gehringer_2

I really hate that kind of crap. You almost wish as soon as he got on the ice, a wing had just taken his skates out from under him and sent him flying. AFAIAC, that's all guys like that should get in the NHL

I guess this was Pete just finding out about it.

yup. That comparison sounds easier to describe than it might actually be to do. 🤔

LOL - that reminds me that Carlos Guillen had been a shortstop but was a disaster at 1b - couldn't manage the footwork at all. Of course he was playing 1b mostly after he was already shot as a fielder anywhere. But that raises a more serious question, did Tango normalize for age comparing guys who changed positions? Or only compare data in single seasons? He may have the same name, but a SS that goes to 1st at age 35 is not the same fielder that played SS at 24. And nobody goes from 1st to SS so there's going to be a lack of reciprocity in a data set like that.

I don't there are many players who don't have at least some reluctance to leave their first team, esp when it's the team that drafted them and brought them all the way to the majors. The question is always how 'some reluctance' does or doesn't translate into actually being willing to take any less than the highest bidder's offer!

Sense, yes. But does that work in terms of getting to the right totals? I've always assumed -and I'm sure you will correct me if not () that the whole system is normalized so that a teams total WAR connects to their win differential. If you only make fieldling adjustment positive, would the system then need to be normalized somewhere else to come out right?

IDK, I'm not that good an observer, He does still seem to spend a fair amount of time sort of in between deciding what he's supposed to defend, but OTOH, I have seen him do nice job bodying up a guy at least a couple times recently which I thought was a good sign. Maybe he's taking some lessons from Stew.

like many of the 2nd Tuesday's in November.

but when only 45% of the people vote, 33% might still et you pretty close to a majority of an election.

I don't know his personal story, maybe he'd just spent too much time with the grandchildren and was in 4 yr old overload? 🙃

to be fair, the use of 'my friend' in a construction like that is an old English (and Spanish for that matter) trope that doesn't necessarily imply any actual relationship - cf the tag line of the "World's most interesting Man" (Dos Equis) "Stay thirsty. my friend." - a statement to a general audience. OTOH, the fawining "steadfast", "you deserve" is another matter. 🙄

I've certainly never heard Boras be that incoherent.

Only 6 assists. Slacker....

Stat of the day: 8 of the last 15 AL CY's have been won by either current or former Tiger pitchers.

I think what seems weak to me, is that it is easy enough to define an average, or alternately a replacement level (the difference is just a matter of picking a baseline) hitter because fundamentally every player is the is in the same situation when he steps in the batter's and every PA by every player has the same potential to influence the game in the same ways. But this isn't true on the defensive side, so I guess I might argue that there really isn't such thing a replacement level defensive player *in general* as there is for hitters, there is only replacement level defense at a given position. When your 1st baseman goes out on the field, he does not have the potential to influence the game the same way SS does no matter what he does. So there is fundamental difference to conceptualizing a replacement hitter vs a replacement defender. That's what produces the strangeness for me. And maybe the other aspect is as you note, the positional adjustment are correct (assumedly -) for looking a players total contribution value. But adding WAR totals is also a way to look at teams, and again, I think there is an oddness there which comes back to my point that you can't play nine SSs in the field. The win contribution to the team makes more sense to me in terms of the total differential value from replacement taken position by position. Now maybe that all comes out in wash as a matter of non-linearly independent sets/redundant differentials, but if so the way it works still seems intuitively awkward for defense.

I think a lot of guys who wash out early in a career probably do it because of unhealed/unfixable physical deficits that don't get talked about a lot because it's just accepted that's the way it is. It's not like they forget how to do the things that got them to the big leagues, but wear and tear (or worse) happen to where they just can't get back to where they were.

guess the docs didn't manage to fix him

well, it's not like Harris has made a secret of the things he says he look for in a player, so it's not that much of jump to say a certain guy fits the profile he professes to prefer more than another guy. But issue is that all that idealized preference stuff has a tendency to get pushed to the side when faced with what you actually need vs who you can actually get. Or it's 50/50 at best. Gleyber is the kind of hitter Harris says he likes, though he did not have any rep as a good fielder (another supposed Harris priority) when he signed him.

as noted, FLA and Tx among MLB states have no IT. So that's an edge for them, but among the rest that do, MI at a flat 4.25% is one of the better ones for high earners. Funny thing is that business taxes in MI used to be higher than a lot places, and when the GOP was in power in the ~90s or so a lot of taxes got cut. Of course, I'm also old enough to remember when we had good schools and good roads in MI. We have neither now. I'm just guessing there might be a connection.

but it will be the obvious explanation when they come to describing how the American experiment ended.

I'm generally not a huge fan of CS Lewis, but I remember in one of his novels he very aptly describes the person who has every understanding and opportunity to save himself but is just so habituated in his mind set, that even if he takes no real joy in his current state, he can't - wont' move himself out of it. (in Lewis's case of course he's talking religion, but the personality description fits a wider spectrum)

yeah - you don't want to get the perfect fit for 4 yrs ago.

excellent point. It could be a Pyrrhic victory for the state.

it's the paradox of QBs. For most athletes, physical ability is the bottom line. NFL QB is one where the mental part of the game is just as important, and you can't see it on field like you can a great throw or scramble for a 1st. It only shows up in the score at the end. Goff has plenty of arm and excellent accuracy, but otherwise he is not an exciting athlete to watch, so he just has be satisfied with winning.

prop taxes are high in MI, but sales and income taxes are moderate, so overall MI is not a high tax state, but property taxes are a bitch. That said, there are safety valves for lower income people and retirees that have been in their houses for a long time to help prevent them getting taxed out of their homes. As long as you are in the same home, your prop taxes can't increase faster the lesser of 5% or the inflation rate, regardless of assessments, and there are other circuit breakers for lower income homeowners. If somebody bought my house today, they'd pay ~40 more in prop taxes than I do now as we have been here a longggggg time and assessments in A^2 have risen faster than inflation. None of which is relevant to ballplayers -🙄- but that's the context.