gehringer_2

and if that drone was armed, those young men have some Ukrainian operator's sympathy to thank that they are still alive.

We have to put the Kool-Aid away. Watch Veleno, Rasmussen, Zadina, with any kind of objective view and it's pretty clear - they are not very good. Skating, passing, possession skills all lacking in all three. The rest of the line-up are end of the liners like Staal, or other team's discards. Blash may be a good or bad coach, but he isn't the reason these guys can't beat anyone to a puck or make an accurate pass or play through a check or shoot the puck effectively. To be charitable they have so far built 1/4 of an NHL roster. A couple of years ago I thought the Red Wings would be the 1st team to turn around, but I don't think that anymore even with a GM as talented at Yzerman. Which is too bad because they are wasting time for Larks and Seider esp., who deserve better mates.

Apparently Forbes was out with numbers about team economics. Somebody quoted them saying the Tigers made a "record" 30 million profit. If that is true, then we all need to beg the Ilitch's pardon for all the things we have said about them because that would be a stupid small ROI on an operation the size of an MLB team. It just shows that too many people don't know enough about what they are talking about.

glad to have been catcher for your morning warm up - now go get 'em!

I don't know how much is Blashill and how much is a team that is just out of gas and out of hope of beating the teams they are playing that are just better than they are. You can chase people around the ice that are faster and stronger than you are only so much of a season before the talent difference wears a team out mentally and physically. The problem now for Blashill is that even if it's not 'him' in any objective way, his coaching credibility has been eroded away by so many losing seasons that it may not be possible for him to turn it around with the Wings anymore even if he is a good coach in the abstract, and who knows if that's true at this point? But this roster is still going to be too weak to win next year and maybe even another, so that probably means the next round will be another another young 'disposable' coach as placeholder.

dept of baseball salary weirdness: just noticed this on JD Martinez's BR page: for the Tigers: 4 yrs, 13.52 WAR, $9,750,000 for the Sox 4 yrs, 12.5 WAR, $90,600,000

Oh! Wait! I know! I know!...It'll come to me in second!....

Jax could only take Walker 1 after the Lions trade their pick....

what war (me) are you talking about, what's (ME) really important(ME!), here is (ME ME ME!) is that we keep (ME ME ME!) the dems in check (ME!)

Hmm, 'some of".."? I guess if that's Seider and Raymond I care, if it's any of the rest of the under performing crew (Zadina, Veleno, Rasmussen etc), not so much. I suppose if anything it's surprising there there hasn't been more dissention on a team that's losing this much. If they've tuned Blashill out there isn't much you can do but dump him. Like they say, you can't get rid of the whole team.....well, wait - you actually could get rid of pretty much this whole team less 5 guys and be no worse off. Stiil, it seems unlikely (to me) Yzerman would do anything until the end of the season.

Lynn apparently decided his hit rate was falling off too precipitously. Classic click-bait if there ever was. There is less than nothing of substance here. And FYI Lynn, what counts against big-league pitching is...RESULTS.

IIRC, Lanier was pretty strong against Kareem. I always wonder what Big Bob could have accomplished on a good team.

so far in ST Greene (450) and Torkelson(375) are #1 & #2 in OBP on the team. I suppose they could both crash and burn in the next week, but seems unlikely.

well, war is hell. We have journals that my dad wrote in WWII in the pacific that he didn't send because of the censors that shed a little light on why there weren't some Japanese POWs taken in that war.....

>national treasure? yeah - I don't always agree with Kareem but he is an honest an perceptive thinker. if he had a piece of sheepskin from an Ivy instead of NBA championship rings maybe we'd be able to listen to him instead half of the gas bags like Sharpton the media normally goes to for racial commentary. Of course I have no idea if Kareem cares about having a higher commentary profile. He definitely has always marched to his own drum.

second reference I've seen to the Russians leaving their dead behind. I bet that does wonders for Morale. Then again, since the poor conscripts may actually trust the Ukrainians to have more respect than their own commanders.....

Rosemary Wood's ghost still haunts the White House!

I think as of this moment the job is Victor's to lose, which he could still do, but so far he has shown a little more patience and has hit the ball hard in the air, and that is what they wanted from him.

this was good:

well, that's kind of fun.

Panetta? Did they have to get him out of cryo-storage for the quote?

would have loved a blood sample on Smith. If you watch the clip he was having a good time laughing 10 seconds before he went ape. Mood instability/impulse control etc. Reasonable markers for some kind of impairment...

actually, sanctuary for Putin is somewhere the Chinese might be able to make themselves useful. It seems doubtful Putin would go, but that's probably based more on the image he projects for himself than his reality. In the end most of these guys don't actually have the personal courage to stand their ground till death.

yeah - that was about as far as I've seen a ball hit to right at Lakeland.

Do they? Guys like Kronwall, Mantha and Anathasiou and Glendening were limited but did provide some kind of talent floor. in Glendening's and Kronwalls cases esp there were getting old so they were getting worse but they still haven't been replace by players better than they were before they aged out. DeKeyser is terrible but he wasn't before he was hurt. You've get Sieder, Bert, Vrana, Larkin. The whole rest of the roster is still minor league unless the two new guys start to show something different.