gehringer_2

In all likelihood the detail would be just murky enough that it would have changed nothing - a scenario where he went down the stairwell head first and one side maintains he was pushed/murdered and the other than he just tripped and fell so the prosecution is a which hunt....etc., etc.,,,,,,,

IDK - The link to Trump seems the most solid thing in the case. The weakest link in the case is proving the payments can't be construed as something other than a campaign expense. The financial records are only fraudulent if the money was spent "for the campaign." If a juror thinks he would have spent the money to suppress the story for personal reasons anyway rather than campaign reasons, the premise of the case collapses. That seems like most effective appeal to make to the jury: That to Trump the money was small potatoes and he would have done it anyway even if he weren't running for office.

right - as a spectator sport it has never provided the drama or football or the speed of hockey and that's why to me it comes down to the experience. I enjoy basketball as a spectator sport though I never played it at all. I have a hard time imagining I would ever watch a baseball game if I hadn't played at it so much. The appeal (to me) is watching a SS snare a liner and knowing exactly what that felt like, or knowing the unique feeling when you have hit the ball dead on. I can't bring that level of 'intimacy' to watching any other sport - so the bar for those sports to be interesting to me as a spectator is higher, and they provide that in a way that baseball really didn't have to for it's 1st 100 years or so. Or maybe another analogy would be that I think musicians themselves are the core group of jazz fans - because they are better able to experience what an improv player is doing at more levels, while the rest of us can only hear it.

what else is a message board for than to swap opinions/speculation? 🤷‍♂️ I do think about baseball more than any other sport though because to me the way baseball has changed and evolved is such a marker for how the larger society has changed. I think it is - at least was, more significant than other sports in that regard because it was so much a part of the culture. Some played football, some basketball, a few hockey, but up to and including the boomers everyone played baseball (and/or their girlfriends came and watched). So it was more a common point of shared experience than almost anything else. But that pretty much ended with the boomers and maybe a few Gen Xers, since we were the last cohort to grow up in that sand-lot youth culture that had existed for maybe 80 yrs prior. Everything changes, that's given, but as it happens to things you are so close to it is hard to look away.

Hit and walk seems to be Max's day at the office.

there are a lot things killing baseball for youth but the biggest is just that they don't play it, and that I think, is due largely to factors way beyond anyone in the sports control - namely low suburban housing density and small families. You need a bunch of kids closely matched in age to have any chance at a sand lot baseball culture - and it just doesn't exist in many places in the US today. I grew up in a city with lots of 4 kids to a household houses on 1/8 acre lots. We could raise 15 to 20 kids across only a couple of grades to play ball everyday after school. We had 4 diamonds at our Jr high, and 3 more within 1/2 mile of there. There were all full most days. Then we all grew up and played intramural and city league softball. That's where MLBs current fanbase came from. And I doubt that is ever coming back. So all they are left with is trying to make the game more of a spectacle (ie. the HR), to make it entertaining for people who don't have the experience based vicarious identification to what is happening on the field. But it will be a different kind of fan with a different kind of relation to what they are watching.

did you see the attendance? Pathetic. There is money to be made by facing up to sunk costs and putting a better product on the field.

I call oxymoron. There is no such thing as good process that produces consistently bad results. In pro sports the process can have no intrinsic value apart from its results.

I think the single most needful mindset in a sports general manager is the ability to see his own players objectively. There was no good reason to believe that a 30 yr old hitter with a sub 600 OPS, poor pitch recognition and a long swing who was not injured, was likely to be a better hitter on his return a year older - he put the evidence in front the Tigers over 550 PA and they pretty much decided to ignore it. The Mets were ancient history by last October.

Problem is Harris didn't find a SS to fill the hole even knowing that the single most probable outcome of Javy's terrible 2023 would be a terrible 2024. Management by wishful thinking? And don't bother mentioning Kreidler, whose most probable outcome based on his history would be right were he is, the DL.

The best HR hitters go about 1 HR in 15 AB. A decent hitter carries a better than 250 BA, which is one in 4. If you are playing for more than a single to get Riley in and extend the game you are playing to lose. This is not an intelligent batting team - whether it's the players or the management, something needs to change.

yup. Hinch is channeling his inner Earl Weaver - he apparently wants the guys playing for the long ball all the time. Problem is he doesn't have a HR hitting team.

Wenceel for hero tonight?

this isn't going to last long. walk the man and set up the force. But Hinch won't

Riley on a 1 for 24

the umps taketh away, the ump giveth back. Total gift to Canha

sounds good to me

LOL - this game could be over in 1:50 if someone had scored.

the thing is, the league is completely aware - all the data goes to the league, so you have to believe this is what the league wants. I can't imagine why, but it is what it is. If the Umps were being rung up for these zones in their internal evals, they wouldn't be calling them out there. And the give away is that it's not just misses at random, it's giving away the outside pitch in particular, so I don't believe it's general incompetence, though there is plenty of that. We are getting somebody's idea what they want.

another game with an ump calling strikes half a foot outside and nobody can score. Batters have no chance. These guys are pitching well but I'd wager with ABS this would not be a scoreless. game.

I'm sure some are more than others - which is the problem. But you also see umps not give away the outside and it's the same catchers behind the dish, so there is certainly an ability level to not being conned.

Newspapers used to make their money on want-ads, which had nothing to do with the news either, so maybe appropriate.

Haberman has not been the NYTs finest hour - but if IRCC, she started out as a freelancer - another symptom of a system making choices without money to back them. I'm fine with people lobbying the Times to change their coverage - I think a lot it has been silly, breathless, vapid, but people do have to remember that the bottom line matters there as much as at Fox, they write what sells to their readership. If you are selling writing that is always the bottom line.

Framing may matter at the the top/bottom of the zone, but any umpire worth his salt should not be influenced by where the mitt ends up inside/outside - he should have the line of the pitch judged before it's in the glove and it's mostly the outside pitch that umps are giving away - so I don't really think it's framing. I agree framing probably makes life harder for the ump, and when they first started doing it I remember saying the umps should tell the catcher that if he has to move the ball after catching it I'm just assuming it must have been a ball. That would have put an end to framing before it ever got off the ground. Water under the proverbial bridge today....