gehringer_2

I think it’s more like Carlos is the resident malcontent now, nothing any team does suits him.

FWIW, I just saw a story about Tork - I think in the Freep. Coach says he is +2 runs on defense in his time at Toledo so far. found it... https://www.freep.com/story/sports/columnists/carlos-monarrez/2024/08/09/detroit-tigers-should-call-up-spencer-torkelson-triple-a-toledo/74720785007/ (While I generally don't consider Carlos as knowing anything about Det baseball, I assume he can get a quote right.)

If they don't bite the bullet and cut Javy loose at the end of this season after 3 yrs of futility, any confidence I have left in this management will be gone. if you can't cut bait when you have to, you don't have enough will to win to ever get out of mediocrity. There will always be something that didn't work out, some player that disappoints, someone who got too many years, someone with a career ending injury -- it is inevitable. Its just a normal part of the overhead for any pro sport franchise today. If you are going to let it freeze your org every time it happens, you are done before you ever even get out of the gate. Fielder, Zimmermann, Martinez, Cabrera, Baez. it happens, it will keep happening. It's not the exceptional condition, it's the normal condition. The Tigers have been using dead payroll as an excuse not to improve for too long.

It's more than a little disappointing that management hasn't come up with at least a replacement level SS in 23 months on the job. It's not like no one knew it was a need.

I think I made the observation before that if you are scouting a guy and everything he does already looks right technically but he still gets no results, maybe you'll have more luck with a guy like Sweeney where ( assuming your assessment) you can identify some stuff to work on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In another sign the apocalypse is upon us, NYT has announced it will no longer endorse candidates for State and local elections in the state and city of NY. That puts them one step closer to never making any at all, and thus never having to cross their capitalist overlords by endorsing candidates whose election would be in the service of the common good of their readers. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/12/business/media/the-new-york-times-editorial-board-political-endorsements.html

he's been a high K guy with a so-so glove so far. I guess no-one is going to worry too much about the glove until he proves he can hit enough to make to the majors - which he does seem to be working at!

absolutely. and if you do use your credit card - always uncheck "save my credit card info". And while it can be an initial inconvenience, you can go one step further - open a bank account linked to paypal with a low minimum balance. Feed that account as you go only what you anticipate spending with paypal. You now have an absolute limit on your liability should it all get hacked.

just watched the rest of this one I missed. Malloy still pretty brutal in LF. Colt hitting the ball hard and playing some good 2B. Greene, Keith, Vierling, Carpenter are your solid major leaguers. Meadows looks like a pretty sure bet as well. So 5 guys. If Dingler hits that 6, if Tork makes it back 7, or you sign at least one real major league hitter and now you are in range of a lineup that can get you somewhere. That's closer than they have been in a while. So oddly enough for next season it looks like more pitching question marks than on the hitting side. Haven't been in that situation in a while.

It's funny how the government forced TV broadcasters to adopt new standards and frequencies when technology changed, but never forced AM broadcasters to shut down and go to the FM band. Maybe the move to digital TV was actually less cutting edge when it happened than the introduction of FM was in its time so there was more doubt about whether it would be viable, plus FM had no capability like the big regional clear channel stations of the time. Also the spectrum of the AM band is probably not worth much to anyone else the way the big chunks of the UHF band that has been re-allocated is.

I keep hoping for the day when political advertising becomes so ineffective candidates give it up. Even today I have to doubt anyone believes anything they see/hear in a political ad, but I imagine they can still be useful/effective for driving turnout of people whose minds are already made up.

it was his first AB of the game so no prior HBP. He had made one play in the field on a GB prior to his AB..

you know Trumps logon credentials are on PostIt notes on his monitor.

I'd guess more reviews/interviews on the Miles Taylor book must have hit recently.

have to think Carpenter is ready in 2/3 more games.

Dem business donors have been lobbying the Biden admin to dump Lana Kahn. Irrefutable evidence she is doing the job.

I think with muscle strains, a problem in baseball games is the inactivity. Guys go out and do their warm-ups but then sit and stand around for extended periods and then have to suddenly cut/accelerate/sprint and those warm-ups were way too long in the past to be protective. The one that I found most ridiculous was Mize's hamstring though. He basically walked off the mound and somehow strained it. Maybe guys need to be running back to the clubhouse during the inning breaks or infield sweeps and re-stretching or jumping on stationary bikes.

jake still has little experience as a FG kicker so we can hope there is some upside on developing more accuracy.

Hard to know how long it was in the planning or how fast it came together in a hurry, but Biden/Harris have pulled off one of the greatest maneuvers in US political history. I think we are just still to close to it to realize how difficult what they just did was. They are either the luckiest SOBs in history or way better at what they were doing than people ever give politicians the credit for being.

If you were not a person that found Hillary grating, then that phenomenon won't make sense, but it is/was real. What I'm sure has changed however, is that with age and the end of political ambitions of her own, I think she is likely to express more of the humor and graciousness that is also in her personality.

what more important than whether they should be there is whether they are on board with the right program! These are all people with strong agendas of their own and their own needs for self justification. You have to hope they will all row in the same direction rhetorically. Obama especially, his speech needs to end with the crowd charged up about Harris, not wishing Obama could have a 3rd term. If it's the latter, he failed his task. 🤷‍♀️

It depends what she says. I can imagine her giving a great speech about Harris, sisterhood, etc. As long as she stays away from talking about 2016 she should be fine.

Yup. Obviously there can be more than one successful strategy and there can be more than on in play simultaneously, but I agree the basic theme at the convention should be not to talk about Trump more than needed to set down the basic markers, things like his behavior on Jan6 and his spiking the immigration bill - things he did or claims to want to do as straight policy contrasts. But I agree, they don't want to talk about Trump as Trump per se.

Obama has to give the speech that creates a continuity - a bridge - from him to Biden to Harris, which I think is still lacking for the reason you note. If he does that, then he needs to be there. What I'm afraid of is that Obama's own ego (which is plenty outsized) drives him to just make a "look at me, the great orator on a great stage again" speech without doing what he actually need to do, which is pull every one of his supporters to Harris. Otherwise it will be a missed opportunity. To me the need to create that bridge is why having the Clintons there becomes somewhat problematic because Hillary is the discontinuity in it - If you could have Bill without Hillary....but of course you can't! Hillary won the popular vote, but it was still 4M fewer votes than Obama got in 2008 and 17M less than Biden got in 20. Harris needs all of Biden's 80M

good point. In the NFL that is already true. I think a big part of Holmes success as Lions' GM is exactly how well he understands this. The injury situation if FB is worse of course, but at least in football, there is actually more pressure for young guys to train to stay on the field because they know if they don't they just get cut. In baseball it's almost counterproductive because a young guy on a major league roster is out a year for TJ he not only gets paid but he accrues service time getting him closer to a bigger payday when he comes back. Not sure that drives the right incentives for players focus on staying healthy when they are young and developing their training approaches.