gehringer_2

Tork has swung at two pitches he couldn't handle before there were 2 strikes

Swung at tough pitch 3-1. Should have let that one go Tork.

LOL - for many years, the PA announcer at Michigan Stadium for the football games was Carl Grapentine. At the of every game he would announce the change in the traffic pattern on Main street down to I-94 as follows: "Traffic Southbound on Ann-Arbor Saline road will be one-way following the game". No kidding Carl? Cracked me up every time. At some point he must have started doing it on purpose because it had become tradition I think.

With Vance I'd settle for improvements in three out of four.

IIRC, at some point it was reported that Sweeney had the highest or nearly highest bat speed on the team. That's probably not a good thing in his case. There is a trade-off between bat speed and control and I think you can be too far on either side. Baddoo is another guy with a wicked fast bat but he can't hit enough of anything either. But he's got a decent profile for a bench guy - occasional power a pitcher has to respect, doesn't make a lot of mistakes, runs well, is LH. He is 25 now so coming into his peak batting years. He doesn't have to get a lot better to be able to eke out a 3 or 4 year career as a backup SS. I'm sure the Tigers wish they had a better #2 SS, but right now they don't.

I'd like to see a metric on Sweeney that measured the overall time from the ball hitting his glove to the ball getting to the 1st baseman. He must be saving a lot of time somewhere - like getting his throws off really quickly, otherwise there is no way he'd be playing SS with his average throwing velocity. Guys do not beat out a lot of ground balls against him so he is compensating somewhere. Sort of reminds me of the mystery of how Peralta never seemed to be able to move very far yet never had bad range ratings.

LOL - those two are not company an aspiring ball player should be happy about joining. Sports can be pretty evil in a way. A kid like De La Cruz spends 7 of the best years of his life getting.....essentially no where.

LOL. The thing with Shepherd is that not only did he come into the broadcast with the wrong concept, he was there long enough to know the broadcast was losing ground with the viewers but never responded. Not much you can do with an employee like that.

Have passed Toronto for best record in the AL by 1/2 game, but Toronto holds the tie breaker (I think,,,,)

Did he laugh himself out of a job? Recall that at the beginning of the season there were reports that the Tigers wanted him out so maybe it just took them half the season to find his replacement.

Toronto literally 'throwing' a game to Pittsburgh in the 8th.

Sweeney and Flaherty needed tonight. Lange was .......shakey but he got himself out of it.

Lange way too amped

No

Haven't heard much about Foley's rehab. Out of sight, out of mind I guess.

about as silly as arresting junkies and leaving pushers on the street, don't you think?

Bennetti is not what bothers me wrt losing the game flow, it's the remotes, and those are not his fault at all. If I never see another remote during a ballgame I'd die a lot happier. During a ball game I don't care about players' families, kids with sign art or fans doing bucket list stadium tours. All that stuff is exactly what pre-games should be there for. (...and stay off my lawn!)

He's been mostly OK with the Hens. He had 6 walks across 3 games in late July, giving up 5 runs in one of them, before and after that only one other walk in 14 outings - so we shall see.

'Financial Advisor' I wonder about. I would guess people with enough means to managed will continue to afford themselves the luxury of a warm body to interact with. But maybe that will be a generational thing.

I don't think the Tigers trust Cruz's glove.

Verlander's camp had made it clear he was going to be a difficult signing and IIRC it did go down to the wire getting the deal done. Give the Tigers credit for the choice and the perseverance to bring it home.

We face Tyler Alexander and he rises to the occasion like Cy Young, Paddock comes out against his old mates like wilted cabbage.

That exactly nails it.

ETTD, why would a house plant be exempt?

LOL. (and I wonder if I have owned that book!?) This reminds be of a tragi/comic bit I read (and again, I can't remember where) about an Renaissance period philosopher/mathematician writing to his son, bemoaning that he had wasted his life foundering on the rocky shoals of pursuit of proof of the parallel postulate, and imploring his son not waste his own life following in his footsteps. Now I'm going to have to find it.