both have been injured. But if they wait until next year, they lose value because they will be short term rentals to the team acquiring them.

 

The rest of their vets should go, but they're not going to bring premium returns. Braun is nigh untradeable at this point.

 

But if I'm being honest, I don't see a lot of winning for them over the next five years or so regardless of what they do. The might as well set up for the future beyond that as best they can.

[SouthSideRyan]

No team should ever need 5 years of losing in order to win again.

[Andy]

No team should ever need 5 years of losing in order to win again.

They don't. Both Houston and the Cubs only tanked for 3 (though both were bad before doing so) and they both look to be at the least decent this year. If you need 5, you're an inept franchise.

[XZero771679666304]

No team should ever need 5 years of losing in order to win again.

 

That's a nice sentiment, but it happens all the time, especially to smaller market teams. And Milwaukee really emptied the tank trying to win before their window closed.

 

But they won't have to wait that long, if they play their cards well. Maybe not to win as in make the playoffs, but be decent. I just think the division is going to be too stacked at the top for them to to crack the playoffs in the next few years. I'm not one to take any consolation from being decent, though. If you're not competing for playoff spots, you're losing, and one kind of losing is not better than another. They might not be in this position if they had drafted better in recent years, but that didn't happen. But I'm not a Brewer fan, and I'm glad for it.

[XZero771679666304]

No team should ever need 5 years of losing in order to win again.

They don't. Both Houston and the Cubs only tanked for 3 (though both were bad before doing so) and they both look to be at the least decent this year. If you need 5, you're an inept franchise.

 

Right. But you need a plan (especially if you're a mid-small market team). If you just kind half try, you end up mired in mediocrity for a really long time. We've seen plenty of examples of that over the past 20 years. Like the Brewers from 1993-2006. Or the Reds for almost all of the 2000s. Or the Royals and Pirates for two decades.