gehringer_2

Reyes with the shortest return from injury on record.

Skubal en Fuego! Miggy too.

and the only year of many with the cast of that 68 team when they won was the year the pitching all came together. Wilson with his last big season added to McLain and Lolich. There were no great hitting teams in that era. Team OPS in '68 was only 10 pts about league average. The did have some long ball hitters though - and Tiger stadium helped.

There is your call on the Grossman at bat, MC. Took two called and swung and missed at the third.

Nice play by Harold there. He doesn't have much arm to play third but he played it smart.

but that's the point, Willi is not a good SH. The whole point of being a SH is to reduce your platoon split, but Willi's BA split still runs 70-90 pts. I commented on that yesterday - Avila seems to have a soft spot for SHs who aren't very good at it.

RHP. True enough that Grossman is scuffling as well though. Robbie came into the season with the idea of trying to K less. But guys need to understand that taking 1st pitch strikes is not the route to K'ing less.

It's hard to not keep coming back to how twisted and vacuous the arguments from 'God's Christian Law' are across all these culture issues. There are 10 things prohibited in the single most foundational statement of legislation in the Christian Bible. 7 of them are completely legal in the US, an 8th is practiced as a political art form, and I don't hear a soul in US political Christianity complaining about it.

Religious extremism is toxic to, and incompatible with, any successful open and pluralistic society. Period.

Tigers have tried that and failed with it in more than one era. The Tigers teams that have gone to WS were all pitching-centric. Lolich/McLain/Wilson, Morris, Petry, Wilcox, Verlander, Rodgers/Verlander/Scherzer etc.

after it happened you could see him make fist a few times, which looked hopeful, but the way he was holding his hand splayed open as he walked off did not.

Musk in another public pissing match with Twitter. https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/elon-musk-says-twitter-legal-team-told-him-he-violated-an-nda-2022-05-15/ Here is something I don't understand. What is he going to do with a company whose management he doesn't like? Fire them all and get paralysis and chaos? Elon is a guy who actually knows how to do a start-up and even a net start up. If what he whats is a different Twitter, at what point would it just make more sense to start one? If there is anywhere in the world where customer loyalty is tenuous, it's the web. And Twitter isn't even like Facebook where your history is more part of the package. Seems to me he could get to where he wants to go a lot faster putting his money into his own people and his own ideas rather than trying to buy a Ford to make his idea of a Ferrari.

yup.

given the quality of the imaging today, at least there is less uncertainty about how long to keep trying rehab.

Madrigal certainly was up until his injury. Alec Bohm starting for the Phils. Joey Bart starting for the Giants but not doing all that much with the bat - but he's a catcher.

I used to say " I blame Hollywood" tongue in cheek, but I do believe too many people who might otherwise take more reasonable positions don't because they have a completely fantasy mindset about the usefulness of guns as defense against other guns - and that contributes to the problem.

I think Chris saw both teams go boom and bust under his father and by all evidence decided to do it differently. I think he is more patient than his fan base. He's the chief tortoise in the mix so we are stuck with his pace.

I could well be wrong, but I still have more confidence in Chinese society as a whole to believe they will let Xi lead them over a cliff. To me, philosophically, we see China's draconian internal policies in terms of just being evil, but internally the Chinese leadership justifies them as being utilitarian. Xi wants to demonstrate he can *save* more lives with his Covid policies than we have in the West. Political Chaos must be suppressed in China because it is historically too deadly and bad for economic development - etc. But that's a harder logic to apply to starting a war. I think/hope there is still a difference there between that and Russia, where Europe's ancient and deep 'Glory of the Motherland' mindset can still be tapped into by a Putin to justify a war of ambition.

Completely agree. Hunting is fine, but no hunting (or target) weapon needs to be more than single shot.

I think there is a lot of truth in this for pitchers - maybe relievers especially. I find it odd that people don't find it odder that relievers suffer just about as much UCL trouble as starters at 1/3 the IP. That would argue it's not the reps, it's particular reps.

I think we are getting back to more conventional epidemiology. The 'curve' is now pretty flat. Vaccines and Paxlovid have mitigated the threat to where the public is accepting the slow burn of the virus through the whole population. As an aside, this implies China is going to have to accept a pivot to a more effective vaccine or the lock downs there are going keep creating chaos for years more.

If this were china vs Taiwan, I could see it, but the population ratio between Russia and Ukraine just isn’t great enough for Russia to overwhelm through numbers alone.

Yes, Kenny got the Cul-de-sac. “We are happy to keep paying you in retirement for past services but your present services are no longer required.

Actually, if you want an honest knock on Avila, I'd say one of them is his penchant for falling for what I would call 'faux switch hitters" i.e., guys who stand in the LH batters box against RHP but actually have worse platoon splits against RHP than the average RH only hitter. Goodrum, W. Castro, Reyes all examples. When your OPS platoon split is >200 pts, it's unclear why you aren't just hitting from your better side.

Pretty ironic that the big knock on Scherzer early was that almost no-one believed he would be durable. Still, give me a guy that throws FB, change, curve and keeps his slider %low and I'm going to feel better about his future. JV had never thrown more than 30% sliders in a year until the year before his UCL gave out. Just sayin'. In fact Scherzer, despite a reputation as a slider pitcher, actually throws it < 20% of the time.