mtutiger

Avila wasn't good at his job and earned his way out of town, but I do think some combination of relatively successful drafts at the end of his tenure and the changes he made in player development deserve recognition. His personal role in the draft aside (as Eddie has said, PBOs aren't that involved), it shouldn't be that controversial to take the full view. I also think a lot about what the national press said about this job right after he was fired.... I recall RJ Anderson from CBS Sports basically said it was a **** job and that this org would struggle to find anyone decent to take it, and I suspect a lot of folks in the baseball world probably agreed. Yet they ended up landing Scott Harris (who wasn't even on most peoples radar and who had been sought after by other orgs), who apparently saw a canvas that he felt he could build off of. Harris deserves a lot of credit as well, he's obviously added additional new personnel (ie. Mark Connor, Rob Metzler) to the org as well.... but it shouldn't be hard to use a little nuance looking at the situation.

I think it's interesting that some of his most ardent opposition among conservatives comes from people who served in his first administration or were associated with his time in office (ie. Ty Cobb).

Kinda comes as a surprise to me, honestly

With black voters, to the extent there's erosion, I doubt it's with older, more socially conservative blacks, I suspect it's more with younger male voters (particularly non-college educated) and breaks more along economic lines than anything else. There's also been the passage of time since the Civil Rights era.... the older voters remember that, younger voters less so.

Part of why it has been in the news is because outlets like the NYT use the one single poll that they fielded (with crosstabs of insubstantial sample size) to write up an article that makes sweeping judgments on the electorate based on said crosstabs. Which then leads to significant media coverage across many outlets which references said poll and crosstabs. The polls inform the media coverage, you can't really divorce the two. Yes, I will concede that.

When we are considering subsamples with "n" values in the 100-200 range (which is where NYT/Siena was with AA voters a couple of weeks ago in their sample), it's fair to say that there's a pretty high MOE versus a n=800 sample. If NYT/Siena goes out and surveys 800 AA voters and comes back with Trump at 20+%, I'd take it a little more seriously.

I'm old enough to remember when Herschel Walker was going to get 20% of the black vote in Georgia (he got around 5%, iirc)

I would add that I still take most of the poll toplines (generally averaging to around a Trump 1-2 pt lead nationally) at face value, but there's been a really consistent trend of crosstabs likely overstating Trump's support among the young / minority groups and overstating Biden's strength with older / white voters. There needs to be a lot more evidence, IMO, that each of these groups is going to experience an epochal shift in a rematch between the same two candidates four years ago. Otherwise I think we have to consider the possibility of sampling errors (as G. Elliott Morris at 538 has suggested)

I would be really hesitant to buy too hard into the crosstabs of black voters that some of these public polls are showing. In addition, there has been at least one oversample of black voters (see below) that contradicts the idea of major slippage with the community as well. I suspect there will be marginal slippage (as there was in 2020), but it's possible, if not likely, that crosstabs in a lot of public polling aren't accurately capturing actual sentiment within the community.

I agree with this. Also, Tim Scott is probably the most anti-choice politician that Trump is considering for the VP slot, so I'll take the under on him being a "moderate" whisperer as well. The guy is *really* conservative...

Trump is going to want someone as obsequious as possible for the role, so as not to upstage him or anything like that. So Scott makes a lot of sense in that regard. The clip above is a good example.... just thirsty as hell.

That's more or less a loss for the Trump legal team in the Georgia case.... I'm a little surprised she didn't get DQ'd

The lack of dignity in this clip is something else....

Always the victim. Always

I'd just be happy to see Dylan Cease out of the division lol

I have no idea whether it sustains once we get into the regular season, but the Tigers rotation looks pretty good at the moment.

Boy, Vierling crushed that ball....

Not sure if this is the case in MI, but they also seem to love buying / leasing old Family Video locations...

In the small community we moved into in the exurbs of Chicago (pop. 25000ish), there's about four Dollar Generals within a 5 mile radius.... including two that are literally 2 miles down the road from one another. Just doesn't seem all that sustainable to me, but what do I know?

I disagree, I would feel totally owned if Ben Shapiro was made one of the top surrogates for the Trump Camp Pain this cycle lol

Any MTS lawyers looking for pro bono work???

Beginning to think that RFK may end up a non-entity in this race after all...

He'd already announced his retirement, but him not even sticking around to finish it out really speaks to how miserable it must be to serve in that caucus. Whatever one thinks of his ideas, he actually has them.... while so much of the caucus otherwise (particularly the MTGs and Boeberts and Ronny Jacksons) are a bunch of circus clowns who are devoid of ideas.

Doesn't look health related

I do have a subscription....