It seems to me that the AL Central represents the precarious state of MLB and that there will likely be a lack of alignment between owners after this CBA expires. Due to the Diamond Sports bankruptcy, an important revenue stream for many small and mid-market teams has dried up with an uncertain future. With the expansion of the playoffs and no large market team (I don't count the White Sox as large market because fairly or unfairly the Cubs take up way more than half of Chicago fans' hearts and as it is abundantly clear to this bemused Minnesotan - thou shalt not be a fan of both teams in the same market even though they are in different leagues), there is not much incentive to spend money (I won't get into whether that means less profit or actually turning a loss for a year since we don't know and almost nobody cares). Somebody will win the division and with a weak schedule (yes, last year four teams were decent to good but it had a lot to do with parity of four teams and a historically bad one to prop their win totals up) they could even get some sneaky wild card appearances. Despite the complaints of "yeah, we can make the playoffs, but we can't make a run" from fans and media, the owners know they indeed do have a chance just by qualifying.
Meanwhile, the large market teams are playing with the margins. It's not really about winning a few more games in the regular season. It's about having more top end talent that theoretically will give them the edge (if healthy and playing up to potential) over the lesser teams and keep up in the arms race of the other large market teams. The bidding price is too high the vast majority of the time for a small or mid-market team due to the risk involved of the high percentage of the payroll going to one player and also the risk of long-term harm from that player being a complete dud.
The Royals and Twins actually was morosely comical in that the Royals got a lot of credit for spending up to their $115M 26-man payroll last year while the Twins got eviscerated and are now up for sale after only spending $127M. Expectations. The Twins went down and the Royals went up. They both far outspent the $98M of Cleveland and Detroit, but I guess in Cleveland there's apathy when it comes to ownership and in Detroit they did have a nice effort getting Baez and Eduardo while still paying Miggy and it didn't work out.
I can see the disparity in projected wins from team WAR and predicted success in the post-season getting large enough between the market sizes that the mid-2010's (4 pennants in 5 years by Detroit, Kansas City and Cleveland) won't be repeated. Have we even seen the last of St. Louis' long run of success and they will also have to do the process of rebuild to generate narrow windows of potential success and not be able to afford to sustain it? Again, I think there will be internal strife, perhaps more so there than with the players, although one of the ways to address it is a salary ceiling, which the players are adamantly against even if it includes a higher harder floor (and it doesn't help that in order to ensure an equivalent share of revenue for the players, the owners would have to open up their books to reveal their actual revenue which is anathema to the owners). Lost games in a couple years anyone?
I remember seeing Raising Arizona at a dollar movie place (for those old enough to remember those) on a whim with a friend. I knew nothing about it, so no expectations. My friend and I were laughing so hard (and he has an infectious laugh that just makes you laugh more) that we were almost a spectacle in the not very crowded theater. When the movie was over and the lights came up, most of the people had gone because we watched the credits. The female half of an older couple a few rows behind us nudged her husband and said "Look Norman, there are the two boys that were laughing so hard".
It was while watching the credits that I realized that these were the same guys that had made "Blood Simple" a movie I had also loved, but one that was as different from this one as it could be. I knew then that they were something special.
Some thoughts: 1. The AL Central teams all have approximately the same small to mid level budgetary mindset (last year the teams were 18th, 19th, 20th, 23rd and 26th in MLB). That means that they aren't trying to put together a WS team, but rather one that might win an admittedly blah division. My Mariners are nearly the same boat budget wise (16th) but our division foes spend more money (3rd, 8th and 14th in MLB plus Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas was 30th). Our goal every year appears to sneak into a wild card spot.
2. The Hudsucker Proxy is an undervalued movie for sure. With Paul Newman as the villain, IMDB gives it a grade of 7.2, good but not great. In 2023, 21 of the top 22 movies were rated higher than that. Paul Newman was in another movie that I love and that was also rated 7.2 on IMDB. The movie? Slap Shot.
3. I know Joe loves words and so do I, but we have a parting of the ways on "lookout". It isn't in all dictionaries. Merriam-Webster sys it is a phonetic spelling of "look at". That only works if you say it fast as if it were a single word and chop the "at" short. It appears it originally appeared as a substitution for "looked" as in this 1776 Scottish song.
"He's blawn his horn sae sharp and shrill, / Up start the deer on every hill. / He's blawn his horn sae lang and loud, / Up start the deer in the gude green wood. / His Lady Mother lookit owre the castle wa'. / And she saw them riding ane and a'."
or this 1806 English song
"O whan the sun was now gane down / He's doen him till her bower; / And there, by the lee licht o'the moon, / Her window she lookit o'er."
Where does it all end? If we bring back "lookit" we are almost obliged to revive "ower" and "o'er" and that's just the start.
Regarding Gimenez, I am pondering the possibility of a trade that makes the team better (which this *may*) and nevertheless being a terrible trade. So much joy left Cleveland with Andres. He made so many thrilling, unbelievable, unmakeable plays, and they were beautiful to watch. I have no idea who the best second baseman of all time is, but he has to be in the conversation. Getting to ground balls, yes, but also: making the pivot. Flipping throws behind his back. Especially, his lightning quick and deadly accurate relay throws - they looked impossible. He has an uncanny sense of the playing field, the bases, his teammates. And he did everything with a smile like he was surprising himself and couldn’t believe how much fun it all was.
You want to watch players having fun while doing what you could only dream of.
His defense is, maybe, a talent of more limited value than hitting 500-foot home runs. But it’s a generational talent nonetheless.
And all so Dolan Jr. can waste millions on hopeless and retrograde political campaigns, or whatever else they’re going to spend the money on. All those millions and you don’t even know how to recognize a star, as Clark Gable did not quite say.
(As for the “*may*”: I think we still know very little about how to compose teams. I mean, yes, if you put Ohtani and Betts back to back in your lineup, that will be a good thing. But what effect does a below-average bat have in a lineup, versus stellar defense? Yes, WAR and all that, but I’m not convinced you can just add 3 WAR and 3 WAR and get 6 - there are a whole lot of variables that complicate the math when combining players in a lineup. And a whole lot more variables in terms of innings that run longer or are cut short because of defense; the number of pitches thrown, batters faced, pitching with men on base or not, etc. A lot gets lost in the averages.)
/rant. Sorry. I was starting to be over this, and Joe just cranked up my ire again.
"Do not seek the Treasure!" words of wisdom applied to Guardians & Browns fans. Sigh. Guardians' fans liked Gime! (his nickname). But I'm not disappointed in what happened. Baseball is in the midst of a large paradigm shift for smaller market teams - build within, trade for younger players with control, and avoid large FA signings for long durations. This versus FA signings with creative ways of financing them (deferred payments, and other options) supplanted with developing high profile stars. Will the game survive the tug-of-war between the two - maybe. The '24 Guards did display what patience; farm products and a few astute trades can produce. Yes, they fell short. But for the 3rd lowest payroll, they did provide entertainment.
You cherry picked OPS+ to make a point I assume. Let me pick one. Current estimates I’ve seen peg 1 WAR as being worth about $8 million. Gimenez averages 5.3 bWAR per 162 games. If he plays 140 games a year, that’s 4.6 WAR, worth about $36 million. Over six years that’s $216 million. He’s owed $97 million. Even granting his offense has slipped the last two years, he’s only 26. The Indians didn’t trade him because he’s not worth the money, they traded him because they’re cheap.
I specifically chose OPS+ because it is a real statistic, and one which best reflects offensive contribution. Gimenez is at best a league-average bat; actually, a bit below that most years. Gold-glove offense is worth something, but is it worth that much by itself? Opinions differ.
The figure I have heard most often is $2 million / WAR. Free agents are the cream of the crop and subject to bidding wars, resulting in a skewed figure.
I see people using that factor ($/WAR/) a lot. I believe that $8M/WAR is what it cost to buy free agent WAR (on average). I do not believe that if you take the total WAR posted in MLB and divide by the total salary dollars that you will end up with $8M/WAR, which should give you the actual average $/WAR for MLB.
That's because MLB doesn't pay the players their *actual* value for years 1-3 (minimum) and 4-6 (arbitration). Real value only reveals itself on the open market. You can't use Mike Trout's 2012 season of 10.5 bWAR making $492,500 as a reasonable basis for calculating value, and same for all other players pre-FA who have not signed extensions.
Miller's Crossing is my favorite film of all time. "So take your flunky and dangle."
What I love about the Coens is that 10 different people will have 10 different answers to what their best movie is, and all 10 answers will be valid and make sense in different ways. As writers and directors, they can absolutely nail such a wide variety of tones and genres.
I hated that movie. Like absolutely effing hated that movie. A movie, for me, needs somebody to root for. hero, antihero, doesnt matter but something. Every single character in that movie was completely devoid of any single redeeming quality. Had a former boss that recommended(insisted) that I watch it as it was one of his faves. Changed my opinion of the man to be honest. Just a vile slog of a movie.
Why stop at 10? If you took an infinite amount of Coen Brothers fans, and handed them all a scorecard to rank all the movies, you would get an infinite amount of answers. Miller's Crossing is clearly the best, but even with that caveat there's room for just an enormous amount of debate. (Yes, I am putting The Ladykillers at #8, so what?)
It seems to me that the AL Central represents the precarious state of MLB and that there will likely be a lack of alignment between owners after this CBA expires. Due to the Diamond Sports bankruptcy, an important revenue stream for many small and mid-market teams has dried up with an uncertain future. With the expansion of the playoffs and no large market team (I don't count the White Sox as large market because fairly or unfairly the Cubs take up way more than half of Chicago fans' hearts and as it is abundantly clear to this bemused Minnesotan - thou shalt not be a fan of both teams in the same market even though they are in different leagues), there is not much incentive to spend money (I won't get into whether that means less profit or actually turning a loss for a year since we don't know and almost nobody cares). Somebody will win the division and with a weak schedule (yes, last year four teams were decent to good but it had a lot to do with parity of four teams and a historically bad one to prop their win totals up) they could even get some sneaky wild card appearances. Despite the complaints of "yeah, we can make the playoffs, but we can't make a run" from fans and media, the owners know they indeed do have a chance just by qualifying.
Meanwhile, the large market teams are playing with the margins. It's not really about winning a few more games in the regular season. It's about having more top end talent that theoretically will give them the edge (if healthy and playing up to potential) over the lesser teams and keep up in the arms race of the other large market teams. The bidding price is too high the vast majority of the time for a small or mid-market team due to the risk involved of the high percentage of the payroll going to one player and also the risk of long-term harm from that player being a complete dud.
The Royals and Twins actually was morosely comical in that the Royals got a lot of credit for spending up to their $115M 26-man payroll last year while the Twins got eviscerated and are now up for sale after only spending $127M. Expectations. The Twins went down and the Royals went up. They both far outspent the $98M of Cleveland and Detroit, but I guess in Cleveland there's apathy when it comes to ownership and in Detroit they did have a nice effort getting Baez and Eduardo while still paying Miggy and it didn't work out.
I can see the disparity in projected wins from team WAR and predicted success in the post-season getting large enough between the market sizes that the mid-2010's (4 pennants in 5 years by Detroit, Kansas City and Cleveland) won't be repeated. Have we even seen the last of St. Louis' long run of success and they will also have to do the process of rebuild to generate narrow windows of potential success and not be able to afford to sustain it? Again, I think there will be internal strife, perhaps more so there than with the players, although one of the ways to address it is a salary ceiling, which the players are adamantly against even if it includes a higher harder floor (and it doesn't help that in order to ensure an equivalent share of revenue for the players, the owners would have to open up their books to reveal their actual revenue which is anathema to the owners). Lost games in a couple years anyone?
And now Cleveland’s offense takes another hit with Naylor send to Arizona.
Burn After Reading hive rise up
I remember seeing Raising Arizona at a dollar movie place (for those old enough to remember those) on a whim with a friend. I knew nothing about it, so no expectations. My friend and I were laughing so hard (and he has an infectious laugh that just makes you laugh more) that we were almost a spectacle in the not very crowded theater. When the movie was over and the lights came up, most of the people had gone because we watched the credits. The female half of an older couple a few rows behind us nudged her husband and said "Look Norman, there are the two boys that were laughing so hard".
It was while watching the credits that I realized that these were the same guys that had made "Blood Simple" a movie I had also loved, but one that was as different from this one as it could be. I knew then that they were something special.
Had forgotten about the dollar movies! Sometimes my buddy and I would just go because we wanted some popcorn
Wells: “What did you do with the money?”
Moss: “I spent about two million dollars on whores and whiskey and the rest of it I just sort of blew it in.”
Only a fool would definitively claim to know what the best Coen brothers movie is. They are all uniquely great.
But it’s No Country, for sure.
Shades of Tug McGraw!
Probably where they got that
Some thoughts: 1. The AL Central teams all have approximately the same small to mid level budgetary mindset (last year the teams were 18th, 19th, 20th, 23rd and 26th in MLB). That means that they aren't trying to put together a WS team, but rather one that might win an admittedly blah division. My Mariners are nearly the same boat budget wise (16th) but our division foes spend more money (3rd, 8th and 14th in MLB plus Oakland/Sacramento/Las Vegas was 30th). Our goal every year appears to sneak into a wild card spot.
2. The Hudsucker Proxy is an undervalued movie for sure. With Paul Newman as the villain, IMDB gives it a grade of 7.2, good but not great. In 2023, 21 of the top 22 movies were rated higher than that. Paul Newman was in another movie that I love and that was also rated 7.2 on IMDB. The movie? Slap Shot.
3. I know Joe loves words and so do I, but we have a parting of the ways on "lookout". It isn't in all dictionaries. Merriam-Webster sys it is a phonetic spelling of "look at". That only works if you say it fast as if it were a single word and chop the "at" short. It appears it originally appeared as a substitution for "looked" as in this 1776 Scottish song.
"He's blawn his horn sae sharp and shrill, / Up start the deer on every hill. / He's blawn his horn sae lang and loud, / Up start the deer in the gude green wood. / His Lady Mother lookit owre the castle wa'. / And she saw them riding ane and a'."
or this 1806 English song
"O whan the sun was now gane down / He's doen him till her bower; / And there, by the lee licht o'the moon, / Her window she lookit o'er."
Where does it all end? If we bring back "lookit" we are almost obliged to revive "ower" and "o'er" and that's just the start.
Regarding Gimenez, I am pondering the possibility of a trade that makes the team better (which this *may*) and nevertheless being a terrible trade. So much joy left Cleveland with Andres. He made so many thrilling, unbelievable, unmakeable plays, and they were beautiful to watch. I have no idea who the best second baseman of all time is, but he has to be in the conversation. Getting to ground balls, yes, but also: making the pivot. Flipping throws behind his back. Especially, his lightning quick and deadly accurate relay throws - they looked impossible. He has an uncanny sense of the playing field, the bases, his teammates. And he did everything with a smile like he was surprising himself and couldn’t believe how much fun it all was.
You want to watch players having fun while doing what you could only dream of.
His defense is, maybe, a talent of more limited value than hitting 500-foot home runs. But it’s a generational talent nonetheless.
And all so Dolan Jr. can waste millions on hopeless and retrograde political campaigns, or whatever else they’re going to spend the money on. All those millions and you don’t even know how to recognize a star, as Clark Gable did not quite say.
(As for the “*may*”: I think we still know very little about how to compose teams. I mean, yes, if you put Ohtani and Betts back to back in your lineup, that will be a good thing. But what effect does a below-average bat have in a lineup, versus stellar defense? Yes, WAR and all that, but I’m not convinced you can just add 3 WAR and 3 WAR and get 6 - there are a whole lot of variables that complicate the math when combining players in a lineup. And a whole lot more variables in terms of innings that run longer or are cut short because of defense; the number of pitches thrown, batters faced, pitching with men on base or not, etc. A lot gets lost in the averages.)
/rant. Sorry. I was starting to be over this, and Joe just cranked up my ire again.
There is no joy in Mudville.
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is in my top 10 all time favorites, for the music alone.
I know it's early in the off season, but Joe pretty much could have written "the AL Central hasn't done anything" and called it a day.
"Do not seek the Treasure!" words of wisdom applied to Guardians & Browns fans. Sigh. Guardians' fans liked Gime! (his nickname). But I'm not disappointed in what happened. Baseball is in the midst of a large paradigm shift for smaller market teams - build within, trade for younger players with control, and avoid large FA signings for long durations. This versus FA signings with creative ways of financing them (deferred payments, and other options) supplanted with developing high profile stars. Will the game survive the tug-of-war between the two - maybe. The '24 Guards did display what patience; farm products and a few astute trades can produce. Yes, they fell short. But for the 3rd lowest payroll, they did provide entertainment.
Blood Simple is the Coens' best.
Nothing screams American culture more than going to a mall in suburban London.
I heard Buckingham was booked.
Well, that's where the basesball-themed place which welcomes groups is.
I know you didn't ask, but Miller's Crossing has always been my favorite Coen Brothers movie. So many good one liners.
The White Sox also added Matt Thaiss. Not that it will make much difference.
Re: Gimenez: the man has a career OPS+ of 101, and is owed $97 million over the next six years. Yeah, I can see why Cleveland moved him.
You cherry picked OPS+ to make a point I assume. Let me pick one. Current estimates I’ve seen peg 1 WAR as being worth about $8 million. Gimenez averages 5.3 bWAR per 162 games. If he plays 140 games a year, that’s 4.6 WAR, worth about $36 million. Over six years that’s $216 million. He’s owed $97 million. Even granting his offense has slipped the last two years, he’s only 26. The Indians didn’t trade him because he’s not worth the money, they traded him because they’re cheap.
I specifically chose OPS+ because it is a real statistic, and one which best reflects offensive contribution. Gimenez is at best a league-average bat; actually, a bit below that most years. Gold-glove offense is worth something, but is it worth that much by itself? Opinions differ.
The figure I have heard most often is $2 million / WAR. Free agents are the cream of the crop and subject to bidding wars, resulting in a skewed figure.
I see people using that factor ($/WAR/) a lot. I believe that $8M/WAR is what it cost to buy free agent WAR (on average). I do not believe that if you take the total WAR posted in MLB and divide by the total salary dollars that you will end up with $8M/WAR, which should give you the actual average $/WAR for MLB.
That's because MLB doesn't pay the players their *actual* value for years 1-3 (minimum) and 4-6 (arbitration). Real value only reveals itself on the open market. You can't use Mike Trout's 2012 season of 10.5 bWAR making $492,500 as a reasonable basis for calculating value, and same for all other players pre-FA who have not signed extensions.
Sure, but if all players were free agents from day one, the average wouldn't be $8M dollars either, it would be much lower.
Miller's Crossing is my favorite film of all time. "So take your flunky and dangle."
What I love about the Coens is that 10 different people will have 10 different answers to what their best movie is, and all 10 answers will be valid and make sense in different ways. As writers and directors, they can absolutely nail such a wide variety of tones and genres.
Totally agree!
As long as the answer is The Big Lebowski...
I hated that movie. Like absolutely effing hated that movie. A movie, for me, needs somebody to root for. hero, antihero, doesnt matter but something. Every single character in that movie was completely devoid of any single redeeming quality. Had a former boss that recommended(insisted) that I watch it as it was one of his faves. Changed my opinion of the man to be honest. Just a vile slog of a movie.
Lots of ins lots of outs. The Dude will abide.
I guess you didn't like Seinfeld either, by your criteria?
To each his own but at least the Seinfeld group was loyal and committed to each other even if they were a bit sociopathic to the rest of the world.
Why stop at 10? If you took an infinite amount of Coen Brothers fans, and handed them all a scorecard to rank all the movies, you would get an infinite amount of answers. Miller's Crossing is clearly the best, but even with that caveat there's room for just an enormous amount of debate. (Yes, I am putting The Ladykillers at #8, so what?)
I was feeling a little daffy...
Joe, I think your London trip is in July, not January.