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Everything posted by gehringer_2
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I think the decision on when to brings guys up from AAA just keep getting harder. Used to be, a guy would reach a reasonable performance level at AAA and you had a pretty good idea he would be able to stay afloat in the MLB even if it was at a lower level than you hoped, but more and more we see guys all around the league put up even pretty impressive AAA numbers and then fall completely flat after call up. One has to suppose teams will be breaking down AAA hitter assessments by quality of pitching faced to a deeper level than we have access to as fans.
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Parker might be a nice player, but at this point I think the window has closed on him being any kind of star, so you aren't going to have to pay that much if you want to keep him even if he gets the year.
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I buy this arg a lot more for pitchers than hitters. Hitting is a young man's game. Guys that don't show some MLB hitting talent by 23/24 at most 25 probably won't ever be more than role players. As for the future - there's some light in Lakeland, but very little in the way of bats likely to make Det anywhere above that (Lee?) so it's going to be a long haul if they can't find some help outside the current org.
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I wouldn't minimize the work Fetter and staff have done helping pitchers improve their stuff, and I still think Hinch is about as good as they come at utilizing what he has to work with, but even with all that, when guys break down you get left short of talent and there is no way around that when you lose guys that were were previously effective the team will suffer. Talent is still the bottom line. Lange's deflagration has been a big blow, and Faedo had been useful before he went down. Chafin may be better than last season but is still not pitching as well as he did in '22. Wentz has been fool's gold. Because they are inconsistent, bullpen is a place where if you aren't trying to improve every year, you are getting worse. Miller was the org's only even half serious attempt to upgrade with a high level talent and he is basically a reclamation project
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sure, I can see two ways of looking at those results. The first is that you have a bunch of AAAA players, so when they face a team that by circumstance can only throw a AAA level pitcher at them, they clean up, but then can't handle normal MLB pitching the majority of the time - so there is your rationale for boom and bust. The other way to look at it is that you have hitters with MLB potential (if not, why did the FO bring them to the Majors?) but are trapped in an approach that is too geared to hitting mistakes only. The outcome of either scenario will be the same - an exaggerated amount of boom and bust based on who they are facing. I think both are or have been true. In Torkelson's case I do believe he is a better hitter than the approach he was using was allowing him to realize, (though may yet be proved wrong 😥). The staff certainly appears to have recognized that and sent him to Toledo to straighten out. They probably should have done it sooner. He would be my main case where I think there had been a coaching failure. Kriedler, McKinstry, Baddoo, are not MLB hitters. Rogers is a AAA hitter with a bit of MLB level power. Vierling, Ibanez, Canha, Kelly are MLB level role bats, not team carriers. Keith and Perez represent hope, but can't be expected to supply much production yet. The only significantly above average quality bat on this team right now is Greene. I'll grant Malloy is still too SSS, but since I've had my reservations about how he would make the transition from the beginning, I haven't seen anything to take me off my scepticism. Clearly since the hitting was thin to begin with, the loss of Carpenter and Torkelson's regression have been fatal. The difference between one feared hitter and three in a line-up is pretty huge.
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Parker is sitting at about 270 at Toledo with an OBP over 375. I used to take 50 pts as a typical BA drop from AAA to MLB but the gulf seems to be worse now. But if he could hold at 220-230 given his occasional power and speed on the bases I think he's still an asset, but he was at 096 went he was sent down and yeah - you can't hide that enough.
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I haven't followed Meadows' ABs at Toledo, but have checked in on Torkelson's. He seems to be trying to swing the bat more. If that's true, and it's just a guess, than I'd rather give him time to work through that. You have to hope they have some plan for him to accomplish 'x' while he is there so whatever it is, he needs to complete it before they bring him back. In Torks case it's not like they just sent him down to get his confidence back, he had some surgery to do on his mechanics/approach.
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Miller is the odd case right now. His peripherals look fine, the result are terrible. In 6 IP since coming off the IL he's given up no walks, 3 hits, 6K, a 143 BA against, and blown 3 saves. How do you do that? Have to think his luck should improve.
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Maybe Hinch himself is getting burned out with the futility of the offense. If you've lost all confidence you will ever score runs when you need them, maybe you reach a point where you figure any reliever, any time just doesn't matter.
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I'm OK with Holton, but they burned him the night before.
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Kredler at 167, Malloy at 176 with a >40% K rate, Rogers at 206 and Keith still figuring it out. That is just too many holes in a lineup.
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I may be too optimistic, but I thought Edvinsson acquitted himself well once they finally called him up. He won puck battles and did well snuffing rushes. After holding him in GR so long I was prepared to see a player that was a lot further from NHL ready. Still, even if Edvinsson is the real deal, they have to manage more than one player upgrade per season.
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that call may well have been the ball game. Challenge needs to come the majors.
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He's still got to learn to finish ABs better. Too many 0-2s that went to 2-2 and 3-2, but can't argue with the results.
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We have one, he's playing center.
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Miller is pretty useless in any kind of leverage at this point. He will do just enough to lose.
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Yes - and we have to hope we don't end up with more corrupted legislatures neutering them.
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I was pretty much hooked at birth. The first article of clothing I have any recollection of owning was a complete wool toddler Tiger Uniform, with stirrups. Funny thing is that my father was not a big baseball fan, but everyone else around growing up was. The first season I remember as a season was '61 - winning 101 and coming up 8 games short of the damn Yankees. I was just a little squirt but understood that winning 100 was supposed to be enough to get a pennant. The other funny thing was how few people went to the games. The population of the city was nearly 2 million in the early 60's and Baseball was still king, but the '61 team drew only 1.6M, and '68 team just barely 2M. Even with the exodus from Det, get anywhere near 1st place now and you can expect 3M for a season.
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rent seeking is bad news, but I take that as more a function of the regulatory state, which to me is a separate issue from economics. Technology requires the regulatory state exist, because it is too dangerous and too arcane for any public to deal with without dedicated professionals in public service. A malfunctioning regulatory state can certainly lead to bad economic outcomes - witness the affordable housing shortage crisis in CA, but those are often as not unintended consequences of bad policy making. I don't know any good way of to deal with rent seeking other than electing good people to do the legislative oversight of the regulatory system, and so full circle we are back to a malfunctioning election funding system as the root of another evil.
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This is true, and the big mistake that the guys like Hayak fans and the Austrian school make in seeing the US as on the road to that kind of socialism is mistaking government expenditure for government management of the economy. In Hayak's theory, government spending as % of GDP is the indicator variable for Government or political management/intrusion into markets and production, economic ossification and a concomitant lose of personal liberties. But this completely misses that in a modern state like the US, the *majority* of government spending is transfer payment to individuals, who then use that money to make free decisions in a market economy. Ergo - the modern transfer payment based welfare state is not Socialism as government control of the means of production (the road Britain certainly had traveled down too far) despite high percentages of GDP government spending.
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Your presentation is exactly the argument why corporations should never be seen to have fundamental rights under the constitution. As long Thurgood has exactly one vote, we don't have to care too much about which side he sees his bread as buttered on, but if you let him marshal all the resources of Widget AI as a direct player in the political process, you are one big step on the road to perdition. There is a fundamental conflict of interest at work. An easy majority of individuals have some sense that there are linkages between their liberty and welfare that of others. The only way around that is by defining some souls as non-human, which always has to be combated but is a battle we know the process can win. But a corporation has no shared interest in anyone's liberty or welfare. They are purely nihilistic players at the table.
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and probably regularly burn a couple of gallons of gasoline to save a nickel finding those imported products at the lowest price.
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It's been a ridiculously long construction. and it's not even that far behind schedule. The long build was mostly waiting for each section of concrete to harden as the towers went up. They probably could have built a conventional suspension bridge faster, but cable stayed design costs less and this is not a project where time was money to any great degree.
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I would guess temperature - and for sure low wind load. These huge structures have to be designed to expand and contract around some neutral temperature - again a guess, but I think they would want to lock the ends in place on a day when the whole structure was as near as possible to the neutral point design temp.
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The Wings are already too small/lack physicality up front for Berggren to be a good fit on the current roster, and when he was up he did not defend, which wouldn't have endeared him to SY.