gehringer_2

Well, if you want a more nuanced view from a mixed race individual (who is generally counted as unconventionally conservative) here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/opinion/kamala-harris-race.html?searchResultPosition=1

Lindsay has always driven me crazy because he is a bright guy and absolutely knows right from wrong, but he is utterly spineless. If Aaron Sorkin had modeled his JAG office on Lindsay, the movie would have ended with Lt Kaffey getting busted to Private and Col Jessup making General.

I would have thought that would have his mind all the more focused on why that was a dumb thing to say.

Realistic odds of any A ball player making the majors? He's too far away for him factor into team roster decisions. Assemble your team based on your A ball players and I guarantee we'll still be waiting for a winner in 2045.

apparently Trump was busy working on developing his bone spurs and missed a minor event in Dallas in Nov 1963.

John McWhorter wrote an interesting piece last week about this. Basically if you are born anything but full White in America, you can expect to be treated as though you were African American anyway, and while Kamila is clearly half south Asian, that made no meaningful difference in her experience growing up in CA. I guess even people's political memories are pretty short, our 1st 'black' president was half-white - that made zero difference to the way he was identified. Remember when Tiger Woods tried to get people to recognize him as Asian? - didn't get far with that either.

for as much as people complain, Keith is probably going better at 2nd than Jung is at 3rd. I don't think that is how the Tiger brain trust thought it was going to go down.

The Sox acquired Jermaine Dye and decided Magglio was 'being difficult' so let him walk. It turned out well for the Tigers and for that matter Dye gave the Sox only one less good year than Magglio give Detroit, so one of the few moves for the Sox in recent years that didn't go completely to ashes.....

It's probably not hard to develop sources in a country where everyone hates the regime.

Tiger best case scenario is he gets to the Dodgers, their coaches don't speak any of the dialects he's been working with in Detroit, he struggles some and so can't wait to get back here. Well, we can dream....

there are always a lot of directions to go in a campaign -- some will be mutually exclusive. You have to decide where the main chance lies. Is it turnout, moving independents, tuning Trumpers off their guy? How you answer that has to drive your strategy. Ridicule's value would be to make Trump appear uncool, so to me that is a strategy for trying to turn current Trumpers, but if the election is going to be won on turnout (my own belief) than trivializing Trump may soften your voters sense of urgency to show up. Conversely, talking the threat all the time is probably good for your turnout, but is just going to harden Trump supporters for him. So at least to some degree, you have to pick a lane -- and be right!

I don't care how strong the MiLB system is generally, only that it has the the 1-3 stars in it that will actually turn into impact players in the majors. We may have that right now in Clark, Jobe, McGonigle but they need one or two guy from this draft to break out at the bottom of the system as these guys move up.

Interesting decision to execute what had to be a fairly high risk operation go after one someone who at least reportedly, was more a political than military guy. Or maybe the opportunity to really embarrass Iran was too much icing on that cake to pass up.

Agreed. Winning a WS (or any particular playoff series) often comes down to how two teams match up, and you can't spend too much energy trying to figure out how to build a team for a match-up that is unknowable before the season starts. Normally your best shot is still to build to win your division and let the chips fall where they may in the playoffs. The randomizing drivers in baseball are so high that anything can and does happen in a short series.

believe so, I use a couple of different platforms and IOS is the only one that has done it to me.

It's statement of general principle. And to be brutally realistic there is no tougher gauntlet in sports than getting through the minors to the majors - you do have to exceed the average performance of your MiLB level at each level significantly if you have any chance. In Liranzo's case the fact that he is young is certainly in his favor, but it's the same thing, if you are not outperforming your MiLB peers by age, you probably aren't getting to the majors either. Liranzo did that in low A, no question so he's on track there. RC 105 at high A means he may not be enough above average to get out of that level for at least part of another year - so he may lose one of those years of advantage by however long he is there next season.

need a really big grain of salt there. No-one has been capable of more wishful thinking since 2016 than the GOP never-trumpers.

yeah - there is a certain paradox in looking at developing players. If a guy has great balance and good compact swing mechanics you might think - hey this is a guy we like. But OTOH, if he has all those attributes and he's not producing, where does he have to go to get better? On the other hand, if a guy looks terrible but is still having some success, then maybe your eyes should light up under your coaching hat thinking "Here is something I can work with" 🤔

if it's anyone other than Shapiro it tells you their polling is telling them that PA is not in play for the GOP.

QFT. Still, I wouldn't underestimate Netanyahu's talent for playing US politics. And I think if you approach him the way Obama did, treating Israel a US client state or junior partner, you won't get anywhere, much like Obama didn't. Israeli leaders will turn off any US Prez who tries to tell them what we think they should think is best for them - it just feeds their belief that the US has the luxury of being dilettante in foreign policy while Israeli concerns are existential. I would agree with the premise that Netanyahu has been wrong - a lot. That he is captive to a religious right in Israel that is at least a screwed up as our own, but I think our approach with him during the Obama years was also counter productive. I think Biden has done better, but there was already a lot of bad blood to overcome between the Democratic FP establishment and the Israelis

Not so much 2 days ago but comparing opening day to opening day. When the season started Wentz, Faedo, hadn't yet really proved themselves as incapable, we still had hope for Brieske, we thought Casey's availability problems were behind him. Now granted none of those things were more than optimism/projection, but having them all turn to dross definitely takes the bloom off the strength of position we hoped to be in by this off-season, when at least for me, I thought we would have XS pitching that would be good enough to land a front line position player or two in trade. The cold reality we are left with now is that we go into another off-season without any XS roster value to use as trade capital on either the pitching or position side of the roster. And yes - of course - Maeda and Torkelson....

I'm never that excited about young guys whose calling card is power whose contact skill haven't been proven. Guys who have the hit tool stand a better chance of developing power than guys with power have of developing the hit tool if it isn't there. The latter is just by far the rarer skill. So I'm not knocking the kid per se, I just don't think the power at 20 in the low minors tells you all that much about whether he projects to ever hitting in the majors.

Iran already started a shooting war with them via Hamas, whose ability to project force is 100% an Iranian project, so if you are Israel, when it comes to Iran, you'd ask "what escalation" with some justification. And as it relates to Iran, the beauty of being Israel is that Iran can't project much effective military power directly at Israel, if they want to make a statement, they have to do with some action like hitting Saudi oil tankers, which is then far more likely to draw a heavy US response. That's a win/win for Israel.

I think pitching is going to have to be the biggest priority this offseason, both starters and BP arms. Of course that depends a lot on how Keith, Torkelson, Dingler, Malloy, Meadows and Perez all finish this season. If a just a couple three of them look like keepers, the position issues will not be as dire as they looked earlier this season.

Reuters reporting that Ismail Heniyah has been killed in Tehran - presumably by some Israeli action.... https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-chief-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran-hamas-says-statement-2024-07-31/ Iran is now probably going to try something noisy to restore its honor after failing to protect an esteemed guest.