gehringer_2

well if Trump has changed his mind there will be a deal in a day or two. The thing he has to work out is pretty much what you note above - he has to work out the best talking points for declaring victory while caving in.

Re:Mamdani: the key for any mayor (or an exec for that matter) is whether he appoints based on competence or politics. For instance, if he looks at the Mayoralty primarily to bootstrap people from DSA into prominence, he will likely fail. If he's hard headed about putting good people into civic management, he will likely succeed. It's no different than the way Trump consistently fails on policy - he has surrounded himself with a confederacy of dunces. Even if he were playing with a full deck, there is no way all the clowns around him can execute.

I hope they called it the Walz Act.

well one possibility is that there is something that would show up a a trade physical that both he and team, but no-one else, knows about right now.

well, tasteless at the least, but that's par for the course.

well clearly, that's a pretty bad thing to do, but still, at some point you have to ask how much protection a consumer needs? How do you not know? Or do they just con people, or are there people who sign on the dotted line before they sit in the car they are going to buy? I guess maybe.....The world is getting to be too weird.

Stephens should know, he's had a lot of them.

now he just has to perform.

the thing about gerrymandering is that it can be a double edged sword if the electorate starts to move. You maximize your seats by concentrating the other sides voters as much as possible, but also by contructing districts which you think you can win narrowly but consistently. If a major shift does occur, your losses are going to be greater.

If the dems start winning races, that will be a big part of the why. The MAGA voter that finally gets burned out on the whole Trump circus is going to become a non-voter.

dropped my subscription to the DetNews - were they selling cars that were "only" technically over the new limit (I think it used to be a 30 mile allowance for pre-sale handling) or more seriously selling demos etc., with the odometers rolled?

everything is negotiable in the form of what's in/with the CR that comes to the floor.

Very interesting.

And I bet the Pistons are doing the offensive side in the paint more on penetration (Cade/Ausar) than post play. I sort of had doubts Cade would ever be a slasher but its a moot point because he's become a fricking road grader, Ausar is supplying the slash.

the unknowns that remains are around how much all the physics metrics get to the last, hardest part of hitting as a player levels up to the top tiers, and that is the tougher decision making. i.e., Your ability to barrel up more balls better than the next guy against AA pitching isn't necessarily 100% indicative of your ability to see and react to spin at MLB command and velo levels. Recognizing better disguised pitches and decreased processing time are parts that remain as hurdles that are harder to project from lower level data. That - and of course injuries, are residual uncertainties even with the tech. To me the irony is that the better metrics do tell you almost everything about a pitcher today - those more subtle vision/processing issues don't apply to their art, but the injury risk with pitchers is so high today that the increased certainty about their stuff still leaves huge overall uncertainty there as well. 🤷‍♂️

If only this were actual parody.

Yup. This is such a stock pro forma denial from Trump it isn't even worth talking about. But it is one of Trump's most interesting techniques. He has figured out that appearing dumb only hurts him with people that don't vote for him anyway, and he's shameless enough not to care how dumb he appears to his non-supporters. It turns out to a be lethal combination.

Well, we had a very exciting election here. A 1 mil property tax levy for vocational training was on the ballot. Period. The election for one decision probably cost as much as the tax will raise.

TBF, it's just as likely Ilitch hired someone who thought like he did so he wouldn't have to control everything.

It will be interesting to see if McGonigle/Harris's picks actually pan out with a higher success rate then Al's. We can check in on this issue again when we know....

IDK about the Mets. OOH, They have to be close to the 'whatever must come to an end, will' point with poorly spent money. OTOH, no team has a bigger mismatch between a strong starting line-up and weak starting pitching, so a guy like Skubal would be the ideal add for them.

Can't say I'm exactly peeved about this, as people deserved to get paid for what they do, but I just saw today that Spotrac is now paywalled. Not the kind of data I'm willing to pay for because I don't particularly care about sports salaries, but it was convenient to be able to look things up in their data set for discussion background. c'est la vie.

I'll still go with both the best and worst case example being Johann Santana with the Twins, They made the big trade with him coming off 2 Cy Youngs and a year of control. They got the much heralded return of 4 prospects. The prospects all crashed and burned, but MN was 2nd in the div that year and won it outright the two following years without him. If they had kept him they probably win all three years and would been no worse off. That's sort of the limits at both ends in one real case history. Also notable that the Twins dodged a bullet in not giving him a crazy long term deal at 'only' 29, as he only had three more good years and was out of baseball after 4. The Mets ended up paying him for 6 - which actually wasn't terrible compared to terms people are predicting today. Of course that's not the only possible future for Skubal, but it is among the real possibilities a FO has to consider.

The kicker is that the Feds didn't have much choice but let CP consign the losses to the whole midwest power consortium, so everyone from Iowa to to Ohio is helping carry Trump's water on this one.

LOL ! I was that kid. 👿 😇