gehringer_2

Sort of a repeat of Friday.

have you ever or do you know anyone who has 'strained' a quad? I have no idea what that injury even is. I've 'burned' my quads running too far too soon after a winter layoff, but they just hurt, it was never debilitating like straining a hamstring.

true

IDK - do you think Benghazi made any difference to anyone? My take is more that Hillary suffered from her own baggage from the Clinton admin (e.g. sweetheart investment deals with Tyson etc) and her own personality issues than any fallout from the Benghazi hearings in particular. Those struck me as more a matter of preaching to the converted I would think. And she put off the progressive wing for a lot of reasons. But that's just my personal take. Maybe those hearings did get some traction with independents.....

Indicting him and losing the case in a public prosectution might not be the worst thing. After all, who besides the 12 nuts on that jury still believed OJ was innocent after that trial?

A lot of this counter argument is based on Switzerland, but for a lot reasons it isn't really comparable. For starters in Switzerland a lot of these weapons are military issue long guns that ex-military are allowed to keep as part of the citizen ready reserve after they leave active service, IOW, guns locked in the closet and not thought about as part of everyday life. Other types of gun ownership in Switzerland is probably falling. Training requirements and background checking are also much more rigorous. https://www.businessinsider.com/switzerland-gun-laws-rates-of-gun-deaths-2018-2#in-addition-to-the-militias-arms-the-country-has-about-2-million-privately-owned-guns-a-figure-that-has-been-plummeting-over-the-past-decade-6

Not enough. It's not that he 'didn't accept' the results, it's that he actively used lies and deception to try to motivate a rejection of the results, by force if he could swing it if not by abuse of the courts and media if he couldn't. That's a damn site more than 'not accepting' and needs a lot more sanction than a harsh judgment by history.

at least you really did get the music you paid your money for, that's more than anyone ever got from Trump.

Since last night the forecast keeps moving the rain back. Last night it was to start at 3p, then this morning it was 6p, now it's back to 9p, so who knows? If it moves back another hour or two they might get it in.

Lee made a post in one of the threads about Fedder being more important than Hinch and it got me thinking about the whole pitching/hitting dichotomy with the Tigers org. I think there is one conclusion - which is that Avila is a 'process' guy and today pitching is something which is definable by 'process'. The tech has allowed teams to understand spin, release, movement. And the Tigers (as they should) have gone all in. They seem to know how to put pitchers into the pitches they should be throwing and how to optimize them throwing those pitches and they appear to have a good system for evaluation of the quality of arms (TJs among them not withstanding). I don't think it's arguable that it been nothing short of phenomenal the way the system has been able to come with young pitchers and BP arms to keep this team even treading water in the face of catastrophic pitching staff injuries and a once in a lifetime offensive collapse. Al has put processes into place which have resulting an org with strong pitching and has hired a manager in Hinch who managers his staff well. That part has been a success. But on the other side, hitting is whole different ball game. There are many aspects you can coach a hitter for, being short to the ball, weight transfer, swing path, and all of that can help a hitter put the bat where he wants to when he wants to, which is great. However 99% of hitting is knowing the point you want to get the bat to, IOW, knowing where the ball is going to be, and there isn't a whole lot anyone has ever figured out to help a hitter do that. And in the absence of any clear system for developing that, like there is in pitching, the Tiger org doesn't seem to have any clear ideas about how to make a good hitter or how to find them, other than that Al likes guys who don't K a lot. Well who doesn't? I like Al's organization abilities, but he needs to find a hitting 'guru' for the system that can show him how to bring some of what has been accomplished on the pitching side to the hitting side.

I doubt any kind decision about that is close. I think the plan is to put a team around Goff and see how he does, then decide how to get a QB if that's not good enough.

the interesting argument here is does it matter if he kept saying he didn't believe people. After all it's what he would say even if he did understand the facts but his strategy was to willfully deny them. Can the Costanza defense hold water in a court of law?

exactly

last in walks might argue that they don't take enough pitches, but I think counter-intuitively, it goes the other way. I think last year they were so pleased with their ability to extend ABs and work pitchers that I do wonder if they fell in love with it too much and opposing pitchers are taking advantage of a team that is now not aggressive enough early in the count, so they giving away too many strikes. It's great to make pitchers work, but you have to remember the best way to drive a pitch count is not to take pitches, it's to get guys on base. In the hierarchy of baseball, chasing starters is good, but not as good as scoring runs.

Grossman is where you would have hoped a hitting coach could have done something. Supposedly Robbie, unsatisfied with his best career year (and nothing wrong with that per se) went out over the off-season and tried to retool some stuff. Well, damn if it hasn't worked out, but can't he at least get back to where he was? And can't coaching help him get there? Sure it's possible he is toast at 32, he wouldn't be the 1st, but it does seem a little odd that there was no intermediate fall off last season or even in the second half of last season.

terrible, but still funny.

Still, after playing with him for 13 yrs I don't think anyone is going to tell Yzerman anything about Federov that would change his mind about whether he wants him or not and I don't see Chris Ilitch, who is the only one who could, actually countermanding Yzerman on it. That said, I agree with Hongbit he seems like a far-fetched choice for enough other reasons that that one wouldn't be top of the list anyway.

I don't really think that is the problem here. It's more a matter of you accept the God of the OT as authentic or you don't. And if you do not, then you cannot simultaneously entertain biblical fundamentalism, unless you are willing to simply gloss over the most jarring possible contradictions, which by and large much of Christianity has been exactly willing to do for millennia. The alternative is to take a more nuanced view that the OT as a document is a human interpretation of the Hebrews understanding of their historical experience. But to do that undercuts the authority of clergy to mediate the interpretation of the infallible text, so the theologians of fundamentalism wave away the inherent contradictions and continue to argue infallibility because it is the key to their power. Now clearly there is another Christianity that has a completely different approach to all of this, but they have been a shrinking minority and American Fundamentalists pretty much view those people as mushy headed apostates.

If you stream the radio via gameday (which is pretty cheap), it will almost always be behind the broadcast enough that on many television systems you can bring the TV 'back' to the audio. It's quite irritating that the gameday app used to have it's own time delay capability which made synching to a broadcast easy. They removed it this season - almost certainly for that exact reason.

they take too many middle middle fastballs (like Cabrera just did). They are all doing it. It's crazy how many cookies this team takes. When you see a guy do that who got to 500 homers because he *always* jumped 1st pitch FBs, you know something weird is going on. They keep harping on 'staying in the strike zone' and that may be true for Javy, but the rest of them need to hit a good pitch when they get it.

Kreidler just hit a 2 run shot. Tigers haven't homered in how many games?

so much of this just stems from the guns. The number one thing police forces need to do is move away from a militaristic approach to the population, but that gets harder and harder to do when the population is armed like a military, which in turn drive police to have to move toward military culture in learning military tactics.

still, before we get too excited, Gausman looked more more up and down than an inside outside yesterday. If Javy can stay home against the guys throwing the bigger horizontal break then he'll be home free.

So much for the Rangers. Tampa gets their shot at the 3-peat. Avalanche have looked better though.

Tyler Alexander gets lit up in an 8th inning relief appearance for Toledo. 3 runs on 4 hits, 3 of which were doubles.