DrungoHazewood

They shouldn't be going 48 in a 50 mph zone! They're playing with fire! Also, not brake checking when they do it at completely random intervals, and lightly enough so that their car doesn't even slow down. They're just driving along at 48 and every ~10 to 90 seconds the brake lights briefly come on for no apparent reason.

Yesterday coming home from work someone in front of me stopped for the school bus in front of them. That's fine. That's what you're supposed to do. But they stopped 75 yards from the bus. They left a 75 yard buffer between the stopped bus and their car. They had Jersey plates. That's not something you do in Jersey is it? The bus stopped at least twice to let kids off, and both times they did it. Weird.

You know what drives me crazy? Mosquitos. Also people who put their brakes on for no reason when you're behind them.

Right, it's the weakness of the One Trophy model of North American sports. Without a bunch of teams in the playoffs half the teams and their fans are essentially done for the year by the All Star break. In '67 the Giants won 91 games but finished 10 games behind the Cards, and were 10+ games back from August 12th on. By the end of the year they had a streak of five consecutive home games where they drew under 7000 fans to see Willie Mays and Willie McCovey play ball because the season had been over for two months. I'd bet a lot more than 2818 fans would have showed up on September 25th if there'd have been a wildcard.

In 1962 the Mets went 40-120. The Giants won 103 games but lost to the Mets four times. The Dodgers won 102 games and lost to the Mets twice. In 1899 the Cleveland Spiders had been stripped of all their good players by the St. Louis Cardinals, who were owned by the same people. They infamously went 20-134. They beat the 95-win Boston Beaneaters three times. They beat the 94 win Phillies twice, and the 86-win Orioles twice. The 1916 A's went 36-117-1. They beat the pennant-winning Red Sox six times. The second place White Sox four times, and the third place Tigers four times. On both August 22nd and September 18th they shut out Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford and Harry Heilmann's team. It's frustrating, but it's baseball. This isn't football where your promising team goes down to Vanderbilt on the first day of the season and that's it, wait for next year.

Did the '83 Orioles look well coached in late May when they lost seven straight, including being swept by the 70-92 Twins? Or later in August when they lost another seven straight, including being swept by the last place Indians and dropping out of first place? I mean, Storm Davis gave up eight runs in 2.2 innings, Todd Cruz and Rich Dauer OPSing under .600, Al Bumbry with a .668 OPS leading off? What in bloody hell was Joe Altobelli thinking? I woulda fired him, clearly no idea what he's doing. And GM Hank Peters should go, too. They hadn't won a title since '70, were they even trying?

That's not surprising, since your whole shtick for the entire time you've been on the board is to take the most negative, curmudgeonly, contrarian position on everything, and then act surprised when few agree with you. In 2014 you were absolutely *stunned* that everyone disagreed with your thought that they should have torn the team down to the drywall at the deadline and rebuilt from scratch. (Note the 2014 Orioles won the division by 12 games.) As Tony and others have noted, hiring Elias and giving him the freedom to build the organization is the best thing that's happened to the Orioles since they won the Series in '83. I think that firing him because the team has under-performed a bit due to a ton of injuries would be tragically short-sighted. It would be a very Peter Angelos kind of move. I hear Phil Regan is still alive, and pretty spry for 87. Maybe he's up for taking over Elias' job?

I suppose day drinking isn't the worst thing if you have Friday off. I wouldn't do it, but it's all up to you, man.

Because the "it's not our money" argument is silly? The argument should be about how no team has unlimited resources, and how do we maximize the use of those limited resources to win the most games. If you want to have a discussion about signing players and building rosters without any consideration of the costs because it's not your money, I'm not interested in participating.

But it's not real resources, and you don't have to have any big expectations. Why not sign him to a low-dollar, incentive-laden deal with some options or thresholds? It's not like you're signing him for $10M with the expectation that he's going to pitch 200 innings. It's a couple $million out of a payroll that'll likely be $125M+ to see if maybe he can contribute in 2026. It's not a huge deal either way to me, but I can't see signing him as anything but low risk.

I mean, illness is a big category. Bubonic plague. The Consumption. Typhoid fever. Whooping cough. Smallpox. John McGraw missed much of the 1896 season with typhoid, so it's kind of a thing that happens in Baltimore.

It's baseball. Every pitcher is one pitch away from 18 months on the IL. Look at the vote-getters in the 2022 AL Cy Young: Verlander: just 57 innings this year Cease: 11-8, 119 ERA+ in 136 innings Manoah: 24 innings in '24, after totally melting down in '23 Ohtani: Limited to DHing after injury F. Valdez: 116 innings to a 3.56 McClanahan: On 60-day IL, hasn't pitched in '24 Bieber: 12 innings this year Cortes: 5-9, 4.16 in 129 innings Cole: 40 innings of a 5.09 Gausman: 9-8, 4.56 0% (0 out of 10) are legit candidates for the '24 Cy Young, unless Cease or Valdez has an epic stretch run. If you want a system to pick out which pitchers aren't going to be good/healthy in a year or two, just make a list of the top pitchers and you'll do pretty well.

Remember when the sarcastic line was "who cares about winning the prospect rankings, I thought baseball was all about winning games!" Well, here we are.