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I mean, it makes some sense on paper. I'm just wondering whether there are enough quality pitchers who can fulfill the swing man/110-inning role to make it actually work. If you have two regular starter roles that can bring you on average 190 innings, and, say, five short relief roles that can average 75 innings, that would mean you'd need six swing roles averaging 115 innings to split the remaining starts and do long and the occasional middle relief outing. That would get you the 1,450 innings you need to compete for a whole season. I think the trick here is to find more than six pitchers in your system who can effectively fulfill the swing man role, because you're not going to have the same six guys all year. So you might need maybe ten or twelve, in addition to four or five or so who can do the starter roles, and the ten to twelve or so you'll need for your short guys. I do think a sticking point will be finding guys who will be comfortable in a swing role, in which they start on an infrequent and nonscheduled basis but also might relieve anywhere from three hitters to several innings on others, and pitchers, being creature of habit, might chafe. They'd have to buy in.

Do you know of any team going in this direction? I'm not even sure who's doing openers anymore.

This is my exact thought any time anyone suggests a team should run a six-man rotation out there. That’s a semi-fashionable thing to suggest these days, and many teams are talking about it if not actually doing it. But why would I want to take ten or twelve starts away from Tarik Skubal and Jack Flaherty just to give more starts to their fifth- and sixth-best starters? Six-man rotations make sense only if you your six best starters are similarly talented and it doesn’t really matter who loses starts so the extra guy can get some.

Fire Jim Leyland!

Hopefully Skubal is ready for prime time tomorrow.

It's almost as though Tork is now trying to make as many outs in his at bats as he can manage. Fairly calm going back into the dugout, too.

It's also entirely possible that the combination of Riley batting 1st and Perez batting 3rd would yield more runs over the course of a season than Perez batting 1st and Riley batting 3rd.

C-Mo sounded awful thrilled and excited there describing how Rizzo jacked a bomb off us earlier in the day.

Some here get their wish as Tork finally swings at a first pitch in the zone.

Hold onto your jocks—Hinch is stationed at the chess board ... 🤣

I've started seeing that on MLB.tv, I couldn't be more thrilled, and I hope it never changes back to a rotation of the same four commercial spots running throughout the game.

Not just self-perpetuating social isolation, but relatedly, also physical isolation. Ever notice how the people who are most agitated about the "border crisis" are those who live the farthest away from Mexico? They are also those most likely to loc up and go vigilante down there. Some travel over a thousand miles to do it! We see the same dynamic about exurban and rural people when it comes to just about any decent-sized city. I have heard someone say they didn't want to go into Green Bay because they don't want to get attacked by gangs of ******s there. Predictably, they live over half an hour outside Green Bay.

Because he's been hurt off the field instead of failing on it.

Twenty-five years ago you would have gotten filleted for airing this apostasy.

I don't believe Hinch would throw this out there ignorant of its impact, so this suggests to me that they might be having some friction where Tork is pushing back on Hinch's direction, and this is a way to put Tork on notice. This might also be a bit of CYA here before they send him down to Toledo for a reset. In any event, it appears that Tork and Hinch are not on the best of terms at the moment.

Yeah, it sure didn’t work out this time, did it?

Pitchers are so unconcerned with Tork that Statcast says he gets more four-seamers than any other pitch, and he does worse against that pitch than any other except the changeup.

You don’t walk the guy in that situation because a standard double play doesn’t help you, or end the inning. You’d have to go home with the throw and that’s hard to manage if it’s not hit decently hard right to you. At that point you’re going for the strikeout. Then you issue the free pass to try for the double play to end the inning.

I’d like it better if it were runs support.

Yankees are a top six hitting team with elite walking skills: 11% of plate trips, best in baseball. They also limit strikeouts and the fly balls go over the fence a lot. They have don't chase, but when they do they make contact. But, like us, they'll watch strikes go right over the plate. Juan Soto is absolutely crushing it for them; Gleyber Torres is sucking wind big time. And just think: he could've been ours. 😉 We're getting a crack at their worst starter tonight in Stroman, and he is extremely hittable in the zone. He keeps the ball low, but he does give up a lot of bombs, too. This may be as good an opportunity for Tork to jack his first bomb as he'll get this weekend. Clarke Schmidt is middle of the road, although I did see him toss six perfect in Scranton in August 2022. Nestor Cortes will be the toughest test, as he doesn't walk guys or give up hard contact, so good thing we have Skubal up against him. They have a strong bullpen although their numbers are outperforming their expected stats, because they have the best BIP luck in the game. They don't strike out guys, and eventually the BABIP is gonna catch up with them. Clay Holmes is absolutely slaying as closer, though, so if we can keep him out of at least two of the games, that would be great. The more we see of Caleb Ferguson and Victor Gonzalez, the better off we'll be. I like us to win two of three here.

I'm still on DirecTV, and I'll probably stick with it for a while. For one thing, I've negotiated $80 or so a month off the topline price to something more reasonable. For another, I like the convenience of channel numbers, and channel neighborhoods, and surfing. I'm not so keen on having to rely on search because sometimes I just want to browse, and browsing the DTV menu has a comfortable familiarity to it (I've been with them since 1999). When I browse the streamers, 95% of what I see are of a certain type of action-adventure-thriller-horror-scifi-reality-franchise fare. I also like how everything on DTV is centralized in one app, versus having to travel around three or four different streamers. Apple TV does centralize several streamers on their home page, although not all. Also, not for nothing, much of what I see on DTV is also available to me in streaming as long as I input my login credentials on the various network sites. And when it comes to baseball, my MLB Extra Innings package not only gets me the convenience of surfing games that offer both broadcasts, but I also get MLB.tv plus MLB audio gratis along with it anyway. Lastly, I'm in a sharing arrangement where I provide the DTV credentials, and I get Netflix, Hulu, Disney, ESPN, and YouTube TV in return. So yeah, I think I'll stick with it for a while longer.

Exactly—consider their constituency.

Is it amazing, though? 😏

But it worked in the video game!

what did you subscribe to?