Moose Milligan

He had his day in the sun.

Interesting that the Giants are worse than us. That's a team that won 3 world series in the 2010s and made another one in the 2000s.

I don't know. I can see having the best non-playoff team drafting first working well...I can also see it being a big nothingburger. In the NFL? Absolutely. NBA? Sure. But not in a sport where there's like 85 rounds of drafting and then you have the whole international market to consider, too? Ehh....

Midwest, there's wide open spaces and a slower pace of life. Florida is pretty cool in parts and while the heat and humidity in the summer is worse than the DMV if possible, at least you won't freeze your ass off in the winter. For me it's not necessarily about having lots of things to do, it's also about bang for your buck. The DMV area is too expensive for what it provides, IMO. You can get twice the house/land in other parts of the country for half of what you pay here. Add in people's attitudes, I'm over it.

Watched that movie the other day, it's fantastic. And if the thought of losing is hateful to Americans, the Men's National Soccer Team must absolutely loathe themselves right now.

I'm assuming he's clinging onto that whole pesky "he didn't bring Britton in" moment. (It's also always a good day when Frobby gets indignant and says things like "You are out of your mind," which is about as close to he ever gets to being fully tilted)

Never would have guessed Luke Scott having one of those seasons.

Most places are better than the DMV area/Baltimore. I'd love to leave if I could.

I tip well, what can I say?

Of course I love it. Unfortunately I grew up in an area where this was the only team to root for and now like a case of herpes, I can't get rid of it. But that's the thing, you gotta grow up playing it, IMO. It's very hard to get into a sport as an adult as a spectator. I have no interest in watching hockey despite many attempts because I didn't grow up playing it. My dad didn't care about it, there was no need for me to care about it. On a similar note, I have absolutely no interest in boxing, MMA, NASCAR, etc. All my life, going back to the 80s when I was a kid, I've heard that soccer was going to take over. I'm hoping that's not coming true because that's another sport I have no interest in. But living here in the Mid-Atlantic region, a lot of kids play it. Kids are playing lacrosse, too. Baseball is getting pushed to the margins at the youth levels and not surprisingly it's getting pushed to the margins at a viewership level. IMO, that's not a coincidence.

You're in Tampa? I'm visiting and we're going to Bern's Steakhouse and then Mons Venus.

Exactly. If they can't do it with Ohtani, there's no hope for them to figure out marketing for the rest. I mean, home run title belts are kinda fun but whatever.

It was kinda cool, but yeah it was overall hackney Boomer stuff too. They took an MLB game and put it in a cooler setting in an attempt to tug on heartstrings. Looks like SG has some kind of a heart after all And that's the catch, it's a boring sport with boring players doing relatively boring things. You can't market it. You can't make it cooler than football or baseball. You said it yourself, you think they did something phenomenal last night. They relocated a boring product to the middle of a cornfield and threw a dash of Kevin Costner on it. That doesn't change the root of the problem. What they can do is try to get more bats, balls and gloves in the hands of younger kids, get them to play and hopefully they'll want to watch. But just straight up tune into a game? Good luck. JFC, if you can't market Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani, what can you do for the rest?

I don't pay too close attention to the NBA anymore, but I did see where Dennis Schroder, an average player, turned down a 4/80 million extension from the Lakers to test free agency and then didn't find any suitors. He took a 1 year deal with the Celtics for 5 million. So there seems to be some market regulation there, I'm not sure how much as that's only one example. I'm also not sure if the NBA is a direct comp due to the fact that they have less of a minor league system (they have a development league, but no tiered minor league structure like the MLB) and rely heavily on the draft to build teams.

The union wants salaries driven up and they're getting it, IMO. We've seen record contracts handed out over recent years. I'm too lazy to check but I'm assuming the median salary of a baseball player has increased over the past 10 years, too. But they also don't want a salary cap. And I'm assuming if they had their druthers, there'd be no luxury tax, either. I don't mind not having a cap as we're in a division with the haves (Boston, NY) and the have nots (Tampa) and somehow the have nots are finding ways to win. High payroll doesn't equal winning. You are correct, IMO. Signing players who are on the clear downside of their careers to sizable contracts isn't fun for anyone. If that's the guise of "competing," it might make the average fan interested but count me out.

It's an inherently boring game. And no matter how much MLB tries to make it appear cool, hip and interesting, I don't believe they can. In a day and age where the younger fans (the demographic that they're failing miserably to connect with) are into hip-hop, basketball and football, baseball just can't compete. No kid is going to be interested in the nuances of a 10 pitch at bat when you can watch Patrick Mahomes throw for 400 yards and 5 touchdowns. No slick amount of marketing can match what the NFL and NBA have to offer when it comes to pure product. Especially at the younger ages.

In thinking about this more, I'm not sure how this would work. The author suggests having a salary floor, and someone in the article said that if you have to have a floor, you'd have to have a cap. If the whole goal is to get all 30 teams to field the best teams they can each year, wouldn't this artificially drive up the salaries on average/below average players? Would you get to a point where two middling clubs are in a bidding war for a guy like Maikel Franco and have to pay him 4 million for a one year contract? That sure sounds silly and I'm not sure if there's a way to get teams motivated to "compete" every season. At the end of the day, someone's gotta be the bitch for the rest of the league.

He did, but whatever. Again, he didn't go on to find success in Arizona or another place with a better climate.

I think the draft reversal is interesting, I wouldn't be opposed to it. I'm opposed to the salary cap, that's pretty much like socialism. It also most likely wouldn't allow a player like Trout to stay in Anaheim for the entirety of his career. The players union is too strong, it'll never happen anyway. I don't know what's worse...what the Orioles are doing right now (which is painful but necessary) or what they did in like 2004 or 2005 when we signed Miggy, Raffy and Javy Lopez and allowed the team to make their fans think "we're really going for it this year!" For the longest time this team didn't have a plan. And now it does...those of us who log into the OH know what's going on, we're aware. We quibble back and forth on how long its taking and how long it should take but everyone here knows whats going on. From a national perspective, no one really cares, they just see the "tanking" and don't bother to understand what's going on at a deeper level.

It's not like Matusz went on to find success elsewhere. Arrieta did. Gausman did (after stops in Cincinnati and Atlanta). I'm more inclined to point blame at the Orioles for not being able to make those guys successful rather than dying on the Matusz hill. That's a strange one.

Not sure if this has been mentioned or not. But he hit .320/.397/.660 with 10 homers and 20 RBI in September of 2012 for our stretch run to the playoffs. I remember thinking that we finally had a trade work for us.

Well then I guess it's Buck's fault, ultimately. If we want to play that game.

The cardboard box that just arrived from Amazon with my latest delivery has more flavor than Bob Carpenter.

The park has nothing to do with what happened. Absolutely nothing. It was piss poor coaching here. The Cubs saw what he had and he was immediately successful as soon as he stepped off the plane in Chicago. Arrieta threw across his body a little bit which isn't ideal. The Orioles tried to beat that out of him and it didn't work. The Cubs let him do it, it's what made him great in college. Turned in one of the most dominant pitching years of all time, several other good seasons and was a big part of getting them their sought after World Series win. OPACY has nothing to do with why he was bad here. That's lazy thinking.

...Pretty sure Davis retired. Not the other way around. I don't think the ownership "got rid of him" and that Elias convinced them to do it. Had the Orioles released Davis, I'd agree.