gehringer_2

Rangers decide to create their own RSN in wake of Bally bankruptcy. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/43589961/rangers-make-network-produce-distribute-game-broadcasts

I'm waiting to see how much rope McLellan is going to give Tarasenko. He's played him on the 1st PP unit and otherwise giving him every chance to get it in gear but I'm still not seeing much. Still looks like he's trying to play no-touch hockey most of the time.

If he was paying no attention, he would have hit the back of the line of cars stopped at the gate. He went around them, so either he looked up and swerved around them at the last minute without realizing those cars were stopped for a train, or he just tried to beat the train.

Back in the day when guys made a lot of money but not such stupid money, Det and maybe Cle had some advantage because of the greater water side recreational potential - if you think of a guy like Gibson - he really loved it here even after having been in LA. But for a higher level FA today, the money is going to be so stupid large that they can charter a lear jet anytime they feel like a fishing trip.

this is another example of the pennywise poundfoolish result you get when your outlook is punitive instead of constructive. Tim Walz would be happy to explain to these wahoos that school lunch is a place where it is simply cheaper to feed everyone than spend the money on a means testing bureaucracy.

Well, regardless of whether the org has been too slow or have been absolute geniuses bringing these guys along, it sure broke well for McLellan to get this infusion of young talent.

The West side (meaning say Schafer west to the city limits) of Detroit collapsed pretty completely due to white flight triggered by fears about busing and block busting practices beginning roughly in 1970 and accelerating throughout that decade. But even before that, the lower west side was already considered a 'rougher' part of town and we knew any number of families trying to figure out how to avoid sending their kids to Cody HS

I think it's true enough that for *some* players salary is just as competitive to them as the games are - so sure, they are out to get every dollar to prove how good they are, but I don't think every player is like that by any means. Some will give up dollars to play on a better team, some will give up dollars for term, some will give up dollars over family issues, and absolutely, there are some guys who do or don't want to play in particular places - but the bottom line is I don't think you can generalize about any of it.

yup - they are about to learn that nothing is that simple, and that there are people at the end of all these line items that they have persuaded themselves just disappear into the ether.

going for the big ring.

Really - what's a bit of pond scum when the whole system is one big swamp!

His swing rates both in and out of the zone were pretty much career highs for him last season. Increased swing rate out of zone could be loss of pitch recognition, increase swing rate in the zone just sounds like taking a more aggressive approach. So why? If he's trying to hit more HRs, you'd think he'd be more selective looking for pitches to drive. I would hope that if a team is putting over $100M on the table they have looked at the film and statcast data of every AB for his last couple of years trying to answer those exact questions. This is the other half of what all the analytics capability is supposed to work for. And then, even if you think you know what he isn't or isn't doing differently, you have to project what that may mean in terms of his future value and what you are willing pay for it. There are some places in the game that I think the value of analytics may be oversold a bit, but not this one. Saving a $100M mistake is worth a lot of analyst salaries!

On a directly related note - Monarezz with a column in the Det lamenting that Lalonde hadn't been let go sooner. I have no doubt that McLellan has been a big boost, but so has been getting those younger, faster, players brought up. And how much of that was McLellan's doing is a good question as well.

so have these rookies all gotten that much better in GR since October, or was the Wings org missing obvious decisions? I suppose one or more of these guys might slow down and get sent back at some point, but even if that's true, it doesn't mean the decision to give them their shot was not the right one. Sometimes a player has to go through that cycle of making it and not holding it to help him figure it out what it takes.

I would guess it's more about a desire to stay in Houston than the particulars of the other place. In that regard all the southern tier states have that marginal advantage over all the northern states - mostly because a lot of players who do sign in the north won't move north because they all use all year training venues in the South -either FLA or ARI or CA. As chas notes, not much teams can do but make it up with cash and attention to detail on making sure the playing experience is 1st rate - coaching, facilities, travel, etc.

also true.

There isn't any election speculation in it, it's almost all just a recap of Peter's career.

which sets up a classic negotiation. Houston knows he wants to stay so they want the hometown discount, Bregman wants to stay without giving them the home town discount. I think in most cases, if the difference wasn't too large the player would realize that the marginal dollars are not the most important thing to him and stay with his team, but the other factor here is Boras, who will does like to see any result at anything less than max $$.

so to pick up where Rob left off - even a short stop only averages 4 chances and most are routine. 2 chances per game is more typical for other fielders.

Kasper and Soderblom should easily be ahead of Fischer, Veleno, Motte or Rassmussen on the depth chart and Johanssen is easily the #4 D man. Tonight they said Petry has started skating. Clearly they are not being cautious enough with his recovery.

so back to the question of why DeepSeeks release hit NVidia so hard if the system still uses NVidia HW - according to the report below, DeepSeek is achieving their results with about 10% of the HW for training that previous systems have used. DeepSeek is "only" 2,000 GPUs. So one interpretation is that they have demonstrated that prior estimates of the HW investment to meet whatever the assumed market was can be scaled back by close to an order of magnitude. And of course this wll also ripple out the energy forecasts and that planning as well. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/technology/what-is-deepseek-china-ai.html

It looked to me like Seider's and Talbot's sticks hit each other as Seider was starting to make the play and that may have thrown things off kilter a bit. Another nice win though!

Nothing on Kucherov, but Lillebirg has drawn a 2 game suspension for the hit on Compher. https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/43589171/tampa-bay-lightning-emil-lilleberg-suspended-two-games

But a starting pitcher has a lot more impact in the games he is in than any position players does in any single game. I think the WAR guys probably have hit it fairly close. By WAR, Skubal was the most valuable player for the Tigers in 2024 (6.3) and Riley was behind him (5.4) despite having appeared in 4.5x more games. I would judge reluctance to offer pitchers the same kinds of contracts a position players related more to the injury risk than to belief they don't have as much impact.

thank you michigan for having shelf pricing.