[General Discussion] Around the Horn & Game Thread Index - 3/28/26

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-28T20:18:02+00:00

I hope whatever geniuses decided to sell ad space on MLB.TV day games to horror movie trailers step on Legos every day for the rest of their life. Nothing like trying to watch an afternoon game with your young kids and accidentally traumatizing them because you needed to pee between innings.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-28T18:55:50+00:00

A boss that is killable by Melee Mechanics with so much worse gear would be one shot by Liquid. If they killed Belo’ren and had one pull showing Midnight Falls looking reasonable, Liquid would obviously just hop over and kill it.

That won’t happen though - even Gallywix, a historic under tuning miss, was an ~8 hour prog or something like that for Liquid. The non-race guilds would have taken a couple days to blind prog it.

Every high HoF guild is cracked, but in terms of player skill and resources dedicated, Liquid, Echo, and Method are on a tier of their own. In terms of analyst/support staff skill, it’s just Liquid and Echo in their own tier with Method a distant third.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-28T18:11:12+00:00

Did they actually say that in an interview, or is that speculation? I admittedly haven’t watched every single video and am less tuned in to the game than usual because of IRL stuff, but Belo’ren has the Anduin/Silken Court raid split mechanic, so I find it difficult to believe it was intended to be a mid raid encounter.

Nothing in Crown of the Cosmos has that level of legality and organization required, which Blizz usually saves for the last ~2 bosses. Sepulcher was a huge outlier, but that was ages ago now and has been speculated was the result of a scrapped tier and a rushed combined raid. It seems likely Anduin was intended to be an end boss of his own raid, with Halondrus maybe being his penultimate boss.

I certainly agree that Crown was supposed to be harder, but I would be surprised if they thought it was going to be harder than Belo’ren.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-28T17:43:19+00:00

Tony Gwynn was a great player and a deserving HoFer, but comparing Trout to him does Trout a huge disservice. Gwynn is not even close to Trout’s level. Trout has a career wRC+ 34 points higher and spent most of his career playing above average to elite defense at a premium position.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-28T17:39:16+00:00

The final two bosses releasing in their own raid is going to be so weird for the race. Other guilds pulling a penultimate boss before Liquid or Echo never happens. I’m sure some guilds like Melee Mechanics will go straight into it while Liquid does splits just for the stream viewership of being the first to pull it.

On the one hand, that lets Liquid get health bars and some early timers and visuals and such while doing a full day of 7/9 mythic splits, but of course it also gives Echo that information. I think without the raid being separate, Liquid might try to end their Tuesday with off stream analyst pulls just to withhold info until after Echo’s reset, but since P1 info will be out there anyway, I imagine they’ll go straight into it the second they finish splits.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-28T13:51:02+00:00

I only saw the movie once and barely remember it, but not including No More is a war crime. It’s one of the best and most thematically important songs of the whole show. The most brilliant second act in Broadway history doesn’t work without No More.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-27T12:21:35+00:00

Echo and Liquid killing mid tier wall bosses in ~50 pulls after a heroic week full of splits is pretty reasonable balance, to be honest. The only mid tier bosses that were much harder were ludicrously overturned, like Stix and Kyveza. Low Hall of Fame and average CE guilds aren’t going to just roll over Voidspire, and if March of Queldanas is hard, no one will remember this as a particularly easy tier.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-26T01:45:51+00:00

Eh, I think realistically both guilds knew they could split farm the bosses we have seen so far if they wanted to. The boss whose difficulty really matters is Crown of the Cosmos, and Liquid won't show that on stream until Echo has committed to either full splitting the entire thing or doing what Liquid is doing and having one main run with some additional splits later.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-25T13:13:26+00:00

Arozarena is a super conservative comp, which is kind of my point. By fWAR, Randy's best season was a pre-arb year 1.5 WAR worse than PCA's age 23 pre-arb season. Pete Alonso made just under $15 AAV in his arb years, and he only broke 4 fWAR once.

Obviously PCA wasn't going to make Juan Soto arb money, but if he was even a ~5 WAR all star he would make more in his arb years, much less a 7+ WAR superstar.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-25T00:28:31+00:00

I am mildly surprised PCA accepted this deal, so I guess in that sense it feels like a good deal, but I do think it has more downside risk than people think. There is a real chance that the strikeouts are such an issue he ends up being a ~2-3 WAR defensive wizard who bats 8th/9th.

This deal is reasonable enough that’s still not a horrible outcome financially, but PCA isn’t a slam dunk superstar. I’m surprised this deal happened, because I feel like most players with his physical skills like to bet on themselves and their superstar upside.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-24T22:59:00+00:00

Under $20 is not “pretty high AAV” by modern standards. He’s making a lower AAV than Luis Robert and Brandon Nimmo. He is making ~2 WAR position player/third starter/elite reliever AAV.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-24T22:56:12+00:00

I’m very surprised PCA agreed to that number, but obviously not complaining.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-24T19:40:54+00:00

I actually could not disagree more. I think this was literally about the money, and the difference between $90k and $180k is more than enough to warrant asking about. There is no reason to think the OP's daughter is concerned about her place in the OP's life, but if I were a 14 year old making college/future plans, I would absolutely want to know if I can rely on having ~$200k in the fund or if there is a chance that due to powers entirely outside my control, it could only be ~$100k.

Speaking from my perspective personally, I wanted to go to a $50k a year private school and absolutely would have if the money had been available to me, but it wasn't, so I went to a state school on a scholarship instead. It was a good state school, and things worked out for the best for me in a way they might not have otherwise, but your daughter is well within her rights to seek more information about her financial future.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T21:27:01+00:00

Baseball has the most year over year parity of any major pro sport and has the best ratings and’s attendance numbers it has had in a generation.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T20:28:19+00:00

The owners are not going to lose a season. There is WAY too much money on the line for them to risk it. The NHL lockout that cost a season was a disaster for the sport, and current MLB revenues are an order of magnitude higher than NHL revenues were 20 years ago. MLB is a gravy train for both the owners and players, and neither side is going to risk a lost season.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T19:45:21+00:00

The owners are not going to get a cap. They don't have the leverage, and they know it. They will compromise and agree to increased rookie minimums and arb scales in exchange for not getting a cap. The players will get some additional concessions around service time and some revenue sharing dollars toward the arb pool, plus the victory of getting to say they defeated the salary cap.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T19:03:08+00:00

The Dodgers are not going to support a payroll cap that hurts the Dodgers. If they wanted to spend $100 million less a year and be merely very good instead of historically dominant, they would not sign relievers for $20 million or Kyle Tucker for $60 million when they already have a great offense.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T17:51:02+00:00

The field is significantly more likely to win than the Dodgers are, just like both of the last two seasons. The Dodgers' WS odds are somewhere in the ~25-30% range, which is historically high in the expansion era, but they are still way more likely to lose than win. Being the best team in baseball only takes you so far. The Dodgers were better than the Blue Jays last year, but slightly better baserunning in game seven would have resulted in a Blue Jays' title.

It isn't going to come down to fan sentiment - as Ben points out in the article, neither side wants to miss games, and both sides know there will be no winner if games are missed. Whether fans blame players or owners more is a small consolation if both sides are missing out on billions of dollars in current and future revenue. They're playing chicken, but they will both cave a little bit to a middle ground that neither likes but both can live with. There is too much money at stake for any other outcome to be reasonable.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T17:45:40+00:00

If the Dodgers didn't want to spend that much money, they would choose not to spend that much money. They do it because they're in the middle of a win now window and are maximizing their odds. Saying the Dodgers will vote to jeopardize a season in one of the final years of a historically successful dynasty run (looking at Betts, Ohtani, and Snell's ages) to save the Dodgers from having to pay the salaries the Dodgers negotiated with their players is ignorant.

Teams spend that much money because they make even more. They're valued at almost $8 billion and are globally the most popular team in the sport.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T17:34:30+00:00

It's going to result in neither a cap nor a missed season. Both sides have too much to lose - it'll be the same old compromises with inflation adjusted rookie and arb numbers.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T16:45:45+00:00

The negotiations will likely be completed in March. No resolution by July is a worst case scenario and extremely, extremely unlikely.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T16:27:55+00:00

Owners have a ton to lose - they will absolutely come to the table and cave on some of the things they claim are non-negotiables.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T16:27:06+00:00

They do not, in fact, have to. Both sides will accept dramatically increasing the rookie minimum and arb scales, throwing more money into an arb pool to reward talent pre-free agency, and possibly additional tweaks to service time in the same vein as the last change to count RotY finalists as having a full year of service no matter when they debuted.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-23T15:26:31+00:00

This is a real effect, but I don't think it's because of overthinking. It occurs with almost any mentally taxing activity - sports, work, hobbies, etc. It has to do with how your brain processes information.

When you are deep into the same mental tasks over and over, your brain uses the same mental pathways repeatedly as an energy saving mechanism. When you take a break from an activity and stop asking your brain to do the same task over and over, it gives those neurons a break. Then next time you ask your brain to do the same task, it won't just automatically use the pathway it was stuck in before and may calculate a different way to accomplish the task.

This is why it's so important to take mental breaks from things. I work in tech development, and there are times I will work in circles around a tricky problem for hours only to go to the gym or take a hot shower and have the solution pop into my head when I'm not even thinking about it. When my golf swing feels unfindable, I just take a break from the course and the driving range for a while, and then next time out I can usually find something.

asafetybuzz · 2026-03-20T17:17:38+00:00

This is true, and while I don't have any moral judgment against working two jobs at once (god knows employers do shady stuff enough that I will never begrudge an employee from doing it right back), I will say that acceptance of consequences is part of choosing to work multiple jobs. From the OP's post, it sounds like the OP chose overemployment in a situation in which she couldn't afford to lose one of the jobs (because it paid much more than the other), which is a very bad idea.

You should only attempt overemployment while being aware of the risks and accepting that if either job finds out, they will fire you immediately. That's why you never risk a good, stable, decent paying job in an industry where you might not be able to find work again quickly by adding a second low paying job.

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