gehringer_2

TBF, Germany has made a turnaround since the Defense Minister was replaced in Jan.

Y

I have mixed feelings about Vierling. He's getting rave OF reviews but to my eye, it's all about his speed, I don't think his glove skills are all that good, but if in the end he gets to enough balls and make some easy plays look hard I'll be glad to forgive him for it! and yes - the bigger problem is that he is on a 3 for 37.

I don't know if he's quick enough on this skates to become a good pressuring forechecker, but sure, I'd take that kind of outcome - it's a big need on the current team.

Fair enough - and of course no-one knows what Russia is going to do. Putin could reverse himself, his position could collapse and what comes after could be better or worse, he could simply remain an intractable enemy of the West in all things, his army could turn on him, or not. We know from history that a dictactorship like Putin's is often perfectly stable right up until the moment it is not. Anyone who says they know is lying. But in the most fundamental sense, he is still the primary driver in this situation and everyone else's strategy is forced to be reactive. Clearly everyone hopes that an outright defeat or at least severe enough set-backs on the ground will eventually make Putin's continued control in Russia untenable and the resolution of the conflict with be a peice of the re-organization of the Russian state government, but hope is all it is.

it basically all comes down to Ilitch not being a strongly competitively motivated owner. If his own inner demons made wins more important to him, what we or Hinch or Miggy think about the situation or the nominal amount of money Cabrera is worth wouldn't matter. C'est la vie.

well, Kiermaier hadn't been until this year in Toronto at 35. Has anyone checked his hat size?

And the level of pressure may also depend on Carpenter and possibly Malloy. The alternatives are always a factor.

I just find him frustrating. He's sort of a quintessential AAAA player. He has a certain skill set that works at lower levels, it doesn't play well at the NHL level but he shows no sign of moving on from it. How many hundred times did Veleno start the same rush up along the boards only to be met and erased by the NHL caliber defender he can't beat waiting for him? Result being just another give away. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? That's been Joe's game.

this is correct, and TBF I don't think there are many voices criticizing Cabrera for taking his money. This is absolutely on the team for not giving him the DFA - I would guess from the reporting he won't accept being DL'd.

When you consider all the Hall of Famers that got cut by teams back in the day because they would not carry them near the end of their careers even when they were still moderately productive, it's quite the contrast. You can argue that the game today may be of higher quality because the athletes are better, but I'm not sure some of the old time team managements didn't have more competitive drive than today's neo-billionaire owner class. Or just for the thought experiment to a more recent case - can you even dream that George Steinbrenner would carry a Cabrera on one his Yankee teams? He'd have cut DiMaggio if he were performing at Cabrera's level.

When does the heat reach Shanahan?

I really don't know how much is just political reluctance by Biden vs US 3D level chess strategy vs a newly energized Europe, but as long as the right things do happen, then IMO having the US lurking more in the background than in a highly public lead can only have good long term consequences - both for how things play in Russia and future Euro integration of Ukraine.

getting a little more background on this, spiting DeSantis certainly plays a big part, but there are apparently a few additional moving parts here, as you might expect in any big corporate move. One is that this development was not an Iger project, and when he inherited it he was not big on the idea a moving a chunk of the creative management talent away from the studio in CA. Disney is apparently also not thrilled with the increasing prospect of FLA allowing inceased Casino activity near Disney venues. So some additional parallel motivations.

Cold is a downside of all battery powered equip. Every kind of battery performs worse in cold weather. Some chemistries are better than others, but all suffer as the temperature falls. In theory, IC engines get a boost from cold weather as the it increases the cylinder charge density, but that I don't know if in practice that compensates for poorer fuel system performance in the cold.

The umpires may not 'run' the clock, but they are in charge of it. I don't think a home team clock operator would get much leeway from the HP ump before he noticed if the operator were trying to shade it for the home team. Then again, we are talking about these major league umpires......🤮

HaHa. That and $5 gets you Vente at Starbucks.

yup - they may have known they didn't have a shot at being a 100 win team, but they also had to know this division might be winnable with 80.

It was a crappy year to be mid-tier shopping. I wonder if it will turn out to be an outlier or if teams are getting smarter about keeping their mid-level guys locked up?

Also, in her case, being from a city in the ME that was still basically Greek when she grew up in it, she probably had more sense of 'Anarchism' as a politically relevant (and not good!) movement.

Meadows was was going to be back and that would be like a new signing...... (that's not to rag on the guy but issues like his do make hell for roster planning.)

No, I think it had more to do with the conncetion to anarchists. but curiously enough 'A&G' was a favorite expression of my mother, who was her daughter.

because that's what they still are?

try telling that to the A's.

That's a blast from the past. I can remember my immigrant Grandmother using 'Sacco & Vinzetti' to refer to crazy people sort of the way we use 'whackjob' today.