gehringer_2

Angel could have claimed that he read 'intent' in Harper's overall actions and it wouldn't matter that his bat stayed back as far as it did, because that criteria is nowhere in the rule. That why it's a dumb rule. They should just define the swing as the bat crossing the plate, maybe with something about the wrist angle, and be done with it. But they never have. On the other side, the 'inverse' of the rule, where a guy's bat crosses the plate when he is bailing out at a pitch thrown at him and he takes a called strike for his effort to save his noggin to me is an even dumber application of a bad set of rules.

over 300 Senators have died while still in office. She must be one of the worse cases, but it's only a matter of degree, not type.

A robot could easily make the call if there was any objective, geometric definition of what constitutes a swing, but there isn't.

I've never liked the 'control the zone' mantra for hitters because it misses the point. That is the outcome you want, but you don't get there by telling guys to "swing at strikes." Every hitter thinks every pitch he swings at is going to be a strike - the problem is the pitch fools him. The last thing you want is to paralyze hitters having them wait too long to make a decision because they are trying not to be wrong. Then they miss everything - you get a tentative hitter like Tork was last season who couldn't pull the trigger on a middle-middle fastball. If you want control of the zone, you have to give guys tools to allow them to wait longer and still get the bat there in time. Or like Torkelson - just get them to where they slow the game down enough so the talent they have can work. Then you will get better control of the zone, and a hitter that is also less tentative instead of more. You never want the hitter thinking about his decision - it always has to be see ball/hit ball. Clearly the Tigers do coach guys on how to be quicker to the ball, so I suppose my compliant may be more the rhetoric than the reality, but it still bugs me when Hinch says a guy 'has to be more selective' like there was some kind of knob under the guy's cap he can just turn to the next setting to do that.

Let the extortion begin https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38514196/mel-tucker-tells-msu-file-wrongful-termination-lawsuit

Still, something to be said for a guy that is actually doing it and not just projected to do it.

He was mostly a baseball guy but I'm not impressed with his homework anymore. Maybe I was not as deep into baseball then but I remember Pat as being pretty knowledgeable about baseball once. Not so much anymore. For various reasons I have been stuck in a car on Saturday mornings in recent years so I've had the 'opportunity' to listen to him again and I can't say I still think he is actually up to speed with Tiger issues. So hard to believe he's working any harder on Lion's issues.

Meadows with good ABs against LH pitching. Lipcius continues to hit for average even at the top level - not so clear the glove or power is enough to keep him here, but he's earning a longer look.

that probably won't work very often in the NHL, but it does show he's plenty strong on his skates.

He had to more than like them, they had to be people that stroked his ego by making him feel like he was the leader he wasn't.

I have to agree that the handling of third over the last couple of years has defied explanation. It's extremely hard to understand the criteria they are using give guys innings there. Especially considering that the Twins and Rays have gotten a decent returns from Willi Castro and Isaac Paredes playing 3d and the Tigers never gave either a serious look there. Seems they have trouble recognizing a decent 3b even when they have one.

But the sadly, logic works both ways. Since the FA situation is that hitters are going to be in more demand than pitchers, the pitchers you trade will return less value in hitters than they should as well. TINSTAAFL. In this market you'd rather trade a hitter for a pitcher to get the most favorable value gain, but you'd have to have a hitter to trade.

At this point I can't imagine Dingler succeeding in the majors. He's a worse contact hitter than Rogers without the power. Kelley is terrible. Catcher remains a problem if they don't want Rogers playing 130 games, and they sure don't seem to.

and of course, one way to see the Oxycontin disaster is as a massive regulatory failure, and which party is it that constantly whines about and is consistently working to deregulate their corporate sponsors?

and of course, the Fentanyl problem is in reality just the echo of the Oxycontin problem. The growth of the fentanyl 'market' has been driven in large part by the ending of opiate over-prescription. But once you create a mass population of addicts it's like a pig in a python. They don't just go away just because their 1st pusher gets busted (in this case US Pharma). They, and their need for fixes, will continue to move through the demographic.

Curious to see if they offer Turnbull or if all the speculation about bad blood was just smoke.

A mostly replaceable group. Diaz has done OK. I don't see any of the bats being significant contributors to a winning team. McKinstry made a contribution early this season this season but I really don't care for guys that collapse in the second half, argues that pitchers have them figured out so their future is dim.

Ibanez is the exactly the kind of utility player you want on a good team*. The question is whether the Tiger start viewing themselves as a good team or not. *i.e. not a player you signed because you were hoping he could turn into a regular and actually fill a hole in a crappy lineup. or IOW, not a McKinstry or Maton.

That seem that an unusually high number of eligibles for one team! Does this year hit some kind of peak because of the lost Covid season?

There have been Mexican administrations in years past that were more open to assistance from US LEO, if not direct military, than the current one. Things ebb and flow in Mexico. This does not seem to be one of the better eras. TBH, I would guess the way things are going we are going to start seeing more El Salvador solutions to our South.

Yeah - there were several comments after the post to the effect that the US Mil does have the capability to push initiative back down the CoC. But I was more interested in the Ukraine end of the story; the argument that Ukraine is probably matching tactics to conditions in a more optimal way than many have given them credit for recently. Even Michael Kofman, one of the primary WOTR writers, has in the past noted lack of larger scale combined arms action by Ukraine as a failing/limitation

I wonder if someone still has the detachable Keweenaw from his map?

I'm going to guess the exception is for a game that can't be made up.

good point. Do you have a count? Madden, Mattison, Hurter? Maybe Couch, Malgeri?

interesting.... BTW - Forecast is 40% chance of rain.