gehringer_2

total doofus

US boots on the ground in Mexico is probably the mother of all bad ideas.

This was somewhat variable by region - in pre-revolutionary Boston a good part of the population was not Church of England. Obviously a lot of the aristocracy on both side of the revolution were, but the pilgrim/puritan heritage in New England was independent/Congregationalist and chuch/state separatist.

Jonathan Swift lives.

Lynn could never have been silent for as long a stretch as Shelton was......

But I don't think the Tigers will consider the marginal left handed RF bat value increase from Carpenter to Bellinger to be worth $32M. Personally, I'd rather see them put that money into 3B or SS - though with a better move than Baez was!

You got a point there. But Buffalo is maybe a special case though since it's the only city in the NFL already named after an animal. So by symmetry, shouldn't their team name be a city? Like the Buffalo Londons or something? Also - in the era of EVs maybe the LAC could use a hamster on a treadwheel?

Logic isn't fair. Damn Greeks.

Even the Russians will likely eventually regret getting in bed with those creeps.

FWIW - guys on the radio reported that the Cubs don't want to pay Bellinger - are looking to offload him to anyone that will take his salary. Very inconsistent player to take on though - he's all over the map performance wise.

The think the explanation for pitchers throwing more breaking balls early in a career is simply that being able to train with instant pitch F/X data has allowed pitchers to optimize how fast they can learn to throw a more effective breaking ball, and for that matter how to optimize their velo as well. A trial and error process that used to take seasons can be done in a couple of weeks now. And drifts in mechanics can be diagnosed just as fast/accurately. On the flip side, I think the K zone has also trended wider - things have sort of standardized that if a mere stitch of the ball is within the zone that's considered a strike, and so when umps miss, they give away even more to the pitcher. I don't think it's an accident that wider breaking sliders (sweepers) are coming back into vogue - that would also argue that the pitchers are getting more effective width to the outside of the zone. For the same reason I also wonder if the numbers show a bigger jump in K's for guys coming to the majors since the minors started using more ASZ. Since hitting in AAA doess appear to be up, that sort of argues the differential for guys getting called up has be going up too since MLB hitting does not seem to be going up like AAA hitting is, but numbers would be more convincing.

I guess there is a certain logic to that. You can still see what you want to hit but getting the bat on what you swing at gets harder and/or maybe you lock up on strikes you would have swung at 4 yrs earlier when you would have seen in for 10 msec more.....

True, but if he got him for Norris we could have gotten him for anyone and a bag of balls. 🙄

Still PO's about that trade. Adames has put up 21 WAR and still has a good chunk of career left. We got about 3.5 WAR out of Price (who was also a jerk), and about 10 WAR out of Boyd. And he was my AAT at the time....😥

IDK - could go different ways depending. Maybe if they are both with the same team you get marketing synergies - the Dodgers become all of Japan's team? Or maybe the two guys don't like each other and it can't happen. 🤷‍♂️ In any case you are correct, there aren't many factors that play to the advantage of the Tigers.

It's not really giving away a possession though, if you get the odd one in the first half you give it back in the 2nd. The better question is whether you have a better chance to score on the 1st drive when neither side has seen what the other is doing, or at the beginning of the 2nd half, after you have made adjustments to what the other side is doing. Maybe that's what it comes down to the most - if you think you are smarter than the other guy, defer. If you are up against a guy you fear is better at adjusting than you may be, take the ball before he's seen you play.

which is why a big name Japanese player will stay on the West coast where the majority of his games will be at a more reasonable time of day in Japan.

Is Rasmussen nursing an injury? His skating seems labored even for him. Veleno and Motte pretty much invisible.

I wonder if that arrangement gave a better alignment between the difference in the zip code and the postage rate between zones.

it was looking pretty hopeless at the end of the 2nd. The sloppy passing on the one power play was downright embarrassing.

Yup - this quote has a lot of different forms but there is a lot of truth in it. When the debates were going on about cutting high marginal rates in the Reagan era, people who were never going to pay those rates were some of the biggest supporters. On one hand there is a certain value in having a society full of dreamers, because some of them actually manage to create those dreams, which keeps society moving. But there can also be too much of a good thing.... OTOH, this might be something that is fluid right now. It seems the GenX/Millennials/Z have a much less rosy view of American economics than in the past. The problem there may be that they also may not be economically literate enough to vote to get the change they want. I imagine there is isn't much economics taught anywhere in US public schools, too controversial if you try to do any kind of realistic job.

Exactly. And if Trump himself couldn't win the Dem nomination, under what scenario would anyone else who was going to be Trump like win there? It's a long route to try to get to another 'whataboutism' or 'both sides are 'just the same'. No. One side is going to places neither side has thought about going at least since 11 states seceded. And the public is fine with it because at heart they care more about potties than politics.

Trump is a one of, probably wrt both sides. I don't see how projecting him onto anyone else gets you a meaningful discussion. If the argument is, what if Trump himself had run as a Democrat? What would the outcome have been in that case is a little interesting. But the Congressional dems are too much a herd of cats with too many constituencies for him to have been empowered in the D party the way he was on the R side. The Dems are fine with eating their own. It still wouldn't have been similar.

And the beatings will continue until morale improves! So seriously, how long would it take for 25% across the board tariffs to trip a recession? 6 months? Maybe less than that I'd guess. The only way to ameliorate it at all would be for Congress to immediately pass spending to push all those dollars right back into the economy and even that wouldn't make up for the shutdown of US export markets in retaliation.

I suppose if the plan is to remove the South towers and most of the pavilion south of the central tower, it would open things up a ton. The facade on the Jefferson side will still be too much, but it is still way better now than Portman left it. Reading between the lines I'd guess they have little prospect of finding tenants for the space in the towers GM is leaving.