Some Stray Thoughts, December 2025 Edition

 So the baseball offseason suits me best because unlike the regular season where there's just so much baseball you can't reasonably get to all of it, the good stuff happens slowly. Sometimes in bunches but at least never at the volume that having nearly 15 games every night will produce.

I had some loose, uninformed and stray thoughts on some things and I thought I might as well yap about them. I'll try to keep it to sports but at some point I will give up and just go off the rails.

#1. The 2026 WBC

The WBC is back next year folks.

The foiling on this card made it scan like shit

My only real thought on it is that we had better get a Shohei Ohtani vs Aaron Judge at-bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to determine who wins the whole tournament like how we got Ohtani vs Mike Trout in 2023.

I want that insane fanfiction-level spectacle between the two best players in the sport. Anything short of that would render the whole thing meaningless.

#2.  Is Baseball Ruined?

As much as I try to stay away from discourse on the internet, the notion that "baseball is ruined" in some way seems to be prevalent. Either because the Los Angeles Dodgers spend money like there's no tomorrow or because the poverty franchises (a good half of the league) have chosen to be non-competitive and cheap.

Regardless of which train of thought people lean towards, I'm just curious if the checkmarks regurgitating this stuff in Jeff Passan's mentions are actual humans or bots (either way they're just farming engagement because Twitter does payouts now).

I don't want to say I completely subscribe to the dead internet theory but I do believe that we are at a weird time where it's hard to tell what's human or AI since humans don't know how to behave and AI's have been trained on those very Redditors humans.

If someone sounds or acts kinda awkward or weird enough to be AI, well, that also kinda describes everyone who's chronically online that was banished from polite society for probably good reason. Like being weird enough to give a shit about the "health" of a billion dollar industry.

#3. The Impending Collective Bargaining Agreement/Potential Lockout

I suppose that the commoner in me does want the labor union to stand firm and for the players who provide the very product I enjoy to get their fair share. I don't think they will but who knows or cares.

While that whole thing plays out I'll just watch basketball. Especially if Giannis Antetokounmpo ends up on the Los Angeles Lakers. Because the Los Angeles sports scene has been really suffering and could stand to enjoy a few lucky breaks go their way for once y'know?

#4. Drew Pomeranz is still active

In a post that's overall probably going to be very snarky (if it isn't already) I do want to state that it's genuinely nice to see someone who was there when I was at the peak of being fully in the hobby stick around. Pomeranz managed to get a job with the Chicago Cubs last year and add to what's been a surprisingly lengthly career.

From being a key prize in the Ubaldo Jimenez deal to a World Series Champion, it's good to see the 2012 Topps Chrome Rookie Autographs alumni (which includes such names as Bryce Harper, Yu Darvish, Dellin Betances and Yoenis Cespedes).

He managed to get a deal for the 2026 season with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim which means his career is more or less finished. It's been a fantastic run Drew.

#5. Edwin Diaz got $69 Million

I saw close to zero people respond to reports that said Diaz got $69M with "nice". This is how I know people now don't know how to act anymore.

Two decades ago 69 being brought up anywhere on sites like 9gag and eBaumsworld merited a nice response.

iykyk

Here in 2025 where 67 is the new meme number 69's been pushed aside.

Sign of the times. Get off my lawn. Oh wait I'm a late millennial/early gen-z, I don't have a house or a lawn.

#6. Prospects are for poor people

Once upon a time I loved being super in tune with players in the Yankees farmsystem and seeing prospects develop.

In the years since I've come to realize that while there's something fun about that, it's also exhausting and something you naturally age out of as the first few prospects you were really excited about became busts or never really live up to their potential.

I still look back on names like Greg Bird, Mark Montgomery, Justus Sheffield and Miguel Andujar with a fondness for the mid-2010's. But I also look back to remind myself to not get too invested in whoever the new young stud is either until they prove they're something. Especially in an org like the Yankees who make it really obvious when they just don't believe in their former top prospects anymore.

Some young in-house talent is always a big need for roster construction but then again the Dodgers trade constantly and yet they somehow always have a top tier farmsystem with guys you and I have never heard of that end up either being big contributors to their World Series run or get traded to midwest teams that aren't trying.

Any other team would've been crippled if they traded away the talent the Dodgers have (also if the prospects busted out like the Diego Cartayas have). But those very same Dodgers just don't care. They traded away Yordan Álvarez for free and they have three World Series rings in the years since to show for it. They'll find three anonymous nobodies that end up in the top 100 prospects list immediately. If they can become something, great. If they take too long then they've probably already been shipped out to help maximize the current contention window.

#7. Arcane is a good show

Hey have any of you seen Arcane? It's a Netflix exclusive show loosely based on League of Legends and it's really good. I liked it a lot.

I even bought a Magic the Gathering card because I just wanted something after I saw the show. Check it out if you have a Netflix account/subscription and want to feel sadness for several hours.

#8. The Chicago White Sox Won the MLB Draft Lottery for the 2026 Draft

Non-zero chance it was rigged for Pope Leo XIV.

#9. The Chicago White Sox Signed Munetaka Murakami

Please see my point about the White Sox winning the draft lottery.

#10. I picked up this Tatsuya Imai card

This was acquired right when there was a bunch of nothing regarding MLB teams being in on Imai.

Nothing about him visiting or talking to teams. Nothing really concrete about teams being interested in him. An entire void of darkness thats lone saving grace is that there's a strict January 2nd, 2026 deadline for Imai to reach an agreement with an MLB club, lest he return to the NPB in 2026.

I specifically wanted a Dream Order card because my local tcg shop had a bunch and because these seem like they'll end up being hard to find in the coming years because the traditional sports card shops don't really have them.

Though regarding this card specifically expect me to just send it to someone in a PWE because I do that a lot.

#11. Computer Science Degrees, Like the Law Degrees Before Them

10 years ago I was still in college and at the time computer science was the field that was getting a lot of attention. The tech world was starting its reign of disruptive terror that continues to this day and headlines about how much folks in that field got paid, even at the entry level positions, were enticing to people looking for stable income in a world that was still licking its wounds from the collapse of the Lehman Brothers.

Well 10 years later I get the feeling history just repeated itself.

What I mean by that is that shortly after the 2008 Financial Crisis there were a bunch of graduates weren't able to find work despite studying in a field that was historically considered stable and well paying. Those being people straight out of law school who found themselves in a tough situation. Too many lawschool graduates, not enough positions for all of them as the economy went to shit.

Unrelated Scan

The effects on those late 2000's/early 2010's grads who were very much screwed over were starting to really show up in 2015 and it was a good thing I was able to read about them right as I heard everyone was heading for tech (like this NYT Op-Ed). I got the vibe that there's a good chance the supply is going to vastly outnumber the demand at some point in a field where advancements in technology happen all the time. Lo and behold, we're here.

There's a lot of reasons for this but as far as I can tell it's predominantly a mix of there being a lot more comp-sci grads in the market now than in the early 2010's and due to the integration of automation/AI that handles a lot of the grunt work that previously lower level employees did.

I know I oversimplified a lot of things there. I didn't study either field so I'm not sure what the status is for people going through it now, I just read what I can from reputable papers. But optics-wise it just looked so similar to me.

I don't know if there is a road to a steady and stable income anymore unless you were born into a wealthy family with old money. What I do know is that by the time you start hearing that everyone and their mother is heading in a certain direction, it's already too late.

#12. Consulting, More Like Insulting

So what's the next thing people are flocking to as an industry that's got money? Looks like it's consulting.

Consulting is such a polarizing industry. It's hard to pin down what it actually does and the results when the companies that hire consultants go under speak louder than anything the firm's official mission statement ever could say.

But it's where the money's been the last few years outside of the tech/AI bubble. It's where the top level executives have been coming from. It's where every kid in business school is hoping to land a gig.

Even the Big 4 accounting firms (EY, KPMG, Deloite and PwC) have found a lot of their revenues have come from their consulting work and not so much the hardcore accounting work like auditing. Because consultants can't also handle things like audits for compliance reasons (you can thank Arthur Andersen and Enron for that) those often get relegated to another firm who do the actual work.

From the outside looking in it looks like one of those "get the bag, then bounce" type of jobs. It pays very well if you can get in with a brand name firm but the stress level it brings along is off the charts. Folks just hunker down and power through it then retire early when they've got enough in the bank, or just jump ship for a bigger paycheck/bonus elsewhere.

Sounds vaguely familiar but then again I see how much consultants make and a lot have an extra comma than folks in my industry do so I'm not crying any tears for them.

#13. Accounting for Accounting

So it's really easy for me to talk smack about fields I'm not in, so time for me to talk about a field I am in.

Overall I consider the time I spent in the profession (I'm still in it now for the record) to be positive but the lows are really something. You've all seen me be pushed to a point where I even blogged openly about the immense amount of stress I was under a few years ago.

If you survive long enough that you're in consideration for a promotion to higher roles you start to wonder if you want to keep at it or maybe go somewhere else to make the work-life balance easier to manage. Or just go into consulting.

The industry views this as a feature and not a bug. At the Big 4 accounting firms turnover is huge and expected. Every entry level job is more or less on-par with an internship in that it's meant to be something for your resume at best and you should have an exit strategy a week into your tenure. Welp, that's one way to make sure accounting majors head for something else.

#14. Return of the Trades

While I'm not super sure how popular it is, I do hear reports of an uptick in young people going to trade school instead of college and learning to become plumbers or welders and the like.

The reasons why look straightforward. College is really expensive now and the return on investment is rocky given that not every college degree guarantees employment and the ones that do have high levels of intense competition.

As good as I think this development is though, I won't lie that it does show that there is a stigma attached to "blue collar work" no matter how much it's pandered to every two years.

As a late millennial/early Gen Z kid I do vaguely remember there being a thing in the air that folks would prefer their kids don't go into the trades when they could instead get a white collar job that won't kill their backs and has a pension. Or at least that was the case until the turn of the millennium when everything went to shit. The trades are a lot more practical than say being a hedge fund manager, and traditional blue collar work like manufacturing is pretty much long gone so I do see why attitudes are shifting.

#15. If the Saudi's Owned an MLB Team How Much Do You Think They'd Spend On It?

Kind of a half-baked idea for a lot of obvious reasons. But I get the feeling they'd spend more than Bob Nutting.

#16. ERA+ and OPS+ Are Godly

In an era where there is too much information (much of it I do not care for), I am appreciative of two stats, ERA+ and OPS+. Why? Because these are just numbers where the average is 100 and anything above is good and anything below is bad. Boom, makes it super easy to evaluate cumulative player performances for pitchers and hitters respectively.

At least as a pea-brained fan who doesn't want to think very hard about baseball statistics when I'm not getting paid to do so.

These stats are just new enough that they are very accurate, but also have call-backs to ancient stats like ERA so they're don't sound alien like, say, wOBA. And again, they're simple.

Simple is good. Keep it that way.

Unrelated Scan

Alright somehow we circled back to baseball at the end. Kinda.

Thanks for sticking around for my inane rambling/excuse to clear out my scanned cards folder before the year ends.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.