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MKE BUCKS & Avid sports enthusiast

[Kyle Malzhan @KyleMalzhan]

#Packers rookie kicker Trey Smack said in the locker room after today's practice that he has deleted social media off of his phone for the most part.

[Jack @jackunheard]

Can anyone explain to me why the Senate is only working 19 out of the next 90 days?

Why are we paying these people?

[ᒪᗩᑎE @lanechanged]

To me, its not even about Mitch McConnell anymore.

We have a real problem when a Senator can just disappear for six weeks with only the vaguest of explanations & the whole institution just kinda shrugs it off.

Every other job in America would fire you for this.

[Clay Travis @ClayTravis]

Important announcement: I am upping my offer, $10 million dollars for a head-to-head basketball game between the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces and a boy's high school state title team of my choice. If the Aces beat my team, I will give them $10 million.

[Bobby Burack @burackbobby_]

Bad comparison. Yes, the Rams are doing what the Dodgers are by constantly trying to get better, while most other teams prioritize profits. The difference is that the NFL is set up to where the Rams are hurting themselves in the future by trading picks and spreading out contracts. The Dodgers are not.

Secondly, injuries to either Stafford, Puka, Garrett, McDuffie, etc. would quickly derail the Rams. The Dodgers are so loaded that they’d still be favorites if they lost Ohtani, Skubal, and Betts.

Finally, the Rams are not back to back champions. The Dodgers are.

[Rick J @rickjeff78]

If NFL eliminated their salary caps and had a revenue sharing like MLB, the Green Bay Packers would never win another game.

[Mission Valley Mafia @MissionVlyMafia]

It is 100% intentional this story had to broken by twitter burners and not Baseball Journalists.

Baseball media will not report accurately on this story because it doesn’t fit the narratives they are pushing.

They either pretend the Dodgers are just the worlds greatest org that ever existed and you just a jealous hater if you don’t like or they use this to push a salary cap to solve this problem

Being honest about the unfair advantage MLB gave away crushes both those narratives

MLB could solve this problem tomorrow by voting to nationalize all TV rights and buyout any remaining local contracts. They could do this with a vote of the owners at their next meeting

That won’t happen and baseball journos won’t report on it because they see an opportunity to go for a salary cap to
Fix the problem MLB created with this God Awful McCourt settlement

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

What a nightmare. By implementing the tariffs illegally, and now having to unwind them, the Trump administration created over $100 billion of profit for corporations selling foreign products, at the expense of American consumers.

Your refund: $0.00
Apple’s profit: $2.2 billion

[SleeperDodgers @SleeperDodgers]

Detroit Tigers officials called the Dodgers on Saturday night to inform them they wanted to get the Skubal deal done, per @FabianArdaya & @katiejwoo

Tigers reached out to the Dodgers 👀

[Rick J @rickjeff78]

I don't care about the owners.
I don't care about the players.

I care about the FANS.

A salary cap is good for the FANS of every single market, not just 4 or 5.

[First Take @FirstTake]

"It's bad for the collective whole of baseball. ... The public is going to look at something like this and say, 'Yo! Everybody can't do that.'"

@stephenasmith weighs in on the Dodgers acquiring Tarik Skubal ✍️

[GB @gbb70]

The Dodgers have gotten 42 innings from the $60M tandem of Snell & Glasnow

$20M Edwin Diaz has 8R allowed in 8IP

$60M for Kyle Tucker’s 95 OPS+

And none of it matters because they can spend another $300M

Carrying water is your job but the Dodgers spending money well is beyond asinine

[Penn State Dad @PghPennStateDad]

Right now under @MLB rules this is legal:

Deferred contracts. A team gets to pay a player $70 million a year for 10 years and defer $68 million/year until year 11 when they start paying it.

A team shows they have the full $70 million/year in an account to fulfill the deferred contracts they have in place.

Then, they get to invest that money into a fund that, conservatively, probably pays them 5-10% annually.

Then, they get to tell MLB the time value of money is less 10-20 years from now than it is today. So that $68 million in deferred yearly payments to our player that starts in year 11 is only worth $53 million in 10 years, so they get to pay luxury taxes today based on 53 million not 68 million.

So while they are earning 5-10% returns on their money they also get to decrease luxury tax liabilities.

Thats the scheme the MLB allows to happen. And that is why Major League Baseball must shut down until the CBA and rules are changed.

#Dodgers

[Rick J @rickjeff78]

9 of the last 10 World Series winners were Top 10 in Payroll.

They pocket in the money because the game has essentially been solved. It makes zero sense spending an extra $30 million on a 68 win roster just to take your win total to 72. It only makes sense to spend it when you finally put your once a decade team together.

The economics of the sport make absolutely zero sense.

Every other sport has managed to solve this to create a wide variety of winners.

The last one resistant is baseball and resistance to change is why the sport was in a death spiral.

[Pirates Prospects @pirateprospects]

The framing of MLB's economics from national media is a problem.

"Anti-Dodger hysteria" is a choice.

The free article from Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic treats the complaints about the Dodgers as an annoyance, in the midst of an attempt to glaze the Dodgers for not only being the best, but being smarter than other teams.

Which, they should be.

One thing Rosenthal misses, in his breakdown of how the Dodgers are the smartest team, is why the Dodgers are the smartest team.

When they signed their massive local media deal, one of the first things they did was expand their front office.

They poached Andrew Friedman from the Rays to be their President of Baseball Operations.

Then, they added multiple front office members who could be General Managers of any organization.

There's no argument that the Dodgers have an unfair advantage in payroll that needs to be addressed in the next CBA. It's easy to demonstrate how the Dodgers have out-spent every other team to accumulate the best roster.

Front offices don't have reporting on their salaries, nor are there rankings of front office executives or prospects. If there were, the Dodgers would show the same advantage as their MLB roster, and for the same reason.

The Dodgers are smarter than every other team, but that's because they can afford more minds focusing on finding advantages.

They can out-spend every team in analytics, scouting, development, and decision-making.

This isn't something to be celebrated without perspective. It's not something to be used as a hand-wave away from the unfair advantage the Dodgers have with their on-field payroll.

It's the exact same problem, showing up in other areas.

If you concede that the Dodgers have an advantage that allows them to take a massive risk on a player like Kyle Tucker, a risk which the majority of teams can't take, then you also have to concede the Dodgers can afford more resources dedicated to building the smartest front office.

Rosenthal framed it as:

"The Dodgers can afford to take more chances, afford to guarantee a ridiculous $240 million to a complementary player such as Kyle Tucker in free agency. But the dirty little secret of a salary cap and floor system is that it would not guarantee small-market teams success. Many would need to develop more of a killer instinct, an instinct the Dodgers demonstrate time and again."

It's not about having a killer instinct, as Rosenthal romanticizes the situation.

The Pirates don't have a General Manager with a killer instinct. Ben Cherington is very passive, as seen by the lack of moves and slow changes during his seven year career. Perhaps some of that comes with the restrictions he's under with a smaller budget.

Even if the Pirates had a General Manager with a killer instinct, that GM would be going up against three GM-types with the Dodgers, armed with the same killer instincts, along with more people in their scouting, analytics, and development teams.

Here's a dirty little secret about war: "A small force is but booty for one more powerful if it fights recklessly."

Small market teams are forced to withdraw until the point they have unearthed a tactical advantage. And that's rare.

It's rare not because the Dodgers can out-spend small market teams. The rarity is due to the Dodgers having the resources to also out-smart them. Chances are, the Dodgers are going to find the advantages before any other team. If another team finds an advantage, the Dodgers have the resources to quickly adapt.

Rosenthal celebrates how smart the Dodgers are, in an attempt to dismiss valid complaints about the disadvantages small market teams have in this system. He doesn't even address that the Dodgers are only this smart because they have the resources to hire the best off the field, as well as on the field.

Rosenthal's approach makes sense. MLB is designed around big market teams like the Dodgers. The bulk of their money currently comes from those teams. National media, like Rosenthal, would be under the same system.

The Athletic, which is the outlet Rosenthal works for, doesn't even cover the Pirates. The Pirates are one of many small market teams where The Athletic decided the cost of a beat writer was bad for business.

Rosenthal, like many national writers and outlets, is going to naturally be slanted toward big market teams. That's where his outlet's money and the bulk of his coverage is located. Until this system changes, and MLB matches the NFL where every market is worth writing about, national writers like Rosenthal are always going to side with their bread and butter in the large markets.

That's going to be a problem when looking for objective reporting this offseason.

MLB and the MLBPA will attempt to work toward a fair economic system that levels the massive advantage the Dodgers have under the current model.

If writers like Rosenthal treat complaints from small markets as "hysteria" and fail to accurately report why teams like the Dodgers are smarter, then they're only helping larger markets maintain the system that gives them a disproportionate advantage.

[Matt Verderame @MattVerderame]

The Rays and Brewers have never won a World Series. The Brewers haven't reached one since 1982.

The idea baseball has this achievement of parity is false.

Since 1927, there have been 98 World Series. The Yankees, Dodgers and/or Cardinals have played in 60 of them.

[Nicky The Good @nickythegood]

This is not what happened.

Tigers’ return is what happens when the other teams (Brewers, Rays) don’t want to trade for a guy they know they won’t extend

This is about money, not the prospects.

[Adam McCalvy @AdamMcCalvy]

Jacob Misiorowski on the cutters, the Angel Stadium mound (“One of the worst mounds I’ve had.”) and a strong no comment on all things Trade Deadline-related.

[Connor @23cmcpadres]

Do not let Tarik Skubal becoming a Dodger distract you from the fact that Shohei Ohtani illegally wired millions of dollars to an offshore bookie and made his close friend and interpreter take the fall for him so he could avoid prison time and continue to bring billions to MLB.