“I pay you to get on first, not get thrown out at second.” -Brad Pitt

The M’s are extremely popular in Seattle. I’m often surprised at how much of a baseball town it is. Football is king of course but it’s a good sports town and baseball is relevant. When they made the playoffs in 2022, it was a big deal, everyone was talking about that 10-9 victory over the Blue Jays the next day. The MLB regular season is a slog of course, even passionate fans don’t pay attention to every game. I don’t think it was analytics that damaged the game as much as their delayed response to adjust the rules to compensate. Which is finally happening and needs to happen more. At least stolen bases are back in fashion now.

When will the Mariners relocate to Austin or San Antonio?

August was a fire (not Fyre) fest in Okanogan. The night before 9/11 we helped with a fast mover on Highway 97 which was being pushed efficiently by some stiff north winds. Had to evacuate the Malott area and got home pretty late and pretty much collapsed. Got a phone call from a friend the next morning when all hell was breaking loose and the whole house smelled like smoke as I was glued to the ol’ 27” Toshiba.

I will say I did like the rule changes they made last year involving the pitch clock and limited throws over to 1st base. Definitely helped increase stolen bases, but that's okay, that's a fun part of the game that analytics had killed too. I thought it was funny so many people thought the bigger bases were the reason there were so many stolen bases. I'm sure it helped on the margins, but the main reason was the limit on pick offs and the pitch clock which helped runners time their jumps so much better.