CBA negotiations 2026

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/50134346/mlb-proposes-shorter-regular-season-best-7-division-series

kind of on board with all of these proposals? tell me why I’m a lackey and this is anti-labor. obviously the salary cap is a separate issue, though personally I’m not opposed to that either presuming revenue is shared equitably

Yup if revenue is fairly distributed there should be no objections to a cap, especially if it's coupled with an appropriate floor.

From a competitive balance standpoint the league needs this. The Dodgers should have to part with some players ffs.

If they win yet another championship is certainly not going to help the players case in the eyes of the public

From a competitive balance standpoint the league needs this.

counterpoint: it does not

it kinda does!

Anyone who argues in favor of a salary cap should be banned from the board

Salary cap and floor needs to happen, the other three top leagues have it.

Okay maybe not a full on hard cap, but why not a significant luxury tax with serious multipliers (like the NBA before the 2nd apron BS) incorporating deferred money (if that whole nonsense isn't banned outright) on an average annual payout basis? Close the loopholes. Luxury tax money then must be spent by other teams on players and players only, and there's still a salary floor.

But no restrictions coupled with no floor allowing garbage franchises to cheat their fans like they do today is an odious take... the status quo is not good.

the last four teams in this postseason will be the dodgers +

tampa
milwaukee
clevo/cws

where are they ranked, salary-wise?

WE HAVE EXACTLY ZERO INFORMATION ON HOW MUCH MONEY BASEBALL TEAMS/OWNERS MAKE (apart from hints from the atlanta braves' public records)

this is all a smokescreen because today's owners only care about CONTROL and MONEY. i mean george steinbrenner was an asshole but at least that guy wanted to win.

i have personally witnessed rob manfred saying what an 'honor' it was to work for this group of baseball owners. he was hired as commissioner because he was an anti-labor lawyer; he doesn't care about the game or its place in society (especially if it offends donald trump).

he and they want to make everyone a contractor subject to whatever immensely rich people feel like giving them.

is it absurd that certain individual baseball players HAVE BEEN GIVEN contracts over $30m a year? yes!

does that not make you question how much the owners are making? or why franchise values keep setting records? why shouldn't the players, WHO MAKE THE GAME, get their share?

Owners want a salary cap for cost certainty not competitive balance

We need a cap = I love to carry water for billionaires, where you want that water put, sir.

If they introduce the 7 game division series then they need a division series MVP.

Being able to choose your opponent is fucking weak shit.

Would lead to some elite upset trash talk

does that not make you question how much the owners are making? or why franchise values keep setting records? why shouldn't the players, WHO MAKE THE GAME, get their share?

― mookieproof, Thursday, October 8, 2026 8:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the players should absolutely get their share. a common misconception about the salary and second apron stuff in basketball (as much as I think the current CBA is a disaster) is that owners are spending less on players because of it. while it might be true that some players are going to take less due to team-building constraints, at the end of the day the players as a whole receive 51% of all basketball revenue. that is true whether KAT’s next deal is for 62 million a year or 50. no one needs to shed a tear over that kind of stuff specifically, or should treat that particular thing as a labor issue. now, personally, do I think the players should get more than 51%? yes I do, but that’s what the current CBA says.

you can point to the teams left in this postseason, but it’s an extreme outlier year. for one thing the dodgers are still here. over the past 15 years, the world series winner has ranked 1st, 3rd, 4th, 8th, 11th, 1st, 7th, 1st, 17th (astros trash can year), 5th, 13th, 7th, 3rd, 7th, and 9th in payroll.

the MLB should absolutely open its books and pay its players their fair share, but that doesn’t mean a salary cap (and floor) should be out of the question. if some players would get paid less than their “market rate”, so be it — I’m not a market fundamentalist. I might feel differently if I were a player or an agent, but I’m not. I’m a fan, and at the end of the day, these people work for us, the people who pay for streaming subscriptions, outrageous ticket prices, concessions and watch the games in the afternoons. it’s not my problem if a player makes 35 vs 30 million dollars in a year — those are cartoon numbers to me. what matters to me is the product, and I think that’s all fans should care about

none of this is to say that any changes to the CBA are going to be a magic bullet and I reserve the right to not like whatever they end up doing. I’m not going to be part of the negotiations. my position, as someone who is inherently pro-labor, is simply: I do not care if some outrageously rich people get upset if potentially the balance of power in the sport improves

is a salary cap inherently anti-labor? yes. are the owners using competitive balance as a smokescreen for reducing costs? mostly. (baseball doesn’t have 50/50 owner/player splits like the other leagues, and the union should fight for this so that regardless of payroll, players get their share. and should also fight for a salary floor.) I’m a union organizer, I understand these things. I can also take a step back and realize that these are not real working people and my enjoyment of the sport is more important than their labor issues

the salary cap issue is going to be a convenient thing for people like bryce harper to point to, but no one needs to care about bryce harper’s material circumstances

there are tons of things the union can and should fight for. the players should get an increased and defined share of baseball revenues. right now it’s essentially a free market system where the lion’s share of salary is paid to washed up guys in their thirties. the younger players should be paid more fairly, get rid of the arb system. minor leaguers should be treated better

"Other leagues have a cap" is a poor reason to argue for a cap in MLB. Baseball doesn't have a cap, historically, because their players union is stronger than those in the other leagues and has benefitted from better leadership.

Owners have claimed that baseball economic is unsustainable and that they're "losing money" for a hundred years. Twenty five years ago, the owners claimed that nearly all of them were losing money, which is why contraction was necessary. The math didn't math then, and it doesn't now. I don't think anything has fundamentally changed. Franchise values keep going up, revenues have been steadily rising for decades (outside of the COVID blip). The cap is a scheme by the owners to increase revenues and cost certainty, that's it.

I don't see how a five year limit for contracts (six if resigning with the same team) is good for the players.

Everybody knows that the real problem in MLB is the lack of a floor, but there's no precedent AFAIK for a floor without a corresponding cap, so I don't see a way for it to happen.

The cap is a scheme by the owners to increase revenues and cost certainty, that's it.

I meant, to increase their (the owners') share of the total revenues.

I like how some people are just burying your head in the sand on what the Dodgers are doing to baseball. The economic are totally out of wack.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/48502875/dodgers-smashed-mlb-spending-record-515m-2025

The Dodgers shattered Major League Baseball's spending record with a combined $515 million in payroll and luxury tax last year en route to their second straight World Series title, according to final figures compiled by the commissioner's office, and Los Angeles is projected for the highest total again in 2026.

Los Angeles' 2025 spending included records for payroll at $345.3 million and tax of $169.4 million for a total of $514.7 million. Despite several contracts discounted to reflect deferred payments, the Dodgers' total was seven times the $68.7 million payroll of the Miami Marlins, the lowest-spending team, and more than the payrolls of the bottom six clubs combined.

Los Angeles' total would have been about $71 million higher but for the use of deferred money for seven players that resulted in discounting for their payroll calculations. Shohei Ohtani counts at $28.2 million because $68 million of his $70 million salary last year isn't due until 2035.

Los Angeles is projected as of MLB's opening-day figures to lead in 2026 spending with a $323.3 million payroll for its 40-man roster and a $163.7 million tax for a $487.1 million total. The Mets began with a record payroll at $358.4 million and have a projected tax of $124.1 million for a $482.5 million spend.

Cleveland has the lowest opening-day 40-man payroll this year at $75.5 million.

kevin OTMFM here. I have nothing to add to all those very well expressed points!

meanwhile, tarik skubal is starting tonight for the dodgers

Could you imagine having Kyle Tucker as your number eight hitter

He will only cost 60 million a year for the next four years.

Nothing to see here everything is fine.

where does the 169 million dollar tax go please tell me i am very stupid

my understanding is half goes to player retirement funds and half is redistributed to lower revenue generating teams

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5656610/2024/07/24/mlb-luxury-tax-tv-money/?unlocked_article_code=1.IFE.7Avw.Vm3Ro5QI9lw-&source=athletic_user_shared_gift_article_copylink&smid=url-share-ta

common misconception about the salary and second apron stuff in basketball (as much as I think the current CBA is a disaster) is that owners are spending less on players because of it. while it might be true that some players are going to take less due to team-building constraints, at the end of the day the players as a whole receive 51% of all basketball revenue.

sorry but i don't think this is true? this alleges that basketball players as a whole have a fixed amount of salary and the only question is how the pie is divided up between them, but that isn't how basketball related income works, at least as far as i understand it. 51% of basketball related income going to the players ensures that money earned by the league as a whole is divided equally, but owners can choose to pay players more than what they are deemed eligible. BRI dictates the salary cap (how much money must be spent by teams) but the tax and apron system limits what owners can spend above that, which is to say that it's a control on player salaries beyond what is promised by BRI. you hand waive this away as "some players are going to take less due to team-building constraints" but like... yeah no shit. that's the entire point. you're describing the apron system as hard cap but then also refusing to see what you are describing? it's like you're looking at a zebra and describing the zebra but then ultimately deciding that actually you are looking at a tiger

WE HAVE EXACTLY ZERO INFORMATION ON HOW MUCH MONEY BASEBALL TEAMS/OWNERS MAKE (apart from hints from the atlanta braves' public records)

actually the braves are now a standalone public entity, you can find their financials going back to 2023 here https://www.bravesholdings.com/investors/financial-information/financial-results

shitting on players for being rich but doing it leftistly while also arguing to funnel more money to the even richer owners is one of your favorite performances but i do think you need to go back to the drawing board again to make this stick. maybe next year?

if some players would get paid less than their “market rate”, so be it — I’m not a market fundamentalist. I might feel differently if I were a player or an agent, but I’m not. I’m a fan, and at the end of the day, these people work for us, the people who pay for streaming subscriptions, outrageous ticket prices, concessions and watch the games in the afternoons. it’s not my problem if a player makes 35 vs 30 million dollars in a year — those are cartoon numbers to me. what matters to me is the product, and I think that’s all fans should care about

this is such a bizarre point of view to me. "i'm not a market fundamentalist" to explain why you don't care about athlete salaries sounds like a cool thing to say but all it means is that you're fine with money being taken from players and kept by owners. it's not like there is a secret third thing that happens. there is not some other labor pool that is going to benefit here. you can hit the "i'm just a working class stiff why should i care about bryce harper's material circumstances" pose but this is a zero sum game where the lessening of bryce harper's "material circumstances" only enriches "the material circumstances" of the people who write his checks. if you want to say "fuck everyone involved" that would be a more defensible position, but instead your position is "taking money from bryce harper and giving it back to the owners is powerful to me as a fan" except you think because you organize labor IRL it's like progressive politics? idk man.

anyway, since all you care about is "the product" from your POV as a fan can you articulate for us -- in an environment where MLB owners are systematically disinvesting in the minor leagues to the point that many people who work for teams now view AAA as not conducive to development at best and an open farce at worst -- how curbing ownership spending on salary via a cap and putting more money back into their pockets would improve the game for you, as a fan. because this is an ownership class that is openly trying to remove its collective money from the sport

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7407888/2026/07/01/mlb-minor-leagues-farm-system-development/

also an interesting read: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-billionaire-playbook-how-sports-owners-use-their-teams-to-avoid-millions-in-taxes

tl;dr after a team is bought the new owner gets to deduct the purchase price against their other income. sort of like buying a car, deducting the purchase against your income and then being able to sell the car for 2x what you bought it for 10 years later.

here's my idea for a new salary system:

no long-term contracts, in fact no contracts at all. take 51% of league-wide revenue and put it in a pot.

every player makes the league minimum salary, plus a fixed and stepped amount corresponding to service time milestones (i.e. a player who reaches 3 years of service time in the 2027 season will make the minimum + the fixed amount for 3 years of service time).

then, at the end of the year, the rest of the revenue pot (after taking into account the league minimums that every player makes) is paid out to the players in accordance with how much WAR they generated.

simple, right? :)

i think the argument about "the product" is the most perplexing to me because, imo, the best thing happening for MLB's "product" right now is the dodgers. having a legacy brand on a dynasty run w/ several of the most famous players in the sport playing in the most meaningful playoff games every year is amazing, and is also completely in line w/ baseball history. dodgers playoff games are appointment viewing because they have a bunch of stars
& hall of famers on their team. pushing for the opposite of that dynamic is to push for an NFL style bastardization of the sport, just like the NBA

shoutout to the brewers and the rays -- as a baseball nerd i find their organizations fascinating -- but i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i wanna watch more playoff games featuring jake bauers and andrew vaughn as opposed to ones featuring shohei ohtani and freddie freeman. instituting a cap system that will distribute player talent around MLB might sound like a good idea if you are Bee OK and you're a fan of the giants so the only thing you care about is weakening the dodgers, but the idea that doing so would be better for "the product" overall is bizarre to me. sports are better when there are dyanstic teams with rosters stuffed w/ stars & in baseball that truth runs very deep

Idk I like that Cleveland’s got Jram and Milwaukee had Yelich, baseball is more interesting when the stars are spread out on different teams and not just clustered on one or two - that is in a scenario where the teams are actually competitive ofc. Is it good for Mike Trout he got paid? Ofc. Is it good for “the game” the org that signed him has made the playoffs once in his career? Probably not. Is it good for fans in Anaheim that they got to see him stay there rather than going to some big market team?

I really hope the Rays sign Caminero. They got burned badly for signing Wander but as fun as these low budget teams are, they’re a lot better when they can pay to keep some of their talent instead of operating as de facto farm teams.

HAS Yelich, that made him sound like he’s retired.

i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i wanna watch more playoff games featuring jake bauers and andrew vaughn as opposed to ones featuring shohei ohtani and freddie freeman.

Interesting to pick out those two names instead of Junior Caminero and Yandy Diaz, or Christian Yelich and Brice Turang. Or Misirowski. I’d definitely rather watch Chandler Simpson on the basepaths than anything the majority of the Yankees lineup could offer, and that’s a $308m payroll.

i do admire j0rd's position on this even though the current state of affairs is what has made his marlins blow up their world series winning teams repeatedly

I mean the marlins are just not a very well run organisation in general

i dunno, i think the marlins do a lot with a little. they innovate, their usage of alcantara/perez out of the pen on their bullpen days in september is prob what gave cleveland the confidence to have gavin williams close game 4 then pitch game 5.

everyone is making good points here, i have to say; but am sort of leaning with what jordan is saying. not so much that lopsided payrolls are great, but that it is part of what makes sports in general compelling. and i am saying this as a Jays fan that had to watch the Dodgers beat my guys last year and have to deal with the yankees every season! if a team wants to put all their chips in and try to win – i cannot be mad about that. i *can* be mad at teams that treat their fanbase like suckers and put as little as possible back onto the field. i don't think a salary cap will fix what i see as what's wrong with baseball. why would we limit what the people we pay to see earn and not discuss caping profits. why listen to a fucking word these owners have to say when so much of their finances are hidden from us (as best as i understand)? it may be petty, but i don't think the owners deserve our support with anything they want so long as they are misleading us – crying poor when we know that's most likely not true.

jordan it’s not that I care or don’t care about athlete salaries, it’s that given the amount of money we’re talking about, I care more about my enjoyment as a fan. we’re not talking about uber drivers here. that’s my personal opinion, I won’t fault anyone for disagreeing. also, can you be less of a dick to me? we’ve been posting on this message board for 20 years at this point, lighten up

you might be right about the BRI thing in basketball. that was my impression based on last time I looked into it, but maybe I’m misremembering

also, I don’t know for sure that a cap-and-floor system will fix the competitive balance issue, maybe it won’t. seems like it couldn’t hurt though

i dunno, i think the marlins do a lot with a little. they innovate, their usage of alcantara/perez out of the pen on their bullpen days in september is prob what gave cleveland the confidence to have gavin williams close game 4 then pitch game 5.

I thought that was really fucking dumb for a non-playoff team to do in a meaningless game with a guy less than two years removed from TJS honestly. In the playoffs whatever do what you need and what your guy’s willing to do because it’s win or go home but that was just stupid. They’re also not the first team in the league to swap starters/relievers in the pen by a long shot, Bruce Bochy was doing that in meaningful games in the playoffs. The Rays themselves have successfully converted two relievers to starters this year and used one of them in a variety of start/long relief roles pretty successfully and now back to relief for the postseason. (Ian Seymour). Honestly for pitching development I look at the Brewers, Guardians, Yankees and ofc the Rays. Marlins aren’t bad but they’re not in the same league as those teams.

? to be clear, it's not converting a reliever to a starter or vice versa. it's taking your starter and having him throw 10-20 game intensity pitches out of the bullpen in a game on his 3rd or 4th day of rest, which replaces the bullpen session he would have had that day where he probably would have thrown that amount of pitches anyway. he's not really doing that much extra work. i think it's a neat idea, probably not for every starter depending on their rest schedule but if it takes on you can certainly see how it might change how teams use their pitching staff.

it's certainly not yamamoto going out the day after throwing 100 pitcheds and closing out the world series.

Interesting to pick out those two names instead of Junior Caminero and Yandy Diaz, or Christian Yelich and Brice Turang. Or Misirowski.

caminero is great. yelich & turang... not exactly sure i'm calling those ABs must see TV

i'm glad you brought up Miz tho. the best thing the dodgers are doing w/ their money imo is investing in frontline starting pitching and being one of the very few franchises left in baseball that is resisting the model that ends up w/ teams opening playoff series w/ bullpen days.

i'm reading jane leavy's book about sandy koufax right now & it's not an exaggeration to say that the foundation of the dodgers in los angeles was built almost solely on the backs of koufax & drysdale, and in particular koufax's performances as a starting pitcher in the playoffs. now i'm not asking for every SP in baseball to be treated like sandy koufax, we know why teams don't do that, but baseball in los angeles *should* be legendary starting pitchers putting the team on their backs and dragging them to a championship. so when the dodgers spend a fortune to sign yoshi yamamoto and then routinely put him in a position to carry on that legacy from koufax -- that's what i want to see in baseball. i think that's what everyone should want to see, frankly.

so i tip my hat to the brewers & rays organizations for building consistent winners under financial constraints, but i'm not out here trying to push the game further down the path where we have robert gasser hoping to make it thru 3 IP in game 3 of the NLCS. give me teams spending money on guys like blake snell and telling them to go win them a game under the brightest lights

Sorry, joining this very late, but re the Dodgers and Koufax: enthusiastically recommend Michael Leahy's The Last Innocents: The Collision of the Turbulent Sixties and the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Didn't really like Leavy's Koufax book.) O'Malley treated all those players terribly--expected them to go right to Japan after the season and play goodwill tours...maybe that paid off five decades later for the organization, but the players resented it deeply.

right so my point is not to treat players like it's the 60s again of course they hated management they were being treated like serfs. but we're talking about "the product" and yeah "the product" is a lot better to me when teams are invested in SP and putting those players at the forefront of their teams in the playoffs. curt schilling and the bloody sock, madison bumgarner putting on his superman cape in the world series etc. and with starting pitching in particular there is a pretty big difference especially when it comes to the depth of the rotation between the big spending teams these days and the non big spending teams. i have no love in my heart for the yankees but i want to see more teams w/ rotations that look like gerrit cole, max fried and carlos rodon than ones that look like drew rasumussen, freddy peralta, and griffin jax

drew rasmussen right now: "what he say fuck me for?"

I would consider supporting a salary cap, but only on the condition all the teams had to open all their finances to public scrutiny down to the penny. I think that's a longer way of saying I won't support a salary cap, because that condition will never happen. I have sports on the bar TVs all the time at work and repeatedly have the same conversation with people -- "they're already millionaires, why do they need more?" "the owners are billionaires and they're never going to reduce ticket prices, the players deserve every penny they can get" "yeah but the players are already millionaires, why do they need more?" "you god-damn moron, finish that drink and pay up"

I mean, sure. The difference is that the Dodgers then had Koufax and Drysdale. They didn’t have Koufax and Drysdale AND Spahn AND Ford and Marichal. That’s my personal objection to the Dodgers, not the fact that they pay for talent. I think every team in the league should pay their talent, and some of the teams that do, they make bad choices in who they pay. That’s on them, not the Dodgers.

It’s the fact they can have like several aces on the IL at once or sign two closers in the same offseason and then the downstream impact of that is that you have teams who can’t compete with that money either signing lesser talent, trading their own elite talent for whatever fools gold prospects the Dodgers offer them, or trading for whatever’s left at the deadline that’s not going to bleed them dry if one of their horses get injured. The Brewers have at least one guy who would be starting for them on the IL. I agree they should have traded for Skubal but their financial situation makes that a bit of a different calculus. The Rays could have traded Caminero for Ohtani in 2023, when they were in the playoffs last, same type of calculation, but knowing they weren’t going to sign Ohtani and betting on needing Caminero in the not too distant future, same sort of call. The Dodgers have the money to replace what they traded away if they ever need to. Small market teams don’t have that so much.

I would question the majority of Kyle Tucker ABs being worth a watch this year on his record-breaking AAV, and I would gladly watch half the Brew Crew come to the plate over him. That home run Turang hit off an inside Skubal left-on-left sinker to left centre field was incredible. Half the Guards too btw and those guys can’t hit. Steven Kwan is fun now that he remembered he’s a good hitter again.

You forgot, of course, a team can have the money and offer the Blake Snells of free agency the money and they’ll still choose to go ring chase with the Dodgers or sit on the bench over being a marquee talent on some other team. The fact that the Dodgers can sign Snell, a marquee free agent, he can pitch 100 innings for them on two seasons, and that doesn’t damage or slow them down at all, is mental. There’s also the weird flip side of that where Kiké Hernandez, who’s averaged an OPS+ of 80 the past few seasons (and who hasn’t managed an OBP over .300 since 2021) but who whatever reason plays like a god in the playoffs, essentially has a charity roster spot purely for October. That’s fucking weird. All playoff teams are carrying at least one underperforming guy because they can’t afford to DFA or replace him, or he’s playing for someone who’s injured. None of them can afford to deliberately intend to keep a 26 man spot for someone who hasn’t produced a league average OPS+ in six seasons just because he might hit well in the playoffs.

What was I trying to say with all that? Something about how they’d effectively broken the market because there’s no consequences for their failures or actions because they just keep signing guys. I just looked up and saw the game is on in thirteen minutes.

Wow I do not know what went on with that formatting, sorry!

want to see more teams w/ rotations that look like gerrit cole, max fried and carlos rodon than ones that look like drew rasumussen, freddy peralta, and griffin jax

Why don’t the Rays just pay Blake Snell a ton of money to throw 100 innings in two seasons for them? Are they stupid?

There just simply aren’t enough aces and 1s in the game, and you have an actual ace hit free agency in his prime maybe once a fucking century and even if the Rays were going to sign him, they’d get outbid by some big market team. Like that’s why they have to develop these guys, they cannot compete on the free market. I feel like ignoring this is pretty obtuse.

Also, the team with the torsion rotation that includes Cole, Fried and Rodon (who they didn’t even use) is in Cancun now.

The Dodgers basically do a variation now on what Steinbrenner did in the earliest days of free agency. The rest of the teams were identifying needs and targeting one (or maybe two) specific players who addressed that; Steinbrenner just got the best player(s) available and left it to the manager to figure out the rest. It worked for a few years, and then their depleted minor-league system caught up with them. It wasn't till the early '90s when he was suspended out the picture that they got back on track.

Then, now, lots and lots of differences. But it's kind of the same strategy: throw enough money around, and you cover your mistakes. It helps that the Dodgers simultaneously throw money at scouts and signing prospects they can trade away later.

I’d definitely rather watch Chandler Simpson on the basepaths than anything the majority of the Yankees lineup could offer

counterpoint: i enjoyed watching Austin Wells on the basepaths the most this offseason.

lol

Obligatory “fuck Mookie Betts” comment

To be fair, I would be in the same mindset if I was a Dodgers fan. One team over and over and over and over again is just lame. Dodgers have won the NL West for 15 or so years excluding one miraculous year.

Dodgers Playoff Years:

2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026

but i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i wanna watch more playoff games featuring jake bauers

the bauers 12 pitch walk from yamamoto that helped knock yamamoto out of the game was electric, sorry

ya, looks like Bauer took that post personal!

yelich & turang... not exactly sure i'm calling those ABs must see TV

Yelich and Turang both knocked in or scored runs off Yamamoto that helped chase him early too. Turang also had that walk in the bottom of the third that Yelich knocked in. That Yelich single in a high octane moment was great, it’s not a grand slam but it’s doing exactly what’s needed in that moment. The seven minute Bauers AB was fantastic, Smoltz correctly pointed out towards the end that he was just swinging at slop so holding his nerve on the 12th pitch of the inning to draw that walk was amazing. I think poor Yamamoto was pouring with flop sweat praying someone would catch one of those foul balls.

applause to the brewers, they're a nice foil for the dodgers, great home crowd, fun playoff games, but you guys are not going to brainwash me into wanting MLB to look more like the brewers. cheapness is not hot

when the brewers scored 4 runs across 4 NLCS games last year were you guys going to bed dreaming of the turang & yelich ABs in your head or were you pulling them up on youtube to watch them back again?

i mean, the rest of MLB is already starting to look like the brewers? 3 of the 4 teams still in the playoffs play very much like the brewers. smallball is back and it's great imo. it's my favorite style of baseball and i'm not sad to see the home run heavy teams go

my argument is less about homers vs small ball -- frankly, pitchers are throwing so hard in the playoffs now that everyone is kinda playing small ball by default. my argument is more about stars vs non-stars and what kind of players & teams are making it to the biggest stage in the sport. so yeah give me more world series where it's guys like soto, stanton & judge vs ohtani, freeman, betts and fewer that involve the brewers, guardians, and rays. a healthy balance is fine, again i do think the brewers provide a nice foil, but i'm not joining the "cheap teams w/ great depth and few stars is great for baseball" parade bcuz i don't think it's true

maybe i'm too much of a baseball sicko but i think a chandler simpson at bat in 2026 is 100% more compelling than a freddie freeman one

I think "cheap teams w/great depth and few stars can upset Goliath" is extremely great for baseball. "Moneyball" is a compelling story; "Mets throw crazy $$$ around and still shit the bed" is a compelling story; "Dodgers throw crazy $$$ around and steamroll their way to 2 WS titles" is not that interesting, imo.

"Dodgers throw crazy $$$ around and steamroll their way to 2 WS titles" is not that interesting, imo.

― be dang if it aint (WmC), Tuesday, October 13, 2026 1:05 PM (six seconds ago)

if you watched last year's world series and found it "not that interesting" i'm really unsure of what to tell you

maybe i'm too much of a baseball sicko but i think a chandler simpson at bat in 2026 is 100% more compelling than a freddie freeman one

― 龜, Tuesday, October 13, 2026 12:55 PM (ten minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

what about ryan vilade, victor mesa jr, jonny deluca & ben williamson? glued to your couch for some small ball?

xp I watched it and can't remember anything about it a year later, *shrug* -- it was no '79 Bucs

chalking this one up to being a "you problem"

could be

i'm far more sanguine about the guardians -- ramirez + delauter & bazzana is the bones of a real line up to me, gavin williams & parker messick are both pretty close to being aces and are fun to watch to boot. but they also rolled out foster griffin out in game 1 of the ALCS w/ jo adell and nate lowe batting 4th and 5th so i can only go so far. jim thome, manny ramirez, david justice & matt williams this was not. you see what i'm saying? you used to be able to turn on the world series and see STARS. baseball should not lose that at the altar of moneyball

maybe i'm too much of a baseball sicko but i think a chandler simpson at bat in 2026 is 100% more compelling than a freddie freeman one

― 龜, Tuesday, October 13, 2026 12:55 PM (ten minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

what about ryan vilade, victor mesa jr, jonny deluca & ben williamson? glued to your couch for some small ball?

are they playing winning baseball? rays best record in the american league? hell yes

when the brewers scored 4 runs across 4 NLCS games last year were you guys going to bed dreaming of the turang & yelich ABs in your head or were you pulling them up on youtube to watch them back again?

It’s very much ok to take the L on this one since we’re discussing the 2026 NLCS and the ABs that actually happened and how compelling they were to watch and not tugging one off to big names just because

And Christian Yelich was pretty bad this year but he makes a ton of money, he has an MVP somewhere and he’s been great so far but sure let’s all cheer the juggernaut because hoarding elite talent is “good for the game”

where it's guys like soto

stanton

judge

ohtani

freeman

betts

and fewer that involve the brewers, guardians, and rays.

Perhaps the Mets, Red Sox, Yankees, Jays should have used their vast resources to construct better teams that could beat these bozos then? You play the game in front of you.

you used to be able to turn on the world series and see STARS. baseball should not lose that at the altar of moneyball

well you must be going for gold in the crashing out competition because......

The two teams in the WS last year were two of the richest and biggest spending in the whole league.

and it was easily the best world series of the last 10 years?

There must be some other sport you can go and fawn over stacked rosters that win every single fucking year

sadly owners in all sports are constructing the rules so that they are obligated to spend less money, all in the name of "parity" so they say. unfortunately there is nowhere for me to turn

if it makes you guys feel any better i made this same argument on i love hoops about the thunder vs pacers NBA finals and everyone got mad at me for saying that it was a lame and ahistorical match up and insulting the blue collar pacers and their random role players

teams like that & the brewers & rays are always going to exist in sports, i think there is a healthy balance for everything, and i get why people want to root for the underdog. but i don't think it's healthy for sports overall including baseball to be pushed further down this road and away from the model of owners spending shit tons of money on star players. i think that's still what sports should be. everyone being cheap and treating players as interchangeable and in baseball in particular making the sport all about platoon advantages like the rays do to the point that they're rolling out a glorified spring training line up in the league championship series, it doesn't turn me on

rays/brewers or guards/brewers would hit so hard imo, and not only because of the tears manfred would cry

Otm if you don’t want to see the teams that regularly dog walk the guys who don’t spend money good finally win a title idk what your problem is.

The Red Sox have like a quarter billion dollar payroll and they were running out a split squad lineup in the playoffs. The Rays don’t stack their lineups with 9 Junior Camineros because there aren’t 9 guys like him in the game. They’re lucky to have one! Hating the Rays cos they do more with less than the Yankees who waste gobs of money every single season not winning anything… can’t believe this very simple point needs such handholding. Apparently though?

small ball is so good. i want chaos on the base paths, i want safety squeezes, double steals, baltimore chops, sacrifice bunts that turn into doubles, running on contact. put the ball in play, make em play baseball.

my favorite player of all time is rickey.

Also I find the idea that drinking platooning is new school moneyball slop very funny when the Simpsons famously had Mr Burns do it in an episode that aired two decades before Moneyball was published.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abq9Y7YVDWA

My phone is sabotaging me with these autocorrects that and the fact I’ve been at work nearly 12 hours RIP

The Red Sox have like a quarter billion dollar payroll and they were running out a split squad lineup in the playoffs

red sox are a funny example to bring up given that they've been slashing payroll steadily over the last several years, traded rafael devers & mookie betts for jack shit, are trying to run themselves like the brewers, and as a result their fans hate ownership. what i actually would love to see is one of the marquee teams in baseball keeping their clean up hitter instead of trading him for kyle harrison and then running out wilyer abreu in the 4 hole in the playoffs. precisely the kinda thing that i think is bad. let's have some self respect

Hating the Rays cos they do more with less than the Yankees who waste gobs of money every single season not winning anything… can’t believe this very simple point needs such handholding. Apparently though?

― bruich, a stór (gyac), Tuesday, October 13, 2026 2:45 PM (eighteen minutes ago)

i'm not hating the rays for doing more with less than the yankees, i'm hating the rays for running out a bunch of anonymous slapdicks in the playoffs and treating the ALCS like it's a thursday getaway game. and i don't think baseball should be further pushed down the path of that style, which the owners are more than happy to have happen because it means they can all spend less money

i would say in general that when rich and powerful people want to spend less money on things as opposed to more money it is bad instead of good, but you guys seem to think baseball is exempt from this principle

I mean if you can get to the ALCS with a bunch of “anonymous slapdicks” then maybe the other bozos need to spend money better?

And yes I’m familiar with the Red Sox, doesn’t change the fact that was a quarter of a billion for a roster of slop.

Not sure where I ever said players shouldn’t be paid. I think Soto deserves his money, if you’re that good that long pay the fucking money. I think it’s really really funny that small teams can beat big teams and I don’t think that like two or three teams monopolising all the good talent makes for an interest game in a 30 game league. I’m very simple, I like watching teams play the game well, and I’m not holding up fringe players (which every team has) as a reason to protest that it’s not fair when the big money teams can’t compete. Everyone knows how these small teams run their game and win games, so why aren’t they doing it? Are they stupid?

my point is not that it's unfair for the rays to beat the yankees, but rather that it's boring, because i don't think watching their players is more fun than watching better and more famous players, and i think baseball as a sport should be working to create fewer teams like the rays, rather than more

shoutout to junior caminero tho

Winning is interesting regardless of how it’s attained.

false! what the hell

Jordan any reply on that post where I quoted where you’d rather watch players like Stanton and Judge in the postseason even though they can’t actually walk and Soto even though he’s on a big name bad team? Are you just like, I want to see the big names waaah that deck is not stacked enough waaaah?

Actually the Dodgers the last couple of years - not all that interesting. That would be my one exception.

yeah I think if it were really that easy everyone would be doing it, that said you could convincingly argue a lot of franchises aren't really trying to win though

the grim reality of the situation is that as players have gotten faster and stronger and pitchers are routinely hitting 99+ they are also getting hurt more, you could argue it doesn't really make financial sense to sign anyone to a long term contract. when you think of the most recognizable faces in the league all I see is a much of guys who are always hurt. I'd love to be proven wrong on this but I feel like the days of Jeter or Verlander are gone, the game is just way too demanding now for a player to be above average for more than a few years. every sport is having this problem not just baseball. but baseball's the one that's uncapped.

also not sure I get Jord's point, the Dodgers have been in the World Series five times in the last decade, is it not boring to see Freddy Freeman on TV all the time?

Tyler Glasnow has a great interview on Chris Rose where he’s basically like, yeah if you are a pitcher and you want to get paid and succeed you are going to get hurt and that’s the price of the game and everyone accepts that.

also not sure I get Jord's point, the Dodgers have been in the World Series five times in the last decade, is it not boring to see Freddy Freeman on TV all the time?

Maybe not if you’re really into his awful veneers

if you guys think that last year's world series was uninteresting we are watching different sports

i don't think watching some of the best hitters of a generation gets boring, no. we're talking about baseball that's the whole point

Jordan any reply on that post where I quoted where you’d rather watch players like Stanton and Judge in the postseason even though they can’t actually walk and Soto even though he’s on a big name bad team? Are you just like, I want to see the big names waaah that deck is not stacked enough waaaah?

― bruich, a stór (gyac), Tuesday, October 13, 2026 3:40 PM (eight minutes ago)

well yeah i'd rather judge and stanton be healthy and be in the playoffs and soto to be on a good team in the playoffs. i would rather watch hall of fame talent than the rays style of team building

Lmao

yes last year's WS was extremely entertaining but so was Brewers-Padres a week ago, there's no one thing that makes for great baseball, but all great series feel competitive and that is something that is generally down to luck.

i mean you did see hall of fame talent in the playoffs this year, it's just that the phillies, braves, padres, astros and yankees all got knocked out by slapdick shit goblins 🙃

and, god willing, the dodgers!

This might be a reductionist take, but whenever I see the Dodgers payroll, and look at the wealth of the owners of [insert your team here], all I can say is "Hell, at least the L.A. bilionaire ownership is willing to spend, they shouldn't be denied the ability to put money in the hands of players because other teams' billionaire owners are too cheap to do so!"

I just don’t understand the mentality that would rather see 2026 Giancarlo Stanton in the playoffs hobbling to the plate than Jackson Churio walking off the best closer in the game.

xp aren’t they also doing so with a TV deal that’s ten times the size of that that the team that beat them last night? I mean let’s not pretend that money isn’t at least partially propped up by that lol

well we've reached the stage of arguing on the internet where everybody's just taking pot shots at each other's strawmen xp

to try to bring it back to the CBA, at the end of the day what the fans care about is competitive balance. the owners know that and are trying to use that as the trojan horse by which they sneak in a salary cap. in that sense, i do care that bryce harper's material circumstances improve, because bob nutting's material circumstances ($3.6b net worth) are already 10x what harper's are, plus all the other advantages that come with being an owner rather than a player

don't forget that the dodgers tv deal is incredibly unfair to the rest of the league xp https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/inside-dodgers-tv-deal-helped-010000990.html

I just don’t understand the mentality that would rather see 2026 Giancarlo Stanton in the playoffs hobbling to the plate than Jackson Churio walking off the best closer in the game.

― bruich, a stór (gyac), Tuesday, October 13, 2026 4:42 PM (two minutes ago)

the mentality is not about 2026 giancarlo stanton. but stanton is one of the great power hitters in history whose playoff career stats across 162 games would equate to a .251/.319/.598 slash with 58 homers and 143 RBI... so yeah i want to see guys like that in the playoffs. jackson chourio is a fun player, but he ain't that (i like watching jackson chourio hit)

to try to bring it back to the CBA, at the end of the day what the fans care about is competitive balance. the owners know that and are trying to use that as the trojan horse by which they sneak in a salary cap.

exactly correct. it's a race to spend as little as possible in the name of "competitive balance" and why anyone thinks this is good for the sport is not something i really grasp. and it's not just baseball, this is happening in every sport

jackson chourio was a 5 WAR player in 2026, you don't like watching a 5 WAR player? jeez

idk if you're using a version of ilx that erases parentheticals but i stated at the end of the post that i like watching jackson chourio hit. his AB against mason miller was amazing. i didn't set up the false dichotomy but if you're asking me whether i would rather watch prime giancarlo stanton or jackson chourio i would pick stanton

^ more or less how I feel (re: prefecture's post).
i also feel like baseball is one of the harder sports to buy your way into a title (yes i know the dodgers have done very well at this). but you can't just go out and get one or two players that will be front and centre most of the time – you have 9 hitters, 5 starters and a couple of relievers that are going to get regular appearances 6 of 7 days a week for half a year. there's a lot of opportunity to assemble different types of teams within that structure that can go out and find ways to win. admittedly i don't know squat about (american) football, baseball is my main thing followed by soccer and then NHL & NBA in sparse dosages – so maybe I'm way off base with that.
all that to say a salary cap isn't going to stop teams that will actually spend from spending one way of the other (there's other ways you can dump money into teams other than players – granted, those other ways are much more affordable) and other teams from being cheap. you're maxing out how much the actual people we pay to see – the people who put in the labour – can make because some owners are cheap shitheels. we will never see those savings when we buy tickets and i am not convinced at all that it will level the playing field significantly.

again, massive xposts to prefecture

the mentality is not about 2026 giancarlo stanton. but stanton is one of the great power hitters in history whose playoff career stats across 162 games would equate to a .251/.319/.598 slash with 58 homers and 143 RBI... so yeah i want to see guys like that in the playoffs. jackson chourio is a fun player, but he ain't that (i like watching jackson chourio hit)

then i think we're having different conversations and i'll leave it here if not for my sake then at least for everyone else's

to bring it back to the CBA -- my argument ultimately is that MLB is currently set up to more or less punish teams that spend a lot of money, bcuz a player's best years happen before teams have to pay them. this is a system that essentially disincentives teams to spend money, and in that void franchises like the brewers and rays have flourished, and are celebrated for their ingenuity in the face of financial constraints, including loudly on this message board. i think it's great for those teams that they have managed to work this system -- a lot of what the brewers and rays do on the player development side is really interesting -- but a system that disincentivize the people who hold the money from spending it only in the end benefits the people who hold the money. which is why we're about to have a lock out, and i think if the players can hold their ground and change the rules so that owners have more incentives to spend money on players the sport will be better off

if you're asking me whether i would rather watch prime giancarlo stanton or jackson chourio i would pick stanton

prime giancarlo stanton is dead and buried so why bring him up, or if we're running no-longer-existant players out in our fantasies I'd rather watch prime Tony Gwynn than any of those non-slapdicks

because he hit 7 homers in 14 playoff games two seasons ago. but i don't think there's anything wrong with saying you'd like to see more players of tony gwynn's stature in the playoffs. i agree with you

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/USATSI_27432641-1000x714.jpg

MLB’s Labor Philosophy: A Reader’s Guide

Jake Bauers terrorising the Dodgers is specifically because he reads this thread.

i kneel at the altar of the power hitting boppers in milwaukee

Mike Petriello
@mike_petriello

The 2026 Brewers right now in the NLCS are running the highest three true outcome rate (47%) of any LCS since the series began in 1969.

oh no, my narrative

slob wizard (J0rdan S.)
Posted: 13 October 2026 at 17:57:36
when the brewers scored 4 runs across 4 NLCS games last year were you guys going to bed dreaming of the turang & yelich ABs in your head or were you pulling them up on youtube to watch them back again?

I think I was enjoying the 2026 Bewers sweep in 2026, since it was their run this season people were discussing.

_but i'm not going to sit here and tell you that i wanna watch more playoff games featuring jake bauers_

Well unfortunately he just won NLCS MVP against that stacked roster so.

lol that post did not age well

The Dodger Yankee glazing as arguments for good baseball viewing (and how parity is overrated) was seriously painful to read. Very excited for this upcoming World Series.

Brice Turang is going to be a guy that’s up in MVP voting most of his career if he stays healthy, he’s easily the best 2B in the whole game, and that post talks about him and actual former MVP Yelich like they’re bums. Fucking hated it.

someone went off-script

Rubenstein on owning the Orioles: ‘It’s not as easy as I thought’

Last month, he completed his third season as control owner of the Orioles, and he’s been seen more often than his predecessor, John Angelos.

“A lot of my friends were buying teams, and I realized they’re making money. They’re making more money than I’m making in private equity,” he said. “I thought I should look at it as a financial thing, but ultimately I bought the Orioles for a philanthropic purpose.

“I grew up in Baltimore, as people know. I didn’t think I’d done enough for Baltimore, so I bought the team to help revive the team a bit and ultimately revive Baltimore because Baltimore had some challenges.”

Brice Turang is going to be a guy that’s up in MVP voting most of his career if he stays healthy, he’s easily the best 2B in the whole game, and that post talks about him and actual former MVP Yelich like they’re bums. Fucking hated it.

― bruich, a stór (gyac), Friday, October 16, 2026 3:35 AM (sixteen hours ago)

lol i'm a marlins "fan" i was rooting for christian yelich before anyone on this board likely even knew who he was, so you can spare me the sword-falling over that one

brice turang, nice player. second base, not that cool of a position. that's where people like me played. i'm not going to apologize for wanting something more

The Dodger Yankee glazing as arguments for good baseball viewing (and how parity is overrated) was seriously painful to read. Very excited for this upcoming World Series.

― octobeard, Friday, October 16, 2026 3:09 AM (sixteen hours ago)

i'm not glazing the dodgers and yankees, i am glazing owners who spend money in a sport where most of the owners even of legacy teams like the orioles, pirates, reds, and cardinals are more than happy to let their teams whither into husks while crying poor. i'll glaze the ownership groups of the padres & blue jays too. *meme of the guy standing up* i actually think it's good when sports owners spend money on their rosters and don't pretend to be broke

this is the intro paragraph to ken rosenthal's post mortem column on the dodgers:

LOS ANGELES — What Major League Baseball doesn’t want to discuss, as it portrays its sport as a broken landscape of haves and have-nots, is that big-money teams can sustain success only for a finite period, if they achieve success at all.

you guys can circle jerk over the dodgers losing, david vs goliath is an age old tale, i get it. but when spending money is negatively correlated with success, that isn't good for the overall direction of the sport. incentivizing owners to spend money, which is to say to more positively correlating spending money with winning at baseball, should be the goal, given that you do actually want money flowing into the sport

if brice turang and william contreras end up on different teams two years from now because the brewers owners don't want to sign $200m+ contracts are we putting on our market efficiency hats and throwing a party over the brewers' front office's ability to find cheaper talent?

where can i get a market efficiency hat

I was trying to remember where I'd read this piece. It came out right after Kyle Tucker signed in January. Best line: "Perhaps they (fans) want a world where teams can differentiate from each other based on drafting ability, player development, shrewd trades, and the intelligence of their allotted free agent signings, but not so much on payroll." Yes, exactly!

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/01/is-mlb-parity-possible-without-a-salary-cap.html

if brice turang and william contreras end up on different teams two years from now because the brewers owners don't want to sign $200m+ contracts are we putting on our market efficiency hats and throwing a party over the brewers' front office's ability to find cheaper talent?

You already told me Brice Turang is mid, so I’m not sure why that would be a problem? Incidentally, the Brewers have made the playoffs 8/9 years since they signed Yelich for $215m. They also signed Churio before he even debuted, and he would have been a free agent target for everyone had they not done that. Not sure why you keep whining that everyone on here is anti-spending in any way. My stance has always been “pay the man his fucking money”, and I’ve also pointed out that it’s good for the game when teams do keep their stars and actually it’s really good that fans in Cleveland get to watch Jram and that fans in Milwaukee get to watch Yelich and Churio (we won’t discuss the last guy Tampa paid). And yes, owners crying poor IS pathetic. Fuck David Rubinstein getting a bobblehead of himself after buying the Orioles and then firing the fucking mascots right after the end of the season. I don’t side with the owners any single day of the week; I admire the GMs who find ways to win despite having less resources available to them than big market teams. I also like watching good teams play well regardless of how much their roster cost. Plenty of the time this correlates to the money spent, this year it doesn’t. The Brewers haven’t made the WS since before I was born.

What I have consistently hated is the idea that a few teams stockpiling elite talent is good for the game. I’m pretty sure I even used the word “stockpile” several times. That and the weird insistence that only the game’s biggest names deserve to play deep into the postseason. I frankly think it’s hilarious that the Dodgers spent all that money and got swept by a team you repeatedly decried as having lesser talent. So do most other people on this board. I meet your Rockwell guy standing up to tell the TRUTH meme with that picture of frogbs hugging his son after their beloved Brewers made the WS for the first time in both their lifetimes. The Dodgers won the WS back to back as recently as last year. I think it’s both necessary and normal to enjoy giant-killing and the fact that two lower spending teams will make the WS right before they break up to argue that a salary cap is needed is also just really funny.

I was trying to remember where I'd read this piece. It came out right after Kyle Tucker signed in January. Best line: "Perhaps they (fans) want a world where teams can differentiate from each other based on drafting ability, player development, shrewd trades, and the intelligence of their allotted free agent signings, but not so much on payroll." Yes, exactly!

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/01/is-mlb-parity-possible-without-a-salary-cap.html

― timellison, Friday, October 16, 2026 5:24 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this was a great read, thank u

Two encounters with what is obviously a ridiculous conspiracy theory (which I've now been duped into dutifully passing it along): that the Dodgers tanked to ensure low-payroll teams in the WS and subvert the negotiations. Created by Dodger haters who, evidently, wanted to cover all possible outcomes--they win, fixed; they lose, fixed.

Posnanski's post today, "Where Are the Baseball Stars?", gets into some of the things that were being argued about here a few days ago.

i just came here to post about that lol. well, the tweet to it, i don't pay for his substack so i can't see the full post. but it's a worthy topic of discussion!

I'll set up a Google doc (as I always say, payback for the Joe-promotion I put up with).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FQpwg3CrOpscbJj7Cvcy-mT-ZcgZBsHIEqWrPtQxvSQ/edit?usp=sharing

Something I posted an hour ago on the LCS thread, before I read the Posnanski piece (but totally relevant to his last couple of paragraphs):

If it is Brewers/Rays, I hope it totally ends up being the Chourio/Caminero Show (with at least one memorable start from Mis).

well spoiler alert it’s not about the cba or big spenders vs nickel-and-dimers it’s about how the modern game seems to either reward HRs or max-effort, low-usage pitching and not a lot else

I defend Posnanski a lot on here, but I'm not sure how true this was in 1977 (when Posnanski was 10 years old): "But the STARS, all capital letters, were baseball players."

1967? Sure. But by '77, there were stars everywhere--not just the big four team sports in North America, but extending to golf, tennis, and horse and auto racing. I think football had passed baseball as the biggest spectator sport by then, with basketball ascending and about to explode.

finally read that joe po post ... i think he was trying to come up w/ an anodyne explanation for a problem that is ultimately offensive to some subset of his readers because the main conclusion to draw from his post is that it's bad for teams like the guardians, rays, and brewers to be in the world series because they aren't marquee franchises and so even their best players have a capped level of star power they can achieve. which is a coherent argument to make, but i'm not sure that brice turang striking out as much as reggie jackson while being branded as a blue collar second baseman explains why brice turang is not a star. it's because he's the 2B for the brewers. and i do think MLB has a problem where its current model franchises are ones that spend very little money and inherently can't produce stars. to me that is like building atrophy into the body, basically. now, not everyone has to care about this stuff, fans of those teams shouldn't give a shit, but in terms of what MLB should be doing from a CBA perspective to help the overall health of the sport, everyone from fans to teams wants to take aim at the dodgers, and as you guys know, i just find that to be a backwards approach

I don't believe in any kind of star system to help MLB spread in popularity or do well financially, or whatever we're talking about. The game and player performance changes too much from year to year. Star system relies too much on national narratives and novelty when MLB teams are probably best served by their engagement with their own communities. How someone like Turang is viewed within the Brewers' home turf is the most important thing.

Brewers' home attendance this year was 2.78 million which strikes me as not bad.

It's amazing how regional a team like the Yankees seem now. I think that's great. Cam Schlittler and Ben Rice are not national stars and they don't need to be.