gehringer_2

I guess the assumption is that Pettersson is the issue and not that the Canucks have a toxic locker room. I don't follow it enough to judge but if there are people in the game who believe that and turn out to be right, another team will get a good deal because I don't see how the Canucks can keep him or get much for him at this point.

But it doesn't really work that way. Corporations fundamentally don't pay taxes of any kind and they don't "decide" whether to pay taxes or not. The consumer pays them all no matter what the form of the tax. The tariff is no different from the corporate income tax in that regard. All corporate taxes or any kind are simply cost of sales that get added to however a company sets their prices, and in the end any retailer's margin is not a matter of their willingness to pay taxes but the willingness of their competitors to take a smaller or margin, or not. As long as Walmart's competitors raise their prices to protect their margins, so will Walmart. And as long as they all need a given margin to return enough on capital to their investors to stay afloat, they will all raise prices to protect their margins. The only tradeoff is that there is a point where price increases will shrink the market and total sales fall, which again pressures corporate ROI. There will be an optimum point where there is a trade off between margin and volume, but that won't be decided on by the store's politics. And of course, total market sales contractions have another name - recession.

I think the biggest problem with a transition to ABS is that 90% of MLB umps currently call a zone which is wider than the plate, and worse, it's not symmetric to both sides, the pitcher generally gets a couple inches to the outside relative to which ever side the batter is on. So the only way for ABS not to cause a big dislocation in the major league game is if the zone is set wider and shifts left and right at each batter - otherwise there is going to be a big jump in offense when hitters start spitting on all the outside pitches they can't reach that they they swing at now because they know will be called strikes anyway.

I'm not going to go look it up, but my recollection is that the rule book says the umpires is supposed to judge whether the batter committed to swing - or maybe 'offer' is the word. I don't think any particular physical geography of what that means is in the rule book. I don't know that I've heard a working umpire admit to what his standard is. Practically speaking, the home plate ump might be able to see the bat "cross the plate" but I wonder if the research showed that the base umpire (who makes the vast majority of the calls) is actually going by whether he sees the bat line up with his line of vision, whether he even recognizes that as his judgement point or not - simply because visually that is the only point where the base ump's eyes can detect a transition of some kind, and that isn't too far from what this system does - the strike line is parallel with the baseline - which is the point where the bat is pretty much pointing directly at the base umpire.

this is one thing that works for me, when I stick to it, which is not often enough.

too late. But that bottom of the 8th was one of the best Tiger relief performances of the season. Maybe Nido goes to the pen when Jake gets back.

yeah - the Wings need to make a significant upgrade to at least 2 lines to be a decent team. I'd settle for a couple of not necessarily great scorers who can skate and forecheck better than average because adding those skills will leverage the game for the offensively talented players already here.

exactly. These people apparently have black holes where their souls should be. People will dump on the court again, but I'm not sure how much choice the court has in terms of law. Hard to tell the exec it can't end something it created by its own actions. That's a problem with policy that end-runs Congress no matter which side makes it. But the larger moral point being that even if there is a reasonable policy reason to end such a program (which I'm not arguing either way here), you know this admin will opt for the most needlessly unnecessary draconian methods it can in implementing the change.

true there. Of course we don't know if Baddoo has actually made enough progress with his bat for there to be any interest in slotting him in for more than this little look see. They do seem to like Malloy though - I guess he is sort of specialty weapon to keep the line moving against a reliever with spotty control. But I had also had the impression Ibanez was under-performing, but looking at his line he's pretty much right where he usually is, so probably less risk of him losing his spot than I speculated.

using the bat angle instead of the forward progress of the whole bat is an interesting way to do this. I will be a big benefit to guys who end up twisting forward getting away from an inside pitch but get called for a swing even though the bat head stayed behind their hands. Under this system much less possibility of that being called a strike. It does blow up the conventional wisdom idea that it's a strike if the bat crosses home plate - a concept that was never in the rule book to begin with.

McKinstry has drifted back down to a more normal (for him) 600 OPS in his last 60 PA (since 5/1), which was never a matter of 'if', only 'when', and that's fine. Of course what we don't want to see is Torkelson turn back into a pumpkin - but unlike McKinstry, there is nothing in his BaBIP, xwOBA etc, to indicate he's gotten any particular good luck to get his results.

IDK about from the OF but they said he had no throws in the game he played at 3rd so he'll keep rotating in there until he gets tested.

I can see it setting up for Baddoo and Malloy to rotate back and forth to the Hens depending on what kind of pitching the Tigers are going to see over each couple of week period - and of course whether they keep producing. When one of them goes that makes room for Vierling. Jake will replace Nido. The big question is who gets bumped for Parker? I'm still guessing it will be Andy Ibanez. Or Andy will be saved for the time being by some one else going to the IL.

If Lolich was your model for what a pitcher should be doing, you would burn out a lot of pitchers!

Well, the Leafs held out for 23 minutes before completing the collapse.

He's upholding journalistic objectivity standards. Doesn't want to appear biased against death.

Not quite a Moonlight Graham life story, but in the ballpark.

Matt Manning's BA against was 300 after his last start. In his 5 relief appearances in May since moving to strictly relief, it has been 189. Hope Matt has found his niche.

So on ESPN's Tiger page they have come up with the Tidbit that Jobe is the first pitcher in Tiger history to have the team go 8-0 in his 1st 8 starts. The previous holder of the mark of seven wins out of the gate was one Howie Koplitz, who accomplished same during two late season call-ups in '61 and of '62. (the 61 Tiger team was very good - 101 wins, disgustingly enough, the Yankees were even very gooder - 109 wins). Sadly that was all the starts Howie ever made for the Tigers. He never got out of AAA (Syracuse) for the Tigers in '63, ended up with Senators where he threw 106 innings in '65, then was out of baseball by age 28. We can only hope young Master Jobe is destined for a more memorable career.

I'll wager it will be along the lines of 'see what a disaster it would have been if you'd elected him'. I don't see how that personality resists going there - and resist isn't even the right word, he won't feel any hesitation at all.

There is the old truism about the rain falling both on the just and the unjust, but the truth of the truism isn't very satisfying sometimes.

To be honest, I think it has as much to do with having more time to fill than they have good material for. This is the general problem across virtually all media today - dilution. In recent years the media universe is expanding more rapidly than the material universe and the material universe is having a difficult time trying to fill it.

He's keeping that bonus pick hope alive.

So the win in this game went to the guy we weren't supposed to draft, all the runs were driven in by the guy who wasn't supposed to make the team, and the save went to the guy we tried to give away twice. BASEBALL!

terrible umpiring behind the plate in this series.