gehringer_2

Yankee's lose both games in Houston but the 2nd game could easily have gone either way. I'd take the over on 5 games.

Hinch is so smooth in conversation and with the media it's hard to know if he is real or just presents really well. I've thought he's been mostly OK with the reservation that we don't really have any way to know - and probably never will, if something in Hinch's 'system' has been part of the issue wth Tigers hitters. OTOH, I don't think Dusty Baker is any kind of genius as a manager , just your regular mainstream kind of guy; so the fact that the Astros haven't missed a beat with him at the helm argues that Hinch wasn't a particularly critical piece of that success, but clearly hadn't been an impediment to it either.

Ed counted two, Cisnero would be three. To pare more pitchers maybe Bryan Garcia depending on what they thought about his move to a starting position. I could seem them cutting bait on Funkhouser as well. I could also see them being conservative about keeping arms around because so many pitchers coming back from injury are perforce question marks.

+Cameron, W. Castro, Short, Candelario, Cisnero makes 9. Plus Reyes and you have a spot to add.

In his sit down with Dickerson, he pretty much talked about all the same kinds of things Avila used to - building a productive organization from the inside out. So I get the idea that that part is coming from Ilitch, which would make sense as that is what he says in public as well. So that would lead one to believe that the big part of the early effort is going to be organizational overhaul and that if a big signing comes it will have to be more a matter of luck than the focus of immediate strategy.

Ironically, I would argue Cabrera was the kind of hitter that signing to that age was more seasonable, and the truth is, he still has hitting skills - witness a 300 BA through half this season. Cabrera has been done in by injury to a much larger degree than 'aging out'. So in Cabrera's case, it wasn't to much that he was already 30, it's that *any* long term deal can go bad given injury. And the other weird thing with Miguel is that while he had the arm and ankle injuries put him on the dl, as far as I can remember, he's never even suffered an explicit acute injury to the knee that put him on the dl at the time. I guess it's more a degeneration issue.

so the context to this tweet is that when Truss first started getting into hot water, a Brit tabloid started a live stream of a head of lettuce, asking whether it or the Gov would last longer. Today someone tweeted this:

LOL - I saw one conspiratorial take to the effect that Johnson pushed hard for Truss, expecting her to fail, so that he would have a better chance of regaining party leadership. Even if true I doubt having it blow up this quickly would have been the plan!

this would be my guess as well.

Krugman wrote a column the other day where he raised the interesting question about why what he calls 'zombie economics' - meaning economic policy that has been shown to be a thoroughgoing failure but which refuses to die, was so thoroughly rejected by the British body politic, yet is still the holy grail of the US right. I would offer the suggestion that the difference is publicly funded elections, but what do I know? The other aspect of Truss' crash is that it's seems to have given some oxygen to British EU advocates. You're starting to see calls for Britain to try to rejoin. I don't know how far that would actually go to solve any of their problems but something to watch if the sentiment grows.

this is why they will risk running morons like H. Walker, Dr. Oz and Tubberville even if it increases the chance of losses - it's because they need people who don't have the brains or will to do anything but just get with the program when they are told at times like that. Loeffler wasn't a completely empty (pant)suit.

Verlander with a shaky start, settles down, gives up 1 in 6, leaves the game and his mates hit him a couple of dingers to put him up 3-1

A tale of 2 quarters.

LOL - Ivey a bit too quick on the missed lay up.

There running around Ivey like he's a pylon. Where's his quicks?

the problem may be that more women buy groceries than men.

that trade turning out not to be quite as one sided as it appeared at the time.

I would guess it has more to do with the fact that he has a lot more to do than run the Tigers. Between Oympia/Caesars/Wings/Tigers he may simply be spread too thin to be a very activist owner - ergo he's going to give his GM a lot of rope right up to where he has no choice but to make a change. All you can hope is that a guy with that profile makes a good GM hire.

I believer that WCF Jr at some point which would have been after the Millen hire, decided he had to spend his full attention with FoMoCo and pulled away from involvement with the Lions.

That play has me wondering about a rule I've never seen applied - if he had tripped on Dylan's stick, which was about the equally likely outcome of the play, and been awarded a penalty shot, would they have let him take it on an empty net? .......(checks rules...) No. In fact no penalty shot, the goal is just awarded. Guess it has to be that way otherwise there would be every motivation to just hook anyone on an empty net breakaway...

Maybe because he's still getting to know the players, but so far Lalonde seems to be mixing up some of his lines more. It goes without saying that mates who play together alot have advantages, but still there have to be nights and matchups when there are other combinations that match up against a certain team better so I'll be interested to see how he manages that as the season goes on.

still, if you could even get them all to go back to hiding in dark places that would be something...

One problem I think the world has now is that Putin has taken Russia so far outside the bounds of civilized statecraft that Russia has to take a strategic loss as matter of 'policing' policy/game theory/overal justice, whatever box you want to put it in. IMV, Russia in Crimea but otherwise out of eastern Ukraine would not have been the worst outcome - it's sort of a toss based on purely historical grounds; but Putin has put the world into a situation where we don't really want to leave a rogue Russian state in such control of the Black sea, so the strategic need to contain Putin's Russia now plays strongly against leaving Crimea in Russian hands (assuming the Ukrainians could ulitmately wrest it back) in a way that would not have be a factor given a Russian state less inclined to imperialist warfare.

No argument that loss of FB velo is always a big red flag. Whether we want to take any solace in the fact that his best fastball velo - which was even poorer on his return, was trending slightly upward through the end of the season remains another one of those open questions.