gehringer_2

Thing is, even if Hueter ends up on the 60 eventually with a more serious muscle strain, that's probably a decision they would normally prefer not to make until a week or more on the 10 day after they see how it's responding. Of course what they 'prefer' to do is probably swirling down the drain with the rest of team's chances.

this is true. But to be fair, I think there is at least some synergy to hitting; as the number of dangerous hitters in a lineup falls, it gets easier for the opposing pitchers overall and I think that tends to make it tougher for the rest of the hitters as well. Or another way to put it is that unless you are Barry Bonds, it's tougher to be a good hitter on a bad hitting team.

yeah - the guys I would care least about losing are position players but that's a mismatch since it's pitchers that are coming back.

You and Hinch both. He has appeared in 47 games this season, has only 17 complete games - he either went in as or was lifted for a pinch hitter in 30 times in 47 games. That's quite the indictment of either the player or the team that spent to buy out his arb years. Or just a manager under so much pressure to win he's doesn't care about player development any more. But this relates to a previous discussion. Keith once had a lot of trade value, today he has about none. Either their evaluation of him when they extended him was just wrong, or they've messed up his development - either way, he was a high value asset as a prospect/rookie and as of today that value is largely squandered. He needed to either be traded or made into a good player. That's an example of an organizational fail. So no org will win 'em all, but the more you lose the tougher it is.

apropos to this - Just happened across recent research linking Picloram to early onset colo-rectal cancer. Picloram is another organochloride broad leaf killer. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/pesticides-may-help-explain-rising-early-onset-crc-rates-2026a1000fsc?ecd=a2a

I'm not all the way to the 'just play 9 guys' limit, but I'd like to see Colt given 100 games at 3b - everyday (subject to rest days) - no other gloves. Same with McG at SS - and when Javy comes back he is the CF so McG stays put. Also would give give Torkelson a few more regular days off than Hinch usually does, though obviously he did sit him the other day. He's played 159,150, 155 the last three seasons. I'd like to see if he benefits from that dropping to ~145.

It's the Pres that's expecting it, that's the part that makes it not silly.

If it was a clean break Meadows should be back to 100%, but at this point he has lost so much development time that may be 100% of not much. high ankle sprain could become a chronic deficit for an athlete but pretty fair chance Javy will be fine. Gleyber seems like he is just starting to break down, a major injury a 3 consecutive seasons now. Likewise - over his 4 full seasons Carpenter's availability has been 57%

yup - if a guy comes in with the objective of carrying an agenda for the guy that sent him and the other 11 don't agree with him, it's going to make policy formulation even more a mess than usual. If he acts as a team player with the rest of the them he risks ending up under indictment like his predecessor.

I think is certainly true for most players, though I wouldn't say all. There are guys like Javy (maybe to a slightly lesser degree McK) who are just what you'd call natural fielders - they have all the right instincts no matter where you put them and have total confidence in their own gloves. If you have even a couple guys like that a manager like Hinch should be in heaven. Thing is, most players, are not like that. They are the guys you are talking about who have to work to learn positions, need consistent work to stay sharp and need to build confidence in order to play free and easy. I don't believe you can force feed a Colt Keith into being a Javy Baez. I think the Tigers as an org would prefer that not be true, but it is.

So Warsh is now sworn in - the next Fed meeting is Mid June and at least one governor just came out for removing the guidance that the Fed 'bias' is toward another rate cut. So when Warsh was on Fed the before (during Bernanke I guess?), he apparently was strongly opposed to QE, wants big reductions in the Fed balance sheet to get it unwound finally. I suppose that is one way to fight inflation without actually raising interest rates, so maybe that's the needle he wants to thread. Problem is that when the Fed starts selling its holdings faster, that depresses prices, and since banks hold a lot of the same kinds of securities, that stresses bank reserve requirements and the bankers don't like that. At one time Powell tried to increase the rate of unwind in the Fed's balance sheet the banks screamed bloody murder (and IIRC one bank went under or had to rescued or some such) and he backed off. Should be interesting if Warsh goes that way again.

LOL - touche! Moving guys around a lot is maybe one where I think there is some consensus around here that there is at least some defensive cost involved, but how do you quantify it and decide if it's a net plus or not? Again it's coming down to someone's (mostly Hinch's) judgment because it's just too multivariate a problem with too shallow case data to generate useful analytical guidance.

I can't argue that from where we sit, the decision that young Riley was an everyday player and young Colt is not seems pretty arbitrary. I suppose it was at least partly because Riley graded very well in the field the first couple of years - though that's seems to be over now.

Right - at some point you just have to decide what you believe. I'm sure there are guys out there on team analytic staffs doing exactly what you are talking about, trying to figure out what term is optimum to get the best predictor for particular outcomes, The problem is that like Soylent Green - IT'S PEOPLE! and they tend to confound whatever you do to try to predict them. My personal observation would be to always down weight previous seasons at least when you see guys do things in the off season that result in them coming back as very different players - for instance Riley two seasons ago and Keith this season -- and pitchers in general because they always seem to vary from year to year just because almost no pitcher can stay 100% healthy season to season -they almost always have something not quite right. Other than that a manager just has to figure it out as best he can! In Hinch's case I think you can make the argument form watching him that he likes to take the longer view. Is he right? IDK - It's not working now, but that doesn't mean it's his choices that are the reason.

This is what I mean about Hinch being a guy who doesn't want to be told about short term trends. Jones' OBP against LHP is less than 300 *this* season. Any rational approach to llne-up construction based on recent outcomes would not have him in the 3 spot, but his OBP over the longer term of with last season was 398 - sure bat him 3rd against a LHP. You can have all the data and analytics you want, but at some point you still have to apply judgments about how to use the data that are beyond what the data can tell you about the player.

The problem is the economy might not have survived 4 more years of JC. We were headed for hyperinflation and Carter - and much of the traditional central banking community, had no idea what to do about it. Looking back I find it weird because the one thing Carter was, was a smart guy. If he have been willing to sit down with a Paul Volker or Milton Friedman or maybe even James Baker he certainly had the intellect to understand why it was critical that the 'new' monetarist paradigm had to be put in place at the Federal Reserve. But for whatever reason he never got there, and for all the talk about the Rose Garden and Iran, it was inflation that doomed his presidency. His fecklessness on Iran was just icing on the cake of a failed economic situation. I really wanted him to succeed, but at that point in his life he (and his team) were too sure of themselves to see when they needed to go get some better advice.

Obama seems like a great guy, is a good campaigner and better orator, but his judgement as a political operative, party manager/leader was never in the same league with this other skills.

I would say that by the std of what a hopeless role it is, Biden and Gore both had pretty successful vice-presidencies - Biden didn't run, Gore lost his White House bid. GHWB did win a Presidency from the VP but he had a really long resume prior, was well known pre-VP -- maybe even better than Biden was. You can blame the press for some of Harris' problem - no doubt the MSM had their head up their butts through most of the Biden presidency, but whose fault it was is pretty much beside the point, it justs add to the premise that from 2020 t0 2024 Harris was not able to do much to build/burnish a public profile sufficient to help put her on a path to a win.

name anything positive she got credit for. the highest profile issue Biden supposedly asked her to lead on was “the border” which was the single most toxic issue for the dems by the election. her 4 yrs as VP did her no favors in terms of building a positive political profile. was she bad at her job? did Biden sabotage her because he didn’t want her to have a strong argument for him not to run,? IDK, but VP did not turn out to be a very good gig for her. it’s really not a good spot to run from anyway, in recent decades VPs have lost more often than won.

the point about Harris having a poor VP-ship is absolutely true. The open question is “Why”. Did Biden not give her any high profile projects with easy wins because he wouldn’t or because she couldn’t? at this point the people who know probably aren’t saying.

The US keeps trying to comfort itself over falling behind the rest of the developed world by every measure of quality (and quantity!) of life by clutching to productivity growth numbers, but Krugman has done an interesting series this month blowing up the idea that those numbers mean anything like what we think they do. When you use the wrong yard sticks, measure the wrong things, you tend to get bad outcomes.

Per WAPO today: Ken Martin releases controversial 2024 Democratic 'autopsy' report. - blames Biden for not grooming Harris as a national figure - concludes that tran-gender issues played badly for Harris and the party - concludes dems did not hit Trump as hard as was needed - states that going back to Obama the Dems have neglected party building. - blames party for writing off too many areas Story concludes with: "The autopsy says the Democratic Party and its candidates have lost voters’ trust. “In the face of misinformation and disinformation, our candidates have proven incapable of projecting strength, unity, and leadership, and voters have drifted away,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/21/democratic-national-committee-releases-contentious-autopsy-2024-campaign/

in a sane world this would be a completely empty threat because for any GOP Congressional leadership smart enough to ask, the Dems should love to join forces to override a Trump veto on a bill that was going to pass without them anyway. But neither the GOP nor Dem Congressional leadership are skilled, brave, honest or trustworthy enough to make it happen.

Fun fantasy: after having their numbers decimated in the fall election, the GOP Congressional lame ducks cooperate to impeach and convict Trump.