gehringer_2

Jansen is probably pretty PO'd. His manager leaves him sit until he's rusty then leaves him out there to be hammered. Not a way to win friends and influence people.

Washington not the world's most pitcher centric manager. After Roger Craig moved on, it wasn't uncommon for Sparky to leave guys in BP sitting for days at a time and it usually didn't work well for those Tiger teams either.

Tork looks like he's further from the plate, or maybe is straightnening up more. He's not reaching strikes that are low or away right now.

how many times had he put the lead-off man on tonight?

Yup - he comes in really well. He just needs to out the bat on a few.

I remember the political fight about that. We had some friends that lived around Duck Lake and all those folks in that area of Oakland county were ready to go to the wall to stop it. In the end the geography with all the lakes (and swamps!) coupled with the political opposition from people with money was enough to kill it. You wouldn't know it to see any of it today, but most of what is now Farmington Hills and many points north were all swampy. In the early seventies I remember west of Orchard Lake between say 12 and 14 mile was still pretty much empty because it needed to be drained. We had a house at Middlebelt and Northwestern in a sub that went in in the late 50's and it was all "high level" (as in they came through the basement wall 2/3 of he way up from the floor) sewer lines to keep them above the water table and sump pumps out to the culvert to keep your basement floor from getting floated!

Trumps mind is so 19th century though. The last 150 yrs pretty prove you do way better to utilize resources commercially by having peer economic alliances with free independent nations than by 18th century Napoleonic resource warfare.

I wonder if the bio-mechanical analysis available today could/would show if throwing a little more downhill affects the physiological stress significantly - certainly something someone could take a deep dive into. Pitchers obviously threw a lot more when the mound was 15", but so many things have changed since then you can't tell anything from that history, someone really should look at mound height again in the context of the current game.

the one I could never figure out was I-35 in Minneapolis just splits into two different roads, I35E and I35W. What is that about? There is a system for numbering alternates and bypasses - what was wrong with calling one I 235? or I 435? Never made any sense to me when we lived there.

If he can crank it up to the upper 90's consistently working short, that's where he's got to go. That's a big increment from where he sits when he starts - enough to make him a totally different pitcher to face.

but do they have any clue how to do it? About the only things that would have any positive effect on pitchers are a deader ball and larger Zone. They won't do the 1st because their addicted to the long ball, and they can't do the second without sending K's even higher. You can change the rules for force pitchers to go deeper, that's only going to injure more pitchers. If I wanted to try something more out of the box, I'd set 34 or 35oz minimum weight on a bat and move the mound back a foot or foot and a half in one of the lower leagues and see what happens.

QFT

LOL - we used to talk about Trout/Cabrera performance comparisons, who knew they'd end up with similar injury futility comparisons? Miguel at least got into his thirties before breaking down.

After his ST performance I was reconsidering by pessimism about Malloy, but he has turned out to be about as disappointing so far as I had earlier feared. The plate discipline to walk a lot is a great thing, but it's something you need in addition to being able to hit some; it's not a replacement for it. When he came up Last year I thought Jace looked like a bat than couldn't field, this year he looks like a glove that can't hit. 🤷‍♂️

Manning used in middle relief tonight. Lots of Velo on his FB - almost hit 98. Clean 6th, got the first two outs in the 7th, then walked the bases loaded. Matt Gage had to come in and get the 3rd out. 1.2 IP, 0 R, 0 H, 2K, 3 BB.

so much of this season hangs on whether Torkelson and Baez can keep doing what they are doing. They've been a huge boost. You could say the same for McKinstry but I have no doubt that in his case he will cool down - it may still be a career year for him just from the boost off this start, but he's the one player I'll bank on coming at least most of the way back to earth.

When did we sign Grizzly Adams?

Seriously, Javy might be a better CF than Vierling. Play Vierling at 3B against a heavy LH hitting team with Javy in CF, swap them against LHP with Ibanez getting some AB in there also.

Well, the FO sure missed the chance to get one more inning out of Maeda....

yeah - Jace is struggling.

That doesn't always turn out badly. Captain Bligh navigated the launch the Bounty mutineers put him in 3500 miles to safety at Timor and went on to become a provincial Governour of Australia.

Every statement issued by this admin is operative right up until it is not. I doubt this one will be be operative very long.

the other issue in large US business is just lack of any long term stability in the average corp management. A management team can spend several years building up a commitment to CS and core of people to do it, and a management change can destroy it all in one quarter. So as a customer, even if you are well taken care of once, you have little expectation it will be repeated again.

"Wolfram" was indeed named for "Wolframite" which is a Tungsten Oxide but "Wolfram" remains in the list of the 'classical' names for some elements like Natrium is Sodium and Aurum is gold and etc (Ag, Hg, K, Fe, Sb) and why the W on the periodic table remains for element 74. But just another measure of how esoteric that tidbit from Benetti was!

He does occasionally try for a connection that's just too out of reach. During the Milwaukee series, when Wolfram came in to pitch (#86) he said something about how he really should be wearing 74, because Wolfram is element atomic number 74. But aside from the tiny number of people in the audience that know enough chemistry for 'periodic table' and 'atomic number' to register, this was even more of a stretch because of course we don't even know element 74 as Wolfram, we actually call it Tungsten. So there was a miss on multiple levels. Overall though, despite the misses, it's interesting to hear all the bits of knowledge Benetti has squirreled away in his noggin that you wonder where he ever got.