gehringer_2

Some of the missing Epstein files no doubt.

and you never know, the other team's goalie might blow a fuse, your goalie might get hot, a top seed might be looking past you and get ambushed, you might draw a team with a better record than you but that you happen to match up well against.

The best pitch to hit is always the one you were looking for. The long time theory in baseball is that even if you know the hitter may be sitting dead red, it's still harder to barrel up velo, so when you are down to just hope, throw the fastball. And if you are Will Vest or esp Aroldis Chapman, that probably still holds. But I don't know how much that holds anymore for a guy Morton with a relatively 'hittable' FB in a league where the hitters have adjusted to handling 100. If your fastball is of the hittable variety, you either need to locate it (And Morton was having trouble commanding it) or throw off-speed, and in either case if you leave the pitch over the plate you may end up in trouble. So I won't argue too much with what he decided to throw. The bigger problem is we have three starters that you can't trust past three innings and a bullpen that is isn't up to that level of support. When he issues his 4th walk in as many innings - in a perfect world you don't even want Morton to face the heart of the order again even if it is only the 4th inning. Maybe if he has Hurter, Eglert, Holton, Brieske lined up like he did last season he goes and gets him anyway, but how can you want to do that with this BP? It's frustrating but unless some of these pitchers raise their game it's going to be a bumpy ride.

to finish the thought - The thing that bothers me the most is that I don't even think they are as good now as we give them credit for. The conventional narrative from last season is that they played badly down the stretch. I think a more a likely story is that McLellan came in mid-season and got the Wings to play their 'A' game while most of the teams they were playing were in mid-season doldrums mode, and when it started getting close to the finish line and other teams raised their level of play to their "A" game, they left the Wings in the dust.

why should hockey get such exalted treatment that a GM should get unlimited time to turn a franchise around? What's is fair then? 20 yrs? You get two full player career generations before you are expected to put a quality product on the ice? There are a lot fewer moving parts to assembling a hockey team than a baseball team, and the Tigers were every bit as bad at the bottom as the Wings ever were. The fact is that Jason hit it on the nose - one player per draft is not enough to ever get a team to good even if the that one player is a good one - that is still below your roster replacement rate. You have to consistently hit on an average of more than one player to rebuild a franchise. And it's true a lot of teams don't hit on more than one, but when you need to get better that's what you need to do.

This Tiger season is beginning to remind me too much of last years Lions' season. Great team that takes on too many injures by the end of the season to remain great. Though with the Tigers it not just injuries but also pitchers just lost to ineffectiveness - Brieske, Hurter, Holton,

You can do the math for any pro sport the same way - divide the roster size by the average career length. 6 yrs is typically quoted as the average NHL career. There are 20 roster spots, you need to average a little better than 3 players per year added to keep up with natural attrition - or find more above league average level players that tend to have longer careers. If your system can't provide that many, you have to make trades that net the amount of added value that you didn't get from your drafting -i.e "win" all your trades. That is extremely hard for any GM to do, and Yzerman is no exception there. In the last couple of years the Wings have met that target, not clear if thy can this year.

One of things I have finally begun to understand about bullpens is that in the modern game, managers don't really decide who they are going to use out of the bullpen, GMs do, because you have to use everyone - there are too many BP innings needed to hide anyone or just save them for mop up. You just don't have the spots with starters' innings constantly falling. So if a guy in on the roster, he's going to pitch - and you are going to take your lumps if he isn't any good.

what little hope is left is Melton away...

The pitching staff is starting to reach critical failure mass - which is what happens when a manager loses so much confidence in his bullpen arms that he leaves starters out too long. The result is failed starts and failed relief, and it all snowballs into outcomes like this.

What villainy is this? Even our Sommers become the Winter of our discontent.

+1. Ann Francis was Emma Peele before Diana Rigg wore her first Cat Suit.

and trying to push 300 lbs guys around on the line of scrimmage is just the thing for L4/L5 issues.

They also lost a ton of income from collapsing cable fees.

No, we are saying that it sucks the proven overall talent level isn't better 6 yrs in. The best we can say for Yzerman right now is to take the comparison to the Tigers. If you take 2016 as Al Avila's first draft in control of the Tigers as a turning point, it took to last season - 8 seasons - to build a competitive baseball team and development system from zero. Do we think Yzerman is within two years of a team that can challenge for a cup? Maybe, but a lot of guys are going to have to make a lot of progress to meet that bar, and most people don't even think Avila was a particularly good GM. Is there an argument that it's harder to rebuild a hockey org than a baseball org? Then again, the Wings have been "sub-contracting" most of their important development responsibility to European teams.

Hinch seems to be losing his touch. He's waited one batter too many a bunch of times recently. Sharpen that hook up AJ. Can't let optimism get the best of you as a manager.

you mean hopeful like the one where Burgess Meredith gets all the books to himself because everyone else is disappeared but then breaks his glasses? That's certainly more hopeful than this game right now.

Torkelson MIA recently. Too many pop-ups and GBs to 3rd. Maybe a little pull happy.

🤮

The worse part is that they can put two D men on the ice together with only 163 games still not have that be close to the weakest pairing.

Pretty much what I was guessing. Well, thanks anyway for a bit of info I would have been happy to live without ever having to hear about.

Yup - JV had made no secret that his ambition was to be the last pitcher with 300 wins and that's what he was playing for. Whether reality has set in and the Sun has set on that ambition to where he just wants to play and compete, I have no idea.

LOL - yeah - quite the fall to the above from the below. Usually not the best sign when people stop caring about their personal appearance.....

One one hand, at this point Charlie Morton and Justin Verlander are the same guy so it probably doesn't impact what happens on the mound every 5th day much if you traded one out for the other. OTOH, Morton is not a distraction from the team focus on winning today's game each day; it's hard to see how Verlander could fail to be, even if he was trying his best not to be, and there is no guarantee that he would be. So- not a move I would make.

I guess I don't pay any kind of attention to things at ESPN, I basically just use the site for real time scores - but I assume they must now also be bedded down with some big gambling interest also as I see now that betting info is front and center in front of and above any actual game data.