gehringer_2

It is fair to ask if in their efforts to filter player procurement through the 'good guys in the clubhouse' lens they forgot to obtain the requisite percentage of junkyard dogs to bite some kneecaps.

Here is another display of the same data given as % change Yr over Yr. What stands out in this view is how steep the recent lines are in both directions. A lot of over and under compensation/reaction around Covid and what looks like the beginnings of another rapid run up in the making.

LOL - should have moved him there already, might have encouraged him to opt out. Just sayin'.

another typical Flaherty outing. Good WHIP, good K rate, 6+ ERA.

so here is a thesis. The Tigers over-emphasize hitting mistakes. Makes them overly vulnerable to when a team pitches well and doesn't make many. IIRC this was Tork's whole problem last year - he had to go back to Toledo to basically learn to cover more of the plate. But where did he develop that habit of being too selective in the 1st place - the Tiger org. And in fact early in his career Hinch always stressed Tork had to "find pitches he could drive". OK that's true as far as it goes, you do have to hit the mistakes. But what do you do when the mistakes are not there in quantity? Is the Tiger hitting philosophy flexible enough to produce hitters that are competitive against good pitching and don't just beat up on the bad? "Command the zone" is a two way street for hitters. You have to let the balls go, but you also have to put strikes in play - at least after strike one, even if they don't happen to be HR potential level mistakes.

FIFY

I think GM has a big piece of LAC.

Somewhat of a return to normal. Looking at the longer term trend, July/August would normally be the best months for homes because of the large number of people who want to move before school starts. The outliers have been the last couple of years when there was virtually no July/August bump at all.

Another issue is just that all media has to brought under the regulatory tent. One of the major justifications broadcasters have used to argue for looser regulation on them (and rightfully so) is that their competition is nearly totally unregulated. Cable and IP have be to refined by Congress as public utilities and brought under oversight so everyone is on a level playing field.

+1000 (minor note:, CU must be "reversed.")

They effectively lost 3/5 of the starting staff they thought they had - Jobe, Olson, and Flaherty turned into a pumpkin. That alone was going to be very hard to overcome, but they managed to do just that because they had some offensive players playing at outlier levels for their talent. Now it's all regressed to mean values, a couple of BP pitchers have done what BP pitchers do (be inconstent) and on top of that they are psychologically shell-shocked as a team. That last part is up to Hinch to fix and so far he appears to be failing. Leyland had his flaws but this is probably what he would have been good at. I don't see Hinch as having the kind of personality that can lift a room. And to be fair, a manager probably doesn't need that 99% of the time, but it's needed now.

I'm beginning to think that with the pitching staff so shattered, Flaherty more likely to either bail or just be bad, Greene having plateaued, Meadows looking like he isn't an MLB hitter, Torkelson's ceiling locking in at about an 800 OPS (IOW good player, but not a great one), McKinstry having come to earth, Torres gone, I'm having trouble seeing them being a >500 team next season. So maybe they get a boost from Anderson or McGonigle by mid-season, still doesn't help the hole the pitching will be in.

"AI Overview" reports UM/Neb pulled 5.3M viewers and was CBS's top rated game. Given it was also sure that Lions had beaten the Ravens in 2009, make of those numbers what you will. 🤷‍♀️

exactly. If ABC or Sinclair pull a show the right or the left argue the merits and can make as big a deal about it and try to create all the PR and economic pressure over it they can, and ALL of THAT is just a matter of free commerce. As soon as the US Government or any of it's duly authorized representatives, in particular a regulator of said media, weigh in, THEN it's immediately a potential constitutional issue. Don't know why this has be clarified and re-clarified at every one of these episodes. The same public that can remember what happened on Survivor Season 1 episode 5 can't keep a little constitutional knowledge in their head long enough to bridge from one media controversy to the next.

I can see the point of having the calls made by the ump standing right at the point of the play - it's visual, immediate and the way other rules work he's going to be there anyway so he has something to do, but none of that means the ump couldn't be getting *all* the calls on ear piece.

17 Ks?

odds were apparently subject to change there.

I've skipped through a lot of games quickly on the DVR but never got through one in 15 sec.......

this is something I have found really intriguing. So in all the years I'd watched baseball "pretech" there was always this debate about using live pitchers in batting practice - was it worth it, and whether a more realistic batting practice setup would improve hitters etc. So when the hi-tech pitching machines appeared that gave hitters the chance to stand in and practice as much as they wanted against what ever spin and velocity they could dial in, I figured there *might* be a potential for a revolution in offense across the league. But not much discernible has actually happened, things all seem to be within the usual norms. I think that argues that hitters already have/had ways to get in as much useful work as they could, and that good pitching will remain hard to hit. It remains more a matter of not knowing or being able to recognize what is coming even if you have the chance to practice against it. So for batters the practice tech hasn't been near the revolution that letting a pitcher actually practice and refine his exact pitch physics pitch by pitch has been.

I agree - I think teams have caught on to the need to hit and pitch against their tendencies when facing the Tigers. I don't think that's the reason they've slumped suddenly though. While it's possible, I can't think of a good explanation that all the opposing teams would have suddenly changed their approach to Detroit in unison 2/3 of the way through the season - I think they've been adjusting that in regard ever since this season began and the Tigers were still winning anyway.

two unsuccessful or two total? Two total could be a joke if an ump is just consistently wide.

yup. And I think it will be a boost for most RHB. That extra ball width/inconsistency that so many umps regularly give RH slider pitchers is murder on RHH.

In the sense that other teams are doing the same thing so Tiger hitters are having more trouble, or in the sense that what the Tigers are doing isn't as effective and other teams are now hitting them better? I'd agree with the first, but the second is more complicated. Using the tech to teach pitchers how get their pitches to move works - end of story there. Hitters don't seem to be able to get better with familiarity or more practice against good movement - and the lack of impact of Trajekt on league offense seems to prove that. But given that the Tiger pitching staff's problem this year seems to center mostly around too many walks, it may be that they have just gone past optimum on their pitch designs to where guys are trying to throw designer pitches they can't command well enough to keep the walks in check.

A lot of the time she was trying to be funny or satirical but she had really lost the handle on where the edge of the cliff was.

or think of if in terms of living there with it and the lights on, or living there without with the lights off. 🤔 We stayed at a place with one of these visible out the window. Took a day or two to notice what it really was. Once you know I suppose you can't unknow though...