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Well, that's pretty transparent.

I don't think of Brad Pitt as being ten.

Kids definitely want more velocity. Velocity is cool.

I wonder whether that means foreign pitchers, like Dominicans and Venezuelans, have a leg up in staying healthy because they don't pitch as much when they're young as the travel ball kids? Particularly those who go into MLB academies when they're 16, or who train with a buscone before that, both of whom have incentives to protect kids' arms, as opposed to American travel ball managers, who have no such incentive and may work kids like galley slaves in games until their arms fall off, because it's no skin off their nose. This is merely a hypothesis based on reading around here and there and I have no actual insight into it either way.

I think it depends how well they can rig the election. Because if the election is allowed to be free and fair, I don't think he has a chance—that is, unless Biden dies and someone like Kamala becomes the nominee.

I don't think the successor can be Gaetz, for two reasons: (1) He doesn't have the personality to maintain a cult of personality; (2) he's too politically stupid to understand that a Trump/Tucker ticket in 2024 would get absolutely crushed in a general election—or at least a free and fair election. I believe the narcissistic psychopathy of Trump actually precludes a successor, since he is so insecure he must strive to have 100% of all favor and power accrue only to him, and as such he is constitutionally unable to groom anybody as his successor for fear they will prematurely upstage him before he goes. Once Trump dies, though, the rush to fill the power vacuum will be one of the more entertaining political spectacles we will see in our lifetimes—assuming he does so in the next few years.

Wait a minute: you think Trump is a lock to be elected president next year?

Changes are always incremental before the revolution happens.

Maybe some of "us guys" think it will be a brutal dictatorship, and that's certainly within the range of outcomes. I think a more likely outcome is the kind of authoritarian regime they have in Russia: the kind where our rights get steadily eroded, and if you voice a strong opinion about it publicly there's a good chance you will get a visit. But if you keep your mouth shut and just live your everyday life not thinking about it, you will probably be fine as long as you don't need those rights at some point, which to be fair most people don't. But either way, once they take power, they will take immediate and drastic steps to curb elective democracy and maintain single-party autocracy permanently, which will be an undermining of the basic principles this country was founded on, but which has also functioned and been accepted in this country before (notably in the post-Reconstruction South). The question will be, how happy and willing will you be to live in such a way?

I'm afraid we are too far beyond the normal range for that party to simply fix itself. Something dramatic will have to happen to snap us out of it, and it probably won't be painless.

I had not heard about this, and i thought for the first 10 or 15 seconds I thought it might have been a joke trailer made out of the original movie done in action thriller style, which itself would be hilarious if they could pull it off.

I think this as their best one ever! I love the Michael Che prank bringing the woman in.

Happy 63rd birthday to Bobby Brady.

I was thinking what a pitching staff might look like under this strategy, and I came up with: Five starters. Two 2-4-inning guys, either one can open in a pinch. They could be either failed or aspiring starters. Two up-to-2-inning guys, definitely relievers. Two setup guys, one of each hand, preferably four outs in a pinch, one of them backup closer. One best short arm as closer. One mop-up guy, a slot through which you can work fungible optionable guys in your system. If I could choose guys off the shelf to try this, this might be how I would construct it.

The research I have seen on this is from 20 or so years ago, before hurlers started trying to throw the ball through the wall on every pitch. I wonder what new research based on today’s conditions and incentives would yield? To your point, if it’s all about the physiology, there should not be any difference.

If Baseball were serious about protecting pitchers, they would deaden the ball to significantly reduce homers, which would reduce the need (or incentive, if you prefer) to try to throw every pitch with maximum effort and movement in order to miss the bats of all nine guys in the order who can take them out of the park. There’s no incentive for Baseball to do that, though, because the home run is their #1 marketing tool, and there is practically an endless supply of fungible pitchers they can run out there.

I’ve been thinking more lately that there must be a market inefficiency in terms of multi-inning relievers, guys who can work out of the front of the bullpen for 2-3 innings at a time and not necessarily be a contender for a starting role. So, if a pitcher has to come out in the third or fourth inning, a team could slot in a guy (or even two) to get them to the end of the game and save the back of the pen, versus having to cycle six one-inning guys, including their closer and #1 setup, to get them to the end of the game because that’s all they have available.

The trick is getting six pitchers good enough to put into a regular rotation. I have never been a big fan of this idea because you end up taking starts from your best starters and scheduling them for your sixth best guy maybe 25-ish times a year. That’s not an effective use of resources, as far as I can tell. I would rather have a five-man schedule and cobble together the fifth spot between your number 5/6 guys. If a team does have six guys who are good and healthy enough for a regular turn—a super rare instance, I would think—then they should probably move one of those 5/6 guys to fill another position of clear need, if they have one.

Given how deliberate Harris is showing himself to be, I am having trouble seeing him throw everything away and making a crazy signing, like 7/200 would be for a Snell or a Bellinger. And I don’t believe Baby Doc is as given to that kind of New York minute that Papa Doc was. If there’s a concern to be had along these lines, I’d think it would be more that the caution would prevent them from making the right big money move for the right guy before someone else snaps him up.

Don’t Massholes go for Trump? Or am I thinking of something different here?

I might stipulate that $14 million is not all that significant a hit to a team’s payroll anymore in terms of opportunity cost, especially given the hike up in contracts this year. I mean, 3/26 for Joe Jimenez? Now that’s a risk, and less because of the $26 million. The Tigers are going to have a payroll in the bottom third of baseball next season, and that’s even with Flaherty on board, so I see it as actually being a low-risk signing. His contract is clearly not hamstringing us from spending more, and if he doesn’t work out, we don’t have to worry about him having any impact on the 2025 payroll.

I rewatched Ken Burns’s doc on Huey Long, from 1986. First time I’ve seen it since then. It didn’t stick much with me when I first saw it, but rewatching it, I am struck, almost stunned, by the parallels between Long and Trump, if not exactly in style, then certainly in tactics and effect. They also talk about what happened after Long died, and it’s at turns frightening and heartening. You can watch it free for here if you’re interested. EDIT: Very weird: the video showed up when I pasted in the link, then disappeared as I posted it. Here is the URL: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8mzfmn

Speaking of Jack Flaherty, I believe it was someone here who posted that it was high risk-high reward. But it’s only a one-year deal, which is basically the opposite of high risk. The Tigers may have tried to add a second year but Flaherty rejected it to bet on himself. Or perhaps Flaherty asked for additional years with an opt-out and the Tigers said no. Either way, it’s only a single year, so I don’t see the risk.

Not to get more political than this here, but I don’t think local newspapers feel that’s their purview anymore, and the papers that do feel that purview tend to be more national now.

I get why they wanna run up the score. They’ve really been struggling the last six weeks, and they need a no-doubt blowout to get back on that horse.