iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Keith Law @keithlaw.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Josue De Paula was just called up 11 days ago and might end up with more walks than a hitter who qualifies for the batting title: De Paula has 10 unintentional walks in 38 PA this year. Andrés Giménez has 14 unintentional walks in 496 PA this year.

55311

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Craig Calcaterra @craigcalcaterra.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I guess it's fair to say that leagues take it way more seriously when you mess with their money than when you mess with the actual game.

310315

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Eric Stephen @ericstephen.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

can't wait to see a movie about dodgers rallies once they load the bases

4538

a horse named beefknock @dmxbiographer.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

[Giving a kind old OBGYN's religious eulogy] oliver rearranged more bitches' guts than John holmes (People start booing) ...What

000

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Eephusblue @eephusblue.com · 03/08/2026

I hate this continual rebuild cycle these teams go through. As if it’s expected. Fans need to be mad at that shit

011

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Alex Kirshner @alexkirshner.com · 03/08/2026

What bugs me about Dodger Discourse is that it shifts the focus off of genuine malfeasance by other teams. The Tigers just quasi-quit on a playoff race that they're very much still in! Who did that to their fans? It wasn't Boras, Manfred, or the LAD

1824440

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Jason Fry @jasoncfry.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Those of you eager to serve wealthy MLB owners as volunteer Pinkertons won’t like to read this, but as usual Joe Sheehan nails the real problem:

Joe Sheehan: This trade is a microcosm of the real problem MLB has faced for decades. It’s not about haves and have-nots, but wants and want-nots. The Dodgers, and teams like them, want to win more than teams like the Tigers do, so they go out and acquire the Tigers’ best pitcher. MLB has built an entire labor strategy and media campaign around demonizing the Dodgers, when in fact it’s the Tigers who are wrecking baseball. You have to be through the looking glass to think the sport’s problem is the team that’s trying to win rather than the team that’s trading Tarik Skubal while sitting 2 1/2 games out of a playoff spot.

691415405

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Josh Thomas @joshthomas.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

since the Dodgers’ tv deal/revenue sharing is making the rounds again: it was originally supposed to be revenue sharing based on $84M/yr because of the bankruptcy hearing it was renegotiated in 2012 to $130M/yr, increasing 4% annually so if the increases started in 2013, present day is $225M

151

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Keith Law @keithlaw.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

we would know the answers to questions like this if the owners would just ... open their books.

1424

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

"Le Chonk" @cdgoldstein.baseballprospectus.com · 28/07/2026

there are roster caps. the dodgers can't and don't bid on every free agent. Ryan O'Hearn was the Pirates first multi-year free agent contract in something like a decade. Why do we have to pretend the Yankees would blast them out of the water with a 7-year deal on smaller moves that could still help

8701

a horse named beefknock @dmxbiographer.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

[Just got stabbed by a cutlass] Ah shit, my life-blood! Dammit

000

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Eugene Freedman @eugenefreedman.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Kyle Bradish just signed a 5-year extension with the Orioles. All teams can sign their home grown talent. All teams can compete if they choose to.

0194

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Mike Petriello @mikepetriello.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Top 5 defensive OF per Statcast 2025: Rafaela, PCA, Young, Scott, Pages 2026: PCA, Rafaela, Young, Pages, T. Peters That's pretty cool. Basically the same guys, and Scott is off because his bat got him demoted.

2264

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Tipping Pitches @tippingpitchespod.com · 16/07/2026

ROB MANFRED: Hey Hal, we're in the middle of a coordinated propaganda campaign to try and convince an unwitting American public that baseball is not very profitable. Make sure you lay low, just for the next year or so HAL: Oh fuck t.co/jW7pRdJE3D

022

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

jen ramos-eisen @jenramose.online · 13/07/2025

the draft: 1) does not let players actually select the right employer/workplace for them 2) it markets their skills as a data point 3) it does not view them as people, but just cogs in the machine

814015

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

jen ramos-eisen @jenramose.online · 13/07/2025

hot take as a labor journo: the draft is anti-labor

514419

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

jen ramos-eisen @jenramose.online · 07/07/2026

would a salary cap have prevented Argentina from winning

4495

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Josh Thomas @joshthomas.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

what’s also a bit maddening is how revenue sharing is already in place, it’s supposed to be spent on improving the on field product, effectively creating something akin to a salary floor, and the closest MLB has come to acknowledging it is asking the union to dismiss their filed grievances about it

131

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Eugene Freedman @eugenefreedman.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Travel teams below high school are a scam, but are really a way to play in leagues that don't have Black and brown kids. The destruction of traditional rec leagues was done for profit, but it was driven by white flight.

16618

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

June Martin @theworldsgreatestwriter.com · 19/06/2026

lmao poor yorick. they got his ass

1154241472

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Bryan Murphy @bryanmurphy.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Buster Posey, Charles Johnson, Greg Johnson interview Tony Vitello, who's flanked by Larry Baer.

Scene from ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025):
The Christmas Adventurers Club are having a meeting with an assassin.

0164

a horse named beefknock @dmxbiographer.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Anyone who frames a salary cap as anything akin to "competitive balance" and not what it truly is, as Mike says here (wage suppression), is either willfully ignorant, stupid, or in on it

000

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Patrick Claybon @patrickclaybon.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

So, this thread with clear analysis of the role of the salary cap and the way fans are conned into siding with capital over labor. Has a bunch of fans in it siding with capital over labor. we're cooked

8355

a horse named beefknock @dmxbiographer.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

A cap is NEVER the answer to questions of parity. True parity in sports must come from the bottom. Owners will happily pay 90% of a cap *as long as there is a cap*. It is existential to players and should be a permanent red line for the MLBPA. A cap is simply owner control over players writ legally

000

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Ken Tremendous @kentremendous.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Brief rant: Yes it's cool that Brunson took less money so the Knicks could build a champion under the salary cap. But he shouldn't have *had* to. Salary caps are just tools billionaires use to suppress wages, and no one gets upset because the labor (pro athletes) make so much money. 1/5

19996198

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 16/06/2026

Exclusive: I have seen OpenAI's audited financials for 2024 and 2025. In 2025, OpenAI had $13.07 billion in revenue and $34 billion in costs. $867 million of its revenue came from SoftBank, and $303 million came from Microsoft. www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-op...

wheresyoured.at

Exclusive: OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion

Soundtrack: In Flames - Colony To further support my independent journalism, please subscribe to my premium newsletter. It’s $7 a month or $70 a year. If you’re subscribed to the free newsletter and ...

9133041088

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Well, the others were negotiated with unions long brought to heel, for one. This is the fundamental piece missing from so much of the coverage. The leagues with caps have unions long broken in wars won by management.

34611

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Craig Calcaterra @craigcalcaterra.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Serious headway is not made seven months out from a lockout. Yesterday was all about MLB wanting to create a months-long conversation in which it and a salary cap are cast as reasonable and in which the players are seen as weirdoes who are out of touch.

2222

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Craig Calcaterra @craigcalcaterra.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

I wrote about the league's salary cap proposal in today's newsletter. It was not a serious proposal, nor do I think it was intended to be. It was designed to set the groundwork for stories like that horseshit Sawchik wrote. www.cupofcoffeenews.com/cup-of-coffe...

The league is touting this as a plan that would share revenue 50/50 with the players and it and its surrogates will make such an assertion to every single reporter who will listen. Importantly, however, the 50/50 proposal does not define what revenue actually is for these purposes, beyond saying that it'd be calculated in the same way other leagues calculate it. Which isn't helpful given how wildly different the other leagues' and the teams within those leagues have structured their businesses and their television contracts over the past several decades. And that's before one acknowledges that, historically, the league and its owners have routinely sought to classify all manner of money they make as something other than "baseball-related revenue" for purposes of calculations that affect players. You cannot agree on a figure about revenue splits if you don't first precisely define revenue, and that's something the owners have simply never, ever wanted to do and don't seem all that eager to do now.

That aside, if such a cap and floor plan were activated now there are 12 teams who would need to increase their payrolls to reach the floor while eight teams would have to shed payroll to get under the ceiling. It would, at least according to one calculation I saw, require those eight above-cap teams to slash $578 million in aggregate salary while requiring the 12 below the floor to increase their payroll by a combined $617 million. That may sound like a pretty good deal overall, but it only takes a moment of thinking to appreciate how such a plan might prove seriously unpopular with people.

I say that because while, sure, a majority of baseball fans and observers may truly believe that the Los Angeles Dodgers have an unfair advantage, how many believe that the Astros, Blue Jays, or Atlanta as they currently exist, are somehow operating unfairly and should be forced to slash their payrolls? Because all of those teams, the Mets, the Phillies, the Yankees and the Cubs would have to do so. The league's spokesman Glen Caplin said yesterday that "fans overwhelmingly support a salary cap and floor," but I don't think that stands up once one starts to actually look at what is being demanded here.

That whole statement from Caplin:

"Fans overwhelmingly support a salary cap and floor like in the other leagues because they don't believe a $446 million spending gap from top to bottom is a fair fight. Our salary cap and floor proposal levels the playing field while sharing baseball revenue with the players 50/50 as we grow the game together."
Caplin deployment of that "$446 million spending gap" figure echoes Rob Manfred's use of that figure while making the media rounds earlier this week. It's a completely disingenuous figure, however, in that it includes current payroll plus whatever a team is paying in Competitive Balance Tax. That despite the fact that Competitive Balance Tax money does not go to players and does not improve a team. It's a figure that was concocted to mislead fans and the commentators into believing that the Dodgers are able to put a nearly half-billion dollar more expensive team on the field than the Marlins are, and that's not at all what is reflected in that figure.

MLB routinely pulls that kind of crap in negotiations and in the communication of its positions in order to get the generalist press and less-than-savvy sports fans to rally to their side (tellingly, Manfred introduced that figure on the Pat McAfee Show, not in a serious interview with a serious reporter) but anyone who cares about this stuff knows that's an inflated figure arrived at in bad faith, which only serves to kill the league's credibility. That, most importantly, includes its credibility among the people with whom the league is negotiating: the players and their representatives.

MLBPA Executive Director Bruce Meyer certainly clocks the disingenuousness at play here:

"Billionaire owners are not seeking to cap their profits or asset values, only player salaries. This isn't out of generosity or a desire to protect the game's well-being. It's a play to control costs, increase profits and maximize franchise values – all at the expense of players past, present and future."

I saw someone online wondering why Meyer's statement only rejects the league's idea of a cap rather than offer anything positive. One could just chalk that sentiment up to people, generally, disliking the players union. But I think it's important to understand something important here: the players, in their proposal, are merely seeking to adjust the figures in a well-established system that everyone has known and operated under for nearly a quarter of a century. It's the league that is pushing for radical change here, and when one is pushing for radical change it is incumbent upon them to make the case for it. It is not the job of those who are generally happy with the status quo to concoct some radical plan of their own. Again, this is something that gets lost in the coverage, in large part because everyone's been so conditioned to believe that unions and workers are the radicals, seeking to ruin a good thing. In this case the situation is pretty clearly reversed.

3337

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

I will say this again and again until the cap fetishists get it. There is a 1:1 correlation between "leagues that have broken their unions" and "leagues with a payroll cap." Let that be a clue as to who wins in a cap system.

1620766

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Marc Normandin @marcnormandin.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

I'll write about this probably next week for BP, but that initial cap proposal tells me MLB isn't serious about this. Which is good, for the record. The floor is fine but it nets out to a loss for the players with a ceiling so low, which makes the actual intent clear.

1359

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

As an aside, the Dodgers kicked back something like $180 million to the their competitors last year. If you think the Dodgers are an actual problem for baseball and baseball teams, you're a fool.

1366

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

The only bad thing is that Shohei Ohtani has ended any reasonable "who is the best player ever" argument. Bonds, Ruth, Mays, Trout...if you want to make a WAR case, a value case, that's different, but Shohei Ohtani is the best to ever play baseball.

79619

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

David 29 Sunset @29sunset.com · 02/11/2025

Also, not for nothing, but good for all those guys, even the assholes, for getting the bag. No one has ever suggested ownership have a cap on earnings, so fuck anyone who thinks it's essential that players limit theirs.

0292

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Bradford William Davis @bwd.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

MLB Network deleting The DeRosa Files is on the sillier side of scandal but the league made a great argument for the importance for supporting independent media. If a sports league will hide something dumb that everyone saw, what else won't its leaders tell you? (And if they won't, who will?)

110615

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Tipping Pitches @tippingpitchespod.com · 27/02/2026

We have been saying this for years now: a cap gives the Dodgers a gigantic advantage. Not because of deferred money, but because they are better at almost everything else than every other team t.co/7FlNWFljIP

021

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Josh Thomas @joshthomas.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

former San Francisco and Boston prospect James Tibbs III

1172

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

"Le Chonk" @cdgoldstein.baseballprospectus.com · 03/03/2026

like idk at this point. doesn't seem like anyone is changing their mind but it feels insanely bad that people have just given up on the idea of a sport without a broken union for a facade of fairness because that's the only thing they can conceive of at this point, and it makes them feel better

2545

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

jen ramos-eisen @jenramose.online · 31/12/2025

I have a lot of goals for 2026 but one big one is that I want to go on more shows (podcasts, livestreams, actual shows, idc) to yell about baseball economics. too many dweebs out there have on unqualified men who don't even have an academic background in economics unlike me, an idiot who does

410714

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Asher @skydome.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

lol if you don’t want to think about salaries and team payrolls my god is a salary cap not the solution for you. Also no such thing as a team spending too much.

0101

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I can’t tell if people are just incurious about how the NFL and NBA and NHL got the structures they have — labor wars won decisively and repeatedly by management — or they do know and are happy about it and actively hate players enough to root for it to happen in baseball.

2405

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 01/03/2026

lol even though they banned them the government used Claude anyway. Slop strategies for the Epic Bacon War. This could not have gone worse for Altman www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

WSJ
‹ Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Is Dead:....
Last Updated: Feb. 28, 2026 at 9:41pm ET
• LIVE
1 hour ago
U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, Hours After Trump Ban

WSJ
PATRICK SISON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Within hours of declaring that the federal government will end its use of artificial-intelligence tools made by tech company Anthropic, President Trump launched a major air attack in Iran with the help of those very same tools.
Commands around the world, including U.S. Central Command in the Middle East, use Anthropic's Claude AI tool, people familiar with the matter confirmed.
Centcom declined to comment about specific systems being used in its ongoing operation against Iran.
The command uses the tool for intelligence assessments, target identification and simulating battle scenarios even as tension between the
company and Pentagon ratcheted up, the people said, highlighting how embedded the AI tools are in military operations.
The administration and Anthropic have been feuding for months over how its AI models can be used by the
Pentagon. Trump on Friday ordered agencies to stop working with the company and the Defense Department designated it a security threat and risk to its supply chain.

321512286

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

We need to round up the “a payroll cap is actually better for baseball players” people and send them to an island somewhere. You have to be a monorail-level rube to think management caps its labor costs to make life better for labor.

4355

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

The video is posted at the other place, I’m afraid, so I’ll just say that the Guardians could have paid Kyle Tucker $70 million and not had a league-median payroll. They’re all so very lying.

0386

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

If a team owner says they don’t have $50 million more to pay players while coughing up $75 million to break players, shouldn’t that be a tell? How is it remotely possible to defend these people?

315345

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Craig Calcaterra @craigcalcaterra.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

You'd think that if MLB owners can put aside $75 million each as a lockout war chest that teams like the Marlins and Guardians could swing payrolls of at least that much, yet they don't most years.

1022941

Reposted by a horse named beefknock

Joe Sheehan @sheehannewsletter.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

If the TV rights for 21 of 30 teams are valued so little, and those teams have to be subsidized by the other nine, maybe 30 teams is too many? This is what’s really sticking in my craw about the “moar revenue sharing” argument. Why is Bob Nutting entitled to a Dodger fan’s money?

6184