Time: 6:40 Central
Weather: Ever-increasing chance of thunderstorms, 85°
Opponent’s SB site: South Side Sox
TV: Twins TV. Radio: I’ll bet you can pick up games for three teams in Kenosha
ChiSox starter Erick Fedde won Player of the Year in 2023, when he pitched for the NC Dinos in Changwon, Korea. Here are their rather adorable mascots:
from this site." data-portal-copyright="" />
In MLB, though, Fedde is strictly a #4/#5 starter. He throws a sinker and a slider/sweeper (stop fighting, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant) plus a cutter and change. The fast stuff tops out at 94; the “swider”‘s his best pitch. If the Twins want to get the series off to a good start, this is the guy to do it against.
One of the innumerable awful sides
about AI taking over everything is that we’ll probably get fewer typos. Like in the following 2024 vaportecture of a proposed new ChiSox stadium. “Vaportecture” is a term coined by stadium shenanigans reporter Neil deMause, referring to the shiny, glowy artwork about what new stadiums will look like. They NEVER look the way they do in vaportecture artwork, and sometimes the artwork has sunlight coming from the wrong angles or skyways to nowhere, etc. I’m sure AI could come up with this:
this deMause post." data-portal-copyright="" />
I’m sure AI would be just as capable of depicting those terraced porches on the left which have no guardrails — heck, most Silicon Valley oligarchs hate humans and want them plummeting to their deaths. But, I think it takes a human to make a typo like this one, from the big Sox logo in the center:
Notice the spelling of Chicago. Typo time! Although maybe not; “ca-ca” is a silly term for poop. Maybe the artist really has a beef with Chicago or the Sox. Anyways, AI doesn’t have beefs. Except, again, with all humans who don’t own tech companies.
Anyhoo, expect very different vaportecture of a proposed ChiSox stadium to pop up anytime, now. Their lease in Corporate Name Here Stadium ends in 2029 and they don’t even have a brand new building yet! What if the old one collapses and everyone dies? That won’t happen, so what if a new one would have swankier luxury boxes and far fewer general seats, driving ticket prices up, up, up! (The proposed/likely new Royals/A’s/Rays stadiums would have 34,000/33,000/31,000 seats.) Yeah, that sounds good! But who’s gonna pay for it?
You KNOW who.
Because “how the sausage gets made” baseball stuff is so much fun, I’ll share a video a frustrated fan clued me into recently. It’s only 12 minutes long and it’s well-done.
It’s about how revenue sharing works and what the goals of the offseason CBA negotiations are likely to be, including some form of a salary cap. And how the idea of a salary cap will be presented as “competitive balance” but is actually all about increasing team resale values across the board.
I don’t have much to add here, except that historically, when there’s been CBA / salary cap discussions, inevitably you hear some version of “how come these dumb guys who are only good and running and jumping want so much money for a game I’d play for free?” Notably, you will not hear too many people complaining about owners wanting so much money. Even though many of them are dumb guys who inherited the teams / inherited their wealth. Or sociopaths who made their money in private equity by having no consciences or souls. Or dumb sociopaths who inherited their team / money.
I suppose people complain about the greedy players more than the greedy owners because they know cries of “sell the team!” mean nothing. You can’t force an owner to leave. Whereas a player with a bad contract will eventually be gone.
Ultimately, I can’t get too wound up by the salary cap discussion because I don’t really care how it works out. If I were commissioner, I’d DEFINITELY have ideas how I WANT it to work out, but I’m not commissioner. A guy who hates baseball is. The way it will work out will benefit owners most and fans last, with players/sports agents in the middle. That’s the way it’s always worked out and always will. As a player said to Jim Bouton in his book Foul Ball, “baseball is like religion — a great game with sh***y owners.”
One thing that, I suspect, is already slowing payroll growth is the idiotic playoff structure, which probably Manfred wants to include even MORE teams in the future. It’s September, and depending how you define “have a chance,” 20 of 30 MLB teams have a chance at the postseason. Six of those have losing records. The more that teams can field mediocre rosters and have a chance at the postseason, the less incentive teams have to try and be better than mediocre. Certainly the Twins’ owners would see no reason to change how they do anything next year (assuming there is baseball next year).
I would note that wherever you stand on CBA negotiations, a lot of fans are feeling pretty angry/frustrated about how baseball is operated these days. You can see it in the clips of angry/frustrated fans in the video, or read it in online comments. People do not like that ticket prices keep going up, more games are being broadcast on more streaming services, and a lot of teams do not seem to care if they put out a genuinely thrilling product on the field or not. (Supposedly, TV ratings are up — but some of that might be because of the growing gambling addiction crisis.)
None of these things bode well for the future of the sport… but team sale prices keep going up, so Manfred is happy. Stadiums are getting more and more expensive, and teams are paying less and less of the costs, so Manfred is happy. I’m not happy, and neither are many fans, but the offseason will be what it will be. I know personally I have a LOT more to worry about than sports, and maybe you do, too.
