gehringer_2

of course not - In my OP on this suject up the page a bit the topic is about team construction, not day to to day operations. For better (hopefully) or worse, the current Tigers are what they are. But I will stand by the argument that loading your team with lefties is a dubious strategy if your lefties are all going to fall off against LHP the way Riley has or more generally, have much worse splits than the typical RHB. Riley's case is esp disappointing because when we drafted Riley, there was a lot of ink spilled on how hard he had worked since grade school to make sure he could hit LHP, and which he was doing reasonably well up until this season. Of course he hit a HR against a lefty today just to make a liar of me . I can live with it.

Athletic depts at the big schools are silo'd. What goes on there goes on in its own world. Academic ties between between b10 schools are very strong, and tenured research faculty are a lot closer to their peers at other institutions than they are to anyone in their own Athletic Depts.

I remember one of my kids read Foundation, I forgot which. I think the only thing I ever read by him myself was 'Fantastic Voyage'. That would have been about JHS for me and that's about the lit level it felt like. Of course, in retrospect I have to believe that was a screenplay pitch/commission that was fleshed into a full novel semi after the fact but in those days we didn't know such things were done. Not that there is anything wrong with that. At any rate, while it was fun (and Raquel made the movie fun as well) it didn't motivate me to find anything else of his. I also remember he had something to do with a very weird early puzzle style sci-fi video game called RAMA, which both my teen kids and I got too bored with to ever bother successfully figuring out at all. LSS - not a fan either.

Not sure what you are referring to - with respect to things like admissions?

Win or go home game coming up.

What is this? Offense? I guess I need to miss more game threads.

I have to think the traditional top Big10/Pac10 legacy schools would love to combine to do something on their own (meaning separate from the SEC etc) *if* they can figure it out - which may in the end be unlikely, but that doesn't mean they won't try But as you note, it comes down to the question of where the cut-off line falls for who gets left out and what they estimate the goodwill cost would be be to just break the conference. When I saw the terms of the 'House' settlement the first thing I thought is that sure, it can work for the top 20 or maybe even 40 teams, but it's not going to work for anyone below that tier. So there are about 100 D1 teams out there facing a future they really can't afford.

apparently not everyone one board - last thing in the article - (and an interesting choice of potential allies to mention.)

I've never been very conversant in tag font- is that supposed to say something or is it just random defacement?

LOL! I think the years have been good to AJ, or maybe he just gets top notch make-up work from Fox, but he looks better today than he did as a player.

does seem odd. OTOH, in both baseball and football, replay has cut down on home field advantage from what it used to be.

I don't see it either. He's the team's union rep is he not? And he's a Boras client. That's just not the profile of a guy that isn't looking beyond his rookie team. And why shouldn't he? That's the system - he didn't write the CBA or the baseball media set-up and he's not responsible for the fact that the system it creates mean guys that can move on to the big markets to get paid.

I'm also going to assume that part of the shift in the willingness to bring the young guys up is McLellan being more on board with playing them. I'd have to guess the two previous coaches being newbies probably were more risk averse than McLellan - (for what good it did them).

well granted the inverse certainly hasn't been true for RIley. He plays against LHP but his splits have continued to get worse for 3 straight years. So maybe chasing a heavy LH lineup is just always a mistake?

If I have one critique of the way Harris builds a team and Hinch runs it, it's that they are too in love with left hand bats and trying to play for platoon advantage. It's a short term cheap thrill but it will bite you in the end, as it has this Tiger team. In general, LH hitters have worse platoon splits than righties, so when the chips are down and your opponent brings in a LHP, you are screwed. And if you don't let your LH play against against LH, their platoon splits will only continue to get worse. And we've managed to take the one lefty we had that did hit LHP and somehow turn him into a guy that now can't (Riley). I don't care if guys are LH or RH, find hitters that hit pitching from both side more uniformly and you will have a much more consistent offense that will be able to perform against a team with balanced pitching in a playoff when the chips are down. And yes, those players are harder to find, keep, but that's the job.

Casey will hold them scoreless for 3 and Hinch will pull him for Kanhle.

Today we face the classic statistical paradox. For Seattle - a 90 win team, assuming just an average opponent, the odds of winning any three consecutive games is only about 17% but the odds of them winning today are 55%.

Is Blumenthal running for anything anyone here is voting for? What do I care what he did? Or what Dubya did or didn't do - his last election was 20 yrs ago. The guys in the present tense are all bad enough. We haven't actually had a combat vet in the WH since GHWB and most of the country wasn't even born then. And the one combat vet who has run since then had a couple of slightly loose screws (John "I'm suspending my Campaign and Sarah Palin is a great pick" McCain) And we've had two guys that ducked service completely since. Let's stipulate a lot of jerks have been elected, that military service doesn't necessarily improve a president anyway, and then maybe resolve to do better?

I don't know if you need a batting superstar, but you need some pretty good guys who are at least consistent at the whatever level they play - i.e. don't slump much/often. Ramirez is only an 850 OPS - that's borderline "great hitter", but his worst month was 715 and he has virtually no platoon split (being a SH helps there but is still no guarantee) - so he always shows up and he's a threat against all pitching. The Tigers absolutely are missing that. Torkleson has probably been the most consistent Tiger hitter, but he's not a good enough hitter overall to carry things. The rest of them either are slump prone or have big platoon splits - making them neutralizable when needed.

We are so screwed. Just saw an interview with SF Fed Pres Daly on Axios. She's gung ho to lower rates - chasing higher employment. It's like we never learn anything. Using interest rates to chase employment is exactly what created the mess in the 70's - exactly. There is almost nothing I ever agreed with Milton Freedman about politically, except that he and the 'monetarists' are 100% right about money supply and inflation. It's trivially simple - so simple that is why 'sophisticated' people think they must be able to maneuver around it, but you can't. Inflation is the rate of change in the value of money, and the value of money is determined by the supply of money - how fast the Fed Reserve adds money to the economy. It really is that simple. If inflation is already above target and the Fed increases the rate of supply of money (decreases interest rates or increases their bond holdings) - inflation is going to get worse. There is no hocus-pocus that can change that inevitability. The fools in Congress that tasked the Fed Reserve to pay attention to employment in the first place where just that. The only goal of the Federal Reserve should be stable money because you don't really control employment with the money supply anyway - that part is a mirage (as should have been understood by 1980). Or a short term transient at best.

well not unless that team from June shows up.

appropriate to end on a BaBIP.

Tork seems to be the only guy who can do anything and he's only doing it when it's too late.

the one truth in sports team management is that if you aren't moving forward, you are moving backward. If you aren't getting better you are getting worse. Stasis is not an option.

Hard to compare generations in any sport. You could ask whether Shanahan would have enough speed to keep up in today's league.