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Ain't gonna lie, I'm a little nervous going into the second half. I'm not predicting a collapse or anything like that, but the team did come into the break playing merely .500 ball over the past month. Our bullpen was baseball's worst during that period, and even our starters were bottom half on some measures. Our hitting has been great during that period, which is why we weren't way underwater for the month, although that has also tailed off the last two weeks as well. Plus, all of a sudden, catcher and center field are black holes at the plate, and how do you solve a problem like Trey Sweeney? I still like our chances to win the division, of course, but I would not be shocked if we end up limping into the playoffs with a .500-ish second half. That would still give us 90+ wins, which is good, better than last year, but that would not exactly qualify as an all-time great season anymore. What would make me feel good about our chances in October would be to see us go 36-29, which is a .554 and 90-win pace, for the rest of the season. That would put us at 95-67 on the year. That's my "goal". I would be very happy with that.

Would it have meant a lot to him in 2022? I wonder whether the Tigers are interested in him? Setting aside the discussion of whether he's a good fit for the clubhouse, he should at least be fairly cheap (meaning no Top 100s), since his contract expires this year.

Per FanGraphs, the average age of DHs is 28, which is less than the average age for catchers and first basemen; and the same as the average age for third basemen, right fielders, and left fielders.

The incident in question is from 2003, when Trump was presumably lucid.

All the evangelical people think he’s Cyrus, so it’s OK. All the superwealthy people are getting rich off him, so they don’t care. All the incels think he’ll get them laid Handmaid’s Tale style, so they’re eager for that. The rest of the people who voted for him are those who didn’t follow closely enough and thought he was just another Republican. Those who are truly ignorant of even this probably don’t bother to vote. The rest voted against him.

There is that, and also, the players prefer the zombie runner because it allows them to punch out sooner.

It seems reasonable hypotheses have settled on the extreme effort pitchers put on their pitches to maximize speed and movement from the very first pitch of the game as the likely cause of injuries, rather than on more pitches thrown necessarily. It has become a Faustian bargain all pitchers appear to make: accept that you will have catastrophic injuries requiring surgeries in exchange for the possibility of making millions.

If the Tigers don’t make the Series, I want Tampa to, just because of the stadium situation.

I don't know whether you have HBO (or MAX or HBO MAX or whatever the heck it is), but I have just started watching the Ms. Magazine doc, and it's pretty good.

"This should teach you coloreds how much value your life has."

I'd be interested in hearing what the upbringing along these lines were in your house, if you'd be willing to share that, because I am intrigued by this kind of thing. Totally cool if you don't feel comfortable doing so, of course.

Honestly, I think all it will take to adopt it is for Players and Baseball to want it. I wouldn't be surprised if older fans overwhelmingly reject it, but I would be surprised if Baseball discards the idea because of that. As long as younger fans and gamblers are at least lukewarm on it, it's gonna happen.

If you like an 8-man batting order over what we have now, that means you do want it. We'll never see it, though ...

Too expensive. Bag of balls for Clase. 😉

Would you rather have the nine-man order with the DH, or the eight-man order without it? Not what is logical, but which would you prefer?

Nope, I'll accept the gold standard as is, thanks. FWIW, InsiderAdvantage, from Silver himself during the 2024 campaign:

Exactly. So an X pundit posting numbers in the low 40s and then breathlessly claiming that Trump has an approval crisis is goldfish mentality.

Don't know if I would trust a Nate Silver-run poll aggregator that includes such right wing stalwarts as Rasmussen and Trafalgar and whatever the hell "InsiderAdvantage" is. Gallup is a gold standard poll, and they have Trump at 47 at his high point on Inauguration Day. Above water would be 50 or higher. And to paraphrase Charles Comiskey from Eight Men Out:

I learned about the world from Bullwinkle even before I discovered Mad Magazine.

I would be willing to bet that the age breakout of all the swing-off polls we'll be seeing in the next month or so will show that something like 70-30 of fans 55 and over will oppose it, and 70-30 of fans under 30 will be in favor of it.

As for the swing-off—is that the accepted nomenclature for it now? "Swing-off"? Good god—my prediction is that it starts during the 2027 regular season, or whatever season will be the first of the new CBA, since the swing-off will be codified within. Because that will definitely be one of the things both Baseball and Players want.

I would be OK with zombie runners starting in the 11th, although I am starting to make my peace with the thing starting in the 10th. At a certain point, I have to recognize the thing is never going to change to something I would prefer that no one is talking about anyway. I will never OK with ghost runners. I think we need an actual human being on the bases out there. 😉

I don't care about college football overtime because I don't really care that much about football to start with.

This from the guy who wants to see an eight-man batting order. 😉😘

Sure it's all done at the moment—in the service of an overall strategy, one that's simple as it gets, to simply blame everything bad that happens on Biden and the Democrats. That's a strategy, one that he is adhering to quite well. So give it up to him for that, at least. 😁 It doesn't take a guppy or a goldfish to think up a lie in the moment. If he were really as random about what he says as you seem to be implying, wouldn't he be saying roughly 50% of the time that he himself is responsible for the bad things that happen around him? According only to the laws of probability, that's what a guy incapable of a strategy and speaking randomly would end up doing.