gehringer_2

Lets be real here: Harold doesn't play SS either.

Plus I'm sure they want to make sure he can get his planned work in on schedule. The road trip goes to MN, where weather can still be iffy, and then the left coast - so a bunch of dead travel time.

The easy way to cut this kind of thing of is cut off beer sales a couple innings earlier until things calm down. This kind of stuff is almost always EtOH driven.

Wencel Perez has sort of dropped off everyone's radar, but he is out of the gate at WM (43AB) with a 970 OPS.

Skubal can throw his FB right down the middle and most times the batter will still do no damage. Some guys, every mistake goes yard. You can talk about “art of pitching” all you want, and no argument that many great pitchers make their living painting corners- Gomber being a good example last night. But I still love the guys who can say “Here it is, you still can’t hit it”, and Skubal is one who can live mostly on that side of the continuum.

I'd missed this - apparently the more dead Russian Oligarchs. https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/two-russian-oligarchs-found-dead-one-day-apart-alongside-wives-and-children/ One family murder/suicide - tragedy. Two or three - definitely conspiracy.

yup - that and not missing uselessly high with the 1st pitch FB.

'effin tragic.

Trump would have demanded he sign an NDA and the Gospels never would have been published.

Everybody likes cherry cola.

Not surprised he was done at Lakeland but figured a couple starts at Erie.

Always strange to see a switch hitter so befuddled at the pitch coming in toward him.

yup. A guy who is slumping can't take that swing with two strikes, one out and a man on 3rd. Wrong plan.

And gets a ticket back to Toledo for his efforts. 🤷‍♀️

Aside from all the hoopla (not there is anything wrong with hoopla 🎉🎊) the best long term signs from this game were: Skubal - of course!, and Schoop hitting the ball hard a couple of times. Also Congrats to Harold for 4/5 - maybe his best day as a Tiger? However, TBH, Skubal gives up two fewer hits and probably goes 7 if Baez is at short.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-war-ukraine-identity-history-and-conflict

I'm sure all it would take is more good guys with guns to able to kill even more of those kids before they got killed themselves.

Supper

There is an interesting history piece on the CSIS web site about the history of the Muscovy elite’s fixation with expropriating and thus voiding Ukrainian nationality going back to Moscovy’s emergence after the fall of the Mongol Khanate. Putin comes out of a looooong tradition.

and even there, they don't have a policy, only a complaint. Their own GOP Prez couldn't move the GOP congressional caucus to actually passing a bill because they want to keep the complaint more than they want to solve a problem.

yup- wasn't finishing the pitch when he went armside/inside to the RHBs and they were sailing.

there was clip there of Wilmer Flores as well. Talk about your drop and drive style pitcher.

It's great that John Roberts thinks that umpires are a good model for Judges, but what does he think happens to the game when the umps decide to just leave the field?

IIRC, when Madden was picked the buzz was that he was quite advanced and would move through the system fast. So far, so good.

the other thing that has shifted a bit is that typically guys like that also had high rebounding value. They still have some, but the higher the proportion of long shots put up, the lower the payoff to old school positional rebounding technique.