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Notice on that replay how, on the Jahmai Jones throw to the plate, which would have been a perfect strike on a contested play, Jake knew the runner on third was not contesting it, so he moved out from behind the plate and cut off the throw in front chest high to put himself in a better position to make a play on the runners if he needed to? It's a super low percentage chance anything would happen, but he did it anyway. #GameWithinTheGame

Ooh McKinstry error on an easy ground ball. Dog days of the season bit him but hard.

I think we are well into the post-Congressional-Reps-Represent-The-People era.

Jesse Watters absolutely understands the Republicans drew that map.

Is Benetti calling an Ohio State preseason practice game for FanDuel Columbus or something?

I would not object to at-large representative by state on principle, but man, would that ever make election day a mess for voters, especially in big states. Plus, they would have to overturn the The Uniform Congressional District Act that stipulates that representatives must be elected from geographical districts, and that these must be single-member districts.

CF is down the defensive spectrum from SS, right? 😁

Riley is going to have to solve the swing and miss problem with giving up much on power. He is 5th percentile on that, and 10th percentile on contact overall. As for defense, "decent" is probably the nest way to put it. plays like the diver on Saturday notwithstanding, he is solidly middle of the pack when it comes to turning around routine plays regularly, and on plays with 2+ star degree of diffiulty. He's got decent reaction time, but so-so burst speed and below average routing to the ball. He is 10th percentile on arm run value, though, and 20th percentile on arm strength. Bottom line on him is, he is acceptable in left as a 24-year-old, but the physical skills he has that we expect to deteriorate is going to show up in reduced defensive utility long before his controllable years are up.

I've been thinking about this, too, and I don't think he's as untouchable, or as certain of a long term deal here, as I once thought. He's controllable through 2029. It would be weird to trade him any time soon, since he's a three-to-five-win guy, and I don't expect we will be selling at deadlines for the foreseeable future. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I don't see what such a trade looks like, except as a challenge trade of our slugger for your established starter. But our organizational depth at outfield as it currently stands might rule out backfilling internally if Riley goes anytime soon, since we are so stacked at catcher and infield instead.

One more take on gerrymandering, this time grading every state for which there are sufficient data. The results generally pass the sniff test for me. Again, take it as you will. https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card/

Not according to this. Take it as you will. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-gerrymandered-states

If I understand correctly, Mexicans are required to have a visa to visit the US for pleasure, but can use something called a Border Crossing Card that is unique to Mexican nationals residing in Mexico and functions as a stand-in for an actual visa. I hypothesize that the vast majority of Mexicans use BCCs, so the stats for overstaying visas don't apply to Mexico. Otherwise, here's the latest visa overstay data I could find. It's from 2023. I would imagine it's going to look a lot a lot different for 2025.

Beautiful win. Needed to have it when it was looking a little shaky there. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we sweep a team that’s given up on he season, and at home.

I was worried from the get-go that Riley was going to get nailed at second. He’s just not a fast runner, at least not at the moment. I would like to have the team evolve from run on everything and make them throw you out, to making better decisions on when to go and when not to.

RF had the ball in hand when McKinstry was about halfway to second. Not a good decision to go, and it didn’t take a perfect throw to get him.

Man, Wendell just went downstairs and took that out. That was a ball.

It’s becoming clearer that the goal is to prevent anyone from ever coming to the United States ever again, I guess so we can become Trump’s hermit kingdom. Next up: restrictions and/or prohibitions on Americans traveling abroad. Book it.

It sounds good to ignorant people. But, also, it takes the spotlight off the Epstein story and all the truly larcenous things he is doing in plain sight that we’re not talking about instead.

Here's an even better one: America’s Drunkest & Driest Counties Based On Excessive Drinking. Are buying Wisconsin? The map above shows the drunkest and driest US counties based on the share of excessive drinkers. The drunkest is Gallatin, MT where 26.8% of people are excessive drinkers. And the driest is Utah, UT where only 9.04% of people are excessive drinkers.

Here's a good one.

The down side of being a good team.

It’s alarming because the people fleeing government to get away from the changes are in so many cases the same people who would fight back if they stayed.

Beat journalism is more than just describing the game and getting player quotes afterwards. Some of it entails hearts-and-minds stories meant to connect fans on a personal basis with guys they read about all the time but will never meet.

fire Harris

By way of reminder, we also had a decent shutout lead late in yesterday’s game, too