squally1313

I remember getting (correctly) roasted pretty hard here when that story came out, since we're all in the spirit of reminiscing about past times here. Given the trainer story that came out after this, and the pretty universally accepted fact that everyone in the locker room at least knew about it, if not played a part in the cover up, you really 'should' just write that whole era off in terms of any of them being redeemable human beings (or, at the absolute most generous, anything beyond 'incredibly stupid young adults'). Everyone can decide for themselves how much it taints their memories from those Cup years, and how much this trade should impact you. It's going to be jarring seeing him in another uniform, and I'm already conflicted for when we inevitably bring him back, either in the offseason or by overpaying for him in a couple years. It would also be nicer if there was a single player from the current roster I thought was like, the leader of the next generation. But ultimately we've been clinging to Kane/Toews (and until recently, Keith/Crawford/etc), and it's been what...7 years since we won a meaningful playoff series? Hopefully this just marks an end to this era, and hopefully at some point they start meaningfully building towards the next successful one.

I know almost nothing about how that site puts together their metrics, but I'd put Keith right up there with him, especially if you discount just like, the cumulative stats Kane has put up after Keith left.

Certainly not expecting any of the actual data, but a little curious on the actual financials of a forum like this given the pretty low traffic. In the middle of a Mad Men rewatch and I keep thinking back to when the people they originally sold the company to decided to sell them (right before they make Lane fire them to start their own agency) and Don keeps talking about just buying the company back for themselves. I share Sofa's concern about the new guys coming in, trying a few things, and then just pulling the plug, and even though Brock says that isn't the case....everyone has someone to answer to. I'm not naive enough to think that like, the remaining 16 of us would band together and start paying out of pocket, but just financially curious on what all is involved. Really, in a roundabout way, this is just me belatedly thanking Tim for keeping this thing up and running all these years. I'm sure it was a lot easier during the 2014-2017 stretch, before we all mostly decided we hated the Cubs and maybe baseball in general.

Don't forget the 2026 second rounder. Don't forget that the first round pick is top 10 protected.

This is why it's good. There's really no downside once folks get used to it and stop their pearl clutching My favorite thing about baseball the last 20 years has been the slower pace of the game compared to other sports. I loved that the action stopped and I could sit there for a bit evaluating and speculating on what everybody on the field would be doing. Every pitch changed the optimal strategy somewhat, and I loved trying to anticipate that. There is no longer time to leisurely assess all these various shifts in strategy. I recognize that how I enjoy the game is in the minority. But let's not pretend it's just conservative pearl-clutching. There is an actual downside that sucks some of the fun out of the game for certain viewers. (though, to be fair, the Ricketts family was already doing a good job of destroying my fun the last few years.) This kinda sounds like you're describing chess (which also uses clocks). At the end of the day, it's an athletic sport...maximize the percentage of time during the game where the athletic stuff happens. Be incredibly strict and firm on this stuff for the next month and hopefully you don't even remember it exists once we get into the regular season.

Bingo. Maybe I just need a faster internet connection/operating system, but the idea of having to switch entire apps every time the game goes to a commercial break (and back) is just a complete deal breaker for the current half-baked version of this team. Especially if I'm going to be a minute+ late on streaming anyways, I'll just stick to what I have and wait for the big highlights to pop up on Twitter (yes, another wonderful ownership structure, but at least it's free).

Start with the bases loaded. If you're worried about lopsided scores, just do a soccer/PK thing and make it so the winning team officially wins by 1 regardless. It'll increase variance of scoring results and also speed up play.

I did the free trial of Apple Arcade and messed around with the app version of FM23 but there's so much detail built into the game that it seemed almost impossible to get the full experience through the touch screen on my phone. IMBs summaries are holding me over until I just decide to become a laptop gamer guy, albeit the nerdiest possible version of one. IMB....also kinda seems like, for the type of thing you're doing, I could probably get away with FM22? I'm not a big enough soccer fan to have the outdated rosters really bother me, especially if I start by toiling away at some low level. Unless the features/gameplay is markedly improved in this one.

????

The Reinsdorfs are doing exactly what they set out to do.

Yeah had that same thought, but too lazy to figure out if it's an outlier amount or not. 16 guys total from the organization, which, if that was the average, would mean 480 MLB/MILB players in this thing, which seams really high for a total of 20 teams, with some of the teams made up almost entirely of non-MLB/MILB players. Really wish this was going on like, right now, and not in the middle of March Madness, but guessing if you moved it up a month you'd get a lot less participation.

This reads more to me like a list of players who can maybe get them some more first round picks to stockpile now that, for example, all the West teams have a new team to try and chase down.

Some pretty questionable LBJ takes going on here.

Agreed, keep the Brady discussion in the "Eat the Rich" thread where it belongs

Oh no. Darn. That's really too bad.

Rory goes birdie birdie to beat Reed by one. Setting aside all the various issues of playing a tournament in Dubai, pretty fun victory for the good guys.

For better or for worse, that was a 108 win team that probably underperformed. Everyone in charge seems content to shoot for low 90s.

‘Embattled’ huh

Yea I have a feeling Buffalo and Cincy just have a 16 game schedule. I certainly don't think Buffalo is going to have that be top of mind, and it likely doesn't affect Cincy in the standings anyways. It's honestly hard to imagine what the Buffalo players will have to do to even be ready for week 18. Due to the trauma, anything will probably be a rush job and mentally unhealthy for those players. The interesting thing here is there are Super Bowl implications with this game. I'd estimate about 90% of NFL games don't matter in the grand scheme of who wins a title or not, if the NFL had to cancel 1 every couple years and have an unbalanced situation. But this game was between 2 of the top 3 teams in the AFC....the conference that will be the favorite to win a championship. And this game was going a long way to determining who wins home field advantage. If Buffalo won, HFA was there's. If they lost, goes to KC. If KC loses, potentially to Cincinnati after that. If not played, KC would win HFA based on a 1/2 game difference. HFA can legit be the difference between who makes the Superbowl or not. Obviously, in comparison to a player's life, HFA doesn't matter at all. And I'm sure Buffalo would take going on the road to KC if it meant Hamlin was OK. But there will be a lot for the NFL to discuss. If you're Buffalo, at this point does it even make sense, setting aside all of the actually important stuff, to screw up your schedule for the next few weeks for...a coin flip shot at best? Every one of those players on both teams woke up today significantly more drained than they would after a normal game, going through the whole process of a game again (and two, potentially three short weeks) to potentially avoid playing a first round game just might not seem worth it. And then I would think it would be even less important for Cincinnati, but haven't gamed out of those scenarios. Again, setting aside all of the actually important stuff

Neagle made 58 starts in the two years after signing his Colorado deal (3.8 total fWAR), and then had a variety of things go wrong (including injuries) and only pitched 35 more innings. But that was driven largely by a solicitation arrest that let Colorado get out of the contract. But he also signed that contract going into his age 32 season, and was a pitcher. So, closer, but still no.

What does this mean

Hopefully we can flip him for some lottery pick single A who has an incredible second half and becomes the new Future guy to build around when he's ready in 2026, so let's hold off on signing anyone big until then.

I guess I'm not sure why this would be in question at this point. They're linked both locally and nationally with all of those things, Mooney/Sharma specifically listed the holes they wanted to fill that included all of them, and there's significant noise about them spending more than recent years. Maybe the SS isn't Correa and maybe the SP isn't Senga or the catcher isn't Murphy, but it seems very certain they are going to keep adding at those spots. The main open question is if they can win the race for one of the SS, since that's the one spot where there's not really a plan B, but they're heavily linked to all 3 available which means they aren't putting everything in a single option. Key point here. A ton of teams want these dudes, and rightly so. If we lose out because of the money spent here, we're big picture screwed anyways. But we can also very easily miss out on these dudes for whatever other reason that has nothing to do with these signings, and I can't imagine how this and Taillon hurt anything.

If this was a move big market teams should make then options 2 and 4 wouldn’t be on the table. But they are, because what this team needs to do is acquire a crap ton of production, not a guy with a long history of no production. I....don't think you're actually angry about this particular transaction.

None of us are going to know just how much money is available, and if committing $80m or so to Bellinger and Jameson takes us out of the running for someone like Correa…we probably weren’t seriously involved anyways and there are bigger problems. What these signings could do is signal our desire and potential ability to compete immediately, which at the very least alleviates some concerns if Correa is picking between something like us and Minnesota (who I wouldn’t think would win out otherwise).