gehringer_2

25 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Actually...

She looks like to me that she is channeling Jim Carrey in The Mask.

Melania Mask?

Madame Mask?

 

 

 

LOL - I could place what it reminded me of, but you nailed it!

We can be frustrated with the hitting in general but the pitching lost this one.

3 minutes ago, buddha said:

the problem with a trade now is that you dealt away a lottery pick for justin faulk.  so you dont have the first to trade anymore and i dont know how comfortable i am with dealing another first rounder unless youre getting a star back.

we can rewind to hongbit's argument (and max bultman's argument) about quinn hughes.  should he have given up edvinsson for hughes?  i didnt think so at the time and i still have reservations about it.

that said, they need 5x5 offense and hughes/seider would bring that.

the problem is that i dont think it would be enough because the rest of the team would still suck.  as weve seen.  and more than that, the STARS of the team have sucked.  THAT'S the real reason theyve tanked in march/april the last two seasons.  larkin and raymond havent been good enough.  

and the other reason being yzerman hasnt signed enough good secondary players to help them.  debrincat, yes.  but debrincat fell into his lap.  he could have re-signed gosthisbhere but didnt.  he could have kept walman.  traded for guentzel.  done SOMETHING other than sign quite marginal players.

they signed a 60 year old jvr to PLAY ON THE FIRST LINE!  only finnie's early season hot streak bailed them out there.  and finnie has been bad for most of the second half of the season.

 

yup. The year before COVID I looked at this team with Betuzzi and Larkin and thought - 'They are only a couple of Dmen away from being competitive", and every year since then, there has been this illusion that they are not that far away. So initially the D was terrible and it's improved a lot, then they got an at least decent goalie, but here we are several years later and we find ourselves down to a mere 3 bona fide offensive players. The illusion is gone, they are not close. The front lines have decayed as fast or faster than Seider, Edvinsson and Faulk have built up the D.

Tork deserved to be hit after missing that center cut fastball on a 2-0

So I need to revise what I said the other day about this team likely having trouble with run prevention on 3 out of 5 days. 

I was two days short.

Pretty funny actually.

Not a bad AB by McKinstry - just didn't hit it far enough or low enough

Just now, monkeytargets39 said:

Good job Riley.  😑

doesn't know the K zone and can't barrel the ball. Any other issues?

Keith got some serious EV on that (105). Nice to see.

17  AB, 1H, 1BB,  2K

Well, they aren't striking out a lot....

1 hour ago, buddha said:

we all said the same thing about asp and danielson and they both kind of sucked at the nhl level.

i'm down on stevie right now but i'm not sure bringing up the rookies would have made a positive difference this year.

I'll grant Cossa has been inconsistent, but he was simply outstanding for a long stretch in GR, there is some kind of talent there. Maybe playing 2nd string would have been exactly how to break him in successfully. But we'll never know.

11 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

 

That's a laugh. I'd take any Chicago Priest in a test of wills with Trump.

39 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

I didn't save it but a guy on Twitter, who claims to be an oil expert, claims the shortage by the blockage of the Straight of Hormuz hasnt even hit American refineries yet. And when it does, oil won't only be double in price but also unavailable. A serious shortage. My unanswered question is... According to Trump, we don't need any oil from there. And if that was true, why did the price spike? And then I remember Trump is a pathological liar...and there's my answer. 

ex-refinery guy here. The picture is actually very complex, many interdependencies. Each refinery is pretty much set up to run optimally on one type or mix (which may or may not also mean one or one set of sources) of crude oil. The flexibility of a given refinery to do something else varies with its particular equipment but profitability (ie prices go up) will almost always suffer, at least short term, if they are forced to switch crude slates. In the US, most midwestern refineries run Canadian crude or oil that comes by pipeline from the gulf. East coast refineries import more, West cost refineries source some local (CA is a big producer but nowhere near CA's consumption), a lot of Alaskan, some ME. Refiner's generally hike their prices the instant world oil prices go up, though in reality they have several days (not months) supply already on hand and any oil at sea may already be paid for, though that varies also, some tankers do arrive with the oil un-purchased and the deal is cut on arrival.

I'm few years out of the biz now so I don't have any inside sources any more, but I would estimate that in the US, total imports from non North American sources are low enough that given the fall in demand that the increase in prices will produce, I doubt we will see outright US shortages, but don't ask me to bet on that, and there will likely be some local dislocations.

The situation in Europe and in particular Asia is much different. They know their vulnerability to supply upsets so in general Asian refiners keep a LOT more crude inventory (month+) on hand, which is the only reason why you haven't had Asian nations (i.e. China)  making more noise about retaliation against the US (trade etc) if this doesn't end soon.

I can't see them giving Jones much more rope but other than that: Parker and Javy aren't actually doing too badly, Torkelson's last three games were good, Yesterday it was Keith, Torres and Dingler that went 1-12 and those are the guys who had been playing well so far. Green is scuffling but you know he going to get more room to straighten up than anyone else on the team.

Just now, Betrayer said:

I suppose the doctors know best, but it seems silly for him to play at all. He's not eligible for awards no matter what at this point and if he doesn't play in the regular season that's another week and a half off before the playoffs start. He can work his way into shape in the first round.

Stew on the other hand hasn't played in forever and isn't dealing with an organ injury - I'd like to see him get a game in.

If the docs say there is no risk, then starting now and giving him the longer ramp up to playing full game minutes seems like a fair strategy - assuming they do limit his minutes. The paradox with Cade is that he's so much an end of game player you wonder what you'll get playing him 15 min. 🤔

1 hour ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

What a great negotiator 

whether we agree or not, I'm sure Iran's position is that a cease-fire means Israel stops shooting at their clients and that surely hasn't happened either.

1 hour ago, Zakk_Wylde said:

I'm hoping somebody can help me with this question.  Can anybody here tell me what the only thing that Fieger Law does is?  I might have heard it mentioned once or twice while watching a Tiger game this year but I can't remember.  Perhaps they will mention it on tonights game?

Use auto-tune?

16 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

This is just my opinion...

But if we had had Sebastian Cossa as 2nd goalie behind Gibson all year, instead of Talbot...

We'd be in the playoffs right now.

I also believe Gibson would have played less the past month or so... in which McLellan has simply worn him down by overplaying him (Talbot started ONCE in March...), and BOTH: Gibson would be sharper in the games he has played... and Cossa would have won a couple games that Gibson got blown out in...

I think he would have been worth 5 more outright wins for the Wings.

IMO.

I think this is a good take. Talbot was pretty useless this season and we knew from the beginning that a lot of the team's early success was Gibson and the temptation would be there to burn him out. I just don't get this reluctance to see what a guy can do, what the worst that can happen - he shows he's not ready? It's not like you'd be sitting prime career D. Hasek to look at him,  he would be stepping in for just barely there Talbot. 

Intel, left for dead 8 mo  ago at $19, just hit $58

5 hours ago, oblong said:

eh, Tim already had 2 WS championships and they won the year before in '67 so he could get over it. 🙂

 

Right. The thing with McCarver is that he was never gracious enough to admit the Tigers were also a pretty damn good team that year. Even Tom Izzo will admit when he plays a good opponent! 😉

20 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Yes, If Greene, Torkelson and Carpenter hit even at their normal levels, it will solve a lot of problems

I was really hoping we'd see a Riley that has moved away from the extreme swing but I'm not seeing it. I see Riley as a guy who can either be a very good 20 HR hitter or a pretty useless 35 HR hitter and he seems determined to be the later. He's just not built to hit homeruns without the long swing. His frame can't generate the power that a big guy like Judge or Cabrera, or even a more compact but powerfully built guy like Trout can without having to over commit on his swing. And the over-commit is going to leave him a poor OBP hitter if he won't change it. Be a good hitter and let the HRs come on the good barrels and he'd be fine (IOW if he had just continued to let his '24 approach improve)

12 minutes ago, NorthWoods said:

He doesn't come off to me as intense as Gibby.  I knew Gibby a bit at MSU and he was INTENSE.   Clark seems to be more of keep things loose but "let's go win" guy.   I've followed him on twitter and watched/listened to his workouts that he posts.  Under the flash there's a pretty solid, intelligent, high effort person.  It just strikes me that he's the kind of leader this team needs.  

The spotlight falls on him, doesn't faze him and the others fall in line and follow him....I'm thinking we may see sooner than later.

Correct. Max has some personality, but I don't see him as the type to come into a clubhouse the tear into it and a HOF manager the way Gibson did in LA at all. Max is more what I'd call a "Peacock" on a Myers-Briggs scale. Outgoing, likes to be seen. Gibby was a piranha.

1 hour ago, LongLiveMaroth said:

Toledo Mud Hens

Kudos for the return of the MiLB reports!

21 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

How is a fan to know better about these things than Hinch?  

No arg there. That was sort of my point about why good managers are rare and valuable. It's easy to have a long resume (say like Trammel) and get a managing gig and just try to always go by the numbers or by a 'system' (like his reliever rotation idea), but a good manager does have to have sort of 6th sense about his team and players that goes beyond the data. I didn't mean to imply Hinch wasn't as good as anyone at it, just making the point that that is always the manager's biggest challenge - and where his decisions can have the most impact, especially in such a data driven environment where it's always easy to justify "I was just following the numbers"

2 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

 

Not that it needs re-iterating but... ETTD.