gehringer_2

Yeah - Malloy has great zone discipline, but I haven't seen enough evidence Malloy can hit the ball when it's in the zone - at least so far. The former by itself isn't enough to stay in the majors.

and Kirk's fans on the forum didn't like what they thought was dis-repect to his memory here, in a place were not more than few people saw it? Jeez Louise.

The other extreme end way to look at the argument is that your one year of your superstar may be worth 6-8 WAR plus the economic value of a playoff run, and you get a high comp pick, which gives you a shot at a guy with as good a set of odds of success as a prospect you get in trade; compared against getting a prospect or two in a trade, from the team that knows them best and is still willing to part with them, who have a good chance of having less career WAR than your star produced in that one year you kept him. And I think for Harris the high pick has a lot of appeal because he knows what he wants in a pick and it's probably not what a lot of teams draft for.

You're kidding, right?

Harris alluded to this talking about the Tiger approach would change as the line up changed, and to large degree this is probably the ultimate truth. Once a guy gets to the majors, very few ever change their profile much. Not saying none, but few. Now in the Tigers case, since the K's are a recent thing for Greene, it seems reasonable to expect he can move back along a path he has already been on. With Torkelson it's all about his willingness to go to RF, and I'm still not sure Hinch has his heart in encouraging him to do that. Even in the presser, Hinch pushed back a little on the idea that he's willing to see the power hitters back off on power for contact. It's an interesting clue of a bit of daylight between him and Harris that they live with. Which is fine, no two people in an org do or should agree 100% on everything.

Nuclear power is a good base load match for renewables. The question is whether US society can still produce the kind of competence and discipline required to be a safe nuclear operator. At one end, the US Navy does very well - at the other end we saw the outcome of a sloppy and poorly disciplined society running Nuke plants in Chernobyl. I've have no qualms about the science and engineering of nuclear power. But accountability is such foreign word in US business management today that I do worry about nuclear power in the hands of quarterly profit driven/unaccountable management US business.

but probably not the liquid sodium cooled concept this outfit is pushing. Liquid metal cooling is one of those bad ideas like Hydrogen powered cars that sounds good so it just won't die. TBF, I think what is at work here is the divergence between science and engineering. There are some things which are elegant Science or elegant logic, that simply can't be adequately engineered in the real world. So these ideas just keep getting life and investment, and then ultimately fail the test of ever actually being executed in the mundane real world of what is practically possible.

Bridge is done, apparently they can't get the customs houses into operation - construction/staffing/training, whatever. Some reports the Canadian side lost a ton of workers to the nearby Stellantis plant project and accusations that US gov is dragging its feet.

Yes. I think he has posted a link to it here before but I won't presume to - just PM him for it.

What a symbol! It will surely drive them to greater glory.

Unsurprising yet sad.

and unfortunately that also means their signature to an agreement isn't worth the paper it's printed on, so we'll see.

these projects are moving targets and I don't track them particularly closely, but these are probably the same units that Ontario Power is building at Darlington Ontario (north shore of Lake Ontario) which is already the site of a set of conventional CANDU reactors. One modular is being built at Darlington now, 3 more are planned. They will be the 1st modular reactors in N. America. A lot of folks are watching this. Part of the project at Palisades MI is to add two or more modulars at that site along with the restart of the PWR, but everyone is waiting to see if the reactors at Darington work as advertised. Ontario power also is considering putting Modulars in at the site of the huge coal plant (2400MW) at Nanticoke (lake Erie) that has been torn down.

Cautionary tale. There was a time that the Dodgers had a #1 prospect young outfielder everyone was salivating over. Boston finally pried him loose in return for Mokie Betts. Since the trade, Betts has put up another 32 WAR, Alex Verdugo has produced 8.6 and doesn't seem to have much left at only 29 (Jeter Downs didn't produce any). It's *really* hard to match any young player(s) to a superstar. You just never know ⚠️

I can imagine it goes something like this. The Tigers ask Skubal for the courtesy being able to match, Boras says - go fly a kite, make us an offer now. The Tigers eventually make one for a max AAV but less term than Skubal wants and it's over when the Tigers are outbid on term. I can see C.I. being will to make him the highest paid pitcher - and maybe by a decent margin *while* he's still pitching, but I don't see Chris being willing to pay another player >$40M/yr to play golf for 3 or 4 years. Just don't.

another aspect to add to the argument is that a longer throw does mean less leeway for a breaking ball, and again - I would argue that is the whole point. If it's harder to control max spin with the added distance, that devalues max spin. That helps the batter but probably also helps pitcher's health long term.

the difference is still much smaller than the range they already pitch through. Any pitcher than can throw a pitch a few inches higher in the zone can throw the pitch for a strike a few inches further away. Even a 'slow' major league pitch ~80mph, is moving horizontally a lot faster than it is moving vertically. Besides, even if is harder - which i'm not conceding, isn't that the whole idea? To make it a little harder for the pitchers?

IDK - I guess I would disagree with the underlying assumption here. I don't the pitcher changes anything he is doing at all if the plate is a foot further away. He already throwing the ball into the same target box as hard as he can - what is he going to change about that? the change in his angle to the plate is far smaller than the size of the zone he is throwing into. It's really no different than the umps deciding to call the zone an inch tighter one day - they deal with that all the time. It would be a much smaller change to pitching geometry than changing the height of the mound, which has been done without any major upset.

Every batter has trouble with the slider from the same sided pitcher because when it leaves the hand it looks like it is going to be a FB in the zone. If the batter can't pick up the spin or see the break start before he has to commit to his swing, it's a swing and miss. Every single batter has the same problem and every single batter at least occasionally falls victim to the slider away, it's only a matter of degree. Javy is simply worse at that aspect of hitting than most guys - he doesn't have the ability to see it. So he has to make up his player value somewhere else. He can work on situational awareness and study particular pitchers and get better at deciding when to commit to taking a pitch, but he's never going to be any better at recognizing that slider - it's not in his skillset.

Hilarious that the people pushing this apparently claim the Regents at UM can't kill UM's participation. They apparently haven't read the Michigan Constitution. The UM Regents are not advisory, they are controlling. Not to mention there isn't one chance in 10,000 that Grasso would even think of trying to vote in contradiction to any Regents' guidance. To get UM, they need the BoR.

Hinch gives off conflicting signals with regard to his advice to his hitters so it's confusing. He did talk about the need for his hitters to be able to switch to 'plan B' within an AB. Assume he's talking about exactly what you mean - hunt/guess/pick a zone/whatever while you are ahead, but then go into protection/extend the AB/at least rattle the pitcher mode once you are behind. But he's also always pushing to only swing at pitches you can drive. So take your pick. But that isn't even my biggest gripe. They were so pleased about themselves extending pitchers to high counts early in games, but I think they are overboard on the value of that. Some teams have BPs so good it really doesn't do you any good to get there - esp in the playoffs. Sometimes (like in the one playoff game) you do get a pitcher to 60 in two innings and then you go down two straight innings in 9 pitches. Meanwhile, how many cookies did you take on 1st pitches that put you in a hole for the AB and forced you into 'plan B' before you ever swung at the one good pitch you got? Other than maybe Riley and Gleyber, I think the rest of them need to MORE aggressive on the 1st pitch. Stop giving away strike one. It has already been documented that early on, when the offense wasn't so hot out of the gate, they were taking more 1st pitch strikes than any other team. They still tend to fall right back into that habit.

OK - so by the numbers, Assume Mize is Mize, Olson was 1.7 WAR in 68 IP. Can he be 3.7 WAR in 160? Jobe was 0.4 WAR in 50 IP, can he supply at least 1.4 in a full season? So you have 3.0 back. Can Melton be better than 2 WAR? That would be 5. Can they sign 2 WAR? I would think so. That would be and additional 7. Flahery was 1 WAR. If he stays he should be better, if he goes 1 WAR shouldn't be that hard to improve on. They have some assets, but they have to get them on the field and keep them off the IL. Harris hit that as a major emphasis, but I don't know what pitching health magic the Tigers think they can find that hasn't already been tried and failed. Because after Montero I'm not seeing much depth if people get hurt next season. Brieske? Madden, Guenther? 😑 Of course the flip side is that if Skubal is still here, with Olson back and Melton joining the staff, they could be the 95 win team we thought we had last season.

even when they were 25 over in August they were below 500 in games not started by Skubal or Mize. OTOH, I don't think the world turns black on the day Skubal inevitably departs. Depending on Jobe's timetable, if you have a rotation that starts with Olson, Mize, Jobe, Melton you may still have a playoff team with only one or two reasonable additions. Or maybe not, but the current potential staff is not all chopped liver behind Skubal.

I saw McGonigle and Anderson assigned, No Clark

What are we going to do with Max Anderson. He may be the most reasonably ready reasonably high contact RH bat in the system right now.