gehringer_2

yeah - one critique I saw (on BA I think) was about his throwing footwork. That should be low hanging fruit for Dr. Trammell. Still, I want to see him prove he can hit MLB pitching.

And you don't need to excel in every aspect of the game to be a great player. Would you draft Andrelton Simmons over Derek Jeter? I've never seen anyone play SS like Simmons when he 1st came up, but if I wanted to win ball games I'll take Jeter. Or long story short version: Great hitting trumps almost everything else.

and Jose Altuve has hit 30 hr twice at 5'6". There probably is no pro sport were physical tools are less connected to actual performance than baseball. I'm not saying they aren't connected, but that in baseball, other skills like ball path perception (i.e. fly ball judgement), anticipation, soft hands, and of course your perceptual hard wiring as a hitter, are all as important as, and unrelated to, raw athleticism.

well, there are plenty of guys in the HOF at less than 6' so his height should be the least of his problems.

If one of my kids had wanted to spend 75K on a wedding I've have told them they haven't learned enough to be married yet.

that he's 'only' 5' 11"?

Curtis had stayed in school for 3yrs, which would be unusual for today's top prospects, who often come out in a year or two.

yeah - the only guy I can think of who could ever fairly have been called the 'next Mantle' would have been Mike Trout and even with the reasonable skill and athletic match, MT can't switch hit.

that's a fair number of words to say "I was sitting him for something I'm not going to tell you about"

and Maybin was a pretty good ballplayer - he just couldn't stay on the field, but when he was healthy - which was rare, he was productive.

Indeed. Maybe JB screwed up his rotations. Or maybe FT shooting could be one of the messages sent by having Ausar sitting and also forcing other guys to be responsible for defense. The team is doing so well that maybe we lose track of the degree to which a coach still needs to push some of their buttons once in a while.

Just that he is naturally pretty chunky and may be feeling more than average pressure to up his HR totals. Training tech is of course a lot better in recent years, but it is still another reason I'd like to see them commit to him at third so his motivation to maintain quickness and flexibility stays right in front of him.

I'd like a little more certainty we get production from the OF, but to me the IF is the least of this team's problems. The Tigers 1st priority needs to be to have a more reliable rotation and bullpen than last season. They're not going anywhere if it's Skubal, and the 11 Dwarfs again. So far I'm unimpressed on that score.

It's always been this way, only with each new tech it's moreso. The printing press opened the world to the mass of humanity, but the most popular early books were the ones feeding witch-hunt hysteria. Heck the printing press set off the Reformation which led to countless millions of deaths in European religious wars, civil wars and religious persecution. Can't build roads or bombs without dynamite. Video screens can teach science or numb brains. And so it goes on and on.

Coach said "I don't want to hear one more person tell me they have a damn CALF strain!"

Ivey may be the shooter they are looking for.

Probably a lot easier to book venues! We got married a blizzard. Made for great memories once it was well in the rear view mirror!

what's the expression in one of Shakespeare's plays spoken by an army grunt? "I took the King's shilling" (?) - which would have been pre Cromwell.

I'd like to believe Parker will hit. I've made arguments about why I think it possible for Parker to get better. And Parker is still shy of 1000 MLB PA. But the probabilities are what they are, not many guys at his age and career path suddenly get much better. Not none, but not many.

Colt seem to me to be the kind of guy who needs to develop confidence, so if they can leave him be to get comfortable at 3B I think he's the kind of player that will help. By the numbers, the sample size is too small at 3b but at least he didn't grade out so badly it jumped out, Neutral RDS and -2 on Statcast. +1 lateral, -1 in, -1 out. I though the best thing in the statcast data was a max throw of 87 mph, which means his shoulder has recovered pretty well and he seems fairly accurate. If he develops even a little more, his arm won't be a show stopper for him. I think a risk for Colt is he lets himself bulk up out of being a decent fielder.

I suppose guys will sort themselves out with their bats. Agree Colt will probably get the most patience if he scuffles early, but I don't think even Colt will get that much run if he doesn't hit.

Politics. The war never would have gotten off the ground if the draft hadn't been concentrated among the poor, low skilled and minorities. It was no accident at all that the pressure to bring troops home just happened to become politically unbearable the year student deferments were ended. The services needed higher quality manpower, but US society was not going to be willing to let the Pentagon use it in Vietnam, so it turned out to be righteous confluence of interests for all -- except the ARVIN.

That would be a little different. The last three UM presidents, Ono, Schlissel, Coleman, had no previous tie to UM before their appointment. The three before that all did - Shapiro as in the Econ dept, Bolinger at the Law school, Duderstadt at Engin. But none were alums or ex-faculty coming back from somewhere else. Here's a wild guess: Alec Gallimore.

Speaking of Culture. If the guy spent the last 30 years in Utah, he's going to find life in Ann Arbor.......interesting.

Two articles in MedScape today signalling the impending Apocalypse. One entitled "AI Psychosis", about the surge in reports of psychosis-like symptoms linked to intensive chatbot use; the second entitled: "How to get ChatGPT to Recommend Thalidomide to a Pregnant Woman" This one is about how a Chat session might be hijacked to produce malevolent results.