I never use my platform this way but I’m going to make an exception today. This incredibly brave boy, Breckon, is in my daughter’s class at school. He is currently battling Leukemia for the second time and he’s had to some spend some extra time in the hospital getting treatment recently. He’s just a normal kid who loves playing baseball and hockey with his friends. As a parent, the entire situation breaks my heart. We’re all really hoping this next round of treatment helps Breckon become cancer free again, but in the interim his family needs some help. As a community, we’ve all stepped in too help however we can. But if anyone out there has anything to give while Breckon’s parents are out of work to care for him, it’d be greatly appreciated. gofundme.com/f/support-breck…

The Texans have been begging the Giants to beat them all day and they just refuse to do it.

Feels good to be kind of nervous watching a Giants game again. Haven’t felt like that in a long time.

If the automatic check swing system wouldn’t have ruled that a swing from Yandy Diaz, then that system is going to suck and it’s going to be a major change to get used to next season. Because looking at it, it was obviously a swing. There are going to be a lot people losing their minds over and over again next season if hitters are getting that much leeway on check swings

I don’t understand how the refs missed that obvious face mask on McCarthy. It was incredibly obvious. Giants haven’t helped themselves enough today but that was a terrible miss by the officials.

The competitive balance argument has lost all of its steam since that Athletic article came out and now the facts are available for everyone to see . So now the mantra from the billionaire bootlickers is “I’d rather see baseball cease to exist than watch a team from a bigger city win.” At least we’ve finally reached the point where small-market fans are admitting this has nothing to do with competitive balance. You don’t want a healthier sport. You’d rather burn the entire league to the ground than accept that Kansas City doesn’t have the same resources as New York. Imagine hating the Yankees more than you actually like baseball. Pathetic.

I have all these Brewers fans in my mentions trying to gloat over the G1 World Series ratings. The hilarious part is that the actual ratings haven’t been released. Takes a few days for Nielsen and Fox to aggregate and publish them. This dude looked at fake viewership numbers, logged into the internet and then told me to eat his ass because of them. Hilarious but also petrifying at the same time. People are so incapable of discerning reality from fiction nowadays and it’s quietly degrading our society.

They should change the term “Dynamic Ticket Pricing” to “Fuck You Ticket Pricing.” I think it’s a much more accurate term to describe what it actually is.

If Gary Sanchez wins a World Series with the Brewers, is he still lazy? Would he still be considered “not a winning player” by Yankees fans?

I think MLB owners are just going to have to come out and say: “A salary cap benefits us financially and that’s why we want one.” Any other reason they’ve presented is provably false. The Athletic’s analysis shows from 2022–26, payroll explained just 17.2% of the variance in regular-season winning percentage. Even measuring cumulative spending over five years, that figure only reaches 31%. Spending clearly matters, particularly when sustained over time, but its influence is considerably more limited than the owners’ rhetoric suggests. Competitive balance has actually improved under the current CBA. There were 34 team-seasons with 95+ wins or 95+ losses from 2017–19, compared to just 18 from 2024–26. This season also had the sixth-tightest distribution of winning percentages since 2003. I think the most interesting finding is that market size explained almost nothing statistically about a team’s performance. That’s a significant distinction when the league is framing its argument around the structural disadvantages of small-market franchises. Even MLB executive Morgan Sword acknowledged that a salary cap wouldn’t necessarily produce more playoff appearances for smaller-market teams and argued that it doesn’t need to. That’s a damning admission when you’re asking players to accept restrictions on what teams can spend on their labor in the name of “competitive balance.” There are legitimate problems with the current system, particularly owners collecting revenue-sharing payments without making a serious effort to compete. Greater accountability and spending requirements would address those concerns far more directly. The owners are proposing a fundamental restructuring of baseball’s labor market despite evidence that competitive balance is improving, market size has little relationship with winning and their preferred solution might not improve competitive outcomes. The burden should be on ownership to demonstrate why a hard cap is necessary. This analysis makes that case difficult to defend.

Imagine you screw something up at work and your boss makes you go home for the day and says you get paid anyway even if you get fired for it? I’m sure everyone here would be really bent out of shape over that.

There’s a huge difference between coaching high school kids and managing professional athletes making millions. At that level, authority comes from credibility, tactical expertise and understanding how to get the best out of players who are never going to fear you but need to respect you. Screaming at grown men isn’t leadership. People who’ve never played a sport beyond high school struggle to understand that distinction because the fear-based method of coaching is the only form of coaching they’ve ever experienced.

Even on a smaller scale. Say Jazz Chisholm boots a groundball he shouldn’t have booted. Then Boone calls him into the office and reams him out about it. What does that actually do to help him field the next one? Nothing. It’s still the same player with the same skills in the same situation. The words don’t have any real impact. The player just needs to make the play.

This is what Yankees’ fans expect Aaron Boone to do to the clubhouse after every loss.

Anyone who thinks Boone humiliating players in the media would’ve changed the Yankees’ results is confusing performative outrage with actual accountability. It might satisfy fans for a night. It doesn’t fix real baseball issues.

This is 100 percent the correct way to manage a baseball team. Keep your dirty laundry in house and ignore the noise on the outside. It’s essential to do in a market like New York. I say all the time that I’m indifferent to how much longer Boone manages the team because I don’t think the manager has the impact people typically think he does. But that said, to place the majority of the blame for the Yankees’ on-field failures on a guy who does not play on the field is pretty silly to me. When performance is the issue, it’s the job of the people who are supposed to perform to perform better. I think blaming Boone for getting swept in the ALDS is lazy. The guys on the field sucked. It was really that simple for me.

People are giving the Brewers credit for fixing the ticket situation, but this solution actually sucks. The people who bought those tickets bought them for this exact moment. Who knows if the Brewers get here again anytime soon? Giving them a shitty seat and then forcing them to wait who knows how long to use their Timeless Ticket the way it was originally intended isn’t doing the right thing. Corporate greed has permeated everywhere.

I’ve always viewed prediction markets as essentially another form of sports betting, but the idea of using them to make financial risk management accessible to small businesses is fascinating. Hadn’t really considered that application until I saw this. Large corporations have been using derivatives for decades to hedge everything from commodity prices and interest rates to currency fluctuations and weather. Small businesses have plenty of risks they’d love to hedge too, but the traditional derivatives market isn’t particularly accommodating. An investment bank isn’t going to bother structuring a custom derivative for a restaurant worried about $100K in revenue tied to a playoff run. There’s simply not enough money involved to justify the legal expenses, structuring costs and counterparty risk. And it’s not as though there’s an established futures market for restaurant revenue contingent on the Dodgers making the World Series. But if that restaurant can buy a reasonably priced contract that pays out when the Dodgers get eliminated, it can offset some of the revenue it would otherwise lose. That’s essentially the same principle behind an airline hedging fuel prices, just applied on a much smaller scale to a risk traditional financial markets have never really served. There’s a lot of potential economic value here, particularly for businesses whose revenues depend heavily on outcomes they have absolutely no control over. Assuming these markets develop enough liquidity to make the hedges practical, this could become a genuinely useful financial tool for small businesses.

Now this makes sense. Really didn’t understand why pitchers got so upset by this before.