It is the top of the 1st in the Pirates v. the Cardinals Game Day opener at Busch Stadium, so you all know what that means.
The Pirates are officially mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, and just a few more months of darkness before football starts again.
Zifnab
They only played one game? How did they get two loses on their record?!
RememberNovember
Mets up 2-1 in the 9nth agains Reds.
Ricky Bobby
Bow down to the all-mighty NFL salary cap. Ain’t watching another MLB game until they get one too.
The Yankees and Bosox can go suck a fat one while we’re all waiting.
gwangung
I don’t believe in a salary cap unless it’s me that’s fronting the money.
Just Some Fuckhead
@gwangung: It is you that’s fronting the money. Tried to go see a game recently?
joe from Lowell
Rainout in Boston.
BenA
Yes thanks be that the NFL players union is the biggest joke on the planet and that the poor owners instituted a salary cap to save themselves… from themselves.
The real boon to the NFL is the strong revenue sharing they have and not the overly complicated salary cap.
I feel particularly sorry for Pirates fans. They make the Clippers look like a well run top flight organization. They have the worst ownership out of all the major sports teams, end of story. At least Philly has produced with their new stadium. No one is as blantant as the Pirates organization at dumping salary.
John PM
The start of the season also means that the Cubs have been swept in the first round of the playoffs after Alfonso Soriano struck our 298 times.
Sigh.
Gus
Long-time (I mean Harmon Killebrew days) Twins fan here. For most of the ’90’s I could feel your pain, John. However, it has been discovered that a decent front office and a decent scouting staff could make up for a small budget to some extent. Perhaps the Pirates will discover this formula in your lifetime. I do agree, though, with Ricky Bobby’s sentiment re the Yankees and Bosox. Go Twins!
Bootlegger
The Pirates will win it all this year baby!
Good news for John McCain as Beck’s Citizens surround the park.
Zifnab
Salary cap doesn’t do as much good as you’d think. NFL has a much higher turn-over rate than MLB. And low ranking teams get to draft the best rookies. And you play 16 games, rather than a hundred – so one screwed up play can cost you a play-off berth in a tight divison while your MLB counterpart can suck for a week without seriously diminishing their chances. It’s comparing apples to oranges.
And even then, when you’ve got dynasties like the Cowboys and the Patriots… how well is this whole salary cap thing working?
gbear
This is the Twins last year in the worse-than-pathetic Metrodome. Next year they can play their first home game in the snow. …next door to a garbage burning plant.
Punchy
It appears that I can haz mah bayzballz thr3d!
Where to begin? Only the greatest sport to watch, analyze, drink while said watching, bet on (in Vegas, of course), drink while analyzing, plus all the disparate fantasy stats to monitor (15, to be exact). Hard-on central over here.
And what I wouldn’t give to see Fatbathia go down like a $3-dollar hooker to Markakis, Roberts, and 7 underachievers on Opening Day.
I’m so excited I literally cannot function at werk.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Just Some Fuckhead: Hey Fuckhead, if you see Mary W. before I do, would you please tell her my Kangoo Jumps were last seen in Chicago on Thursday. They may arrive at my door any moment now. I’m breathless with anticipation.
Oh yeah, Go Red Sox! Go Rockies! (just to stay on topic)
Tonal Crow
Go Cubs!
The Other Steve
Did you catch the asshat UNC coach?
At least the UNC forward has some class.
Ricky Bobby
Patsy’s missed the playoffs last year, Cowboys too.
Cowboys haven’t won a playoff game in almost 15 years.
Dynasty ain’t it.
gwangung
@Punchy:
Well, over here, that’s generally only when I’m with my babe, but I get the point…
The Other Steve
Well, Twins still haven’t gone to the world series under this strategy. Their best players still somehow end up on the Yankees and Red Sox rosters.
although, they are at least competitive and play a good game.
J. Michael Neal
Why? It doesn’t do anything for anyone, except guaranteeing a profit for the owners. I did an extensive study of this at one point, comparing the first ten years under the salary cap to the last ten years without it. Almost all of the definitions of "competitive balance" that I could come up with showed no significant difference between them, and for most of them, the insignificant difference was in the other direction.
Fans have swallowed this bullshit, but that doesn’t make it true.
Neal
I’ve waited patiently for months only to have the Rays rained out. We asked MLB if we could play at home this year on opening day (since we haven’t in 5 years and we are AL champs and all) but we were denied. Ironic, because I think the weather at the Trop is just fine today.
Rommie
I know how you feel when it comes to bad teams – the Tigers made the Pirates look good earlier in the decade, and the team I *really* want to see win something, the Lions, well, success is not an option. The new logo should have been Bubbles paws-up with X X in the eyes.
BenA
@Gus:
I really don’t think the Pirates are your typical "small market." They have more money than they let on. They just don’t want to spend it.
gwangung
@Gus:
You know, the Seattle Mariners used to be known as a small market team. Then they found success. Then they threw it away, thinking they knew everything. Now, they could be a small market team again. (Hm….I was thinking that they were thinking like Republicans for a while…).
Buck
One down and 160+ to go. That is a lot of fuckin’ darkness. Oh, and I hear there is one more major college basketball game of some importance tonight.
J. Michael Neal
The strange thing about the Twins front office is that they do some things very well, and completely screw up some things that should be easy.
On the plus side:
They develop young pitchers. There is an organizational mandate to throw strikes, and they teach pitchers how to be effective in the zone. Slowey, Blackburn, Baker are almost identical pitchers, and they have some more in the pipeline.
They know how to develop outfielders, too. They take kids that no one else sees value in and turn them into productive players. I don’t think Denard Span can play like he did last year, but they’ve already gotten more out of him than I expected. They took Ben Revere in the first round two years ago, when no one else had him in the first three, and he’s coming along very nicely. We’ll see how it works with Aaron Hicks, who has tools everyone else was drooling over.
What they do badly:
The infield. Third base is a running sore, and they’ve never even tried very hard to fix it. Little Nicky Punto isn’t any good offensively or defensively, but they just resigned him to a big contract. It’s mystifying.
bayville
Kahlil Green batting cleanup for the Cardinals? This is opening day, right?
JenJen
I find it amusing when people find any game other than the one the Cincinnati Reds are playing to be "Opening Day.’
Whatever. I ask your city: Do you have a parade? Does everybody take the day off? Do the ones who couldn’t take the day off cut out of work early, as in "Ouch, my stomach hurts I have to leave early"- early?
Cincinnati and Baseball…. it’s what’s for dinner.
(My apologies on behalf of the city, in advance, for Nick Lachey’s Opening Day First Pitch. It wasn’t my idea.)
J.
Woohoo! The Mets won, bringing them one game closer to a World Series spot!
Andy K
@JenJen:
Half of Detroit won’t be working on Friday…uhm, that is, half of the half who have jobs. So three quarters won’t be working.
Parade? Nice, but I prefer mine at the end of the season.
And while you might have baseball for dinner, I’ll give it up to St. Louis- they eat it, drink it and breathe it.
Tax Analyst
No, nothing could do that. The Pirates at least have some franchise achievements, although none of them have been very recent. The are hurt by the market they are in and perhaps under-captitalized management. The Clippers play in one of the biggest markets in the WORLD and have a fairly wealthy owner and still manage to drag up the rear of the Confence standings year-after-year.
The Pirates might stink, but not more than the Clippers.
Punchy
Please….PLEASE tell me you’re joking. Mr. 0.231 BA batting cleanup? Can I demand they test LaRussa for meth?
Fizz’ixed for the reality of Beltran’s fragility and Delgado’s disappearing act. Not to mention, you got a guy named "Putz" on your roster. All those many, many years of teasing can’t be good for his pysche.
Ricky Bobby
@J. Michael Neal
Why isn’t it true? The Yankees and Bosox simply buy all the best talent out there (turns out they are all on steroids, weird!) to gear up for another series run. In the NFL it’s not quite that easy due to financial concerns.
I think the onus is on you to describe how being able to outspend every opponent is NOT a competitive advantage of the first rank.
gex
@gwangung: Well considering that most of the money in the game comes from advertising paid by consumer purchases (whether you watch the sports or not), the luxury boxes help companies reduce taxable profits, and the stadia are generally tax payer funded…
gwangung
No, no…the onus is on YOU to support the thesis you made–that their success comes from buying up all the talent.
Hint: the Yankees’ success in post season recently didn’t come from buying talent.
Laura W
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
4/2/09: International shipment has arrived in the destination country.
I guess that’s a good sign?
Zuzu's Petals
OT, but thinking of my upcoming train trip…
Can anyone recommend some low-tech games to play on my Vista-driven laptop? Meaning no external hardware beyond CD.
The only game I’ve ever really played is Shanghai – Great Moments, but I can’t find a Vista-compatible version.
gwangung
@gex:
That argues for a ticket and revenue cap, not a salary cap.
Dave L
"Well, Twins still haven’t gone to the world series under this strategy."
Yeah, it’s been a 17-year drought. Same as Pittsburgh, only in the Pirates’ case it’s 17 years of losing seasons.
gex
@gwangung: Wasn’t disputing your thesis on the salary cap. I was disputing your thesis that you weren’t fronting any money. Did I mention the salary cap?
Cris
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Tetris!
Seriously.
Punchy
The Yanks have had the highest payroll since the turn of the century (if not since 1996). Yet they haven’t won in 8+ years.
The Marlins have had, historically, one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. Yet they’ve won 2 WS in 10 or so years, and were competitive last year with a laughable, 22 mill team outlay.
Baseball is fickle, and freak injuries so common, that I believe it’s hard to correlate payroll to success in the field.
Corner Stone
I’ve had the impression that the Pirates had a pretty good scouting dept, but that ownership didn’t want to pay to keep them after they started sparkling a little. Were there changes to the Pirates’ scout dept, or was my impression just never really that accurate?
ETA – ownership didn’t want to keep the good young talent ID’d by scouts.
Poopyman
But but but John….
The paper tells me that The Process is working!
Frankly, I’ll be happy if they can stay under 90 losses this year.
Face
Tony Clark currently doing his best Barroid Bonds impression.
That Rox/Snakes game gunna end 15-11 or some such Ravens-Steelers score.
Zifnab
@Ricky Bobby:
Not a current dynasty, I’ll admit. That said, the Steelers have reliably made the playoffs 5 times in the last eight years. The Patriots have made it 6 times. The Colts 4 times. The Titans 4 times. The Ravens 4 times. I mean, there’s usually not a lot of mystery as to which team is getting out of its Division.
Poopyman
Cornerstone,
Check out the link I left in #44. Bottom line is yes, they’re trying to reestablish the caliber of scouting and farm system that they had 30+ years ago. But, these things take time. Hopefully, this time something will come of it.
J. Michael Neal
I never said it wasn’t. It is a competitive advantage, though not as great as many people think. Large markets haven’t helped the Dodgers, the Orioles, or the Cubs. The White Sox and the Angels are good, but not dominant. The Phillies just won their second World Series . . . ever.
Running a competent organization is more important than having a large market. If you have one, you can succeed without a big market. Don’t have one, and you won’t succeed anywhere. Having huge revenue streams helps on the margins. In particular, it means that good teams last longer and the gap between them is smaller, though it isn’t perfect. I’m picking the Yankees to finish third again, and they are in significant trouble going forwards, since they don’t have any good young position players unless Cano comes out of his funk.
Still, that wasn’t my point. What I said was that, even if you do think that there is a competitive balance problem, a salary cap won’t do anything to fix it. Despite the popular perception, it hasn’t changed it at all in the NFL. Because of a the small sample size of the regular season, and the frequency of injuries, football has always had higher variance, and thus the effect of competitive balance. So long as baseball plays 162 games a year, it can’t have as much turnover as football does.
J. Michael Neal
The Pirates biggest problem has been the draft. They spent a decade drafting high school pitchers and then watching them get injured in the minors. (A grossly incompetent medical staff has also been an issue.) Passing on Matt Wieters because they didn’t want to pay his bonus is going to haunt them for a long time.
Shinobi
The Sox opener go SNOWED out here in Chicago. I call shenanigans.
Good thing I don’t care about the Sox. GO CARDS!!!
Ricky Bobby
@ Punchy
What a drought! How do the New Yorkers ever cope?
How ’bout them Royals!
I am not arguing that a high payroll GUARANTEES success, nothing in pro sports can guarantee a win, but you have to admit that any owner of a large market franchise would count it a serious advantage to get revenue sharing and salary cap issues off their table.
Zuzu's Petals
@Cris:
Uhm, will have to look it up … yes, I’m that low-tech.
Looks up. Looks interesting, but I’m not thinking about multiplayer games, plus … am I right that the most recent PC platform seems to be XP, not Vista?
But thanks.
Riggsveda
A picture is worth a thousand words:
The img tag doesn’t work. Click my name
Cris
Vista is newer than XP. I would think that Vista could handle most XP games, but I don’t know, I haven’t used Vista.
If you seriously haven’t heard of Tetris, I recommend it even more. That game had the highest ratio of addictiveness-to-simplicity of any game produced past 1983. But anyway, it’s not inherently multi-player; it’s usually presented as a solitaire game, and you’re only playing against your own sense of spatial relations.
You should be able to find a reasonable clone for free, too. Due to its simplicity, it spawned scores of copycats. I’d give you a link but I’m behind a firewall and can’t browse game sites from here.
J. Michael Neal
They traded for Mike Jacobs, and signed Willie Bloomquist and Kyle Farnsworth to big free agent deals. This isn’t terribly unusual for them. They need to stop being grossly incompetent before they complain about market size.
Riggsveda
The source of the picture referenced above:
21, A Graphic Novela
at http://21comix.com/
Xanthippas
Whatever. Try being a Texas Rangers fan.
J. Michael Neal
Andrus. Beltre. Feliz. Holland. Perez. Smoak. Teagarden. Saltalamacchia. Ramirez.
Being a Rangers fan should be pretty fun soon, though I think they’d have been better off waiting a year for Andrus.
4jkb4ia
I cannot faint at the existence of the thread. The grocery list and oven remain.
D-Chance.
Cole,
If you want a jump on football… here’s a pretty good (and free) football simulation. DeepRoute.com A full season can wrap up in one month (the league I play in takes two months to play… draft to preseason to season to playoffs). Just finished my first season, and took a CPU team from 3-13 to 11-5 and a wildcard berth. They got their butts kicked in the first round. Hoping for a playoff win next season.
BTW, the guy who runs this has a horse racing simulation that I’ve played for years… an excellent sim, best I’ve ever come across. He also has a college basketball simulation, as well (never got around to that one).
4jkb4ia
Sabathia knocked out in the fifth inning! It was a happy day.
Zuzu's Petals
@Cris:
Ah, thanks. I’d sort of heard of Tetris but always assumed it was something you need a box or a stick or whatever to play, so never had an interest.
Will find out about the XP to Vista thing. My version of Shanghai is for Windows 95 and doesn’t work on my Vista laptop. Well, it tells me I need to reconfigure to 256 colors or something, which is WAY too confusing for me.
NonWonderDog
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Right click on the executable, go to properties, select the compatibility tab, and put a check in the "Run in 256 colors" box.
I have no idea if that will make it run, but it will at least get rid of that pop-up box.
asiangrrlMN
I am a conflicted Twins’ fan. I love them, but I am pissed because the state forced Hennepin County residents (one of the poorest if not the poorest counties in MN) to pony up for most of the new stadium. How is this not corporate welfare? We have a $400 M deficit this year–which is just about the cost of the new stadium. Plus, we’re also funding almost half of the new Gophers’ stadium. No one mentions this when they talk about cutting spending and not raising taxes (thanks, Pawlenty). It pisses me off.
Plus, the new Twins’ stadium is going to be called Target Field, and the Gophers’ stadium TCF Stadium. The former should be called Hennepin County Taxpayers Stadium and the later should be called, well, Gophers stadium is fine.
Yet, I love sports. Gr.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Laura W: My friend whose husband got a pair says this is when customs plays with them for a few days before sending them on to us!
Bad Horse's Filly
Laura W: And sorry I called you Mary W in an earlier comment. Long day at work, brain still not functioning!
Laura W
@Bad Horse’s Filly: eeeeewww! I’ve heard rumors that customs agents have sweaty, stinky, swollen feet.
I’m not sure I’m OK with this.
I’ll stock up on the Dr. Scholl’s anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, Kangoo Jumps deodorizer.
Edit: "And sorry I called you Mary W"…I knew who ya’ meant. Besides, it was a compliment when I realized you meant Mary Minion and probably crossed wires ‘cuz you two are always talking cycling.
You’ll just have to get used to considering me to be your Kangoo Buddy.
AhabTRuler
Snicker.
Zuzu's Petals
@NonWonderDog:
Hmm, don’t see a compatibility tab, but will keep trying. Thanks.
Bad Horse's Filly
@AhabTRuler: Again, long day at work, brain not functioning. Dirty mind, you.