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I'm sorry, but treating the current breakdown in American political culture and the violent undertones of it as being completely symmetrical is a bunch of hooey. There is one party that is led by a leader that sicced a mob on the capitol, there is one party that is led by a leader that blanket pardoned all of the people involved, has legitimized groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, etc. I understand the tendency to want to see things from both sides and all.... but on this particular subject, it's wildly asymmetrical and oughtta be treated as such. And the fact that we treat "both sides" as if they are "the same" on this only emboldens more bad behavior.

Wow

First of all the White House should have no control over the WCA Dinner. This event is sponsored by the White House Correspondence Association. The President is a guest (as are all other extemporizes hangers on who attend these function. (and paid the price to attend). It is up to the White House and Secret Service to provide security for the President (and I assume his party). Having spent a bit of time around these huge convention type hotels, it's impossible to shut them down completely for one event. That said the fact the guy didn't get past the main checkpoint proves that security worked Saturday night despite MAGA talking points. Everything else goes back to my main believes. The occupant of the White House is merely that. While he is the President and Supreme Commander, when it comes to his/her living quarters he/she should have no more rights than your average renter. Tearing down parts of buildings and building whatever they want without permission should be grounds for immediate eviction and restitution. Trump should be kicked to the street and made to finance all unauthorized repairs immediately. Move him and his bride to the same barraks his flunkies are staying in and start charging rent. Or he can go back to Florida and build his big ugly ballroom

Maxx Crosby 2.0 and I was the one accused of being Brad’s burner account.

I disagree that ridiculing the Trump cabal as a bunch of weirdos isn't downplaying the threat, and the same goes for ridiculing them as stupid and incompetent. They are all those things, yes it's true, but to focus on the stupidity and incompetence and weirdness takes the pressure off their evil and, as importantly, leads us to forget that their hands are on the levers of more lethal power than any other ruling body in the history of the world. This thinking leads us into the false sense of security that they are too stupid and incompetent to control the world for even a second, and then we assume it will be their stupidity and incompetence that will bring them down, and so all we have to do is play the waiting game, which most D-leaning people believe will be this November. There is a valid historical parallel because the Nazis seemed so weird when they themselves started out, so nobody took them seriously, until all of a sudden, everyone had to. I'm sure practically everyone agrees that Trump aspires to absolute power, but if you think he wouldn't want to wield it in the way Hitler did, with the power of life and death over an entire population, then you haven't been paying attention to the effusive praise Trump unabashedly heaps on Kim Jong Un for the way he has an entire nation at his beck and call, maintained through his own Hitlerian tactics. I am all for making fun of this regime's stupidity and incompetence and weirdness. It's a great release valve during arguably the most stressful and uncertain time of our lives. What I am not for at all is sitting back and believing it is their very stupidity and incompetence and weirdness that must inevitably bring them down all on their own, and that we need do nothing more than wait them out.

Something good came out of Saturday Night

Cats and dogs praying together, (or something like that). Seriously, it seems very Christ like)

It's crazy that any of this even has to be said.... but when you have a media and political ecosystem built around treating this guy as if he's a normal President and not an aging 80 year old narcissist who is increasingly losing his fastball, this is what you get.

A coup[le more random thoughts from last night.. November 17, 1973. Richard Nixon "I'm not a crook" April 26, 2026. Donald Trump. "I'm not a rapist" "I am not a pedophile" Look how far we've come in 53 years

2026 Post-Draft Depth Chart I put a line ( | ) where it felt like a general "no sweat training camp" ended. Everyone to the right is likely fighting for a job, though some (like Rakestraw and Frazier) may have an inside track relative to others, and certainly a 7th round (and maybe even a 6th round) rookie can easily fall to the right of that line with a bad camp. Underline is a veteran addition, bold is a draft pick, italics is a UDFA signing. QB (2/3): Jared Goff, Teddy Bridgewater | Luke Altmyer RB (3/6): Jahmyr Gibbs, Isiah Pacheco, Sione Vaki | Jacob Saylors, Jabari Smalls, Kye Robichaux WR (5/9): Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, Isaac TeSlaa, Greg Dortch, Kendrick Law | Dominic Lovett, Tom Kennedy, Jackson Meeks, Malik Cunningham TE (2/6): Sam LaPorta, Brock Wright | Tyler Conklin, Zach Horton, Thomas Gordon, Miles Kitselman OT (3/5): Penei Sewell, Blake Miller, Larry Borom | Giovanni Manu, Devin Cochran IOL (4/11): Tate Ratledge, Cade Mays, Christian Mahogony, Juice Scruggs | Ben Bartch, Miles Frazier, Michael Niese, Colby Sorsdal, Seth McLaughlin, Mason Miller, Melvin Priestly EDGE (3/8): Aidan Hutchinson, Derrick Moore, DJ Wonnum | Payton Turner, Ahmad Hassanein, Tyler Lacy, Eric O'Neill, Anthony Lucas IDL (5/9): Alim McNeill, Tyleik Williams, Levi Onwuzurike, Skyler Gill-Howard, Tyre West | Mekhi Wingo, Myles Adams, Chris Smith, Aidan Keanaaina LB (4/7): Jack Campbell, Derrick Barnes, Malcolm Rodriguez, Jimmy Rolder | Damone Clark, Trevor Nowaske, Erick Hunter CB (5/9): DJ Reed, Terrion Arnold, Roger McCreary, Rock Ya-Sin, Keith Abney | Ennis Rakestraw, Khalil Dorsey, Nick Whiteside, De'Shawn Rucker DB (3/9): Kerby Joseph, Christian Izien, Avonte Maddox, [Brian Branch-PUP] | Chuck Clark, Loren Strickland, Dan Jackson, Thomas Harper, Aamaris Brown ST (3/3): Jack Fox, Jake Bates, Hogan Hatten Initial look with 85/90 spots filled says there's a lot of turnover, but not a lot of glaring holes. It wouldn't hurt to have more security in the defensive backfield, but Kerby is such an unknown to us. If he's 100% it's probably fine until Branch gets back. If he's not, that looks like a hole. Additional linebacker depth wouldn't hurt either, since the Lions tend to use linebackers on special teams quite a bit. The camp battles will mostly come in the trenches and the defensive backfield. Currently 42 spots are already filled by my rough estimation, leaving 11 spots for 48 guys.

Probably shouldn't let Iran know the entire administration will be in the same room within the next 30 days.

I imagine you’ll see a lot more Javy in CF once McKinstry is back.

too high: kobe, allen iverson, david robinson, and probably isiah. too low: kareem, wilt, tim duncan, not to mention bill walton. criteria would matter. in no universe is allen iverson better than oscar robertson, but their criteria may include "social influence" or something. if that's the case, dont you rank magic/bird either just below jordan or just above him? those two saved basketball.

Yeah but you have to put Moore on an NFL strength and conditioning program. 😉 In all seriousness, it is a bit outlandish to be putting Maxx Crosby expectations on Moore. Crosby outperformed his draft slot partly because he was physically and technically underdeveloped as a college player. Also, he had at least one known disciplinary issue that resulted in him being suspended for the season opener in 2018. How much of all of this was related to his substance abuse issues? How much value did the Raiders get buying low on him? Hard to tell. Moore was good enough to get recruited to Michigan and to play every game as a freshman. He apparently thought he was not quite good enough to come out as a junior. But playing 50+ games at Michigan says you have a high floor, even if it leaves very few secrets or hope for untapped potential.

raymond is young and prolific, but he's small and now has been injured late in the year multiple times. he's going to carry a lot of value in the league because of his production and his contract, so if you want to pull back a STAR, i think he'd be likely to be in the conversation. what kind of team do you want to be? do you want to be heavy and physical? or small and speedy? i dont think the wings have a plan. or if they do, it hasnt been executed very well, because now theyre not physical, not especially speedy, and not all that skilled. so what are you?

Why are we setting our expectations so low? I expect him to turn into Reggie White.

1000%. Tired of having to pretend that the behavior observed out of both sides of the political spectrum with my own eyes and ears are the same. It just isn't.

They sure do. But then, the Nazis sounded like a bunch of weirdos for their first ten years, too.

He gets his ballroom and he’ll never have to go out and sully himself by having to be around the Great Unwashed ever again. Real populist Man of the People ****.

Maybe Dana Bash can ask Senator Scott to "tone down the rhetoric"

It doesn’t take any evil genius to fake an assassination. All they have to do is follow the playbook given them by their benefactors. It also doesn’t take any level of evil genius to use stupid **** like this to detract from the really awful **** they do that hurts real people but doesn’t get reported on properly because everyone is focused on stupid **** like this.

I seem to remember this happened last year, too, where our wOBA fell well short of our xwOBA. So I did a little digging and found something that kind of startled me. xwOBA—the expected wOBA a player or team should achieve given quality of contact factors such as exit velo and launch angle—has been around as a stat since 2015, so I went to FanGraphs and downloaded the full season data by team since then—eleven seasons, 30 teams each season, 330 data points—and compared their xwOBAs to their actual wOBAs across time. I created a separate column subtracting expected from actual to see whether the team's wOBA was under their xwOBA, or over it, and counted how many of the eleven seasons each team either underachieved their xwOBA, or else overacheieved it. Here are the results, ranked by worst average underachievement for the past 11 years. Spoiler alert: the Tigers are historically the very worst at overachieving their xwOBA with a better wOBA: Team Under Over Ave Diff MaxUnder MaxOver DET 10 1 -.0070 -.015 .000 OAK 9 1 -.0069 -.013 .006 KCR 9 2 -.0069 -.015 .005 SEA 9 2 -.0054 -.010 .005 PIT 8 3 -.0054 -.019 .006 LAA 10 1 -.0052 -.011 .004 STL 8 3 -.0046 -.014 .005 ATL 8 3 -.0034 -.012 .009 NYY 6 5 -.0034 -.020 .009 TEX 6 5 -.0024 -.016 .006 MIA 6 5 -.0024 -.011 .008 CLE 5 6 -.0020 -.017 .005 LAD 8 3 -.0019 -.011 .004 SFG 8 3 -.0019 -.011 .007 WSN 7 4 -.0015 -.013 .006 SDP 6 5 -.0014 -.016 .008 TOR 7 4 -.0011 -.007 .010 NYM 5 6 -.0008 -.013 .015 MIN 5 6 -.0008 -.017 .009 BAL 5 6 .0007 -.007 .019 CHW 4 7 .0009 -.017 .010 CHC 3 8 .0012 -.010 .009 PHI 4 7 .0012 -.006 .007 MIL 4 7 .0030 -.017 .014 ARI 2 9 .0030 -.009 .009 HOU 6 5 .0037 -.004 .016 CIN 2 9 .0043 -.017 .012 TBR 2 9 .0050 -.006 .013 BOS 3 8 .0070 -.001 .022 COL 0 11 .0139 .001 .027 ATH 0 1 .0144 .014 .014 (Read this table as: DET underachieved their xwOBA ten of eleven seasons and overachieved in one; the average difference for DET is -.007, or .007 lower wOBA than xwOBA; the maximum underachievement for DET was minus .015, and the maximum overachievement was .000.) In ten of eleven years, The Tigers' wOBA underachieved their xwOBA, and suffered the highest average underachievement of any of the 30 franchises. Only one other team, the Angels, experienced 10 out of 11 underachievements, but no other team's maximum overachievement was so low that it rounds down to zero at three digits, which itself is only a hair from an eleventh underachievement. This consistent underachievement of wOBA versus xwOBA is not something we can pin on Harris, because this happened not only for Harris teams, but for Avila teams, and for the Dombrowski team in 2015 (which, to be fair, had the sole overachivement of the eleven Tiger squads measured). Given this, and also given how persistent underachievers like OAK and SEA and LAA tend to play in tough-to-hit ballaprks while consistent overachievers like COL and BOS and CIN play in easy-to-hit ballparks, I'm given to hypothesizing that the xwOBA stat itself may not have sufficiently ironed ballpark factors out of the reported number.

Keep it up! It’s as if Lawler learned nothing with that angry town hall he had recently. I mean, he knows, but this is the party with the fealty to one man with a 67% disapproval rating. Hopefully it will be their downfall.

Then Chris Ilitch will use the money to finance a new show that will be featured at the Fox Theatre, called Lately My Friends, which will be about Chris, several City of Detroit officials, and several from the State, all of whom end up at a condo in The District Detroit™ with hilarious consequences.

Old enough to remember when they hounded Biden for not going out in public enough...

Last weekend I did around 20 hours of yard work over the course of 3 days. This past weekend I did at least 11. I’m stiff. I’m sore. The satisfaction though is worth it.

Sounds like Julie K. Brown's life is in serious danger from the MAGAs and Russia-adjacent types like this guy Michael Tracey. 'P*ssy!' Michael Tracey and Jim Acosta Almost Fight

In a night of ups and downs, the thing I'll remember about this game more than anything was Bobby Scales' story about how he almost gave up baseball and why he didn't. Maybe he's told that story before, but I never heard it. It made me a little bit of a Bobby Scales' fan hearing him being as honest as he could and revealing a major point in his life. I've always looked at him as some generic guy with the Tigers' announcing crew that I wondered why the heck he was here. At least I remembered Rod Allen from the 1984 Tigers. It made him a lot more human at least to me.

I did and wish I had not. I don't have the stomach for those things.

Getting back to baseball, for the series in Atlanta, the starting pitching is Mize, then Skubal, and finally Framber.

I’ve noticed that Jonas hasn’t really tried to go head to head with Tadej this year. I don’t think he will ever beat Tadej again. I’m expecting Jonas to go for early retirement before too long. I’m not sure his heart is really in it anymore.

BTW, Tigers offense was second behind only the Dodgers in xwOBA entering today.

Toronto beats Cleveland to extend that series to at least a 6 game series.

Seabold to the IL

@oblong Map of the Moon If Its “Seas” Were Really Seas

I'm not throwing in the towel on the Tigers at this point, I'm not accepting that we're fated to be a .500 team, and I'm loathe to accept that the Tigers bullpen is exactly what we will see the rest of the season or worse as we see now. It's April 25. We haven't even hit Sparky Day. I'm not about to throw Harris, Hinch, the coaches, and half the roster onto the fire just yet.