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I don’t listen to many baseball pods at all. I like Foul Territory, although it’s the little girl with the little curl: when it’s good, it’s great, and when it’s bad, it’s horrid. Their best talents are Scott Braun, who was a revelation to me after he left MLB Network, and A.J. Pierzynski, whose superpower is that he doesn’t give a s***. Plus it’s daily and two hours and they cover multiple topics, so if they do something you don’t care about, like, a backslapping interview with a current player, you can easily skip it and get to something more interesting in short order. Fair Territory, its offshoot, is generally good because of Ken Rosenthal, and it’s at its best when he’s alone on the pod. Alanna Rizzo totally grates on me because she is so obviously a Dodgers slappy on a national pod apparently (or, perhaps more exactly, allegedly) targeting fans of every team, and she doesn’t try particularly hard to mask that. I am in and out of so many other podcasts, like Rates and Barrels, MLBTR Podcast, and the Windup. I go back to them, listen to an episode or two, then tire of them. Baseballs pods that dovetail into my particular areas of sabermetric interest that don’t devolve into gambling or fantasy tips are really hard to find. In terms of Tiger pods, Tigers Territory is the only one I listen to with any regularity and even that’s not religious. Tigers Today is not really on my radar because it’s only once every two weeks. The most recent one is May 6—a lot’s happened since then, so why listen to the latest episode? I also listen to North Side Territory for the Cubs, which is two beat writers, and it’s a little more chuckleheaded than I’d like, but it’s at least as good as Kieran and Cody’s. That’s petty much it. Wish I could be more help.

Umpire throwing the ball back to the pitcher Lauer almost threw it past him. That got me to wondering. If there’s a runner on base and the catcher—let’s call him Mackey Sasser—attempts to throw a ball back to the pitcher but wings it right past him into center field, the ball is still live so the runner can advance. But what if the umpire, instead of Sasser, throws the ball wildly past the pitcher the same way? Is the ball still live and the runners can advance? Is there already a rule that contemplates this?

I always liked Austin Jackson as a player, and I’m sure that he’s a swell human being as well. Kind to his wife, good to his kids, loves kittens and puppies, all that. But as far as that podcast, Tigers Territory, is concerned, the value he adds as a third wheel is exactly zero. He provides no insights at all from a player’s perspective. Everything he says on that pod is the same overview from 40,000 feet that you can hear from a guy in a bar. Arguably worse, he never mentions any specifics about players or games or performances. It’s like he doesn’t do any homework at all, maybe not even watching the games themselves. Every time he speaks, it’s four solid minutes of clichés and generalizations. I feel less knowledgeable about the Tigers when he’s through talking. I acknowledge that as an ex-Tiger he will always be lionized on his pedestal by Kieran and Cody on the pod, but man, is it ever a slog to have to listen to him talk.

Wasn’t this one of the things he said he was being sarcastic about? It’s so hard to keep the asshattery straight.

I remember when I was a little kid, just after the 1969 expansion. I was knocked out by the idea of a team in Montreal, a French-speaking city. That was, in fact, the one thing that got me interested in learning French. One day my family went over to Windsor for a picnic or something. I met a local kid who confirmed he was. I asked him if he was an Expos fan, because, you know, Canada. He looked at me like I was an alien (which, in today’s terms, I guess I was). I’m a Tigers fan, he replied in a what-the-hells-wrong-with-you tone. I replay that scene in my head occasionally.

Guess I’ll have to be less subtle next time. 😏

lol what does he need more money for. And there are people who actually buy that nonsense? That’s really the aggravating thing about this whole experience: the gaslighting that just insults our intelligence so badly, as if we’re the ones who have to defend the idea to them that all billionaires want more and more money. It’s simply bonkers.

That’s another reason against the salary cap/floors without idea: the amount of revenue generated by organizations is vastly different among one another. More than NBA basketball and certainly NFL football, MLB baseball is an intensely local sport with very little national or even regional appeal. Maybe that’s because of the everydayness of the enterprise: to be really tuned in to your team or the league, you have to follow it every day, because the landscape is always changing. Contrast this with football, which stays static and is subject to analysis (over, more likely, overanalysis) for an entire week in between games. So an NFL fan has the luxury of contemplating a lot more teams and players and the league while it is essentially in stasis. I think that might lend itself to maintaining more national profile than baseball. And, of course, the NFL pools its money to a nearly complete degree, and the Players have a lot more access to how much money is flowing through it, making them far more able to negotiate a fair share of the proceeds in a negotiation of salary caps.

I don’t think there should be salary caps or floors without the audited books of all 30 organizations being completely open to both sides. Only this will enable the possibility of a fair distribution of the money, especially in an industry whose monopoly status is protected by legal precedent. But as long as only one side—meaning Owners—has the ability to see the books, salary restrictions are always going to be favorable only to Owners. Otherwise, Players are going to be negotiating in the dark, and I don’t believe that’s fair.

I was definitely not being sarcastic. 😁

Not me. I would pick up the curly fries, get a Dixie cup of water, and book.

I see Malloy optioned when Vierling comes back. When Meadows comes back, it’s Baddoo.

Man, Arby’s must be getting their clocks cleaned this year on their Instant 3 Play promotion, where they give free curly fries to everyone who comes in the Arby’s whenever the Tiger score 3 runs. Next year they’re going to have to change it to Instant 4 Play.

A case could be made that Javy is doing as well as he is because he’s finally happy with where he’s playing. If he’s forced to move to third base, he might become unhappy, and as all of us know now, an unhappy Javy is an unproductive Javy.

😉

He might rotate there, but likely Vierling and McKinstry split time there as well.

See, this is what I think, too. How do you fire Javy Baez after the job he’s done out there?

Man, Brieske left a lot of picthes right in hitters’ happy zones, and gave up some loud outs, but technically, he got the job done, and I expect he’ll get another leverage situation in the next week or so.

And a seeing eye single. This is getting dicey.

Baez botched the awesome sliding catch there. Dag.

Great soft contact out. Not a great throw to first by Brieske there, but at least he got it there in the air and got the out.

Got away with one on Kirk there ..

I just think AJ wants to get Brieske a leverage situation here. This is as good as time as any to test him.

Well, Beau Brieske here is a choice …

I mean, Torres had to go for the double, but man, does it ever suck he’s out. I have a feeling were gonna need a run here.