I am sure this will be sent to a half dozen different group chats in vastly different spheres all thinking I am talking about them, and a few will be right and most will be completely wrong

this happened to me and I got stuck there for a few years just above the relegation zone. It was just an absolutely miserable experience getting caved in by 9-6s almost all the time and was the beginning of the road to me not playing anymore

the bar for post-war middle infielders is sneakily high. Alan Trammell made it all the way to the VC, Chase Utley isn't a lock at all, Lou Whitaker isn't in, Bobby Grich isn't in, Jim Fregosi isn't in, Bert Campaneris isn't in

a 55.7 bWAR/60.5 fWAR player with well under 2000 hits and 300 home runs, no hardware, and no ring is probably not a Hall of Famer. He needs either a couple more peak-ish seasons or a long and graceful decline that hits a bunch of counting numbers to be an easy yes. That's all

I believe they call this situation you and I are in “golden handcuffs”

My gut is that the people who think he’s a potential MLB ace are right, and I expect him to get paid closer to that, but it’s just a really weird mix and angles and reasonable people can heavily disagree about that

We’re talking late-2010s Angels farm depth. And there is probably a Taylor Ward somewhere there but good luck identifying who

I did many hours of work on their complex league teams only to find almost nothing worth writing about. I don’t think guys like John Spikerman or Griff McGarry would warrant a mention in any other team’s report and they both would’ve made an ordinal top 20 here.

Most of the riser bats like Eduardo Tait and Hendry Mendez were traded. Basically every pre-2025 draft that would impact a list looks like a catastrophe with the exception of a few first round picks

Aidan Miller is really good and their 2025 draft was much closer to what I value than the previous decade of drafts. The rest…well, it’s usually not pretty when Dombrowski teams are getting to the end of the contention cycle…

it’s a scary enough time for people without making shit up

It wouldn’t fix every problem at all but it’s a common thread between many of the betting scandals that are happening *and* addresses some of the most concerning compulsive behaviors

Do you think sound minds are betting on the ball/strike outcome of an Emmanuel Clase vs. Andy Pages pitch? 99.999 percent of those bets are out of compulsion and 0.001 percent are cheating

The solution that a lot of people will end up identifying, though circularly, is that gambling app micro transactions and specifically in game prop bets just need to be banned. Too addictive, too easy to manipulate in ways large and small

Many of them mean well. Some even hit on the right solutions. But the discourse is toxic.