gehringer_2

well, let's take them in turn. Manning? He certainly wasn't rushed - he was in the system 5 yrs before his first call up. The kid has had a ton of injuries, did management have him on a bad conditioning program? Certainly possible. At this point he doesn't have much of a fastball. I think there was an assumption with Manning that with his build he would develop as a power pitcher. Didn't really happen. Coaching? The series of injuries? IDK. Maybe it was never there in the 1st place? At any rate, to me it's purely achieving consistent velo that caps Manning's potential at this point. What are your thoughts? Mize? I know people will claim I am ret-conning but I was never enthused about Mize's MLB potential going back to his draft. I don't care what the media consensus was. He was a trick pitch collegiate who came to the majors without a major league swing and miss fastball, depending on a off-speed pitch that didn't fool ML hitters. Then he blew his UCL and has taken way longer than normal for recovery, then lost more starts to a bad hammy. As far as I can tell, Fetter/et al have helped him improve his 4 seamer and build his velo to where he has a shot at becoming a real power pitcher. Maybe the old staff should have done that to begin with before bringing him up? In any case at this point he does not have ML caliber command. Does he just need more innings to get there because of the surgery, or is he just not what everyone hoped? I absolutely don't know at this point. I think all you can do is let him pitch enough to find out and hope he can stay healthy enough to pitch that much. What do you see as the prior management's contribution to his problems?

but the only way Dems can do this more broadly is with successful grass roots fund raising. Neither party will undertake serious corporate governance and business reform as long as they need corporate and business money to get elected. I don't know if it will/is changing with gen X/Y/Z but the Boomers were so used to somebody doing everything for them in life that they thought it was beneath their dignity to ever make a political contribution. But as the saying goes, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Corporate political money is entrenched and we aren't ever going to displace it by wishing.

also a very good point. Adding the tools of the industrial revolution to Imperialism does make the more toxic mix.

Looking for parallels, Verlander spent little time in the minors but he was a college guy who was done developing physically. Porcello maybe a more relevant comparison - he was a prep pitcher who was in the Majors at 20 after only one A ball season. I don't know if there is an argument to made Porcello would have been any better than he was for spending another year in the minors. But I don't think pitchers are like hitters in terms of coming up and being 'overmatched'. Once a guy has velo and spin he is basically a finished product in terms of being physically ready. At that point it's all about command/strike throwing. If I'm the Tigers I'm looking at his long bone images to see if his body is ready and his walk rate to see if his command is ready. I don't know about the former but the later is still lacking.

It interesting that they have Madden starting or at least working the long shift of a BP game. I always had the impression that even if he was starting in the minors he was being slotted to be a reliever. I suppose next ST should resolve that.

TBF, in the 19th and early 20th century Germany didn't have any monopoly on eugenicists and racists in intellectual circles. We are still taking their names off of buildings at the "U"! Of course the cultural differences between the US and Germany were large (e.g., the US not being a nation identifying in one culture as Germany with the attendant cultural chauvinism) but at the most basic level, one difference was the US had just fought a civil war over the issue and the 15 amendment was in the Constitution so the issue was settled in terms of the national legal construct - even if it did take more than 90 years to get Jim Crow off the books in the South and we continue to find ways to effectively segregate minorities in the underclass today.

Still won't work. The bureaucracy to support them is unwieldy, the impossibility of being surgical enough is daunting. Pricing in the real world must stay dynamic because real supply and demand changes happen all the time for valid reasons. Let's think about what has changed here and then work back. Why is price gouging a growing issue now after 250 years of the republic? The increase in corporate pricing power we are experiencing in the US is due almost completely to the growth of market monopoly power. So don't attack the symptom, attack the cause. The way to go is to control businesses' pricing power. The government can help keep prices down in an economy and do it effectively but not by direct controls. You do it setting the playing field - insuring competition via tax and M&A law/rules, subsidizing infrastructure, subsidizing new business formation. For commodities the Gov can maintain supply reserves like they do for oil that can moderate market shocks. Even direct investment subsidies are better than attempts at direct price control. And I will beat the dead horse again - why is the business playing field in the US more distorted than ever? - because we have a politics distorted by business money - Citizen's United. So along that line, what makes anyone believe that a government already bought and paid for by corporations is actually going to do any effective price regulation even if it somehow could come with a workable system to do it? Without political reform first, it would become the biggest rent seek in history.

Speaking of Detroit based Germans. Charles Lindbergh's mother was a HS teacher at Detroit Cass Tech.

It's nonsense. Players know that deals get bigger as time goes on. And really, of any player you can think of, is there one less likely to complain about not being highest paid on the team if it means they win? Not to mention if the team feels the Captain has to be top AAV, they can always give him a bump - I'm sure he wouldn't refuse it!

not that it took any great insight to get to that conclusion. Any FPV flyer who has handled and stressed Li-Ion batteries could tell you that they don't explode, they conflagrate, which is dangerous enough but looks different from what happened. They are also unpredictable enough that you couldn't get a large number to do the same thing at the same time. For instance if you tried to short them all to initiate fire, you'd have no way to know the charge state and the ones that were nearly discharged could end up duds - that wouldn't be a very reliable attack.

Command just isn't there. His sinker was often up, his 4 seamer was often down, which seems backward. A lot of his sequencing seemed less than optimal. He threw the split a lot at before he got to two strikes and guys just spit on it. The one hit by Salvy they just kept going away-away-away and a smart old fox like Perez just stepped across the plate and hit one - you could see it coming. And the one pitch that Casey seems to always get hurt on is a 4 seam fastball - at or even a little below the bottom of zone but in the middle of the plate, which is what Massey hit for the RBI - 105EV.

I think it's a long shot they use him but the other guy available again at Toledo who is already on the 40 is Manning, who threw 63 pitches in a start tonight.

Hadn't noticed that Matt Manning made his 2nd start for the Hens since coming back from the IL. Gave up 2R in 3 IP in his 1st start, 1R in 3 IP tonight. But 63 pitchers to get through 3! Been around forever but still only 26.

well, I suppose anything is possible, but strike one would be thatJobe is not on the 40.

You could have stopped there and it still works.

BTW - did anyone notice in the forum stats that we had 350 lurkers for last Thursday's day game?

I don't think the Tigers have been 6 over 500 since the end of the 2016 season.

I'd still walk Witt.

I wonder if Erceg losing the glove caused just enough distraction for Witt.

Can't hit it much better...

Brieske showing maybe the best pure arm on the staff after Skubal.

He and Casey have the same problem - when it goes south, it's equatorial.

well, Parker hit what would have been a DP ball anyway....

TOOTBLAN

Miller pitching like he doesn't trust his stuff. Hope that's it for him