My Omaha hotel "good night" text exchange with Mrs. Runner last night:
Me: Best record in baseball, baby
Mrs. Runner: 🙂
Twins sell 20,000 $5.00 Flash Tickets in 8 hours. Now of course there are a number of reasons why Twins attendance has suffered this year including 8 years of pretty lousy baseball and really bad "Spring" weather.
However, I also wonder how much ticket prices have played into the attendance woes. The way sporting event prices have continued to increase these past few years, I fear, have put attending a game out of reach for a lot of families, especially once you toss the cost of parking/transit and food/beverages into the mix. While I don't expect the Twins to discount their tickets to $5.00 all season long or for major sections of the ballpark, I wonder if this ticket special will cause the bean counters to figure out that maybe ticket prices have reached the point of diminishing returns. The Gophers for football, basketball, and hockey may be learning this, and perhaps the T-wolves and even the Wild may be in for a rude awakening on how much we are willing to spend to attend a game, especially if it's a middling product.
I've been paying a fair amount of attention to this issue. Attendance is down again, league-wide. I've seen a number of articles, and most of them passingly mention ticket/concession prices, while focusing on other issues (lack of competition/free agent spending). And then I look at the comments section, and nearly every comment is directed at the price of attendance. And while I know that's not a perfect representation, the near-unanimity of the comments speaks volumes.
There is no reason beyond pure, dumb greed that the upper deck can't be easily affordable.
As Philo mentions, everyone who pens articles about attendance has their agendas that they're trying to push, but everyone I've talked to would be willing to go to the game if the price was less "summer vacation" and more "day trip".
Yup. My kids have been asking to go to a game. The absolute minimum for us, with basic concessions and parking, is $100.00 per trip. Most of that is in ticket prices. I try to take them to a game every year, but we're pretty much capped at 1, and only 2 of the 3 interested kids (the other one has to stay home until he's a little older).
If I could get a kid in for free with each paid ticket though (so I'd have to buy 2 to take myself and 3 kids), I'd probably take them to 2 games a year more often than just 1, and I'd bring all 3 kids. That's where I think baseball should be focusing their ticket-price efforts: on kids. Build up that next generation of fans.
Yep. As an adult, I tend to be satisfied for the most part with just watching on TV. But when I was a kid, a trip to the ballpark was like Disney World for me. Obviously it helped that the Twins won the World Series when I was 7 and 11, but no doubt attending several games per year helped.
Without getting too far into Forbidden Zone topics, I have to think that the shrinking middle class is not helping. The wealthiest of Americans will purchase the sky boxes and premium seats aplenty. These major sports leagues need to get smart and listen to Nibbish above. If you are rarely selling out your venues, why not offer the worst 25% of your seats at a deep discount to invite the more budget conscious families to come watch the game. In the restaurant world, the biggest expense we have is the empty seat.
Speaking of empty seats, what is your thoughts on turning tables over? I know very little about the subject, except I hear in Europe, most places get offended if you don't spend several hours on your meal, and in America, most places want as many customers as possible and would get annoyed if customers take their sweet time eating their meal.
You seem like the type to just make your customers happy whatever they want to do as long as they're not being obnoxious. Just curious if it's something you think about.
as a server, i remember my thoughts...
I remember my thoughts from my days on the line about both of these things.
heh, we probably had different feelings.
I'll just note that this has not been my experience in Europe at least during peak hours.
Having travelled to Europe (a lot), I love how the waiters harumpf when you don't order dessert, the cheese plate, after dinner aperitif, or the espresso afterwards. Sorry, Euro-waiters!
We are customer focused, so we are not pushy on table turns (except when I need a table for the next large group that has a reservation... then I give em the evil eye). In Alexandria, when we hit a wait on weekends, it is rarely a long extended wait. So we dont have as much pressure to turn them all to aggressively. I always tell my servers to read the guest. If they are in a hurry, don't make them wait. If they are in for a longer, extended visit, don't rush them.
Not to be That Guy. But I am That Guy.
The lower limit in household income for the middle fifth of households (a constant share of households by definition) has climbed slowly but steadily in nominal terms every year since 2010 and it climbed in nominal terms every year for the two decades before the Great Recession. During the Recession it topped out in 2007, dropped by a thousand dollars by 2010, then resumed growth such that was higher than 2007 by 2012.
By this empirical standard, the Middle Class is neither shrinking not getting poorer. Maybe not getting richer fast enough, but certainly not declining.
/nerdtalk
In constant-dollar terms, the picture is of stagnation during the 2000s. The bottom real income for that quintile peaked in 1999, troughed by about 19 percent during the Recession, then slowly recovered. 2017's constant dollar figure is the same as 1999's. So, again, not much evidence if "disappearance." Just no advancement.
I often find myself wondering about these "constant-dollar" assesments. How do they factor in the societal changes between now and then? For example, cell phones and internet access weren't necessities in 1999 the way they are now. I know that these are tools design to give us a more accurate picture (we don't want everyone all GOMLing about how cheap gas used to be, or whatever, when it isn't really more expensive now, in real dollars), but I often feel that, on the whole, these comparisons miss key facts, and often lead to a distorted picture themselves, albeit distorted in other ways. In short, the comparisons work better for direct point by point comparisons (price of gas then vs. now) than they do for whole-picture comparisons.
Also, getting back up to what you were at 20 years ago is absolutely a disappearance/loss. If you were holding serve you could have used the difference to grow further. That lost opportunity for growth is loss itself.
The constant-dollar things are good with baskets of comparable goods/services.
But cell phones today are radically better than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Same with TVs, cars, and a number of other goods with a big technological component. So one can easily argue that constant-dollar incomes today buy a lot more than they used to. I.e., the data understate "real" income growth.
To the degree that the baskets are dominated by things like housing costs and commodities, they are very comparable over time. But if technological changes alter the utility of an item in ways not captured by prices (e.g., computer chip power goes up and price goes down), the basket does not track so well and "real" income can be understated.
So one can easily argue that constant-dollar incomes today buy a lot more than they used to.
But to the extent that one is forced into that "more" their constant dollar incomes are actually lower. For example, a person who would be satisfied with a minimal voice-only phone plan but is coerced into data usage because lots of other people text. And then send chats and images which result in much higher data usage, largely pushing that person into spending on a smart phone. The society around has changed, such that participation in it essentially requires a higher minimum level of expenditure. So yes, you might be able to "get more" and therefore your dollars go farther. But the floor for participation is much higher.
This particularly effects the lower income levels, and is something that is regularly missed by these comparisons. "Hey, people are better off because they're getting more for their money" is a conclusion that ignores "people are required to spend more of their money to meet minimum participation standards, just to keep up, and have less choice in how they spend their money." That lack of flexibility is a huge negative.
I should probably add that I don't really mean to say constant value incomes are actually lower, rather that there is another effect happening at the same time that has a limiting impact, such that even more constant value dollars don't actually stretch as far as one might otherwise think, given the implications of the phrase "constant value".
I think you will have a very hard time making the case that anyone is "forced" to buy a better (and cheaper!) TV, or much better (and no more expensive in real terms) car, or a much better and cheaper computer. And the reason smart phones have been so widely adopted is value and plummetting real prices, not social pressure. Entry level phones, TVs, and cars are waaaay better and cheaper in real terms than they were 20 years ago.
Is it an easy case? No. If it were more immediately obvious, society would approach poverty a lot differently. But I've worked with it firsthand, and have dealt with it myself (I love my dumb phone, but it takes effort to be smart-phone free), and, especially for the poor, the required ante to participate in society can be steep. Again re: cell phones... my kids play ball. All schedule changes, extra practices, relevant info, etc., is sent via some program that my dumb phone can't process. We do not get the messages directly. I'm lucky enough to have a neighbor who will alert us, but absent that, we'd be out of the loop. Being out of the loop costs people opportunities of all sorts.
I have no objection to the suggestion that, measured by real value dollars we're "better off". I object to the suggestion that that's the only relevant measurement. I think the lack of empathy involved in such an approach provides a dangerous distortion of what's actually happening in the world. It's far too easy to wash our hands of obligation to others when we've got the excuse of "well, they've got a much nicer phone so they're better off."
This subthread began with my claim that, contra the probably off-hand comment, the "middle class" was not disappearing. I cited evidence that it was not. I stand by that evidence, which is pretty compelling.
I don't know how those comments led us to wherever it seems to have gone. I would just remind you of what I argued and what evidence I offered. You seem to be talking about something very different. That is your prerogative, but please don't twist my comments into some other box.
Today's cheap cellphones are waaaay better than the best ones of twenty years ago, and they are cheaper. Today's cheap tvs are better than the best ones of twenty years ago. And they are cheaper. Today's cheap computers, same. Today's cheap cars are better and cheaper.
What's not cheaper and better? Housing. Higher education. Health care (probably). Most utilities. Basic nutrition.
I never made the claim that Everything Is Awesome. I just said the middle class is not disappearing and has not seen (or probably not seen) continuing welfare losses. Incomes have recovered for the middle quintile in nominal and constant dollar terms from the Recession. Those are facts.
And hungry joe started everything off by asking "Are we having fun?"
For twisting your comment into a different box, I apologize. I meant to have a more limited push back, and I think your last line here ("those are facts) is... sort of the thing I wanted to push back on, but really, only that.
So, quickly... I push back because the facts are not immediate, in the same way that immediately observable phenomena are (the sky is blue, there are 4 apples on the table, etc.). They are conclusions more than observable facts. In order to reach these conclusions we have to make a number of assumptions and imperfect observations. We compare baskets of goods and services from 20, 30, 40 years ago to those that exist now, even though our world looks a lot differently. We ignore other things that matter in people's lives. We assign dollar values as a proxy for actual value for everyone. We use aggregate to assess many individual transactions. We often ignore geographical or gender or age or other differences, depending on what we're collecting. The process is based on approximation and assumption. It's as close as we can get, and it's valuable. Let me restate that, so you know that I understand it. Doing these things is as close as we can get, and it's valuable. I don't mean to suggest otherwise. I think the value to this approach is real, and we should look at the data this way. But these conclusions are not a lock in the same way as other facts. The proclamation "those are facts" is simply too strong for my liking. I don't have the confidence you do in the data, the collection process, the assumptions, the comparables, etc. I think we need to be more careful about the way we speak about these conclusions though.
That was what I meant to push back at, and that alone.
I ended up twisting it further because in my experience, too often people stand on these types of facts and 1. overreach into other facts (for example, I can understand the "incomes have recovered" point, which relies on fewer assumptions, but I would still push back on the "has not seen welfare losses" because that second point relies on many more assumptions. At a minimum that second claim shouldn't be made as strongly. And 2. people often use these facts to make normative claims, and I find that to be dangerous. You certainly weren't doing #2, and you weren't doing #1, at least until I came along.
Yeah, when was the last time you used a website/app to find the cheapest gas-price in the neighborhood. I just Audi-ed up myself to 91/93/95 (60 clicks for a tank of gas).
Beyond economics, I wonder if demographics play a part. As the baby boomers age, do we have less of a population in the age range that would attend a game?
A good many of those boxes & premium seats are purchased by corporate entities. I think there’s a serious question to be asked about whether the sport is serving its future interests well by selling the best seats to those for whom the game is the sideshow to the deal being cut or the executive being recruited, rather than the primary attraction.
Between 6 pm last night and 2 pm, the #MNTwins sold 20,000 tickets for their remaining 11 May home games on the $5 flash deal. They’re releasing 1,000 more per game for those 11 contests.
I don't know if they use people walking through the gates or tickets sold for attendance, but that's an extra ~2500 per game for the rest of the month. Based on FanGraphs' article about April attendance, that's just enough to reverse the drop from last year but will only put them at middle of MLB for total attendance. This isn't an early 20th century park however so they're looking at 50% full instead of 45%.
I think it's also fair to point out entertainment alternatives. There's cable TV, countless streaming services, not to mention movie theaters, board games (my fave), and other options where people aren't spending an enormous amount of money. Even the minor league games in my town (which are not affiliated with MLB) are too much for me to attend regularly. And there's so much other stuff for the kids to do that I'm usually off with them instead of enjoying the game.
I haven't been to a live game in 4 years or so. Part of the issue is that I'm 2-3 hours drive away. But I also don't really want to spend the money on a high priced ticket.
I think the same thing has happened with concert tickets.
Yes. Definitely. I have gone to one "big" concert in the past 5 years and two in the past 10 years. Main reason is cost. For any bigger act, you are looking at well over $100 per seat for basically bad seats. I will not pay that amount of money "just to be there".
Don't want to get all "get off my lawn", but man entertainment in general has gone through the roof. Disney, Wisconsin Dells, etc have all gotten out of hand. That's why I am lucky to have kids who choose "nature trip" when we start talking vacation. They would rather drive somewhere we haven't been before and explore, than to go to amusement parks and such.
At least with concerts it can be somewhat justified with the drop in the cost of purchasing recorded music.
It's just not baseball. I'd consider getting season tickets to MNUFC but man the prices. It cost me $45 (with fees) just to get into the supporters section a couple of weeks ago. That's the place where you stand behind the goal the whole time. Throw in a couple of (ok 3) $10.50 16 oz Summits, and a $10.00 Burrito, transportation, and I was near $100 for one person. I can't do that for 20 games, even if I reduced the beer/food consumption. And I'm a single guy with a modest lifestyle.
(Not my joke... seen on a different site I found while googling "Socrates Burrito" images).
Fortunately it wasn't served with hemlock.
I've been driving during a lot of games lately, so I've caught a few games on XM, and man the differences in broadcasts (in this case NYY and TOR) surprised me. Though the innings talking about Rugby was a pretty fun change of pace on Tuesday.
Gosh darn, JBJ:
When a walk-off home run ISN'T a walk-off home run. Enter Jackie Bradley, Jr.
Yeah. I think that one might be it. I don't know if I'll see a better one than that.
I thought the pitcher's reaction was a little subdued, almost like he was ready to puke right before the catch and didn't know what to do with it afterwards.
Yeah, I'd run out to CF and hug him if it was me.
Jorge Polanco has, according to both rWAR and fWAR, been the second most valuable position player in the AL so far (just a hair below Trout in both metrics). He's got the highest batting average in the AL, the second highest slugging percentage, and the second highest wRC+.
I'm not expecting this, or anything like this, to continue, but that extension is looking crystal ball prescient so far.
Byron Buxton is hitting .255 with 27 hits, so not bad but not great. More than half of those hits, though, 15 of them, have been doubles, with a couple of triples and a dinger to boot. His .769 OPS is just over average (104 OPS+). But that alone has made him a huge improvement over last year and I'm hoping he'll keep up the development and become a really special player. I also noticed today that our best starting pitcher, Berrios, is also the lowest paid at $620,000. Odoreater is the highest paid starter making $9.5 million this year.
My Omaha hotel "good night" text exchange with Mrs. Runner last night:
Twins sell 20,000 $5.00 Flash Tickets in 8 hours. Now of course there are a number of reasons why Twins attendance has suffered this year including 8 years of pretty lousy baseball and really bad "Spring" weather.
However, I also wonder how much ticket prices have played into the attendance woes. The way sporting event prices have continued to increase these past few years, I fear, have put attending a game out of reach for a lot of families, especially once you toss the cost of parking/transit and food/beverages into the mix. While I don't expect the Twins to discount their tickets to $5.00 all season long or for major sections of the ballpark, I wonder if this ticket special will cause the bean counters to figure out that maybe ticket prices have reached the point of diminishing returns. The Gophers for football, basketball, and hockey may be learning this, and perhaps the T-wolves and even the Wild may be in for a rude awakening on how much we are willing to spend to attend a game, especially if it's a middling product.
I've been paying a fair amount of attention to this issue. Attendance is down again, league-wide. I've seen a number of articles, and most of them passingly mention ticket/concession prices, while focusing on other issues (lack of competition/free agent spending). And then I look at the comments section, and nearly every comment is directed at the price of attendance. And while I know that's not a perfect representation, the near-unanimity of the comments speaks volumes.
There is no reason beyond pure, dumb greed that the upper deck can't be easily affordable.
As Philo mentions, everyone who pens articles about attendance has their agendas that they're trying to push, but everyone I've talked to would be willing to go to the game if the price was less "summer vacation" and more "day trip".
Yup. My kids have been asking to go to a game. The absolute minimum for us, with basic concessions and parking, is $100.00 per trip. Most of that is in ticket prices. I try to take them to a game every year, but we're pretty much capped at 1, and only 2 of the 3 interested kids (the other one has to stay home until he's a little older).
If I could get a kid in for free with each paid ticket though (so I'd have to buy 2 to take myself and 3 kids), I'd probably take them to 2 games a year more often than just 1, and I'd bring all 3 kids. That's where I think baseball should be focusing their ticket-price efforts: on kids. Build up that next generation of fans.
Yep. As an adult, I tend to be satisfied for the most part with just watching on TV. But when I was a kid, a trip to the ballpark was like Disney World for me. Obviously it helped that the Twins won the World Series when I was 7 and 11, but no doubt attending several games per year helped.
Without getting too far into Forbidden Zone topics, I have to think that the shrinking middle class is not helping. The wealthiest of Americans will purchase the sky boxes and premium seats aplenty. These major sports leagues need to get smart and listen to Nibbish above. If you are rarely selling out your venues, why not offer the worst 25% of your seats at a deep discount to invite the more budget conscious families to come watch the game. In the restaurant world, the biggest expense we have is the empty seat.
Speaking of empty seats, what is your thoughts on turning tables over? I know very little about the subject, except I hear in Europe, most places get offended if you don't spend several hours on your meal, and in America, most places want as many customers as possible and would get annoyed if customers take their sweet time eating their meal.
You seem like the type to just make your customers happy whatever they want to do as long as they're not being obnoxious. Just curious if it's something you think about.
as a server, i remember my thoughts...
I remember my thoughts from my days on the line about both of these things.
heh, we probably had different feelings.
I'll just note that this has not been my experience in Europe at least during peak hours.
Having travelled to Europe (a lot), I love how the waiters harumpf when you don't order dessert, the cheese plate, after dinner aperitif, or the espresso afterwards. Sorry, Euro-waiters!
We are customer focused, so we are not pushy on table turns (except when I need a table for the next large group that has a reservation... then I give em the evil eye). In Alexandria, when we hit a wait on weekends, it is rarely a long extended wait. So we dont have as much pressure to turn them all to aggressively. I always tell my servers to read the guest. If they are in a hurry, don't make them wait. If they are in for a longer, extended visit, don't rush them.
Not to be That Guy. But I am That Guy.
The lower limit in household income for the middle fifth of households (a constant share of households by definition) has climbed slowly but steadily in nominal terms every year since 2010 and it climbed in nominal terms every year for the two decades before the Great Recession. During the Recession it topped out in 2007, dropped by a thousand dollars by 2010, then resumed growth such that was higher than 2007 by 2012.
By this empirical standard, the Middle Class is neither shrinking not getting poorer. Maybe not getting richer fast enough, but certainly not declining.
/nerdtalk
In constant-dollar terms, the picture is of stagnation during the 2000s. The bottom real income for that quintile peaked in 1999, troughed by about 19 percent during the Recession, then slowly recovered. 2017's constant dollar figure is the same as 1999's. So, again, not much evidence if "disappearance." Just no advancement.
I often find myself wondering about these "constant-dollar" assesments. How do they factor in the societal changes between now and then? For example, cell phones and internet access weren't necessities in 1999 the way they are now. I know that these are tools design to give us a more accurate picture (we don't want everyone all GOMLing about how cheap gas used to be, or whatever, when it isn't really more expensive now, in real dollars), but I often feel that, on the whole, these comparisons miss key facts, and often lead to a distorted picture themselves, albeit distorted in other ways. In short, the comparisons work better for direct point by point comparisons (price of gas then vs. now) than they do for whole-picture comparisons.
Also, getting back up to what you were at 20 years ago is absolutely a disappearance/loss. If you were holding serve you could have used the difference to grow further. That lost opportunity for growth is loss itself.
The constant-dollar things are good with baskets of comparable goods/services.
But cell phones today are radically better than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Same with TVs, cars, and a number of other goods with a big technological component. So one can easily argue that constant-dollar incomes today buy a lot more than they used to. I.e., the data understate "real" income growth.
To the degree that the baskets are dominated by things like housing costs and commodities, they are very comparable over time. But if technological changes alter the utility of an item in ways not captured by prices (e.g., computer chip power goes up and price goes down), the basket does not track so well and "real" income can be understated.
So one can easily argue that constant-dollar incomes today buy a lot more than they used to.
But to the extent that one is forced into that "more" their constant dollar incomes are actually lower. For example, a person who would be satisfied with a minimal voice-only phone plan but is coerced into data usage because lots of other people text. And then send chats and images which result in much higher data usage, largely pushing that person into spending on a smart phone. The society around has changed, such that participation in it essentially requires a higher minimum level of expenditure. So yes, you might be able to "get more" and therefore your dollars go farther. But the floor for participation is much higher.
This particularly effects the lower income levels, and is something that is regularly missed by these comparisons. "Hey, people are better off because they're getting more for their money" is a conclusion that ignores "people are required to spend more of their money to meet minimum participation standards, just to keep up, and have less choice in how they spend their money." That lack of flexibility is a huge negative.
I should probably add that I don't really mean to say constant value incomes are actually lower, rather that there is another effect happening at the same time that has a limiting impact, such that even more constant value dollars don't actually stretch as far as one might otherwise think, given the implications of the phrase "constant value".
I think you will have a very hard time making the case that anyone is "forced" to buy a better (and cheaper!) TV, or much better (and no more expensive in real terms) car, or a much better and cheaper computer. And the reason smart phones have been so widely adopted is value and plummetting real prices, not social pressure. Entry level phones, TVs, and cars are waaaay better and cheaper in real terms than they were 20 years ago.
This subthread began with my claim that, contra the probably off-hand comment, the "middle class" was not disappearing. I cited evidence that it was not. I stand by that evidence, which is pretty compelling.
And hungry joe started everything off by asking "Are we having fun?"
Yeah, when was the last time you used a website/app to find the cheapest gas-price in the neighborhood. I just Audi-ed up myself to 91/93/95 (60 clicks for a tank of gas).
Beyond economics, I wonder if demographics play a part. As the baby boomers age, do we have less of a population in the age range that would attend a game?
A good many of those boxes & premium seats are purchased by corporate entities. I think there’s a serious question to be asked about whether the sport is serving its future interests well by selling the best seats to those for whom the game is the sideshow to the deal being cut or the executive being recruited, rather than the primary attraction.
And this is here. Good.
I don't know if they use people walking through the gates or tickets sold for attendance, but that's an extra ~2500 per game for the rest of the month. Based on FanGraphs' article about April attendance, that's just enough to reverse the drop from last year but will only put them at middle of MLB for total attendance. This isn't an early 20th century park however so they're looking at 50% full instead of 45%.
I think it's also fair to point out entertainment alternatives. There's cable TV, countless streaming services, not to mention movie theaters, board games (my fave), and other options where people aren't spending an enormous amount of money. Even the minor league games in my town (which are not affiliated with MLB) are too much for me to attend regularly. And there's so much other stuff for the kids to do that I'm usually off with them instead of enjoying the game.
I haven't been to a live game in 4 years or so. Part of the issue is that I'm 2-3 hours drive away. But I also don't really want to spend the money on a high priced ticket.
I think the same thing has happened with concert tickets.
Yes. Definitely. I have gone to one "big" concert in the past 5 years and two in the past 10 years. Main reason is cost. For any bigger act, you are looking at well over $100 per seat for basically bad seats. I will not pay that amount of money "just to be there".
Don't want to get all "get off my lawn", but man entertainment in general has gone through the roof. Disney, Wisconsin Dells, etc have all gotten out of hand. That's why I am lucky to have kids who choose "nature trip" when we start talking vacation. They would rather drive somewhere we haven't been before and explore, than to go to amusement parks and such.
At least with concerts it can be somewhat justified with the drop in the cost of purchasing recorded music.
It's just not baseball. I'd consider getting season tickets to MNUFC but man the prices. It cost me $45 (with fees) just to get into the supporters section a couple of weeks ago. That's the place where you stand behind the goal the whole time. Throw in a couple of (ok 3) $10.50 16 oz Summits, and a $10.00 Burrito, transportation, and I was near $100 for one person. I can't do that for 20 games, even if I reduced the beer/food consumption. And I'm a single guy with a modest lifestyle.
For $10, that better have been a Socrates Burrito
It'd go well with a Plato nachos.
(Not my joke... seen on a different site I found while googling "Socrates Burrito" images).
Fortunately it wasn't served with hemlock.
I've been driving during a lot of games lately, so I've caught a few games on XM, and man the differences in broadcasts (in this case NYY and TOR) surprised me. Though the innings talking about Rugby was a pretty fun change of pace on Tuesday.
Gosh darn, JBJ:
Yeah. I think that one might be it. I don't know if I'll see a better one than that.
I thought the pitcher's reaction was a little subdued, almost like he was ready to puke right before the catch and didn't know what to do with it afterwards.
Yeah, I'd run out to CF and hug him if it was me.
Jorge Polanco has, according to both rWAR and fWAR, been the second most valuable position player in the AL so far (just a hair below Trout in both metrics). He's got the highest batting average in the AL, the second highest slugging percentage, and the second highest wRC+.
I'm not expecting this, or anything like this, to continue, but that extension is looking crystal ball prescient so far.
Crystal ball prescient, eh?
So you're saying he's gonna crater after 2025?
Exactly.
Be careful, Jim, those teeth are razor-sharp!
So Jimmy Buckets at the end of that half.
Byron Buxton is hitting .255 with 27 hits, so not bad but not great. More than half of those hits, though, 15 of them, have been doubles, with a couple of triples and a dinger to boot. His .769 OPS is just over average (104 OPS+). But that alone has made him a huge improvement over last year and I'm hoping he'll keep up the development and become a really special player. I also noticed today that our best starting pitcher, Berrios, is also the lowest paid at $620,000. Odoreater is the highest paid starter making $9.5 million this year.
Sad news out of Moose Lake
His partner is one of my best friends from high school and junior high.