gehringer_2

they have played Jung some at 2nd, which surprised me when I just looked it up. 7 games at 2B and 10 games at 3B. So Hinch will be able to keep the position line-up vego-matic going full tilt.

Personally, I don't consider voting for two of them 'throwing up my hands', but nor I can't deny what my eyes are telling me about the society I'm living in. Of course if the Dems could manage to make themselves into a more overall appealing party, they could probably elect candidates even given the irreducible residual of sexism, racism or whatever 'ism' that is always going to infect some marginal number of the voting populace. It's pretty disappointing to me that by early in Trump's 1st term there seemed to be democratic voices with leadership potential showing up all over the place, but so far I don't really see opposition leaders meeting the challenge of building a winning movement to turn things around (in fact we get Hogg trying to self-immolate what's left of his party). I think it has to start with a message that defines more than opposition - that may be enough for another close win in the next election, but it's not enough break the stranglehold that nihilist zero sum politics has on too much of the US electorate. It won't start the kind of civic transformation we need. The dems need to find an ethos richer and deeper to mine.

don't be unrealistic, no player or captain can throw his mates under the bus - at least not without the prior decision of management to be rid of those players - which does not seem to be forthcoming. The better players on this team have a right to be PO'd. Two full years of nothing but backward moves from management at the pro level can't be making anyone in the room happy. In the light of what was said today, letting Larkin and Raymond go to 4 Nations and get a taste of what playing with an actual NHL quality roster was like was probably the worst thing that could have happened to this team.

I think he'll be fine if he doesn't kill himself against the wall. The guy can flat out catch baseballs, that talent really has never been in doubt.

yup. Not the world I'd prefer to live in but the one I also think we are in, and if anything the DEM party insiders are going to be even more adamant that they have to get a woman elected, and to be honest, a good deal of the best Dem talent is female. But that and $5 will get them a Vente and a President JD Vance.

Major league fielder, AA hitter. His glove has already gotten him more MLB service time than most guys with his bat will ever see. He'll probably be a great manager some day.

I guess Riley is going to have to survive playing CF - McKinstry and Baez as his relief?

I think the one thing that has shifted wrt hitting in recent years is that as pitch velocity has climbed, hitting becomes more and more pure reaction capability. Everything you do today mechanics, technique, everything, has to serve the single purpose of giving the greatest possible time to make a swing decision. It's always been that way to some degree, but the degree keeps increasing. Tork's case is illustrative - he had to slow down his swing to gain more control of it and increase his contact, but he had to move back to get the time back needed for a slower swing. I'd really love to see them experiment with moving the mound back 1' at one of the minors levels just to see how it goes.

unfortunately, being the "most popular" democrat is right up there with being the most popular leper.

People like Hogg are just disinterested in building a governing coalition. US politics are so screwed. On the GOP side you have a party that doesn't care about right vs wrong at all - only winning. On the DEM side you have people who care so much about being right it excludes any possibility of actually building anything that looks like a winning coalition. Pretty clear why one side is winning more elections.

this is very true and sports isn't the only place. It's always hard to teach something where any part of the phrase "it comes to me naturally" applies at all, because you have no experience with which to identify with the person for whom it doesn't.

it just his typical sarcasm. He's actually pillorying the whole Christian ethic here, the subtext argument is clearly that any real Christian attitude of love and forgiveness is actually ridiculous and foolishly naive. Of course it doesn't matter to his fans in the Christian right, who have already wandered so far to support him they won't see it.

mercy rule

Kemp could seriously swing a baseball bat.

how stupid does an ICE agent have to be to fabricate that a US citizen told him he entered the country illegally.

Also interesting that even last season Hinch said more than once that he thought Torkelson had too many people in his ear - maybe that's a little odd since it's his staff - or maybe it's not completely under his control, and he might also have been talking about outside coaching as well. I did read over his last off-season that the Tigers have sort of thrown in the towel about resistance to guys getting outside coaching and realized they just have to roll with it.

I believe Keats decided to retire or he'd still be there.

Hitting coach in the majors has to be the worst job in all of professional sports. Half the guys you are working with probably know as much about hitting as you do, all of then know themselves better than you do and almost all of them are already as good or better at it than you ever were, but it's up to you to make them better anyway....

I didn't see him play in the minors, but the stroke he used last season wasn't going to put many balls out of the park.

I think Keith learned how to be a good OBP hitter and that got him the deal and the promotion, but now he's feeling pressure - whether real or imagined, to hit for more power and his very-short-to-the-ball approach doesn't lend itself to that task so he's gotten himself into a no-man's land approach wise.

I would have thought the pitch simulation machines like Trajekt would have been a huge breakthrough for hitters, but they are around now and so far hitting doesn't seem to have been impacted enough to move the needle in overall league numbers. Dan was talking today about BaBIP still being on a downward trend and assigning that to constantly improving pitching, though I have a suspicion that the increased emphasis by hitters on hitting the ball in the air is also playing a part. Fly balls are generally at least as easy an out as a hard grounder. Maybe better for OPS but not necessarily for BA. (edited to remove echo.....)

it has to be a frustration for a quantitative driven management that there is so much you can do for a pitcher with today's data and tech and yet how limited what you can do for a hitter remains. I think at least at the general theory level, Harris has been a clarifying voice with the idea that you have to be competitive against the whole or at least as much of the K zone as you can. My impression was that under Avila's people the emphasis in being selective at the plate had gone too far and Tigers' hitters too often found themselves hitting out a hole behind in the count - certainly one of the habits Torkelson was still fighting early last season.

I don't think Dan mentioned it but Hinch put Ibanez in at 2nd to close out the game. Colt had tossed a potential DP ball over Sweeney's head in the 8th. Colt owes him though because Sweeney did such a great job of faking out the runnner he didn't go to third. No base given up, no error charged.

relievers are dropping like flies.

I don't know if he'd be any good, but putting more energy into him as a starter is getting pretty pointless so there is a certain convergence between a need and the time try it.