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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?

I’ve been wanting to try generative or photo-editing AI, but it seems like every site I end up that wants me to buy an expensive subscription upfront before I even try it.

Also, why should I tip cash register people I will literally never see again?

That’s kind of close to one of my old rules: if you wait on me, I’ll tip you. If I have to wait on you, I won’t. This applies to that.

I believe Rubio has no spine and he would follow whoever he thinks the alpha in the room is, even if he’s president. He’s always struck me as a weasel-y follower.

He’s the guy I’m rooting for! He can be campaigned against. Well, actually, I’m rooting for MTG or Kristi Noem, but I think Vance will do.

Yeah, I just don’t envision where they would “all” vote for Trump after they have been turning red districts and even entire states blue or bluer for six years all across the country. Although I can definitely envision another Jan 6-type event.

It’s interesting to me how Britain uses red for labour and blue for conservatives, which kind of makes more sense, since red is associated with socialism and communism, which is closer to labour than to conservative.

I don’t think there’s any really great answer here, which is why I think they might hang with Tork and hope for the best for at least a few more weeks. He’s at about 50 wRC+ for the past week, which is awful, but probably not much different from what we might expect from a freely-available replacement. Maybe all he needs to do is pop a couple in the next couple of weeks and we probably won’t be talking about this much for a while.

I think we probably need Urshela at third more.

He’s played 150 or so innings, but we’re gonna have to bring up a positional players anyway if we were to send Tork down, so it might as well be a guy the clock is already ticking on, like Hiura. He’s only gonna get one shot anyway since he’s out of options.

I’ve have seen and heard a lot of demonizing of college students in general because of this—you know, those entitled little ****ers getting daddy and mommy to plunk down six figures to send them away hoping they’d get a business degree and a job that would pay them enough to get them out of the house for good and, bonus, pay for their end of life care. Who do these little snots think they are? They should go out and get a real job and see what it’s like to work in the real world for a change. Know what I mean? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. But probably far less than 1% of college students are even involved in these, and I just think politicians are stunting off this for likes from their base.

I think it’s really difficult for someone to overhaul his approach in the middle of a season at the major league level, and that’s even assuming he’s willing to try, which, I’m not sure exactly where Tork’s head is on that. Sending him to Toledo should probably be in the cards, but Mark Canha is the only guy on the team who can hold down first, and we’d probably have to bring up Keston Hiura, who ain’t exactly setting the International League on fire, especially lately. And how long would Tork have to stay in Toledo to get himself right? Because I don’t think it’s gonna happen in a week, and if we send him down for a week then bring him back and he’s still sucking or worse, it’s gonna make us look like an organization of chaos. It’s probably gonna take some time to fix him. Yeah, it’s a bit of a quandary, all right.

You won’t be able to use a VPN on your phone since phones typically use geolocation, but try using the VPN on a laptop. I can make that work on mine when the Tigers play Chicago teams. Also, I have VPN set up for my router and I can fool my living room Apple TV unit (although I can’t fool the basement Apple TV and I don’t know why). But if you and other Michigan residents can put a VPN on your router, you might be able to see Tigers games on your smart TV or OTT device.