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And the guy you're thinking of isn't even being serious about it!

Fire Hinch! I hear Pedro Grifol might be free soon … 😁

I don't think it was small talk. I think she was genuinely annoyed and genuinely wanted me to know that. To what end, I can't be sure.

lol couple of dozen

I guess beating the Blue Jays three of four and having a record 2-1/2 games better than they is not enough for these particular writers to consider the Tigers to be better than they, especially since the Tigers were ranked two spots higher before the series started. But then, Kaitlyn McGrath is a Blue Jays beat writer, so ... 🤷🏻‍♀️

This will go down as one of the favorite examples of a players effectively going ape**** at an umpire.

I won’t. I am reminded that when I went to Game 1 of the 2005 World Series, he was working right field and Country Joe was working the plate. Laz Diaz was nowhere to be found.

Brought to you by the fine, fine people who bombed a marked caravan of aid workers “systematically, and car by car”. But always remember: not a genocide.

Ok, here we go: assuming Leyland doesn’t like it, doesn’t buy into it—could he have stopped the players who are acting on explicit orders of the front office and the owner from carrying out a cheating scheme? I have a hard time envisioning that even Jim Leyland could make a general manager and an owner heel. After all, they hired him. They’re his boss. How does Jim Leyland use his very force of will to take control of the situation like he’s the boss and intimidate everyone, including the billionaire owner himself, into bending to his will on this? I don’t know, that sounds like fan fiction to me.

Not sure. For all we know, maybe either or both those guys would have bought in to it?

I agree Hinch learned an important lesson, and that lesson might have been that when you take a managerial job, make sure the front office hiring you has, at the very least, the same morals and values as you.

If a guy is a workplace superstar and the big boss in the office wants them to cheat, they’re not going to listen to their immediate supervisor who is definitely not on the same page telling them he wishes they would not do it. That’s just Workplace Politics 101. Hinch’s only moves were to quit, or to try to navigate through it, because stopping them doing it just wasn’t going to happen, and it was literally an impossible situation to find himself in. I do not think any less of him as a leader for not being able to affect it. We’ll simply have to agree to disagree on this.

Which I basically said.

Based on the Tom Tango research, run expectancy is about 0.86 runs with man on first and one out, versus 0.66 runs with man on second and two outs. In a case like yesterday, though, it’s not run expectancy we want to look a—that is, how many runs a team is expected to score—but run probability, meaning what are the chances a run will score, because one run is what was needed, and not many runs. Run probability with a man on first and no out is 41.6%, while a man on second and one out, it’s 39.7%. So the chances of scoring at least one run, which is all we cared about in that moment, is actually worse after the successful bunt. Not enough worse to start firing people over, but definitely not better. If you want to increase run probability after a sac bunt, the only situation it makes sense is with man on second with no out, which is 61.4%, to achieve man on third with one out, which is 66.0%. That is definitely better, but also, this is the only situation it even makes sense. And that’s why sac bunting has gone the way of pitchers batting—it just doesn’t make any sense outside one very specific circumstance, if what you want to do is better your chances of scoring runs, or even scoring one run. As an aside, if Cody Stavenhagen is characterizing run expectancy as being 80% and 65% in yesterday’s case, then he is unclear on the concept, since he is confusing run expectancy with run probability.

I think the situation in Houston was that Hinch didn’t like it, but the decision to do it was made over his head, a couple of the superstars on the roster bought into it, and if that’s the case, there really was nothing he could have done to stop it. What was he going to do, call a cop on the front office?

The one time I tried to visit Rickwood, it was locked up because the city owns it and it was veteran’s day.

Now both knees have ACL tear histories. I don’t know how you maintain elite performance with that.

This just sucks for baseball.

You may not be a guy who buys the concept, but they have a much-improved run differential this year than they did last year at this time.

I just don’t see how a manager who is overseeing an improved team that wasn’t even expected to go to the playoffs would get fired for guiding the team to a .500 record in their first third of a season.

And I just don't understand why everyone seemingly thinks he should be on the hot seat!

I disagree that this year is just a little better. This year is a lot better. Based just on the runs for and against listed in the tweet, last year's pythag record after 52 games is .392, which is a little more than 20 wins. This year's is .494, which is close to 26 wins. That's at least five wins better in terms of runs differential.

Tiger players win game despite evil A.J.’s efforts to lose it!

HOLY **** WHAT AN ENDING!!!

Talk about the makeup call on that 2-1 to Vierling …