The Buscher

My favorite part of spring is when you hear some little kid in the stands screaming their head off in the late innings. There's such an innocence to it. Like, of course a kid would be the only one there to actually be invested in the on-field results of a spring game. The idea of "meaningless baseball" doesn't really occur at that age and you also never know when or if they've ever been to a regular season game - if they live in a part of Florida far away from the Major League cities, this might be the closest to a big league game they can go to. Some poor Mets minor leaguer was on the mound with the bases loaded, no outs in the 8th yesterday and this kid was screaming "WE WANT DIAZ!" This may as well have been a World Series game to him. Bless him.

Caught up with Abbott Elementary. So good. You know it's a great ensemble comedy when I really can't even decide on a favorite character, all of the leads are funny in uniquely different ways.

It’s a 3-year, $80 million deal for Bellinger with opt outs after each year. So if he has a year like last year, he goes back to the market. If he regresses, he stays. Seems like a good deal for the player and the appropriate amount of risk for the team. Exactly the kind of deal all parties should be looking for at this stage of the offseason.

Seeing them in action now, wow the small names on the jerseys looks even worse on TV. Again I half expect this is a precursor to putting ads behind the shoulders.

Ultimately I really don't care about the real player names one way or the other. As someone who plans on sinking deep into dynasty mode, they're going to be off my team within a few seasons one way or the other.

Not even a single spring game played and Kodai Senga has a shoulder strain and is shut down and will open the year on IL. It's likely 3-4 weeks of rest at minimum and then from there he'll either be cleared to throw or he won't. If he's cleared then he basically starts his Spring Training. Given a pitcher needs around 6 weeks to fully ramp up we're looking at 9-10 weeks from right now and that's a best case scenario which, it's the Mets so I never assume that. If he throws a pitch in a big league game before June it would be a victory. Unfortunately for the Mets, he's also their ace and basically the only guy in the rotation anyone had confidence in. The Opening Day starter is now gonna be one of Jose Quintana, Sean Manaea, or Luis Severino. Hilarious group to choose from given this team has the highest payroll in baseball. And Stearns has already categorically ruled out adding another starter despite the glaringly obvious need everyone sees. Punting a season when you're spending half a billion dollars on your roster. Never seen anything like this.

Heh, they just updated it in the last 45 minutes. Drew etc are listed now too. I for one am taking SCRYPTS to the main event of WrestleMania

The roster list on the 2k24 site doesn't seem to be completely up to date as its missing Drew McIntyre, George Steele, Kurt Angle, and Ken Shamrock who were all confirmed. In terms of other current names missing the one headscratcher missing is Karl Anderson. Luke Gallows is in and both guys were DLC last year. I'd have to assume him not being listed is an oversight on the roster page unless there's a weird contractual thing like when they left off Ciampa and Nikki Cross that one year. Can't really expect everyone from NXT being in but Mark Coffey not being in is strange given Joe Coffey and Wolfgang's inclusions. Lyra Valkyria and Von Wagner aren't in either unless the roster on the site wasn't up to date. Dragon Lee was with WWE well early enough to be included but his omission doesn't surprise me as they're always gonna want to withhold some fun names for DLC. Carlito is also someone I'd expect for DLC. Oh and I'd assume they'll do whatever they have to to get CM Punk in as late stage DLC too.

I'll third The Bear recommendation. It was classified as a comedy for the Emmys because it was a half hour show and so all of the shows of a similar ilk also went in as a comedy because everybody knew Succession would clean up the drama category. But aside from a few clear gags most of the humor is dark and it's a lot more on the drama side of things. The writing is great, does a great job of capturing human complexity. Absolutely captivating show, we flew threw it and are looking forward to the season 3 drop this summer. And yes, I now wish I could go to Chicago to get an authentic beef sandwich.

They posted this image after her Rumble win and there was so much outcry I wondered if they'd fine SOME way to fix the model late in the game. Apparently not. Yeesh.

First televised Mets spring game of the year on Saturday. I'll tune in because being greeted by Gary, Keith, and Ron for the first time makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. In general though I've not been this checked out before a season since 2013. I'm normally counting down the days to Opening Day by now. I look at this team and just don't really see how or why I'm supposed to be excited. Once the Mets didn't sign Yamamoto it feels like Stearns decided he wanted to look like the smartest guy in the room by building a roster that looks like the land of the misfit toys. Didn't add a single offensive weapon when the lineup badly needed one. The "big" position player add was Harrison Bader. Bader is a fantastic CF and I realize Stearns is operating under the belief that runs saved are just as good as runs scored but the lineup already sucked as is, now it's even worse. Pitcher gives up 3 runs it'll be game over most nights. Oh and this kicks Nimmo out to LF just a year after they gave him an 8-year deal for starting CF money. And with Alonso's impending free agency it feels like the last year the core is together is being punted. Everyone's screaming for Pete to be re-signed and I respect it'd be a good move for the fans to keep a homegrown guy which they rarely ever do. But the team has also sucked 2 of 3 years since Cohen took over, are we sure this is even a winning core? We already have Lindor, Nimmo, and McNeil signed for life, breaking the bank for Alonso might be a mistake as much as it pains me to say. If the team is bad this year it's screaming for a shake-up. Dunno. Just not sure I understand why the Mets are projected to win around 84 games most places I look. That would probably require EVERYTHING going right and it almost never does for this club. Safe money feels like it's on the under.

Eh, I think if you need to invent a gimmick to incentivize players to play hard early in the season/give fans a reason to care about early season games it’s more of a sign that the season was too long to begin with especially when over half the league makes the playoffs. The appeal of the FA Cup and other sort of in-season tournaments is that hundreds of teams from different leagues can qualify. The in-season tournament still felt to me like a bunch of regular season games with a flashier title.

The 3 point contest and Steph vs Sabrina were the only good parts of All Star Weekend. In general the 3 point contest feels like the only thing players actually like to do and take somewhat seriously. The skills contest is a lot of screwing about. The problem with the dunk contest is there’s really nothing left, everything has been done. So it’s a lot of “I’m gonna jump over this dude” or “I’m gonna wear an outfit” or whatever. Jaylen Brown was getting booed for doing normal dunks without gimmicks and the judges were rewarding him for it. The game itself was, as always, a parody of real basketball. Tuned out after 5 minutes. At least the Saturday stuff was meant to be fun, I feel much the same way about the All Star Game as I did about the Pro Bowl. Skills contests are more fun than a fake game. The stupid in-season tournament finals being in place of the All Star Game would be an improvement.

Kenny Smith's takeaway being that Sabrina should've shot from the WNBA line when she literally tied what all of the male shooters did in their first round sure was something. Some guys need to have the mics taken away.

The Padres are moving Xander Bogaerts to second base one year into an 11-year deal where they were paying him star shortstop money. Yikes.

Nah he was healthy, just tired. Problem was I was in the bottom of the 5th inning and I was batting. Had I been the pitching team I probably could've just brought an arm in cold to at least get out of the screen. Might turn off the warming up of pitchers as a precaution. Feel like CPU bullpen management is unrealistic enough as is, who cares about warming them up.

Dakota Johnson’s entire press messaging for this was pretty much “this movie is trash and what we were expected to do to make this shows there’s a terrible problem in the industry” Not really surprising it’s being reamed. It would’ve been shocking if it were good.

After struggling like hell to hit for a couple of weeks I get off to a 9-1 start in the 5th inning of a game including 4 dingers. But my pitcher had a pretty high pitch count through 5 and was tiring. Go to the bullpen menu to warm up a reliever. And there’s no back button. I can’t press circle to go back. No way out. Completely stuck. No choice but to turn off the game, losing my offensive explosion. I know games glitch sometimes but crap like this makes me actually want to put the game back in the box for a while. Bare minimum I’m setting it to beginner hitting next game because I want my stats back

If you're into futures bets, the odds for the Chiefs to make it a threepeat at +750 look pretty tempting. For a Super Bowl champion team they have pretty limited cap issues, the biggest impeding free agent they have to keep is Chris Jones and it's tough to imagine they won't eventually be paying him and possibly tagging Sneed. Mahomes has also signaled he'd go the Brady route of contract restructuring if he has to. Figure in the draft they'll get Mahomes another weapon and then shore up the defense for anyone they couldn't keep. There's never been a Super Bowl threepeat but no QB has ever looked as automatic in big spots as Mahomes has. The game seems to slow down to Easy mode for him when they're down late. If ever a QB was built to make history it's him. It's tough to give money to the sportsbooks a year in advance but if you believe the Chiefs are unlikely to have as lackluster a regular season as they did by their standards, you're not going to get better odds on them than right now.

Yeah that’s right. Fanatics has deals with a bunch of the leagues now and they give the leagues equity in the company, leaving little incentive for them to make a quality product. The skeptic in me also wonders if the smaller names on the back is meant to open up more advertising space.

Damn, they came up with a better cast than mine

Not liking what I've seen out of the Spring Training uniforms. Seems to be a leaguewide thing. The logos and lettering look flat instead of stitched on, which is what you'd see in a knockoff jersey. Also the names on the back seem to be smaller and more scrunched together. Just looks very cheap. Hope it's just a spring thing and not a trial run of how the regular season uniforms will look.

Yeah I've definitely noticed it. It's kinda taking me out of things. When there's a casting change it's one thing. It still trips me up a bit when I hear Dr. Hibbert or Carl but I'm OK with it because they properly gave those roles to Black voice actors and that's worth hearing a long familiar voice go through a slight change. But now everybody's voice sounds different and it does seem like a pretty predictable outcome given the mileage on their voices and the age of some of the cast. I never agreed with people who for years have yelled for the show to go off the air because "the best years were long ago" but what I did fear was that it would stay on to the point where the vocal changes got a bit jarring. Julie Kavner sounds like she's in pain doing the Marge voice, it makes me sad.

I could see that. For whatever it's worth, Scott Hanson has said that he thinks 5-6 games is an ideal RedZone window. He knows people love the idea of the Octobox or even 9-10 games but 5-6 games still gives you a lot to flip to without it being too overwhelming for the producers, plus they're less likely to just totally ignore a game like they are when there are a lot on at once.

Yeah they'd have to re-configure the network agreements I'd guess. NBC has a lot of power with being able to pull any game except for one of FOX and CBS' protections but now you've got Monday night flexing and Amazon in there too and I'm sure it all just really comes down to who is willing to pay the most for better bumping rights. Maybe in a 20-week schedule you give each of the 5 networks (Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN, Amazon) 4 weeks where they get a guaranteed locked in pick for games. 4 weeks where they get the #2 choice, etc. The NFC on FOX/AFC on CBS thing quietly got shunted to the side a few years ago so maybe it'll be a free for all. Of course, knowing the NFL they'd put execs from all 5 networks in a room and make the game selection its own special broadcast on the NFL Network.