gehringer_2

I don't know about McGonigle in particular, but I have to wonder if often scouts aren't too quick to dismiss guys at SS because they don't have 95mph. Total time from ground ball to 1st baseman's mitt is more than just throw velo and it's exactly the kind of thing that teams have the metrics to get a better handle on than they used to.

We know the kids probably throw too much, too hard and too many breaking balls too early - so by the time they get out of HS some of them already have geriatric arms. And we know guys throw harder a higher percentage of the time in each outing - all of which certainly contribute. But another effect I wonder about is whether back in the day, overwork in the minors just weeded out more guys that couldn't take the grind in the majors before they ever made it. Teams take much better care of their MiLB arms than they used to so maybe more guys get to majors before their first major injury?

Funny, but Jim Davis' publisher may have the last work on this one.

yeah - for every media technology from the soap box to the radio to the TV to the net, there are people whose presentation style is a good enough fit that the value of what they say doesn't correlate in any meaningful way to their success.

this is certainly true, but there is still a line of sorts between analysis and cheerleading and once you get to cheerleading, you lose journalistic credibility - for instance on the cable side, Fox and MSNBC are both over that line even if there is a difference of degree. I think in general liberals *want* WaPo and NYC to cross that line an *be* cheerleaders, I don't think that is a good idea in the long run,, but I'm probably pretty much the old man yelling at clouds on this.

I think this is the case. As much as coaches want to get scoring from more than the 1st line, the Wings case is sort of unique in that so many of the current pieces do NOT fit together interchangeably, even though you'd like them to.

Probably correct. All self-directed stuff, so still 'unserious' with respect to having any outward impact, or in particular positive impact, beyond himself. When he bought WaPo, I think there was a hope it was evidence of a philanthropic bent, but maybe it was really just for the media strokes. Sadly, little evidence there are going to be many Andrew Carnegie types among today's generation of dot.com billionaires. Maybe Gates excepted.

I'm somewhat of two minds about how to run a newspaper in the US today. As much as every voice in advocacy and help 'the cause', I can see the virtue in trying to move a paper like WaPo away from being known for it's editorial page positions back to more of a straight news focus -because that is the only way to ever recover credibility as a news source in such a political charged environment. The thing is it is not at all clear if that is any part of what Bezos is trying to do or not. Frankly it seems at this point in his life he's no longer particularly serious about anything.

wasn't nearly what I was looking for. No fundamental re-alignment. Blue's ambitions have been beaten down so far they consider one chamber in 2018 a big wave? One chamber in the off year is more like a ripple on the body politic.

Sure -there is always hope for a midterm landslide, but after 2018, my expectations are lower - maybe one Chamber. Not that that wouldn't help.

We have to face the reality that his supporters know what he is and just don't care because he serves their purpose of being against stuff they don't like. David Brooks, now a WaPo refugee at the Atlantic, wrote a piece about the fact that American is now a culture without standards of any kind. We don't care about right or wrong or abstract morality or idealizations of good and evil - everything is transactional. There are no norms that anyone cares about violating. And if Trump gives Trumpers what they want, they could care less what kind of Ogre he may be. The only thing that can put Trumpers off Trump is that they stop seeing him as on their side. which is not the same thing as him being good or evil at all. There is some potential for that happening over the Epstein stuff but probably nowhere near enough to make a significant political difference.

yeah - "Trump innocent" doesn't solve the conspiracy at all. It would be fine if Trump were guilty circa 2010 as long as he were rooting "them" out today. There is a segment that doesn't care about his personal status in the whole thing - that has never cared about his guilt or innocence individually - that's what the left has never figured out, and why their stridency about Trump himself falls flat as effective messaging (at least to that part of the MAGA side anyway...). What the conspiratorialists want is Trump blowing the cabal out of the water - that's what they have all been primed for for 8 yrs. For Trump to turn around and say "Cabal? What Cabal? I never even met 'em. Nevermind" will absolutely not cut it. But again the question is how big a piece of MAGA land is that segment dedicated to the proposition that Trump is the answer to blowing the cover on the great conspiracy. And even if the numbers may not be huge, how much of the energy of the movement do they carry? That is probably out of proportion to their numbers. Which is because they are the one most dedicated to the political argument as just being a veneer over a great struggle of good vs evil, and because of that they are the ones who are most willing to see all the rules trampled.

So if I have the timeline right, it was Trump's DOJ that initially prosecuted Maxwell, though her conviction did not come down until after Trump was out of the office. Then again, but the end of his 1st term Trumps seemed out of the loop on a lot of stuff....

Fat (pitches), dumb (bats) and stupid (play) is a helluva way to go through the baseball season son.