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Last time I went to the local indoor range I was preparing my equipment. 4 kids I am guessing 20-25 walked in and Immediately the range smelled like a dead skunk. One of them comes to the bay next to me and I hear a clunk hit the ground. 9MM Glock 19 falls from what I assume was his waistline because as I look around the corner he is fixing his belt. I packed my stuff up and left, think I was more pissed at range for letting them in like that.

Deaden the baseball!

I believe what a debate can do for Biden is simply have him out there being President. He was inaugurated during covid. That restricted a lot of the ability to "be President". Use the pageantry of the office as an advantage. That's the draw of being an incumbent. Flying around in Air Force One and Marine One. RIding around in The Beast with the long caravan of security. Hearing Hail to the Chief played as he walks into the room. Yeah I know they don't do that during a debate itself but Biden needs to get out there showing that he's the President. He needs to exude the power of the office and show his competence.

Speaking of Vierling: Good morning ... ... days until pitchers and catchers report.

The Tigers started nine different players at third base last year. I did a little Excel thing and found that these are all the teams since 1956, the earliest season Fangraphs has data for, that started nine or more guys at third base: Team 3B Starters 2022 CIN 11 1958 CLE 11 2022 SFG 10 2022 LAA 10 2013 NYY 10 1959 CLE 10 1956 BAL 10 2023 DET 9 2022 MIA 9 2022 ARI 9 2021 PIT 9 2021 CIN 9 2018 NYM 9 2017 SFG 9 2015 ATL 9 2014 ARI 9 2006 LAD 9 2003 TBD 9 1997 CIN 9 1969 CLE 9 That's 20 out of 1,766 teams, or a little more than one percent. Eight of those twenty teams have done so since 2021 alone. Starting more guys at third base is a bona fide trend. This chart shows the average number of starting third baseman per team by season since 1956: Fun fact: Only fourteen teams started only one guy at third the entire year. The 1995 Tigers were one of them. Without looking it up, do you remember who?

Preach. Stop worrying about uglifying the next batch of spring training hats and get to work on recalibrating the baseball to where home runs and pitching injuries are reduced.

What they need to do is expand rosters to maybe 28 players (keeping the pitcher limit at 13.

Biden: "Donald, it's hard to set up a debate when your time is mostly spent in a courtroom. What are you charged with? Lying about sexual assault against a woman? Threatening a state official to overturn election results? Illegal use of funds to pay off a porn star? Attempting to overthrow the Constitution of the United States through violence? Donnie Boy, I think the debate is over already. You're a loser." That should set off the fireworks.

I don't normally watch music award shows as I'm not into pop music but last night was awesome. To see both Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman get put back onto the mainstage and get recognition was nice to see. And then to have BOTH Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan get nominated for Country Album of the Year made me so happy. It is nice to see that the great music these guys have been writing, along with Jason Isbell, is finally getting the mainstream recognition they deserve. There is so much bad music out there that gets spotlighted from the likes of Blake Shelton, Florida-Georgia Line, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, and all the other bro-country artists out there. So to see Jason, Tyler, and Zach all have their music nominated for Grammy awards and to know that fans are getting exposed to better music these days than they were just a few year ago is very refreshing.

Thanks a ton for that correction.

I believe House Republicans are SAYING the bipartisan bill is DOA because it's not the immigration reform that THEY want. But you might be right... If the Senate passes a separate bill covering ALL of the defensive help they want to offer (Israel/ Taiwan/ Ukraine/ misc) and then runs the immigration bipartisan agreement from the Senate ONLY, as a separate bill... That might put the House on the spot: A) If they refuse to bring the defense portion to the floor they're showing their anti-Ukraine Pro-Trump hand publicly. B) If they table the immigration portion because it's "too close to the election", they're boot-licking Trump and NOT working to solve America's problems. B) If they run their OWN version of an immigration bill in the version that they keep SAYING they want passed; which would then go to House-Senate committee to resolve differences and then if it passes both chambers and sent to Biden for signature... then they are working for America and not Trump. In effect... calling their bluff. On Israel. On Ukraine. On Taiwan. And on immigration. Which I think is your intent here...

I'd love to see all of these bills as standalone bills, and honestly they probably would all pass if they were standalone bills. But the Speaker of the House holds discretion over what bills are brought up for consideration in that body, and outside of maybe Israel funding, they wouldn't see the light of day in that body. That's part of how they got grouped together in the first place: the compromise was supposed to be Ukraine Funding for Border Security. The House reneged on their part.

Vildor might have caught it had he not been shoved with two hands by Aiyuk who was clearly not making a play on the ball

Every year I make a trade deadline thread and every year it is a huge disappointment. So no trade thread this year and we probably land Luka, Hali, and Booker.

That's because he is mostly an OF'er and the other guys were mostly IF'ers. Hinch didn't realize he needed to start his 4th OF'er at 3B until several IF'ers proved that they weren't very good in the IF. At least at 3B...

Never been diagnosed, but watching Community back in the day and the heavy implications the Abed character had this and me seeing a lot of myself in that character made me think...

Yes, a consistent pass rush was a huge problem. So was containment, Purdy had a few huge runs. And adding to the luck, don't forget the punt the Lions weren't able to down at the one yard line. That play was overlooked in the 49'er ability to comeback.

I'm 80. What's ogle???

No such thing. If our society wasn't so mathphobic, so many of its ills the last decade or so wouldn't exist.

Law kept JHM off the list because he hates the Tigers

yeah I think the gaffes are already baked into it. He's always been this way, maybe it's his stutter as much as any other cognitive issues.

Boom

They need to add a round of answering basic questions on government and the constitution. Use some of the citizenship test questions, then spice it up a bit. The candidate giving the wrong answers gets slimed. That might make the whole thing worth watching.

A team in our position, last year especially, needs to give someone enough latitude to learn and get better at a position to see whether they can become a more permanent option there. That’s going to be a matter of weeks, not days. There’s not enough roster depth and 40-man flexibility to put a guy out there, figure he can’t do it after three or four games, then say “you’re done, next up!”, all season long. Nobody has a couple dozen different guys in their system to be able to option them up and down during a season trying to find The One. An organization has maybe half a dozen guys tops they could do that with at any position, not counting guys on big league contracts they play out of position there, and when you hamstring yourself at third base like we did when we let Candelario walk, you have to give the best of a bad lot time to figure out whether they can actually keep the job. In Maton’s case, he apparently had enough tantalizing moments to make the Tigers think yeah, maybe he can do it, but those were interspersed among the many more moments they looked at him and went, yikes. By end of July it was like yeah, this ain’t gonna work, and we didn’t see him there much after that.

I think debating is grossly over rated and it's time competent managers push back against the idea that it's even an important skill. If I were Biden, my message would be "Talk is cheap and no-one makes it cheaper than my opponent. If there is anything America need less of it's grandstanding on podiums. It's time to judge people on what they have done, not what they talk about doing and fail to do. Here is my record. You can see my opponent's in the court records. Those are all the debating points I'm interested in making."

The other thing Biden needs to do, is... Immediately after Nikki Haley bows out of the race, is to call her and offer her a position in his new administration (assuming he wins November). Back to the U.N, or whatever, if she wants it. He can campaign on that. "Trump, I'm adding some of your favorite people to my next Administration. Starting with Nikki Haley, who wants to get back to the U.N. I'm adding her to my team. I am also placing in charge of Women's Rights in America, Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll, names you should be intimately familiar with. All your best friends are now with me." That should also get the "ball rolling" so to speak. Mostly, Trump going apoplectic.

Bass player is the key. All bets off.

Barnes is playing well and much better than advertised. But he also had the benefit of playing behind OG and Siakam. Since those trades Barnes shooting has fallen off a cliff. He shot 27% from three in January. Maybe a slump but it has to hurt now he is the main focus of opposing defense just like Cade is. In what is basically his second year, Cade is scoring 22.4 PPG, 7.5 APG, 4 RPG and shooting 34% from three while getting to the line at an improved rate. TO's are down under 4 at 3.7 but has shown great improvement as the season has gone on with TO's, only averaging 2.9 in December. All this while basically facing a constant double team. He certainly has things to work on. Defense needs to improve quite a bit, but again, he was above average as a rookie. So I wonder if this is a coaching thing. Love to see the 3PT% north of 36%. Keeping cutting the TO's down. Be more assertive especially in crunch time. I would love to see him get out and run more, especially since Ivey, Duren, and Thompson are all athletic and run well for their positions. I think he is on pace for basically a second year guy. He takes a lot of crap because the team doesnt win. But so did SGA.

To me, What the Crumbley parents didn't understand is that the second you have a child, you become secondary in your life. It's all about them. Seems they didn't want to cramp their style. I didn't feel sorry for the shooter, but I kind of do now. I mean, he deserves jail time, but I feel like he was more of a nuisance for the parents than actually the most important person in their world. Selfish people aren't typically good parents.

Another documentary worth checking out, Chuck Leavell, The Tree Man. probably the best rock pianist around. Played with the Allman Brothers in their prime, toured with the Stones and served as their musical director, founded Sea Level, not to mention recorded and toured with Clapton, John Mayer, Govmt Mule,among others. He's also a tree farmer in Georgia and co founder of the Mother Nature Network.

But also... These extensions would take effect in 2025, not 2024. So the Lions have two years to do some cap management to be able to manage the extensions to our best players...

This outcome was probably expected on their part, and probably will have some mild benefit for Biden in the sense that it will give him something to blunt some of the attacks on the issue IMO. (IE. We supported this bill that even the Border Patrol Union supported, but they arent interested in fixing the border) This whole exercise has been very enlightening though. On a number of levels. The age of McConnell is coming to an end, the inmates now run the asylum

Well, he swings and misses.

No Wings game until Saturday?! C'mon, what a momentum killer. 2 week gap between NFL games, March Madness a month away, no spring training for baseball quite yet. This would have been a great week to fill the void with a bunch of NHL games.

Cossa now has a higher save percentage than Wallstedt in the AHL!

Me noting who celebrates this move for when they say the Tigers shouldn't have cut Maton after he takes off for another team, a la Candelario.

The second half, San Fran got lucky, very, very lucky.

I'm going to make an odd statement here... And it's sort of directed at ewsieg... But I want to make a very specific point, see if you can spot it: If Trump were to, somehow... win the DEMOCRATIC nomination for President (Biden: "I'm tired. I'm going home.") And Nikki Haley then gains the Republican nominee for President. Then I am voting for Nikki Haley. I don't care what her platform is. Don't care if it's a conservative Republican platform. I vote for her. No. Hesitation. Whatsoever. Just my 2 cents.

It’s nice to know that I can come here and experience smart people saying intelligent things. This is the only place I really need to go to to learn more about the Tigers. This place is like a page for connoisseurs of the Studebaker Avanti. There aren’t a lot of us, but the people who are here really know their ****. I’m grateful that through all these years, Scott has still kept this place going in one way or another. Thank you, all of you.

By trading for him now, they will at least get a draft pick if he leaves. (He would obviously get a qualifying offer)