gehringer_2

He can hold the bat in either's batter's box, doncha know. Whether you could actually call him a switch hitter is debatable.

If you are good enough from early age to be a short stop, and you don't actually spend the time playing around in the OF also, you will miss that development. It's odd, there is a hierarchy of difficulty in playing the positions around the diamond, but just because you can play a harder one doesn't necessarily mean you can play an easier one, sometimes there is just a hole in your skill set when you reach adulthood, and some skills are harder to develop as an adult. So on one side you have Robin Yount or even Don Kelly who could play anywhere well. OTOH, Schoop is a very good 2b. 1b is 'easier' to play but he is a terrible 1b. Now I would say that since it's mostly footwork, given the time, Schoop has a much higher chance of becoming a good 1b than Willi has of becoming a good OF.

I have my doubts that the lack of an adolescence spent conditioning your still plastic visual-perceptual hardware/software chasing fly balls can be made up by some early work before a few games as an adult, but sure, that pig *could* fly.

interesting, but Platoon level walk-aways would be more significant. That might indicate that the information wall around the grunts was collapsing.

In other news, the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow.

the umps are not competent enough to switch the ball reliably for 2, so obviously 3.

was watching video of Putin's speech; he spent the whole time at the podium unweighting off his right leg every 5 seconds or so, the same leg he kept lifting during the Shoigo video. I don't know if that is just a standard physical tic for him, if not maybe sciatica on his right side, or who knows what.

it's already feeling like 2020.

yeah - there needs to be a protest filed with the league office. They don't go anywhere but someone needs to go on record.

LOL - well you have the guy hitting the ball hard up as the winning run.

interesting that Dan's monitor says it was a good pitch, gameday says it was a ball.

At 21 the Tigers shutout is now also old enough to drink...

another QS

10 pitch inning for Blackburn..... Poor Jimmy can't believe another inning is already over. It's a shame if this is all they give Price to work with in what could clearly be his last season.

Grossman gets a 91.5 mph middle/middle mistake and.... still makes an out.

maybe the whole table top.

9 pitch inning for Blackburn.

Not sure why they are so amazed the A's are looking to take the outside pitch away. Pineda has no velo, they have plenty of time to adjust if he comes inside.

Tigers O doing their bit to shorten game times.

Blackburn make three nearly perfect pitches to Schoop, he manages to hit one hard, and still gets nothing. That's how it goes when your slumping.

Hinch will probably be mad at him and bench him for bunting with one out just now.

man, don't blink while the Tigers are hitting, you'll miss the half - inning.

I thought Trotz has already quit one job because they wanted to move him to management and he wanted to coach? Maybe he's changed his mind over time. Not to mention "some believe....". Really? Taking lessons from Lynn Henning

I can only surmise that the pressure of losing is scrambling their brains.

another HR off a change-up. I remember JV had to stop throwing his because he couldn't stop tipping it. I wonder if it's the nature of the change that it's harder to deliver without tipping, guys seem to hunt them against the Tigers.