Month: February 2026

A Tale of Two Cities

Baseball season is soon to be starting, and once again I will be cheering for my Cleveland Guardians to do the seemingly impossible: win the World Series. It may be impossible again this year, though, because Cleveland has signed no free agents or added no significant pieces to their team. In fact, they are reported to be near the bottom in payroll going into this season.

But not everyone is going begging. The Los Angeles Dodgers again have one of the top payrolls in baseball, and they added more than a few free agents during the offseason. Spending large amounts of money seems to be their stock-in-trade these days, especially since spending all that they did to lure Shohei Ohtani from their cross-town rival the Angels a few years ago. In fact, the Dodgers have won the World Series three times in the last six years, and twice in a row in 2024 and 2025, due in no small part to their huge payroll.

What is the problem here? Are the Dodgers becoming the new New York Yankees, in that they are willing to spend money and allegedly “buy” championships? One of the reasons why the Yankees have been unpopular outside of the Bronx is this perception that the organization buys, rather than earns, championships simply by affording all the best players. While it remains true that good players tend to win more than mediocre players, it isn’t a “home run” that getting the best on paper will lead to actual on field winning performances. However, the recent Dodgers’ success and the historic Yankees success would seem to counter my argument, in the broad strokes anyway (keep reading for more on that idea).

What comes of so-called “small market” teams like Cleveland or Tampa Bay or others that can’t afford to outbid the likes of Los Angeles or New York? Are they doomed to lose out on the fall classic year after year? Perhaps. The best thing Cleveland has going for them currently is that they spent enough money to lock up star Jose Ramirez for as long as he wants to continue playing (officially through 2032).

Of course, it isn’t as clear cut as all that. Cleveland could, after all, spend more money. An article from TheScore.com suggests that Cleveland is only spending about 48% of their revenue. Los Angeles, in contrast, is spending 67% of their payroll. This doesn’t tell the entire story though, as the New York Mets are spending 102% of their revenue, and haven’t won the World Series since 1986. What this does seem to indicate, however, is that teams like Cleveland could be spending more to attract better players.

Of course, other things factor into the mix as well. For instance, playing time seems to be a factor in whether these star players sign with a team like Los Angeles versus Cleveland. This article suggests that Cleveland matched the dollar offer of some “big market” teams, but that the players chose to sign elsewhere in order to secure more playing time. After all, what star player wouldn’t want to play a majority of the games a majority of the season? Cleveland management is currently focusing on more of a “platoon” approach to the playing field, and this has allegedly turned away some potential signings.

Obviously, too, more than two factors work into where any given player signs as a free agent, which is why all this talk about salary caps in baseball intrigues me somewhat. The chatter is that when baseball’s player agreement comes due for re-negotiating next year, there will be a strike over the matter. Players, go the talk, won’t want a maximum set on how much they can earn. Owners probably will, to avoid paying out ever larger sums of cash over ever longer contracts. (See: Bobby Bonilla, the OG in deferred contracts.)

In theory, I am in favor of a salary cap, but not for any devaluation of a player’s talent. I object on social justice grounds: nobody needs that much money. Period. (And especially not for playing a kid’s game.) However, salaries won’t go backwards I am sure. Therefore, capping salaries seems a good way to try to reign in the insanity of massive contracts and obscene amounts of money. We will see how such implementation actually goes. But: also institute a league-wide minimum as well. Force these teams that have money to spend it. If there is to be an upper limit, establish a lower limit as well. Truly level the playing field. Make team culture, coaching staffs, and playing opportunity matter just as much as the money. Make fan base and location important. Give all teams the incentive to be competitive with more than the wallet.

Honestly I don’t know why Cleveland insists on a platoon strategy so much so that it made it impossible to sign some free agents this offseason. Maybe they set it up to avoid spending money and to avoid looking like they were avoiding spending money. Plausible deniability, as it were. It wouldn’t surprise me. For whatever reason, they were non-competitive this off-season; Cleveland’s culture seemingly also did not attract, at least, not this year. But maybe, with a league minimum and maximum in place (theoretically) and other small market teams becoming just as competitive as the big guys, maybe Cleveland would be forced to evaluate their playing strategies to become competitive; you know, actually play the game rather than just exist. For now, it seems like they are too conservative in terms of pocket book and playing style to hope to have a shot at the World Series.

But, you never know, and that’s why whether you are highly paid or making small potatoes, you still have to field a team and play all 162 games of the season. At some point players gotta play, and as part of team. Shohei can’t play every position simultaneously, after all.

Anyway: Go Guardians! 2026 is our year!

Scrabble

I’ve been playing Scrabble, the crossword board game, since I was old enough to spell. I’ve been watching my family play Scrabble ever since I was able to sit in a high chair. Safe to say, it has been a part of my life for a long time, and I’ve been playing only a little bit less than that.

I can remember watching my maternal grandmother and my father play epic games that would take hours as they hunted for the right word to play, and planned an intricate strategy to keep each other from hitting the bonuses and racking up the higher score. I remember many a game between my mother and father. When I was finally old enough, I started playing as well. Sometimes against a brother, and sometimes against my parents. Well, in those early days, not so much against as with them. I couldn’t be said to offer real competition until my teenage years, and even then I lost pretty regularly.

Now, as an adult, my dad and I are fairly evenly matched at the game. Our strategies are similar, no small wonder me having learned from him, and our vocabularies are each fairly extensive. It usually comes down to the luck of the letters, or some lucky play that determines the outcome of our games, one way or the other.

And, when I am not playing my parents in Scrabble, I often spend time online playing against an AI player. Playing online keeps my skills sharp, and helps me to continually refine my strategy and increase my vocabulary. When I play a slightly more advanced AI, I learn words I didn’t know before, and I also have to be cleverer to beat it.

I wonder if there are any other casual Scrabble players out there? I am sure there must be, after all, it is a fairly popular game. Scrabble was invented, in more or less the same format, in the 1930’s. It was refined through the decades, and sold a few times, until it reached the more or less standard form we know today: a 15×15 grid of squares, 98 letter tiles (and two blanks) of various point values, and various squares marked with available bonuses. Playing a crossword-type game, 2-4 opponents play words and accumulate scores thereby. It seems simple, but there is a surprising amount of intricacy to the game. Scrabble also exists in more than English, being extant in at least 10 other languages (according to Wikipedia, I didn’t do extensive research for this post, I’ll admit).

I thought about sharing my accumulated Scrabble skills and strategies in a series of posts here on my blog, for any other recreational players that may be out there. I don’t claim to be an expert, or some sort of Scrabble savant, only good enough to challenge my dad and mom regularly. But I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two along the way, and I don’t mind sharing what I do know. After all, I don’t like gatekeeping, and I don’t like hoarding knowledge. The worst that could happen is that someone finds a way to beat me at my own game, and all that really means is that I would need to find more avenues to strengthen my Scrabble playing abilities. So share, and share alike. If you like, on any of these upcoming posts, feel free to comment your tips and thoughts and tricks that you use while playing. Let us all learn from each other!

I am still compiling a list of topics, and may combine a few topics into a single post depending on length, but watch this space for Scrabble talk in the near future.

One last thing, since Scrabble is a word game after all, why is it called Scrabble? The word itself means, variously, according to the Cambridge English Dictionary, “to use your fingers to quickly find something that you cannot see” or “to try to get something quickly that is not easily available”. I always thought it meant “to claw or tear at” which may be in some other dictionary somewhere. International versions of Scrabble, at least the Swedish version for a time, was called “Alfobet” which seems a much more likely name for a game based on letters and words. However, I can see where the other definitions work as well, as a Scrabble player must quickly come up with words that aren’t readily available with the letters that they have before them, both on rack and on board. In any case, we would have to ask the game’s purchaser, James Brunot, who purchased the game from its inventor American architect Alfred Mosher Butts in 1948 and changed the name from “Criss-crosswords” to “Scrabble”. Only he knows why he chose the more pithy name.

Shake up some letters, pull out your Scrabble board, and let’s get wording!