gehringer_2

I wouldn't make decisions based on the chance Jobe wins ROY. He has awesome potential, but hasn't yet shown the kind of in game consistent dominance that a Verlander or Skenes did before their call-ups and if you don't hit the ground already running full speed you won't win ROY.

The key to success in the future will be to ID guys early and tie them up before they know how good they are. i.e. Colt Keith type signings. Of course you need to be right. OTOH, you can make a couple of $20M/yr mistakes and still be ahead of making one $50M mistake.

Nice find to post. Fingerprinting based on the split paths - good tried and true detective concept. But still - a lot of work and ultimately getting physical IDs still appears to depend on being able to subpoena someone at the cash out end to get the real world ID. That may or not be possible in any given case. Of course if you have a crooked off-shore bank to work with, you may not need bitcoin anyway. 🤔 But also consider the reality of how police agencies actually work. Most crimes go unsolved not because they are unsolvable, but because the resources are not available to solve all crimes using available methods. Luigi Mangione would probably still be walking around if his target had been lower profile than Brian Thompson. If you commit a big enough Bitcoin crime, maybe TPTB make the kind of effort Meiklejohn did to find you. If you're smaller scale with your illicit activities, will you be worth the candle? I suppose it depends on how simple/automated Meiklejohn's methods can be/have been made.

Jobe did not look ready at the end of last season, if he picks up where he left off, he's still got some work to do.

IDK, Lalonde doesn't seem to have the key to him, or maybe he isn't right physically - I've thought more than once this season that his skating looked labored. And if his conditioning is bad, that's even worse.

Yeah - I don't think the wings were actually playing that much faster, they just had more time because the Sabres gave them more room than they usually get from other teams. The defensive breakdowns remain nuts. I don't remember which Sabre goal, Sabre player standing in front of the net, two Wing players were down low, but neither bothered to play the man in front of the net, he was just chilling unmolested and blocking the goalie's view for maybe 10 seconds with 10 feet of space to either side before the goal went in. WTF?

I'm putting it at 50/50 Maeda gets into the rotation at all. At 36 and relatively slight (for a pitcher), he'll probably try to train harder, rip something, and be done. Manning will probaby get some run if he's not traded, and Gipson-Long sometime before the end of the season unless he has a rehab set-back.

Gustafson seemed to have a little more jump tonight. I would like to see this team with any two players other than Motte and Petry.

We are probably due for some regression in the starting pitching - but at least there is plenty of depth. But with so many young hitters there is room for the offense to pickup the slack if the kids start putting more balls in the seats as they get stronger. Dark horse candidate for a comeback - Alex Lange.

He wasn't terrible in 78 PA agasint LHP in '23, 657 OPS but a 333 OBP. Last season he did pretty much nothing in only 32 AB. Considering how bad our RH hitters were I'm not sure why Hinch didn't give him a little more run to see what he could do. It's definitely an issue, if you only always play to the short term platoon advantage with a given hitter, then it does pretty much become a self-fulfilling situation that he's not going to get any better at handling same side pitchers, and sooner or later he's going to have to face one when it matters or at the least you will have to make a substitution you don't want to.

Everything Maeda throws is a change-up

Larkin - walk in the park for the winner.

Tarasenko - useless.

but not at 3rd. Oh well.

I was surprised, not as terrible as one might think. The nats got 5.2 WAR this season for the guys they got for Soto - two more are still cooking in the minors. Soto has averaged a little over 5 WAR per season over his career. Granted he tallied 7.9 this season as he hit 40+ HR for the 1st time, and if he keeps hitting 40+ he's likely to stay above the 5 WAR average for a while. On the other side, the Nats have $50M a year to invest in something - if they can do a good job of it.

Be still my beating heart!

at the time the claim was that once you discounted the deferrals the Tiger deal was just as good as what the Nats offered, but at that point everyone was pissed off so that was that.

In the end, it's not justice to hold Penny responsible for a tragedy not of his making. There has to be a better way of keeping Jordan Neely from acting out threats in a public space then having him run into Daniel Penny. Again, it goes back the fact that in every functional society, the expectation of order in public spaces is the norm and Americans are no different in sharing that expectation and demanding it be met.

In the end, you can only stay ahead with fewer $ if you have more brains, and eventually the dollars will take the brains away from you as well, so you need a management/scouting pipeline as well.

I don't know if this is more a WOW or a smh? The guy does all this meticulous planning before the fact and then doesn't ditch the gun and paperwork after the fact? Well, I suppose if the guy was wired right he probably wouldn't be murdering people.

what saves baseball is that as long as the playoffs allow in enough teams that that some med/small market teams have to get in, there is always a reasonable chance that the 88 win StL team will beat the 106 win NYC team and that will generally be enough to keep fans interested. Plus the divisional structure - the Central divisions in both leagues have only one really big market - Chicago - and it's split, so that guarantees the midwest a shot in a short series against the coast. But bias toward high salary teams in the playoffs is pretty clear.

the huge contracts will continue as long as the money in the big markets is available, the money is available as long as the media rights fees can keep increasing - i.e. the ecosystem doesn't collapse because viewers reach the point where they won't pay. As long as the big markets can afford to outbid places like Det, they will. A contract like Soto's - or the one Skubal will get if he stays healthy - is suicide for a team like the Tigers. Ilitch can talk a good game about being willing, but the $ are not there in this market when push comes to shove and the league isn't going to allow teams to operate at a loss. Doesn't matter if the owner has the money - the team still has to be solvent.

relevant to this story.... there was a piece in the Atlantic recently about police work - a long interview with a researcher who studies police manning and crime rate questions. One of the ancillary points that the story raises is that to an increasing degree, what the public is demanding is more *order* in public spaces, but the problem for law enforcement is that the things the public wants enforced are mostly not illegal - at least anymore (things like vagrancy etc), and if the police push in those areas, they get only get in trouble, are accused of harassment, etc. As a society we have not done a good job of recognizing that disconnect and figuring out what to do about it. We basically have a legal regime where we can't get what we want inside the system we have created. I think cases like Penny's are a direct result of this.

this is the thing. I can't see any of M's draft eligibles playing and I'm sure the same will be true with Bama. It's going to be two hollowed out shells of teams. Well, for the same reasons at least we know M will have it's starting QB....😂

Unless the sports media ecosystem (i.e, the money machine) totally collapses, Skubal is gone. The only question is bite the bullet and trade him while you can get a good return or take the performance and accept the comp pick as consolation.