gehringer_2

2nd time in two nights Cabrera tried to sneak it past a fielder waiting for him up the middle with men on base. Got to try to do a little more than that Miguel.

The road out of the Majors is littered with guys who could hit the FB and never adjusted to breaking balls .

yeah - that did not look good at all.

I'm sure MN would rather not have DeLeon hurt, but this also going to leave Lange to get iced.

I'm glad Harris sees all the progress that Maton is making in his process. That and 5$ will get him a Vente.

They can't make this easy, can they?

Have I remarked in the last 5 min that Maton is no 3B?

Marisnik hit it hard, and a slightly better AB by Torkelson - but nothing comes of it.

That's why I'd rather draft a guy with great spin on his FB than his slider. If your fastball is great, your off speed doesn't have to be - it will still work. If your off speed is great, that's nice, but you will still get hammered when you have to throw your fastball. I don't think Avila ever understood the difference.

never throw a hittable pitch 0-2, dummy. EDIT: only cost him two more pitches...

Shreve gets two RHH on ground balls, give up a 425' shot to the lefty. Go figure.

They have 3 on the board, but in terms of batters hitting baseballs in any useful way, this is their 11th shutout.

DPs are good.

Olson hit his wall. Strike % on the slider falls and he's in trouble. Kid needs to get more value out of his FB - throw it higher - spot it better, something. and the Twins getting some of the luck the Tigers got earlier.

so I came in after it started - who's in the booth for Fox? EDIT: Pierzynski? I thought he would sound more like a jerk.....

Torkelson has gone from not aggressive enough to way too aggressive. Needs to find his balance point.

That is the question. It all depends on how good Yzerman is, or believes he is, at picking players. He did get a probable perennial all-start at 6. It already seems probable all 4 of his 1st round picks have or will get to the NHL so I think you have to say that in Yzerman's hands, 1st round picks are worth a lot. Certainly a lot more than we got used them being worth under Holland. and just for reference, Debrincat was himself a 2nd round pick (39 th overall). And Buddha makes a very good point about his production being down without Kane. Remember we thought we had some shiny value in Abdelkater, and it turned out it was just reflection off Datsyuk.

One can only surmise that there is a volume of shoes left to drop on this episode - Imelda Marcos volume even.

"from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step" Regardless, if Prigozhin is simply allowed to return the status quo ante - the civil defense panic around Moscow and Putin's pledge to make all the rebels pay leaves him looking like a cockolded fool. Not to mention a slight issue of several aircraft apparently downed by Wagner forces yesterday. Putin now playing Henry II to Prigozhin's Beckett: "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest/(read warlord)?" Any way you slice it, Russian stability has taken another notch downward.

You know what they say about the weather in Michigan. Give it ten minutes....

LOLOL - Now Prigozhin says it's all over.

Not.

Larry Doby comtemplating how glad he was not to be a catcher?

Prigozhin is certainly a bad actor. The thing is that it's not really clear what he wants. Early statements were to the effect that he wanted to clean out the MoD so Russia could *continue* the war more effectively, and that Putin himself was a victim of MoD incompetence and misinformation. That was before we heard from Putin and it was unclear whether this was some 3D chess level ploy of his to re-create a more pliant defence establishment. But Putin made it clear this morning that whatever green lights he's giving Prigozhin in the past he wants him stopped now. So what is Prigozhin? He's not an ideological revolutionary, he's not a freedom fighter/reformer. He is a creep, but what else? He's looking to me like the dog that may catch the UPS truck. What's he going to do with it? Does he even know?

Favorite part: It's amazing how much you can get done when you worry more about the job than the reporting about the job.