gehringer_2

I would suggest that immigrants from the old world fall into two categories once they come to the US. Ones that continue to be captured by their old lives and history, and those that want nothing more than to leave what they left behind behind. When a reporter goes to do a story like this it is guaranteed he is only going to see people from the 1st group, but politically an important question is what percentage of a given immigrant population is in either group. In the Arab Muslim community it would be interesting to look at what proportion actually attend at the local mosques vs the total population.

the question will be how big a cut from the current rights value Diamond wants vs what Ilitch will accept. With the team on an upswing the Tigers may not be in a mood to rebate much.

so if the court approves Diamond's move to void the Tiger's deal then the Tigers either: a)work a new deal with what's left of Diamond at a lower payout for the Tigers, b) send the rights back to MLB like the teams whose deals were up - if Diamond's offer is worth less than than MLBs, c) go independent if they think they can do better themselves. The complication for Detroit is that both the the Tigers and the Wings (and FTM the Pistons) need homes. If there are advantages to Ilitch to having both teams on the same carrier, that argues against the Tigers going back to MLB.

I've seen estimates that the Clinton increases were about 80B/yr. We can't actually compare the relative scale to Bush's rate increases because the economy went into recession and revenues actually fell at first. Today totally federal taxes as a % of GDP are lower today than under Clinton. They reached ~19% under Clinton, we are sitting somewhere around 16% today. Since the economy boomed under Clinton, you can't very well argue increasing the total take back to closer to 19% would tank the economy, and 3% of GDP today raises an additional raises $750B, so you'd cut the annual deficit growth about in half. Not sure how fast the Biden infrastructure spending will start rolling off the books, but that should reduce another big chunk a few years out. It's not the economics that are broken, just the politics. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

you may get the VR view - I'm willing to bet it will still come with commercials!

And really not sure if you can call it Clinton's doing, GHWB passed the tax increase that cost him the election but set Clinton up to achieve that balanced budget.

the GOP weakness in special elections is one incontrovertible fact that forces one to wonder if the polls are going to end up missing by a mile, or maybe it's just that GOP voters refuse to go to the polls more than once every 4 yrs. If that is true now, it certainly didn't used to be.

I think it's hard to learn to handle a breaking ball away period whether you are LH or RH. But maybe a difference is that RHHs who can't manage the breaking ball away are never going to get to (or stay long in) the majors at all, whereas a LHH who can't hit good LHP can still be plenty useful on a major league roster. The other thing that is funny about platoon splits is that the two best LHP in baseball this year both have pretty small platoon splits against. Skubal is only 85 OPS pts, Sale is less than that - about 50. But neither of them depend that much on horizontal break. Skubal is mostly fastball change, Sale throws a lot of 'sliders' but his slider is more like a 12-6 curve ball - slow and mostly vertical.

the social/economic cost also depends a lot on what it gets spent on. Spend money on good infrastructure and education, you aren't going to miss that that money was spent. Buy millionz of 80MM artillery shells to blow up somewhere (or maybe even worse, never blow up) or to add the 10th lane to a 9 lane highway, maybe not so much.

but if that was before the big changes he made in approach it may not be transferable. A hitter has some choice in how much he is willing to tailor his approach. A left hander may be able to give up coverage against RHP to hit LHP better, but is that necessarily his best strategy? If he believes (or knows) he's likely to be platooned anyway, then he should probably sell-out on a approach to hit RHP and if his splits get worse, so be it. to answer the initial question, last year Kerrys platoon split was about 180 OPS pits. This year it is off the charts (>400 OPS points) but it's on a tiny sample size (30PA) because Hinch hasn't let him face LHP. So egg, meet chicken.

I think a lot of it is just how much experience is available. Riley's father pitched to him left handed constantly as he was learning to play. For most lefties, they just aren't going to see enough LHP to hone their skill on the ball breaking away as much as right handers will get the chance to see RHP throw them breaking balls away. OTOH, right handers don't suffer all that much from not seeing a lot of left handers because most left handers can't throw them anything that breaks away from them.

so far he definitely does. The dilemma for a manager is winning now versus developing his players. If a manager has a reasonable platoon pair for a player there just isn't much incentive for him to embark on a 'learn on the fly' program with his player at the MLB level. If a left hand hitter comes up who has already shown a reasonably small platoon split like Riley or Keith, they may get the chance to stick as everyday players, but otherwise they are probably out of luck.

but how can you blame anyone in DC? People generally respond rationally to the incentives they face. I have highlighted the dishonesty of the GOP in particular but both parties absolutely demagogue on debt control strictly when it's the other party's priorities they want to see cut - so there is no honesty or good faith available in the debate, so no-one sees any profit in going there, and with a media environment where there are no voices of enough authority to hold the sides accountable across the whole body politic to where the game playing has political cost, there you are. again, in the real world, since the Dems want to spend program money, they actually have a higher level of consciousness about what the cost of debt service does to their ability to spend on their program priorities, so as practical matter, I think that is one of the reasons Dem admins have been more the more responsible in recent years.

two observations: -regardless of whether it's likely that proposals end up enacted, it's still useful to know in which directions a candidates aspirations lie. -many things that are too big a lift to institute in whole can be started in-part or pilot to find out what costs and logistics will be. ACA would never have been passed if RomneyCare in MA hadn't provided the small working model. Communication in a campaign takes many forms and a lot gets said for the sake of their symbolism or attitude value.

I don't know if he needs to make swing changes to do it or just pitch selection change, but Torks's biggest issue in my reading was that he was only doing damage on cookies - his hot zone just a tiny middle middle spec.

right now apparently Vest and Brieske are better choices in Hinch's view. 9th inning guys don't so much win jobs as move into them as managers lose confidence in the guy they've been using.

In the full write up in NYT Cohn defends the result as possibly the result if an influx of more conservative voters into FL - lured by DeSantis' positioning of FLA as the place to be happy if you are a reactionary. Some of the comments on the article see a silver lining if that's true in that if those people left places like MI MN and WI (typical states where snowbird retirees exile themselves to FLA) than those states are swinging bluer!

indeed - investigations and all kinds of noise. IIRC Christie aide(s?) was even convicted but in the end Christie was never indicted.

So when was the last time the PLA was in a live fire conflict with an enemy? IIRC the recent dust up with India was a sticks and clubs affair because they have some kind of weird dis-armament treaty at the border.

Meanwhile the same poll showed Harris increasing her lead nationally. The two things are contradictory. She can't be backsliding massively in FLA while increasing her lead elsewhere by that kind of divergence. Can't happen. Shouldn't pass anyone's smell test.

and that's the thing with CLE, they don't hit for much average outside Ramirez, but they don't strike out, so they are on the high side for putting balls in play. Taking a look at Foley's season results on FG, things that jump out compared to last season are that his walk rate is up and GB rate is down, and HR/FB is up. If you look at his pitch mix, what you see is that after dropping it last year, he has added a 4 seam fastball back to his mix. Amateur observer sleuth here says he added the 4 seamer to try to up his K rate (because that's what closers do, right?). The problem is that Ks are not up and instead the effectiveness of his sinker has dropped off. I've heard some pitchers say they cannot throw both the sinker and 4 seamer without one messing up their delivery of the other. Maybe Foley is one. And of course, not easy to retool at this point.

the way I would interpret the rule that shouldn't be possible. It should not have have mattered if a few degrees of Kwan's glove was under the ball because if *any* part of the ball contacted the ground, it's not a catch. I think too many people lost the forest for the trees there trying to decide if some part of the ball was on Kwan's glove. That shouldn't have been the question - it should have been did any part of the ball touch the ground, and to me it clearly did.

As of now, Brieske and Vest are the leverage guys. Interesting question if Hinch's growing confidence in Brieske late mean we won't see him open again?

Foley has faced 14 Cle batters across 4 games this season, 4H IBB, 2B HR for a 973 OPS.

I think Olson is effectively the #2 starter now. Even if they open with Holton, the expectation for Olson is at 5IP +