gehringer_2

Workman has definitely fallen more than a bit short of the hype they put out around him early.

Parker is not exactly doing the Kerry Carpenter thing, but relative to how he had been languishing this has been a good season for him. From here he probably needs to make about as much more improvement as he made this year to make MLB, but at least he's making progress.

and the truth is, if a guy can put in his first couple hundred AB not not tail off badly as MLB pitchers take his measure is a hopeful sign. Riley has been able to hang around at about a 240 BA for ~150 PA -- so far so good. (Now watch the kid tank the rest of the way....)

and ironically, the guy that set him on his road to Detroit (Robson) didn't even get the courtesy of a farewell notice.

To me, the thing that makes it look like something has changed is the K rate. His MiLB K rates weren't bad last year, and even if he was K'ing too much in Det I would have expected that to fall back to his previous AAA rate when he was sent down, but it hasn't, and K rate is something you normally don't need that big a sample size to start getting a good indication.

The FUD being generated over the Saki raid is epic. The Russians claim 'accident', the Ukrainians 'officially' plead ignorance. On background the Ukrainians put out "special forces raid", the twitter sphere is trying to figure out what Ukraine's SRBM inventory could possibly be.

that pretty much puts an end to this one.

Futility, thy name is Tiger

My guess would be that conviction under the records act probably can't disbar the right to run for Pres since those criteria are constitutional, but I'd still be happy to see someone force Trump to litigate it. OTOH, you'd think after all we have heard from the J/6 committee that we are getting close enough to this applying: courtesy of the 14th amendment.

so either Meadows has flipped, or alternately any continued contact would just be additional evidence of a continuing criminal enterprise......

Maybe too many hard breaking balls? Of course no-one in baseball management anywhere really wants to know. The Tigers generally don't want guys throwing more than 50% fastballs. But just a couple of high profile anecdotal cases, Max, a guy supposedly headed for arm trouble from the time he broke in, pretty much never throws more than 20% sliders. Justin Verlander never threw more than 22% sliders until 2019. The most sliders he threw was over 35% starting out 2021 and we know where that ended.

solid take

Silly column about Soto by McCosky yesterday. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. There is only one issue with Soto - can he find his slider? If he can't, he's not going to be successful and of course will fall out of the closer role. If he does, none of the statistical fall off litany McCosky catalogs means anything, because it is all because he can't throw his slider consistently this season. But I suppose if you get paid by the word, then: "Soto is toast if he can't find his breaking pitch consistently" isn't going to pay the bills even if it's all that need be said.

As much as we talk about development failure, I'm more struck by their inability to correctly evaluate their own everyday players. They had money to spend last season and could have done any number of things differently, but their internal intelligence told them that Candelario, Willi Castro, Schoop, Barnhart, Grossman were players that could form the core of a decent team that rookies like Greene and Torkelson could add into. But in 6 of 6 cases their internal evaluation of the player was wrong.

The Ukrainians say the weapon used at the airfield in Crimea was there own, but none the less this: Can't vouch for Rogoway sources other than that he he's been around defense journalism for a while. Runs an e-mag called 'The War Zone'

interesting. Earlier today I could not get to twitter via cellular, but my hard wire I-net hasn't had an issue.

next year just meaning at least next year as nobody other than Kreilder even has 200 AB at AAA in support of their potential ceilings. So maybe just say 'in the semi-immediate out years'

of course you can have a perfect bat path and still be too late with it....

Pence is pretty much a worm. I can't really come up with a better fit. That would be a guy that blindly follows his nose in the dark, eating whatever dirt has been shoveled on him, and in the end just ends up a someone else's bait.

TBF, we do have a couple of guys who have put up some pretty nice MiLB numbers at least recently. If they don't flame out after 100-150 AB maybe one or two of them may be better hitters than Stewart was. That's the best we can hope for now. But heck, even if we assume Tork and Greene are both going to be + MLB hitters (and that is still an open question) you look at the rest of the bats on the team and after Javy - who even if he has disappointed is a reasonable bat for a SS - and you have basically nothing. So assuming you need at least 6 decent hitters in a lineup to score runs, we are still at least 3 short. If in the next year we need to count on an MLB breakout by at least three out of say - Kreidler, Couch, Rogers, Perez, Carpenter - that's asking an awful lot.

but if you put in the context of people who have always been able to claim favored status with respect to law enforcement, i.e. white privilege and the rest, it makes more sense.

Sad thing is that conviction under the law prohibiting the removal of documents contains a bar against holding future federal office, but it's probably not enforceable on the Presidency since the qualifications for Prez are set in the Constitution and Congress has no explicit authority to override them, and given the current Supreme Court..... OTOH, if they could get him convicted and sentenced, say by early 2024, it might be pretty tough to campaign from Leavenworth. 🔒⚖️

that's a bit revisionist. Stewart's best BA at AAA was 260, so having him come up and not be able to break 220 shouldn't have been a big surprise. He hit for good power in the minors, but was never the kind of hitter in the minors that would make you think he would be a good hitter in the majors - you could only hope at best he would be a Rob Deer type, low OBP, maybe good power, but he wasn't even that.

A significant capability for the Ukr air force.

4 IP for Norris without a walk. We'll how long that lasts.