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Riley got his Willie Horton homer!

Within the realm of possibility still: Tigers win three of last four, Cleveland loses three of last four, Tigers win division. Just sayin’. Anything can baseball, man.

I’ll keep half an eye on the game rather than two whole eyes on it.

A terrorist’s wet dream.

Yawn

So was not having Jobe or Olson for much of the year, or Colt Keith at the end.

During the first half of the year this team was one of the lost exciting, most entertaining teams of my lifetime. I dont know what’s happened either, but let’s not forget how awesome it was to watch them earlier this season.

I’ve been thinking along those lines myself the past day or two. This is really doing a bigger number on my baseball psyche than I imagined it would. It’s even making it harder for me to watch baseball games involving other teams, which I normally enjoy, because doing so just makes me think of The Collapse. (Yes, I am conferring that official name onto it. No need to add the team name or year to it. We will always know what it refers to, and when it happened.) The biggest problem for me as far as The Collapse is concerned is that I am going to be hearing about it constantly for the next year, and then hearing about it occasionally for the rest of my life. This has been so monumental a collapse that it’s almost as though 2024 never even happened.

Not exactly true. That team won five of their final six.

Can we please stop calling Cal Raleigh “Big Dumper”? Ugh.

See, there you go. I don't think I would have traded for Devers. Yes he can hit, but he is a terrible third baseman, which is why the Giants are moving him off third and to first, and we already have a first baseman. Plus he seems like a bit of a prima donna malcontent, and that's a bad fit for a team like ours. Again, I know he's a great hitter, even though he's tailed off in Frisco, but especially given his money—it did take Frisco to pick up his entire remaining $300-ish million to acquire him—I don't think I would have wanted to commit to him for the next eight years. Although one thing I don't understand is how it's possible on the one hand to speculate that Devers did not want to come here and/or the Red Sox did not want to trade him here, yet criticize Harris for not going after him even though we don't know he didn't. That doesn't seem exactly fair, but again, fan prerogative. I believe the front office did think we had depth in the system at SP. We had K Montero, W Hernandez, Melton, SGL, Enns, and a few others backing up our starting five. I think that looked reasonable at the time. In retrospect we had a lot more injuries and there was more ineffectiveness than we hoped to see. That just happens sometimes in today's game. I'm not sure how many more guys we needed to have down there, but I'd guess that one could say no matter what the number is, it would never have been enough, because you can never have enough. Not enough starting pitching in a team's organization is a tale old as baseball itself. In hindsight, it's true the Sweeney was terrible, although there was no reason to believe he would be this bad when the season started. If I'm going to fault the front office, it's that we did not have shortstops at higher levels, and really, they should have seen that Kreidler was never going to be the answer. I think the hope was that Sweeney would be enough bridge us to McGonigle and then eventually Bryce Rainer (remember that guy?) when it was time for them to arrive, but that blew up on us. Not sure that could have been foreseen. The A's got a king's ransom in prospects from the Padres for Mason Miller, including the guy who's #3 MLB overall just behind McGonigle and ahead of Max Clark. I don't know whether you're suggesting we should have traded either of those guys for Mason Miller, but I think we're going to be glad we didn't. Andrew McCutchen, just ... nahh. Thanks.

Except it's the government that needs to reform the media, and all these rich men also own the government. We're just their marks.

I really do need to make a habit of scrolling down before replying.

I’s true: networks have the upper hand here, and they should take advantage of that. In big markets, there are enough independents they can strike affiliate deals with, like WDAL in DC or KWDK in Seattle or KPDX in Portland to shake off pesky affiliate groups and get clearance for their shows. In small markets, they can strike deals with other stations to run on their dot-two channels to get clearance. Affiliate groups on the other hand won't make as much money airing Golden Girls reruns, so it ends up hurting them more. I think I'd like to see networks flex their muscle in this case.

That’s fine, you don’t have to come up with anything they might have done differently. It’s not as though we know any better than they do. And you’re right, you’re not a mlb GM. It’s not your job. You don’t have to have a serious discussion with other fans just because they ask you to, or otherwise talk about or have to think about possible remedies that might would have been better than what they did. You can just continue to yell at the clouds about it. That’s a fan’s privilege and a fan’s prerogative.

I think the principle is, the game is played by the players and not the umpires. That’s probably why we never see umpires make a call and then just stop play to change their own call. They require the players to appeal the call instead, if they think the play was called wrong. I remember a softball game in which I crossed the plate to score, and then after a couple seconds the umpire yelled that I was actually out because I hadn’t touched the plate. Setting aside that I don’t think he saw it right, it’s not as though anybody on the other team chased me to tag me out, or told him I missed the plate, or anything like that. He just decided to call me out, period. I’m shocked none of us pushed back on him in the moment, but the rule in the book is, if a runner misses the plate, he’s considered safe until someone appeals, then the umpire rules as he thinks he saw it happen in the moment. It is explicitly an appeal play, and I believe that’s because of the principle that the play on the field belongs to the players, and not the umpire. The umpire is not there to rule the players like a king. He’s there to adjudicate the rules like a judge.

Sigh … I’m out … I’ll keep it on the iPad but I'm disengaging for the moment. Mental health thing.

LOL knocked the bat out of his hands!!

Got Valera on the strikeout. Good work so far by Vest. Now for the big kahuna …

If they break the dam open here, our season is essentially over.

I’m not talking about effectiveness. I’m talking about what it communicates.

Wow, short fly to center is a big break there.

Putting Vest in here to put out the fire in the seventh is basically telling everyone you know this is your season right here.

Then you burn two guys. Benches are too short to do that. And Ibanez is supposed to hit LHPs. (Insert lame joke here.)

The difference is Ibanez can take 3B and McKinstry SS. Can’t put JHen in the infield.