gehringer_2

I agree on this, these three are going to make or break Yzerman's and the Wing's near future. If they are not impact players, this franchise is in purgatory for another 5 yrs. Maybe you can add Augustine to that group.

Let's be fair - DD & Mike Ilitch did a lot of of the design on the house Avila inherited.

no - I'll defend the parallel because of what the team is actually doing - in a long wait for young players, committing money to the wrong players, making bad trades, having to dump a bad coach but (maybe) finding a good one, and keeping people around too long who probably should be broomed, those are all nearly exact correspondences. Which is logical since most teams that aren't getting any where don't get anywhere for most of the same reasons.

It's the rotary engine, they've always had lubrication issues on sustained use.

So did Kenny Holland yet he ended up ineffective. Sometime guys find a combination in one place or time and can't reproduce it in others. They got a big energy boost from a new coach but that's not looking sustainable. By any objective measure this team is not improving very fast and the FO has been making moves over multiple years that can't be defended. By that measure the comparison is spot on whether we like it or not. We just keep hearing that it's the next crop of kids to come up will be the difference. If it were any one other than Yzerman and his track record he'd be on a very hot seat for this performance in this place.

I keep getting drawn back to the parallels with Avila. Of the various tasks a GM has to do, Al did one pretty well -drafting); started others in the right direction but was too slow - development infrastructure; and at others was outright terrible - acquiring major league talent via trade and FA. He also keep a bad manager too long but then did hire a good one. The parallels with SY are striking - and of course in the end Avila's performance was judged by virtually all to be not good enough. Hard to be a total failure in an aspect as important as trades and FA and succeed no matter what else you are doing right. I agree with what's been said before - that to retain his credibility SY would be advised to drop the hammer on the parts of his org that are clearly under performing and bring in some new ideas.

I don't know if the market is ready to punish him that severely at Starlink and Tesla, but if it does, and Musk starts looking like a 'loser' in Oligarchy's sewing circles, you can bet that will get him bounced out of Trump's orbit.

In American Politics it's hard to be forgiven for a messed up economy. Reagan came in with a bad recession, but inflation was so bad he was forgiven because by the '84 election inflation was back under 4% and interest rates were on a steady decline. I don't know what Trump is going to do to try to justify a recession he causes or if anything he says would have any traction in the face of rising unemployment.

for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume the Docs have the Tigers persuaded that Javy is likely to show some recovery to his prior self, otherwise the lack of urgency around adding a SS seems a little dumber than I'd like to believe the FO is.

Russia will agree to the cease fire but then not abide by it. As predictable as the Sun rising in the East.

Even sellers have to catch their breath

where the heII did Talbot think he was going?

recent outlet attempt by Gustaffson from behind the net has to be be on the most inept I've ever seen.

I hate seeing all the value in the market being senselessly destroyed, at this point Musk is such a malignant force in the US that I'd live with 10% drop in my portfolio if part of the that market was Tesla being wiped out (as in coming back to a P/E more like 15-20) and Musk getting neutered.

In fairness, IIRC in 2019 when Mize, Manning, Skubal and Faedo were all at Erie, it was Manning who was doing some of the best work of the group, so it's not like there was never a good reason to think there was something there to work with. But it seems he he never took the next step after the Covid year. He's just sort of faded since then. C'est la vie.

lower body nerve pain is frustrating because it can be nearly impossible to know where it's really originating. This recent nerve insult I suffered in the hip area seems to be improving, but now I'm getting intermittent pain in my foot. Am I doing something to it in my daily routine or is it just more phantom sensation from the earlier sciatic injury? Damn if I can tell.

Jones turning into anything at this point is a definite long shot, but if he has one hot month and it gets us to Vierling, it will be a good acquisition.

not at all, just noting that so far they haven't found the key for him to achieve reproducibly what he has done occasionally - and for the majority of guys it probably just isn't there, which is why there are so few good major league players. It's one of those things you can do an XY graph with one axis being max talent and the other being how often max can be achieved and you can have some combination but you have to stay somewhere in the +/+ quadrant to make it. Manning has shown flashes of high level talent, but has never been able to bring it consistently. He's maybe the opposite of a Holton - who doesn't have great stuff, but is generally steady as a rock at the level he achieves. This is maybe even a better paradigm for hitters, some of whom can have a monster month one every year or two but just can't bring that level to the 162 game grind or have 4/4 days when everything feels right but it's only twice a month - and such guys never really excel

EDIT: Hinch's comment was "Matt just a litttle adjustment away from really helping us" I guess if you call throwing the ball the same way two consecutive outings in a row a small adjustment.....

3 xbh, 2bb in 14 AB - javy buying himself lots of AB for the rest of ST.

I wonder why they haven't worked either Javy or Sweeney out at 3B? Maybe they have.

FIFY

☹️. Chalk that up as one nut the pitching brain hasn't been able to crack. There were flashes of a pitcher in there often enough to tease there should be something there - but he could never hang on to whatever it was he would find when he had a good outing - and the good outings are too rare.

to a degree, but it's inseparable now because in the US class doesn't distribute evenly by race, plus whites with low resources still have more access to social capital recovery by virtue of being more likely to have successful family or social structures to fall back on or because they still live in areas with better social services (since the country is so segregated.) But either way, I doubt America's blacks would begrudge it if the whole bottom economic quartile of America were to be lifted up.

Listening to Tony Clark did not sound promising. I got the impression that if the owners lock them out before the season starts again, the players are going to see striking during the season as their only recourse, and I can't say as I could blame them.