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Whoooooo gives a ****

I did not realize they cheered after he said it. What were they cheering for? It couldn’t be because they really want electric cars after all but couldn’t because Mr. Trump Sir hated them but now he likes them so it’s OK to get one, can it? I think it’s more like they were spacing out and heard “blah blah blah blah Elon supports me”. Perhaps 80% of those clapping were paying attention to something else like their phones, heard people start clapping, and then they started clapping in response not knowing what it was for.

I believe there’s a clear difference between swatting a kid on the butt once to get their attention, and as a completely unusual and out-of-character response to a situation that signaled its practically grave consequences, versus carefully planning and preparing a beating over a period of time before administering a painful corporal punishment for something like backtalk. I think the healthiest relationships between children and parents are those in which discipline is rooted in a loss of privileges and an explanation of why, versus loss of privileges AND a savage beating AND the silent treatment during and afterwards.

Burying the subheadline ledes—still telling people to hate Biden for it, but admitting he’s supporting it because it’s quid pro quo: Donald Trump said at a rally on Saturday that he supported electric vehicles because Elon Musk endorsed him. But he also criticized EV infrastructure and Biden's EV mandates. Musk has publicly backed Trump recently but denied a rumored $45 million donation.

Man, what an awful, awful way to lose this game. Just a swift kick in the nads after the high we got yesterday.

Oh, Jesus, first pitch bomb with two out in the ninth and the last pinch-hitter puts the Royals up 3-2. Goddamit.

I really like Andy Dirks on TV. He's a business-first guy, a la Dan Dickerson, and he keeps Benetti's tendencies to go way off-topic in check. Benetti can be a really good business PxP, and Dirks keeps him in check. It's when Todd Jones comes into the booth where they go really off the beam, and Dirks doesn't seem like he wants to go there so much.

I've been listening to the ten-part podcast "What Happened in Alabama?". The host's father grew up in Jim Crow Alabama before moving with the family to Minnesota when he was 12. The host was born there and grew up as one of the few black people in his St. Paul suburb. A common theme of the pod is how the host's father regularly beat him and his sister as children to within an inch of their lives. The working hypothesis is that the father did so because, as with so many black parents, beating the children was a way to teach them that they had to grow up fast and learn how to navigate a white world super carefully so they don't end up getting killed by racial violence. The pod also ties the beating of children back to slavery days, where violent punishments established itself as something that got passed down through generations through the descendants of both enslaved persons and slaveholders. I just got to episode seven and the pod threw a bit of a curve ball: rather than discussing yet another aspect of Jim Crow directly, they veered off into the topic of corporal punishment of children. The host had experienced regular beatings, and as an adult thought things through and determined that even though he had thought it was a normal and even beneficial way to grow up, he was now questioning the efficacy of the entire idea, and he brought on a doctor who'd studied the effects of corporal punishment on children, and how the nervous system is altered by it. He also brought on an African American Studies professor to discuss how corporal punishment extends beyond the home into schools. There were several really good points I had not contemplated very deeply before. One that had crossed my mind was that constant beatings—and, as importantly, the constant threat of beatings that could come at any moment for any or no reason—likely rewire the brain in unhealthy ways that manifests in the children growing up and behaving that way toward their own children. It's a form of traumatic stress disorder. I also knew that there are certain states, most of them concentrated in the old slave south, still allow corporal punishment in schools. But the one idea that had never crossed my mind was how we allow punitive behavior against children that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment were they to be practiced on adults. At one time the flogging of adults as judicial corporal punishment in the US was common, particularly used against enslaved people and, later, black people during the Jim Crow era. As such, it's a holdover punishment from slavery times that still resonates strongly with a large portion of the United States. But while there is no longer any judicial corporal punishment of adults, people still feel free to administer beatings to children, who with their small and vulerable bodies and brains simply break more easily than adults, even in taxpayer-supported institutions such as public schools. When you think about it in those terms, the idea just seems absolutely bonkers. I remember we had a spirited discussion on MTS many years ago about corporal punishment, with one proponent who was very supportive of it, and would counter with arguments such as "I was spanked when I was a child and I turned out fine" (Did you? Really?), and "Are you a parent? No? Then you have no right to weigh in on this." It's a controversial topic, which is why I put it here in Politics. But the link below leads to a very thoughtful discussion of the issue, admittedly all anti-corporal punishment and nobody on the pro side, that might be worth your time to take in if you have any interest in the topic. https://www.whathappenedinalabama.org/episode/2024/06/26/ep-7-spare-the-rod

That ball must have started tailing away from Meadows because he had to stretch his arm way to the left to get it.

Don't all those AI women have the exact same face?

How about a six year contract to a 29-year-old? 😉

I think they’ll dog whistle the old Jewish tropes to try to skim off the marginals instead.

Trump would get slimed so relentless he would literally drown because he could not avoid breathing some in.

Wrong forum. 😉

I'll be impressed when they lose 28 in a row.

Is he is major leaguer right now? Does he play five positions? Because that's what we need to replace what McKinstry is doing. Ibanez can't take all those reps as well as his own, plus he's no good on the left side of the dirt, and McKinstry is.

I wasn't fingering you for bringing it up because you didn't. I just wanted to see what anyone thought the better option is, and the answer is, nobody. Unfortunately. McKinstry is the only guy on the team who can play a bunch of positions competently, and mop up on the mound when we're getting blown out, all with good defense, and as you alluded to, those guys don't grow on trees. He's a terrible stick but he's a good glove, which is why he is exactly at 0.0 WAR. We have guys who are hurt or sent back to the minors and someone needs to take those reps. Who's going to do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? If anyone knows someone else out there who can do even as well as McKinstry is, they should let Harris know, because believe me, he'd like to replace McKinstry with somebody better. Anybody would. And he will be replaced when the time comes. In the meantime, all we can do is shrug and wait for guys to come back and start hitting their weight, so he can grab bench more than he does.

lol no serious. Who?

We DFA McKinstry. Who replaces him?

As far switching up batting orders and moving players around different defensive positions and even managing bullpen usage is concerned—after all, much of what dictates who's going to pitch in a particular spot depends on the bullpen workload management plan, not who is the one guy we can depend on for an out in this situation, which is usually the same guy anyway—I agree managers have far less an effect on a team's ability to win than traditional fans give it credit for. Players generally have an established level of talent at a given moment, and no amount of managing is going to increase that talent in that moment. We're on the same page there. As far as managing players' psyches and emotions, helping them work through problems and fears and concerns, coaching them to be confident in and maximize their talents, and generally putting them in the best frame of mind so they can comfortably give their best efforts on the field, I think managers have a tremendous impact on a player's performance in that regard. Not talking about you here, but some people will never agree with this.

I acknowledge I came back breathing fire at you, because honestly, hearing multiple posters here suggesting, or even flat out saying, that Harris and Hinch want to lose and players don't give a shĭt is just getting really, really, really tiresome. So it was the accumulation of my frustration at reading too much of that, and you happened to step into my line of fire. So I apologize for that. In my defense, "it's just human reality that a competitor with no reasonable chance to compete can't give you his best" still reads and re-reads to me as though you are saying that are players are laying up on effort because they're not playing on a winner, and I reject that premise. As TD said, most of the players you see on the field are fighting for their professional lives at any given moment, so the idea of them not giving their best strikes me as career suicide, and who does that after all the work they put in to get there in the first place? Do at least some guys do that? I suppose, although if they were wont to do so, they probably would have been found out and weeded out in the minors, if not before. But I do not think it's common at all.

Not at all! It's called Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race by Larry Colton. https://www.amazon.com/Southern-League-Baseball-Compelling-Pennant/dp/1455511889

Dirks is definitely keying off the PxP guy. I think most color guys are like that anyway. Even Craig Monroe was better when he was on with Dan because Dan didn’t feed his worst instincts like Benetti did. By the way, i have to give props to Bobby Scales’s work last night. He seemed loose and informative most fo the broadcast with Dan, especially when they took a 30,000-foot view of the Tigers’ general situation, which happened a lot during last night’s broadcast.

I simply can’t envision major league players—especially marginal major leaguers who have left everything on the field for years as kids and young adults to become a Major League Baseball player, someone who is a 1-for-26 streak, or four straight bad outings on the mound, from literally seeing their careers end—just saying **** it all and start ****ing around on the field like they don’t care just because of a few deadline trades by the team they’re on that already wasn’t going to make the playoffs before anyway. These aren’t 9-to-5 office jobs you can Dilbert your way out of because there’s always a dozen other jobs around the corner you can get when they ****can you. This is the top of one of the most prestigious and rarely-attained professions in the world. And that’s what I mean by “come on”. I also can’t envision an established player with money and future years discarding all vestiges of his professionalism by ****ing around on the field like he doesn’t care anymore, because that would result in a huge reputational hit among other organizations he might hope to continue his career with, as well as with his peers whose respect he values more than just about anything else. That also does not pass any reasonable smell test. When I hear ideas such as that being expressed, it sounds to me like nothing more than a frustrated fan just whinging.

I’d been on the fence about Carpenter, although I started warming up to the idea he might be good for a few years. Not sure how his back injury will affect his hitting going forward, but we’ll see. Even give three primary bats, will a couple secondary bats be enough to turn this team as otherwise currently-constructed into a playoff contender? I don’t know, maybe. Some in-house options would have to take a substantial step forward at the plate, not the least of which would be Tork, but also, Meadows and Dingler. I think the typical playoff team needs at least six above average bats (let’s say at least 105 wRC+) regularly in the lineup, and a couple more on the bench. We won’t get that from the top of the free agency pool, because they won’t come to Detroit next year, so it would have to be someone in the bottom of the pool we can flip into an above average hitter, or a trade from the system which, given our lack of depth there, would have to come from the bone, and I don’t know who that would be.