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I believe batting Carpenter sixth is a confidence-building move.

Maybe they have some of the cutout fans from the COVID season somewhere in the basement they could haul out for it? Or, to your point, hire seat-fillers a la Oscars? The real problem is the swell home plate club they tie to these seats. When the game gets boring, or the weather too hot or too cold, or they just have someone in the seat who's there for business and doesn't give a rip about the game or about baseball in general, they're going to the club to schmooze. This is a problem all teams create for themselves by chasing the short term dollar.

Plus, if they're gonna give Riley a planned day off, doing so on a getaway day against the White Sox is as good a time as any.

I don’t mean theoretically. I mean in actuality. How have other countries been taking advantage of the United States prior to Trump, in actuality?

There are other problems with the no tax on tips thing. Why give restaurant waiters a tax break but not restaurant hostesses or back of the restaurant workers? Why do people who deliver food to your house get a tax break but not the people who deliver Amazon packages to your house? Why should blackjack dealers at a casino get a tax break but not the people who clean the floors and bathrooms there? Why should certain occupations be privileged in the tax code at the expense of others, and of the rest of us?

I reached out to my friend who is an official scorer. I was incorrect when I speculated that there might not be any errors given on fiedler’s choice plays. It does come down to official scorer interpretation of whether a play was ordinary or extraordinary. He says: I looked at the play. Looks like the OS decided that Baez could have thrown out Sosa at first but decided to try for a force at second and that the throw to second - from his knee - was beyond ordinary effort. So no error for missing an out. Judgment call by the OS (and I agree). He would have had time to get up and throw to first, so it's FC and not a hit; going to second required more than ordinary effort.

This is the kind of charming local advertiser you hear running radio spots on other broadcasts, and that I wish the Tigers had on theirs. I am over with all the LCE, Comerica, Corewell, and ambulance chaser spots. Could be worse, I suppose—it could also be the same one Fanduel radio spot running literally every break.

Because they take the Red Line to their ballpark

It’s no accident their “news” letter comes from the email address info@marketing.mlbemail.com. It’s completely out in the open that their focus is to privilege those teams and players they perceive as superior revenue generators over all others. They’re not even trying to hide that they favor and even root for the Big Six teams and their temporary honorary members (currently the Braves, Orioles, and Phillies) over nobody teams like the Tigers. Maybe Scott Harris can succeed in achieving honorary membership for us in a few years and make it last for a while. But we’ll almost certainly never be a Big Six team. This is the state of the MLB business model, and if you love baseball played at the highest level, you’ll accept it or you’ll find another sport to follow instead.

I just sometimes feel like phrases like that are used merely as a punchline, that nobody gives it any real thought, that people just accept the statement on an as is basis because they’ve heard it over and over. I would honestly like someone to explain to me exactly how the US has been taken advantage of by smaller, less wealthy countries in terms of trade. I’m listening.

There’s also the issue of “ordinary effort” bs “extraordinary effort”, a key standard for assigning errors. By any standard, throwing to a base from a knee goes beyond ordinary effort.

Look what arrived in my inbox from the good people at MLB Marketing: This is ostensibly a daily newsletter. That’s how they promote it, anyway.

It will be open season on RINOs for stuff like this, and I’m thinking it will be the Supreme Court that drives the final stake through this one.

Would you please explain how other countries have been taking advantage of the United States prior to Trump?

I’m thinking one key difference here is that China can help their domestic consumers by fixing prices to head off what would normally be soaring prices on domestic goods in a laissez-faire economy like ours.

The oligarchs of the Gilded Age sure didn’t give up their money to maintain public infrastructure and help the poor people of the country.

I had mentioned Riley in a prior game thread as looking like at least a 30-homer guy. Assuming he’s healthy and plays 150 games, my WAG is that he’s a 75% chance for 30 bombs and maybe 20% for 40. This assumes a similar HR rate for MLB overall.

Maybe they blame Biden for his “funny money” economy, or something like that, that created useless paper wealth that doesn’t hold up to gold, real estate, or, now, crypto.

I think I remember learning once that there is no error charged to the fielders on a fielder’s choice as long as there’s no additional advance on the play, similar to how there is no error charged on the back end of a double play if the throw to first pulls the 1B off the bag or the ball dropped by 1B and the runner is safe and doesn’t advance to second. I’ll have to see whether I can get clarification on that.

US train system versus Europe train system.

The 3-4 Tigers vault into first place all alone!

Old friend shares eyewitness account.

Well, that was uncomfortably close.

wt

He was outed as an Obama economic advisor on the chyron, so viewers can safely ignore and/or laugh at him.