gehringer_2

bases should be loaded with no-one out

yeah - from 1961 to when West took over as coach the Lakers had only 2 losing seasons - with a 69 win championship in '71/2. I would take that team as in the conversation as greatest of all time. Real sorry franchise!

OTOH, didn't Mize throw a lot of innings in college, and a lot of splits, which is supposedly a tough pitch on the arm? Then again, at one time the big deal was controlling how much kids threw before they were 18 and how many breaking balls. I don't know if that is still a thing or not.

Win-Win!

figure the math. Russia's population is 3.5X Ukraine. The Russians require 1 yr of military service. Ukraine is basically on a full mobilization basis so you are getting participation from the whole age range of maybe 17-40. Russia's one year conscript numbers plus the numbers of their 'professional' troops actually can't match that without the kind of draft/mobilization that Girkin is talking about. If the West supplies sufficient technology to counter Russian air and missile advantage, it's realistic to predict we get more of what we have gotten to far -- the Russians can kill a lot of civilians but will struggle to achieve strategic objectives. And of course ironically, as the fighting moves east more of those civilian casualties will be Russian speakers.

basically he's arguing for a full mobilization in Russia.I would think that if Putin thought that his propaganda machine could have built the support for that he would already have done it.

I think the reason it appeared in poor taste was that he appeared to be blaming Manning, and all Manning did was not lie to his manager and trainer - which would be a stupid policy for any young player. If Jack is just bemoaning the general state of the game, fine, but he didn't make that explicit. To me the weird thing is that despite athletes in the modern era getting faster, stronger, better in almost every way, we still have this weird idea that somehow off all the athletes in the world, baseball pitchers have made the choice to go soft. I think that is not a very credible view. I'm sure pitchers today train more and harder than their average predecessors ever did. It apparently doesn't help given what is being demanded of them. In fact maybe over training is the problem. If the dominant injury is UCL *wearout* maybe guys need to be throwing far less and saving it for games only - though I think that had been tried as well without it making any difference. Whatever - it's clear the people in the sport do not understand the source of the problem, or just won't or can't do anything about it (too many breaking balls being thrown?). The only thing I'm pretty sure of is that it's not because today's pitchers are 'soft' as athletes.

oh - no doubt. The steals may well not be his fault, but even so his throws have not been impressive as throws. In the Yankee game he bounced one and another missed pretty badly to the right.

so much for not missing his next start.

the only point would be that if the BPA is really a LT, and if the margin between him and a couple of questionable DEs is large enough you may be able to maximize your roster by doing a little shuffling. It's not that you wouldn't love stability on the OL, but you have to adapt to the hand you are dealt in any given draft. My guess we can't get enough for Decker to make it work - but if we could....

yup-Decker probably hurt his trade value with the time off last season, which is too bad because you'd think you could get a couple of mid-rounders for a starting LT that isn't too old under normal circumstances, and you'd think more picks would be what the Lions would like.

CBS's aggregated mock had him going 20th, Pickett 6th. No other QB in the 1st round. I still wouldn't sleep on Neal in the top 3- he seems to be the guy with the least question marks.

I've thought Lindstrom has shown a little something now and then but he's not really that young anymore to expect much more evolution.

Lord I hope Hronek is not back next year. At least not unless they find out that he's been hurt and fix something. He's the guy I would have guessed has the sports hernia.

Not sure if I can state this so it makes sense but it seems like the problem with Holland's picks is that when they don't turn out to be great scorers, they can't at least do something else - forecheck, facilitate, etc. It seems to me the key to a good hockey team is for the guys that are not stars to at least have some strong part to their game. Draper being sort of the poster child for what I mean. Holland just drafted guys that were 2nd tier across the board - and they are useless. You need everyone to be above average at something on the ice.

I think they could be a lower tier playoff team with only one top line, IF they at least had better fore-checkers to keep the other team off the board on the other lines. But that is several players either way. No matter how you look at it, the front side is going to remain a problem even if in a perfect scenario Edvinnson, Walinder and even McIssaac are all able to come in shore up the D significantly next season.

how many of our Euros could make the jump next season without a year at GR? I would think if they can't bring at least 4 successful players to the Wings next season it's hard to see how the season could be a success.

It may a matter of career protection as well. If his ambition is ultimately TV, he can’t develop too much rep for being critical without risking being dropped from the video side- at least until he earns more stature than he has yet. I think teams will accept a lot more reality in radio broadcast than on their telecasts.

It is obvious he is very good as a receiver. Not much gets by him so no over rating there, but his arm has been underwhelming so far. I'm not going to panic over the bat after 20 PAs - it mostly an issue now because so much of the rest of the team is also slumping.

I wonder how much Barnhart has put himself out of sync by going back to switch hitting. That's kind of a major transition to make in a year with an abbreviated ST.

The whole operation is descending into bad. Shep's boosterism is unbearably smarmy, and Jack is a lazy analyst. They don't seem to be doing any serious broadcast prep - they just show up and talk about themselves. The only time Jack seems to know anything about the other team is when we play the Twins..... Here they were faced with a really boring game and the best story of week was probably around Aroldis Chapman's crazy couple of days, which could have been some good filler. MIA. Had they even watched BBTN?

10 hits against 16 walks in the game. I'm curious what Moscoso's umpire card looks like.

They could have been even better if they had ever found the clubhouse at Mall of America....

Hopefully the walks by Schoop are a sign he's starting to see the ball better, the bullpen was good other than Joe, who you can never expect to be, and Alexander should be fresh for his next start. That's about as much as I can see to salvage from this one.

I should have just scheduled that root canal...