gehringer_2

I think is certainly true for most players, though I wouldn't say all. There are guys like Javy (maybe to a slightly lesser degree McK) who are just what you'd call natural fielders - they have all the right instincts no matter where you put them and have total confidence in their own gloves. If you have even a couple guys like that a manager like Hinch should be in heaven. Thing is, most players, are not like that. They are the guys you are talking about who have to work to learn positions, need consistent work to stay sharp and need to build confidence in order to play free and easy. I don't believe you can force feed a Colt Keith into being a Javy Baez. I think the Tigers as an org would prefer that not be true, but it is.

So Warsh is now sworn in - the next Fed meeting is Mid June and at least one governor just came out for removing the guidance that the Fed 'bias' is toward another rate cut. So when Warsh was on Fed the before (during Bernanke I guess?), he apparently was strongly opposed to QE, wants big reductions in the Fed balance sheet to get it unwound finally. I suppose that is one way to fight inflation without actually raising interest rates, so maybe that's the needle he wants to thread. Problem is that when the Fed starts selling its holdings faster, that depresses prices, and since banks hold a lot of the same kinds of securities, that stresses bank reserve requirements and the bankers don't like that. At one time Powell tried to increase the rate of unwind in the Fed's balance sheet the banks screamed bloody murder (and IIRC one bank went under or had to rescued or some such) and he backed off. Should be interesting if Warsh goes that way again.

LOL - touche! Moving guys around a lot is maybe one where I think there is some consensus around here that there is at least some defensive cost involved, but how do you quantify it and decide if it's a net plus or not? Again it's coming down to someone's (mostly Hinch's) judgment because it's just too multivariate a problem with too shallow case data to generate useful analytical guidance.

I can't argue that from where we sit, the decision that young Riley was an everyday player and young Colt is not seems pretty arbitrary. I suppose it was at least partly because Riley graded very well in the field the first couple of years - though that's seems to be over now.

Right - at some point you just have to decide what you believe. I'm sure there are guys out there on team analytic staffs doing exactly what you are talking about, trying to figure out what term is optimum to get the best predictor for particular outcomes, The problem is that like Soylent Green - IT'S PEOPLE! and they tend to confound whatever you do to try to predict them. My personal observation would be to always down weight previous seasons at least when you see guys do things in the off season that result in them coming back as very different players - for instance Riley two seasons ago and Keith this season -- and pitchers in general because they always seem to vary from year to year just because almost no pitcher can stay 100% healthy season to season -they almost always have something not quite right. Other than that a manager just has to figure it out as best he can! In Hinch's case I think you can make the argument form watching him that he likes to take the longer view. Is he right? IDK - It's not working now, but that doesn't mean it's his choices that are the reason.

This is what I mean about Hinch being a guy who doesn't want to be told about short term trends. Jones' OBP against LHP is less than 300 *this* season. Any rational approach to llne-up construction based on recent outcomes would not have him in the 3 spot, but his OBP over the longer term of with last season was 398 - sure bat him 3rd against a LHP. You can have all the data and analytics you want, but at some point you still have to apply judgments about how to use the data that are beyond what the data can tell you about the player.

The problem is the economy might not have survived 4 more years of JC. We were headed for hyperinflation and Carter - and much of the traditional central banking community, had no idea what to do about it. Looking back I find it weird because the one thing Carter was, was a smart guy. If he have been willing to sit down with a Paul Volker or Milton Friedman or maybe even James Baker he certainly had the intellect to understand why it was critical that the 'new' monetarist paradigm had to be put in place at the Federal Reserve. But for whatever reason he never got there, and for all the talk about the Rose Garden and Iran, it was inflation that doomed his presidency. His fecklessness on Iran was just icing on the cake of a failed economic situation. I really wanted him to succeed, but at that point in his life he (and his team) were too sure of themselves to see when they needed to go get some better advice.

Obama seems like a great guy, is a good campaigner and better orator, but his judgement as a political operative, party manager/leader was never in the same league with this other skills.

I would say that by the std of what a hopeless role it is, Biden and Gore both had pretty successful vice-presidencies - Biden didn't run, Gore lost his White House bid. GHWB did win a Presidency from the VP but he had a really long resume prior, was well known pre-VP -- maybe even better than Biden was. You can blame the press for some of Harris' problem - no doubt the MSM had their head up their butts through most of the Biden presidency, but whose fault it was is pretty much beside the point, it justs add to the premise that from 2020 t0 2024 Harris was not able to do much to build/burnish a public profile sufficient to help put her on a path to a win.

name anything positive she got credit for. the highest profile issue Biden supposedly asked her to lead on was “the border” which was the single most toxic issue for the dems by the election. her 4 yrs as VP did her no favors in terms of building a positive political profile. was she bad at her job? did Biden sabotage her because he didn’t want her to have a strong argument for him not to run,? IDK, but VP did not turn out to be a very good gig for her. it’s really not a good spot to run from anyway, in recent decades VPs have lost more often than won.

the point about Harris having a poor VP-ship is absolutely true. The open question is “Why”. Did Biden not give her any high profile projects with easy wins because he wouldn’t or because she couldn’t? at this point the people who know probably aren’t saying.

The US keeps trying to comfort itself over falling behind the rest of the developed world by every measure of quality (and quantity!) of life by clutching to productivity growth numbers, but Krugman has done an interesting series this month blowing up the idea that those numbers mean anything like what we think they do. When you use the wrong yard sticks, measure the wrong things, you tend to get bad outcomes.

Per WAPO today: Ken Martin releases controversial 2024 Democratic 'autopsy' report. - blames Biden for not grooming Harris as a national figure - concludes that tran-gender issues played badly for Harris and the party - concludes dems did not hit Trump as hard as was needed - states that going back to Obama the Dems have neglected party building. - blames party for writing off too many areas Story concludes with: "The autopsy says the Democratic Party and its candidates have lost voters’ trust. “In the face of misinformation and disinformation, our candidates have proven incapable of projecting strength, unity, and leadership, and voters have drifted away,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/21/democratic-national-committee-releases-contentious-autopsy-2024-campaign/

in a sane world this would be a completely empty threat because for any GOP Congressional leadership smart enough to ask, the Dems should love to join forces to override a Trump veto on a bill that was going to pass without them anyway. But neither the GOP nor Dem Congressional leadership are skilled, brave, honest or trustworthy enough to make it happen.

Fun fantasy: after having their numbers decimated in the fall election, the GOP Congressional lame ducks cooperate to impeach and convict Trump.

Tork did swing at the best pitch of that AB but was under it too much.

Baseball makes no sense - Herring throws4 ball and one strike that could've have been challenged to Dingler and he homers. Riley Ks on an unchallenged ball one.

DINGLER - hope lives.

Guardian add a laughably unnecessary insurance run.

the Tiger debate is becoming like the Candelario debate. Are they a bad team that had a good stretch, or a good team that's having a bad stretch? Despite the pitching injuries they've had, the staff is managing to throw winnable games. I just don't have much confidence that adding one solid but not spectacular bat in Torres and one mediocre at best bat in Baez is any kind of slam dunk remedy for this offense.

The US AI industry is racing to build a StutzBearcat, the Chinese are trying to build a Model T. Which do you think will still be standing when the market shakes out.

well, if you want a better return you can always make those deals now...... <g,d&r>

dems acting like they want to win. who knew?

i don’t notice it so much as a team, mostly my observation of Torkelson. you watch his ABs particularly on game day where the pitch history for the AB stays visible, and you are struck by how often he ends up having to swing at a pitcher’s pitch at two strikes after having taken a much better strike to hit. Even allowing for the fact that if a guy lands a good breaking on the 1st pitch most hitters will take the chance it’s not going to land- so there will be times you end taking middle-middle, but when Tork struggles, he seems to stand out for ultimately swinging at worse strikes than he takes early.

But if you can't tell the difference at all, it really makes no difference whether you swing or not does it? If all you can do is guess, then you have a finite chance of running into it, as compared to the chance the pitcher is going to miss. So sure, it comes down to understanding who the pitcher is and what his command is like and seeing whether he is stuggling to throw strikes or so sharp he is just toying with hitters. But the trend of some things is still knowable. If a batter is constantly down in the count without having swung the bat over hundreds of AB, he is giving himself no chance.