gehringer_2

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.

He means the player with the most career home runs who ever wore a Tiger uniform. Matthews has 512 HR - he played out the string at the end of his career with the Tigers in 67/68. Only 9 of his HRs were hit as a Tiger.

Future radar projection at Weather Underground does have the rain clearing out....at 2am.

interesting read: https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/biting-off-what-it-can-chew-ukraine-understands-its-attritional-context/

Is that the player's choice?

That is what I understand. They've changed the rules on rain-outs vs finishing incomplete games over the years, but they've gone back to the old school system again. Teams don't like the line-up and pitching problems that finishing an incomplete game the next day or even 2 months later represent.

If we do a little rough math... Gone: Erod, McK, Maton, Cisnero, Wingetner, Vest, A Meadows, Cabrera, Kelley + maybe gone: Nevin, Turnbull, Ibanez. =9 + 3 maybes Incoming: 2 FA Starters, 1/2 FA reliever, Catcher, Keith, Malloy, Perez, 2 FA bats. = 9. Seems like the ins and out may be in reasonable balance.

Akil still has at least one option left so they don't have to let him go if he doesn't make the 26, and I suppose in the case that Parker has a terrible ST, Baddoo might be the alternate to come North with the team in his place.

In Baddoo's favor, he's still only 24 this year an is still only at 1000 AB. Not so much in his favor is that it's hard to see any progress or evolution in his hitting over those 1000 AB. I don't how the Tigers will come down on it, but I like Vierling the most of all the guys potentially on bubbles because not only can he play all three OF and 3B, but he has almost zero platoon split - so to me he's their most ideal 'anywhere, anytime' player.

Well, sure if you spell 'reform' "S" "H" "I" "T" "C" "A" "N"

they wouldn't qualify it because it would have made it more difficult to chase down those pesky escaped slaves.

Congrats to your 2nd place Detroit Tigers.

don't see any progression on pitch recognition though. When he came up and we saw how fast his bat was I figured that meant he'd be able to wait on pitches enough to be a good hitter, but not so much so far.

LOL - I was typing almost the identical post. I like to see a rookie be able to come back from his 1st slump, means he was able to make the 1st adjustment he had to. Good omen.

If you'd checked in on this team earlier in the year you might not have thought it was surprising they could take their league, but to have still done it after the core of the early season lineup all went to AAA is cool.

90 rbi for Tork. Extra credit for having done it on a team where nobody can get on base.

This is all Reagan's fault. I say that a bit tongue in cheek but it's also true. There was a kind of virtuous cycle at work in the post WWII era where inflation slowly but constantly pushed people into higher tax brackets, and Congress could righteously - and popularly - vote to lower taxes on a regular basis. The conservatives decided this was bad mechanics and indexed the income tax. But in retrospect that has turned out to be a terrible outcome. Now Congress still feels the political imperative to periodically stroke the voters by cutting taxes, but they have lost the built in restoring force which used to make those cuts constructive rather than destructive. If you look at the old system, there was a certain elegant logic to it. Congress could periodically consider total spending levels, but they could always make the adjustment by controlling how much they cut taxes. They never had to raise them. The situation we are in now leads to bad economic policy because rate increases are politically too difficult, but of course in any sane world they are periodically required to correct excess mistakes made on the cutting side or just ordinary changes in the economy. Tax politics in the US have basically be in chaos from the time the income tax was indexed.

Team discipline didn't improve either - always too many penalties. Part of that was still not really having good enough players, but part of it was low detail emphasis coaching.

The attraction of the screen also depends on your reading of the opponent D. Are they in a mode where they are gambling or likely to get caught over pursuing, or are they playing straight-up/stay at home where you just like other plays better?