gehringer_2

if you work 150 innings with a WHIP of 1.25 you face just about 640 batters, and 650 PA is pretty close to a full season of AB for an every day lead-off hitter, so 150 IP is probably a good approximation as the break even point. If you get near 200 IP, your batters faced should be way above a position players AB. Of course if you play premium defense at a valuable position that also counts for something. Of course there is a little paradox there because you want a pitcher to pitch those innings while facing fewer batters. It's easy to have a big 'batters faced' number if your WHIP is high!

one would think that getting close to Trump would be the kiss of death for any NYC Mayoral candidate.

I think they have to be crazy. The conflict between the USSR as the vanguard of international Marxism and the US as the leader of the capitalist block was inevitable. If anything, it would have started long before the Atomic age but the alliance of necessity against Axis put if of a bit. But I can't see any logic in an argument that the that manner in which a war ended in which we were allies of the Russians had much to do with the ensuring tension between. That's an argument that reeks of force fitting the Cold War into a context to support a a prior bias against having dropped the bombs. There are better arguments on both sides of the ABomb issue without that kind of post hoc take.

We really have serious issues with corporate and tax law in the US. We've made it profitable to make money by gutting otherwise stable businesses. But it's one of those esoteric topics that democracy is really bad at because no-one understands how it works. You just have to have decent leadership to fix it and with Citizen's United making sure it's the profiteers that buy the politicians, that's impossible. I believe there are certain 'trapdoor' function errors a society can make that become fundamentally irreversible; that there is no way back from. Even though the consciousness of it seems to have faded from public awareness completely, CU and our corrupt political funding system is still at the fulcrum of what keeps US politics from ever-re-establishing anything like a public interest equilibrium.

My craziest lightning experience was one summer when I was a teenager - there used to be a couple of little 2 pump gas stations kitty corner at Bowers Rd and Lk Pleasant Rd (near Imlay city) - both just 2 laners - pretty much no traffic in those days, you were hardly off the road at the pumps. We were filling a couple of 5 gallon portable tanks for a ski-boat (there's a lake nearby) when lightning stuck smack in the middle of the intersection. I guess it couldn't decide which gas station to blow up and ended up splitting the difference 🤣. Once our hair settled back down we walked out to see the scorch mark in the pavement. We didn't care - we were all pretty young and stupid.

That's "funny" as in completely predictable and par for the course, of course.

The Voting Rights Act mandates for minority representation in more districts is in a sense one of the original sins of redistricting abuse. Back in the 60's when the Dems' control of the House appeared beyond threat, packing high percentages of minority voters into single districts to insure a minority election winner was an easy solution for Dems. Not so much today when the consequence of those packed urban districts is to help elect larger numbers of GOP reps in the surrounding districts. If you are a minority voter, which is more important to you, that your rep look like you, or that your Congress have a chance of implementing policy in your favor? Not clear to me at all that the answer to that question in 2025 should be the same as it was in 1964.

The Shade of Dan Petry would prefer you phrase that: "Was Chet the most recent 84 Tiger to pass"?

isn't every shortstop in the Tigers system just an AJ Hinch nod away from being a CF?

Nice work Chas. I guess the Mexican ID card thing is probably along the lines of the 'enhanced' drivers license in MI that allows you to cross in Canada without your Passport. Pre Trump there had been occasional, usually halting, efforts to 're-normalize' US/Canada/Mexico travel at least a little bit toward the pre 9/11 freedom of motion - so the Mexican card program fits that.

For some reason, it's seems of all the major sports, Baseball is the one where the media get most attached to narratives about well know players and forget to let go of them when the players are no longer relevant. I think that underlying paradigm feeds into the ease of generating malcontent interest. A great example has been ESPN commentary about Correa. Carlos is a player who is getting old fast (30), hasn't had a plus hitting or fielding year in three seasons and they are talking about him like getting him is going to win Houston another WS. The odds right now, today, of him being a difference maker for a team are certainly objectively less than say - Zack McKinstry. But Baseball writers just can't let go of the narrative about guys on the downside, so when teams like the Tigers have sense enough to understand that it's a young man's game, they get hammered for it.

You picked a good time to miss. Some very nondescript teams.

Last season his walk rate was the highest and his K rate the lowest of his career. If anything he was trending toward that Harris profile. This season it's going down the crapper. Sometime a player just makes the wrong decisions for his off-season work and doesn't find out until it's too late that he went the wrong route. The other possibility is that he isn't 100%. He was actually fine right up until the Washington series DH when he hit the 2 HR in the first game. His K rate was up, but not drastically. But he hasn't been the same player since that day. Either the 2 HR got in his head (which seems unlikely for a guy with as many AB under his belt as Riley - you'd think he wouldn't be swayed to change his approach by one game) or he tweaked something in the OF that day and has kept it under his hat and tried to play through it. I could see Riley not wanting to take another trip to the IL.

Except that it's not really a "wide swing in the numbers" The new jobs stats are a tiny difference between huge numbers, (total US employment is ~160,000,000. New jobs in a month are about 0.1% of that). It's impressive that they get as close as they do reporting practically in real time.

Kane is not untalented, but I don't get where all the giggling comes from when he does baseball. It's like there is a bottle of nitrous oxide at the ballpark with his name on it.

yup - our 1975 outfield for the next 10 years lasted exactly one. Roberts gone after one season and Meyer after only two.

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. The teams and players are worth billions, the business of covering all the millionaires can't afford people who speak in complete sentences.

I like this deeper pitching staff. Now if Riley could just get a clue of what he is swinging at. He's really lost right now. It's looking to me like he is trying to level out the swing some, but as we know, doing that on the fly during the season is no easy task. Also am realizing how much more I enjoy the games with Dirks. Petry is a great guy, I just gotten to where I don't like listening to him do a broadcast any more.

This is true. The only hook I think Ernie did use a lot was where the fan that caught the ball was from. He was pretty sparing with all the rest of them, so you were always surprised and reminded at the same time.

Sanchez an outlier also!

So which countries would be significant tourist sources but also visa overstays? Mexico certainly. That and it would be the Central and South American upper/middle classes that would be hit I would suppose. I don't think there are many visa overstays from Western Europe or Japan. Is there PRC tourism on the West Coast?

If he turns this into the Lions GD forum I think I'm out of here.

the guy has two 100+ EVs good for 2/4 against one of the best pitchers in the league and he's the one you are complaining about?

Duran's FB is ridiculous

can we PH for Riley?