mtutiger

Man, Giolito is a mess right now

Disagree... Malloy has struggled of late, but having Keith jump two levels is Tigers Twitter fever dream stuff.

At some point, he's gonna have to take questions from someone outside the echo chamber, right?

It was a literal echo chamber

Wouldn't that make genius here the first Speaker to preside over a default as well?

I don't think there will be a default either as it wouldn't likely be all that good for either side, tbh. But man, it is really frustrating to have to live through this stupidity every few years over an arcane rule that shouldn't even exist. Especially when peoples lives or livelihoods are on the line.

You kinda get to the point: at the micro level, in daily interactions, people of different backgrounds probably play nice way more often than they don't. Even in this day and age. At the macro level, the people with the loudest microphones who purport to speak on behalf of any number of causes, Christianity included, are some of the worst possible messengers. And that's where a lot of the "ridicule" comes in.

My thing is that many marginalized groups that are now seeing more acceptance in society have been mocked and demeaned for years. It took until basically the last decade for acceptance for LGBTQ people to start to enter the mainstream. And a lot of that originated with the people ROMAD referenced: hardcore evangelical Christians, particularly those with a microphone such as Franklin Graham or Jerry Falwell.... I kinda wish there was a little more acceptance or understanding of that.

I kinda look at the media as having sort of a "Ralph and Sam" relationship with Trump / GOP.... on one hand, they are adversarial and lock horns a lot, on the other hand they want the access and need them in order to drive news, which in turn helps drive ratings and clicks.

Exactly. Yet, for whatever reason, Jake Sherman and other members of the "liberal" media continue to do paid PR for McCarthy and Co. Weird.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if raising the debt ceiling is considered a concession by the GOP, doesn't that imply that they favor the US defaulting?

Essentially two bullpen days in a row for the KC Royals.

We discussed it yesterday, but honestly the fact that teams have been pitching Tork relatively cautiously the past couple of weeks is about as good a sign as any.

You know what they say (and by "they say", I mean literally no one says), "when the leader of one of the poorest countries in Europe talks, you listen"

Exactly.... I think we can all agree that the Tigers aren't where they want or need to be as an org right now while acknowledging the reality which is, at least on May 23rd, the team finds themselves 2.5 games out of first place and one game behind the first place team in the loss column. Maybe they regress in a big way over the next couple of months and the decisions become a little easier on trading off pieces, but if their position looks anything like it looks now, they oughtta be using that as leverage in any negotiation over players and be willing to walk away if teams don't meet it. Put more succintly, for Alex Lange, if they are still "competing" come deadline in this division, you do not trade him unless you get a big haul.... basically what Chas suggested in his post. On another note, how this division has played out as well is probably a demonstration on why Scott Harris found this job attractive, more than most of the baseball media thought it was anyway. Even if the Guards and White Sox were playing more to what expectations were going into this season, this still isn't a good division and is filled with light spending teams and multiple organizations (White Sox, Royals) who have been as poorly run as the Avila Tigers, if not worse. As fans, we've looked at this thing as a 3-4 year rebuild, certainly in the teams worst moments but even when it's doing OK, but my guess is that, even if the team isn't fully rebuilt or at the level of the elite orgs in the game, Scott sees the overall division as a lot more attainable than any of us largely do.

Colt probably could use a bump up to AAA, but the lack of position situation is an issue for him as well. It will happen at some point. People are uber-aggressive with him regardless... the Free Podcast (featuring old friend sportz) spent 10 mins this week advocating moving him up to the ML level which, idk, seems kinda premature.

By the time the best pitcher who is about to be traded is actually traded, they will have a better idea of what they will get back off of injury; one presumes that Skubal and Manning will all be back by the deadline. Either way, Lange is young and controllable in his own right, and they had better get a haul in return if they do trade. Particularly in this division... it would be one thing if they played in the AL East or NL West, but all of their negatives in the AL Central still has them competing in late May. And I dont suspect that dynamic is changing past this season...

Grant Witherspoon (acquired from the Rays before the season) gets the call.

The Royals didn't give him much to work with tonight... which kinda speaks to the fact that the depth of the lineup drops off precipitously past the cleanup spot. They really need Carpenter back to add a little more thump

They arent trading Alex Lange.

4 BBs... first time since JD Martinez in a Tiger uniform.

He also was a short timer anyway... even if they tendered him, he would gone after this year regardless in all likelihood. I'm happy he's doing well in Washington but I dont blame them for moving on

The thing with the Jeimer conversation is that, because of his status as a possible non-tender candidate, they kinda had to make the decision right then and there, way back in November. Before anything else had happened in the market basically. So it came with risk that moving on may not result in the most desirable outcome in terms of replacement.... We don't know the rationale for it, maybe Harris and / or Hinch just weren't fans of him deep down. And we don't know the degree to which the org did or didn't try to acquire certain guys to backfill the role once they made the decision to non-tender him. But I was fine with the decision at the time and the fact that he had a nice series against the Tigers doesn't really change any of that, to the extent that there was downside it was less about moving on and more about the replacement.

I guess my overall gripe about the discussion with the starting pitching centers around the term "depth" - I still don't think they came into this season with any less "depth" than most other organizations do. The problem is that they are currently in the middle of using that depth, not only because of injuries but also because of bad performances (ie. Turnbull, possibly Joey W. coming up) That said, Manning and Skubal will be back at some point, and maybe Turnbull will come back and perform a little better than he did prior as well. They are just gonna have to weather the storm for a bit, and I don't think that makes the Tigers unique compared to other orgs.

I mean, 5 IP, 3 runs is pretty average... there are teams out there, even purportedly good ones, who would love to have depth starters who could consistently provide that