diehardtwinsfan

I fail to see how adding extra teams that will almost always be eliminated in round 1 will somehow solve this. There's already a huge advantage for large market teams. Yes, I know that occasionally one of these lower seeded teams will break through, but that's not going to be the norm.

very well said

while I agree with that, I haven't forgotten 1994. Neither have the owners... and I suspect the same thing would have happened this year as well. But yes, you're correct, it's a lockout, not a strike and people should use the correct terminology.

Well, the MLBPA does represent them, even though they have no vote. So they do have a responsibility to negotiate for them and they have not. I have to think that's a legal issue and possibly an anti-trust issue. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that a good case could be made that the MLBPA is in breach of their duty. I would think they could all go after MLB for anti-trust given that they aren't represented and MLB decides who they get to play for. Setting it aside, minor leaguers are getting sub minimum wage for their services which is just wrong. It's a fixable problem too for the cost of a typical utility player.

sounds like we my have something close to a full season.

I haven't looked too closely, but personally I'm more concerned about competitive balance issues and minor league pay. It doesn't look like either of these have been adequately addressed thus far.

There's a reason Jerry Jones was one of the ones pushing back on releasing the WFT stuff. What I don't get is that supposedly this exec was caught trying to take upskirt photos of Jones's daughter. As a dad, all I have to say is that being fired would have been the least of this guy's problems.

I'm going to go with the Browns trade Mayfield + picks to Minny for Cousins as my bold prediction. Personally, I'd probably take a step back in 2022 and run with Mond and see if he can be the guy.

while I don't think everything analytics brought to baseball has been good for the sport, I'd rather be on the lead of that change effort than chasing it like the Twins did.

My bad, I misunderstood you. Me personally, no. I don't think Cousins is the answer (at least for the price). If he wants to stay and takes a salary between 15-20M, I'd probably keep him and use the difference to get help on the OL, since he's definitely dependent on good pass blocking. But beyond that, no. I want a ring more than a division title personally (yes, I realize that one makes it easier to get the other). Cousins can get you that if he's got top notch supporting cast, but that something he's never had here and it's something pretty hard to build from a QB making 35M/season. Personally, I'm of the opinion that we trade Cousins (as I think we get at least a 1st for him, especially if we ask for a 2023 first) and let Mond have a shot in 2022. I'd trade off anyone nearing the end (Smith, Theilen, etc) for 2023 picks as well if I could and use 2022 to draft higher ceiling development types/bolster solid play out of core positions on the lines. If Mond fails, we're likely drafting pretty high in 2023 with capital to move.

It's kind of a moot point, Rodgers would never be traded within the division. The Packers bent over backwards to make sure Favre didn't leave GB to end up in Minnesota. I don't see that changing. And to the other point, we're more than a QB away at this point. We need some more strategic restructuring and I don't think trading away more capital for a year or two of Rodgers will help.

perhaps as a coach... this wouldn't excite me too much personally.

Here's to hoping you're wrong At least the Wilfs are saying the right thing in this regard... I've commented elsewhere that I want a HC focused on being an HC and to hire the best coordinators out there. No problems with an offensive minded coach doing some planning with his/her OC, but I expect that coach to let the OC do their thing... same on defense if it's a defensive minded coordinator.

You and your silly expectations

Minnesota. They would rightfully want more than just Mayfield.

Zimmer needed to go. I was more on the fence with Rick (leaned towards keeping him), but if that's what it took for change, it was worth it. As more and more come out though, it's pretty obvious there were some pretty dysfunctional issues with this team. That falls on Rick to some extent as well.

that was my first thought. Good return, fans forget. We're pretty deep in the infield right now. It's a position of strength, and well Arraez is well liked (deservedly so) from a business standpoint, you make a trade if it makes sense.

well, supposedly Mike and Rick are gone.

I don't think anyone disagrees about your statement about well run clubs. But the rules as setup make it harder for well run clubs to win, period. I don't know if you'd call Minnesota well run or not, but it doesn't take nearly as much well running for a big market team to consistently make the playoffs. That's what I'm getting at with margins of error. The Twins do not have the same margin of error that the Yankees or Dodgers do. The Pirates don't have the same margin of error as the Twins. That leads to a lot less competitive baseball. The dynamics of this need to shift, and my fear is that there's not nearly enough altruistic people in MLB to make it work. The sport is in trouble. Viewership data tells us that, even if revenue increases being largely driven by inflation are not.

To be honest, I think the status quo is bad for the game. It's dying a slow death because of it. The game is in real trouble with its competitive issues right now. Its fan base is aging and not being replaced by younger fans. The game itself has enough challenges with that crowd, but you're going to lose viewers when you know your team simply has no chance every single April. Ultimately, as a passionate fan, I need to know that the rules are the same for the Twins as they are the Yankees. It's bad enough that we get to debate whether or not certain teams/players get a friendlier strike zone, but it goes beyond that. The Yankees will walk home with any player they want, regardless of cost and have the ability to unload said player should it end up being a sunk cost. The Twins will never operate like that in large part due to the disparities that you quoted. We all know that every year there are only a handful of quality free agents. That's true in most sports too I'd add. The problem is that in baseball's model, only a few teams will get those free agents and they get them every single time. In our world, we have to take the ones with question marks and hope we guess right. Some sort of revenue sharing model is going to be needed to fix that. There's no scenario that I can see where baseball can be fixed if teams like Pittsburg cannot keep up with the Yankee's spend.

You're right that MiLB wages aren't hard to fix. They haven't been hard to fix for decades too, and that's what sad. No one seems to care about fixing them, and the cost per MLB team is that of a utility player to do it if they took it on themselves. It's definitely fixable and there are a number of ways to do it. But on to the other parts, that disparity is essentially the big problem as there's a huge competitiveness problem. As I said before, I'm close to being done with baseball. Why? Because it's really hard to get excited for a season when you know your team has a razor thin margin of error in order to succeed. The deck is stacked against small and mid market teams, and while they can compete, as Tampa has shown, it's usually the same big teams in the mix every single season. The Yankees are not some spectacularly run team. They are a team with a huge competitive advantage due to the structure of the game that they can exploit. You ask why fans of mid and small market teams should suffer. I'm not sure where you're going with that b/c where I stand, they already are suffering. While it definitely isn't the only one, It's one of several reasons why baseball is not gaining younger fans. My son likes baseball, but he's not watching it much, and a big reason for that is that his dad isn't either. Back to the economic disparity, big market teams aren't going to vote for anything that changes their revenue to the extent that it needs to change in order to fix the competitive issues. Approximately half the league is going to see a reduction in revenue in some way if we fix them. For the teams near the median, you may get their vote since they can see a bigger picture ROI, but you won't see either New York team, the Cubs, Dodgers, Angels, or Red Sox voting for it, and right there you've just about killed a new CBA that fixes the game. You have a similar problem on the player side, as those there couldn't care less about minors wages anymore... some might, but most won't. Most care more about the fact that analytics has vastly shortened playing careers. MLB is a bit different from other sports in that most players are going to spend several years in the minors at which point they have 6ish years of team control, only the last 2 do they really start to make money. It's a pretty crappy situation for them. In the NFL, you play immediately and have 4-5 years (though you cannot get drafted out of HS)... NBA is similar except that you have to do 1 season in college. That's a lot less time needed to get a second contract and their service time on the first contract is lower that MLB. So yeah, I don't think there's a scenario where the players don't get a concession here, and they're wise to push it.

To be fair, a lot has to go right to get 8 or even 9. But yeah, there's some value there, I wouldn't argue that. To me though, it really comes down to how you use a lost game. Do you play the starters and try to win, or do you accept it for what it is and give the younger players some playing time and a chance to develop. That's technically tanking, but I also think it's the right answer and not even close. The draft spot is potentially a consolation prize.

I doubt there's anything manual to it. They can cameras and other tech to get an exact idea of where the batter is standing and the stance. It's literally a different application of technology used in facial recognition or self driving for that matter. This is all very doable with no manual input.

I think you need a hard cap and a hard floor along with some sort of revenue sharing to allow the smaller markets to spend at the top of the cap consistently. Minor league wages need to be fixed. Given the way analytics has changed the game, I suspect minimum salaries will need to go up considerably and the time to FA will need to drop a bit. Those are the big ones.

Have you followed the Vikings? We always win these games. Remember that meaningless game that AP tore his ACL in? We lose that game, we get the 2 pick which the WFT trades a bazzillion picks for to get RG3... So yeah, we win, and someone is out in 2022. That's Vikings football.