chasfh

And then after you answer “yeah I know”, they invariably reply, “so why didn’t you do it??” And you wanna answer, “because I’m ****ing human and I made a ****ing mistake. Do I really need to defend that?!” But you don’t, because it just doesn’t matter, and you just want it to be done with already. But it’ll still bother you for a few hours. Then you’re over it, and everything resets.

O’re definitely right on paper, although I have personally experienced playing left field with a ball hit almost exactly to me and the center field yelling he got it. I shouted back no no it’s mine and I definitely did not get out of the way. So I can see something like that happening in the bigs, and I can definitely support the corner outfielder holding his ground under such a specific circumstance. Again I haven’t relooked at this play.

The Tigers have played only seven of their 28 games against teams who are currently higher in the power rankings than their #13 (per MLB this morning), and they were 3-4 against those guys (Royals #9; Rangers #12). So it will be a nice little baptism of fire when they go on the road against the Guardians (#4) and Yankees (#5) starting this Friday. It will give us a better sense of how improved this team really is.

Just speculating with actually going back and looking, maybe the ball was more in Perez’s area than it was in Meadows’ so he had a better shot, but Meadows was big-timing as the CF, and Perez stayed with it because it was his by proximity, but Meadows insisted, and at the last second Perez pulled off, and it dropped. That’s one way it could have happened, again, without actually searching for it.

Just to build onto what you posted here, I wanted to look at effectiveness of LH pitchers since 1975, so I am adding FIP- below. I like FIP-minus because it measures a pitcher's expected outcomes on the things he can control, taken against league average. I used 220 innings minimum because that's the lowest qualifier on your table (i.e., Willie), which is why we see Lolich on the table. 100 is average; lower is better: David Price 71 Mickey Lolich 82 Willie Hernandez 85 Drew Smyly 88 Tarik Skubal 89 Phil Coke 90 Jim Crawford 90 David Wells 90 Justin Thompson 91 John Hiller 92 FYI, Skubal's FIP- for the season coming into this game is 55, and it was 47 last year, so, I expect him to move up the list within a short period of time.

We had to have this one. We couldn't lose two of three to KC at home.

Come on, boys, we need some instant runs!

Benetti is a bit of a cheerleader, too. You can tell when he says things along the lines of “come on, guys, we need some insurance runs here”, whereas Dan would say, “Tigers could use some insurance runs here.” Big difference, at least to my ears. You can also hear difference in reactions after home runs and the like. Dan is all business and always a journalist. Jason will allow himself to be a fan. Nothing like Monroe, though—being one of the clubhouse guys in the booth at all times is practically his entire schtick. But I do think later vintage broadcasters, even play by play guys, purposefully incorporate blatant homerism into their broadcasts, perhaps at the behest of their employers, and responsive to focus groups. Maybe it’s that the kids like more than just one kind of homer.

I actually signed up for NordPass as a replacement, but obviously they made it for the mobile-only generation, because it works fine on mobile, but it is practically unusable on laptop, which is where I do all my heavy lifting. So I'm sticking with LastPass for the time being. That's fine, they do not store anyone's master passwords so no breach can reveal that, and the nature of the passwords is that they exist encrypted on the user's machine and even if that's breached, they are useless without knowledge of the master. So I feel reasonably confident that I'm gonna be OK.

I think it counts. Stern is a major legacy media vehicle by now.

That checks out with the map.

I'm OK, you're OK.

The company you keep.

I read about people's preferences for seasons in the Washington Post and this is a pretty good map: What it basically shows is which season people tend to look forward to more, spring or fall. A lot has to do with the local climate, obvs: if you live in the cold north, you are more likely to look forward to spring; in very warm or hot climes, more likely to look forward to fall. This is apparently based on Google searches. Now, this isn't a map, but I found this really interesting: you are more likely to prefer the season your birthday falls within!

The do have good rapport and I was not at all suggesting Hinch doesn't like Benetti—but you can be annoyed with people you like. 😁

Can you imagine a better way to get the youngs flocking to MLB than highlighting players’ charitable endeavors and talking about their parents?

A.J. Hinch is a great interview in the right hands. This was a very relistenable first episode. Dan and Jason are different kinds of cops. Dan is the all-business-all-the-time cop. Jason is the joke-around-and-ask-offbeat-questions cop. It’s a good mix unless Jason goes way off the reservation with something. Here’s a good example of that: I loved the part where Jason asked Hinch what kinds of life situations A.J. would call a personal pinch-hitter in to help him with. Just a really oddball and borderline dumb question, and you can tell A.J. was a bit annoyed by it, and he replies, half-jokingly, “Sometimes I love you, Jason, and then sometimes I love you a little less.”

They are waiting for Trump to become president before they can finally rule 6-3 that presidents have no immunity.

Did people really think Comey was on our side?

I don’t think it would be a bad thing at all for Biden to have an extensive interview with a major legacy media vehicle like the Times, provided he nails it, and I think the administration would like to do so. It’s a risk, though, and it could go upside down in unexpected and uncontrollable ways that wouldn’t apply to prior presidents, which may be why they’re avoiding putting Biden out there in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try it, though. Just not now because the topic is too hot.

I find it hard to believe that there are substantial pockets of Michigan that prefer soda over pop. I find it even harder to believe that Chicago is firmly soda country. I can tell you from first-hand experience: it ain’t.

Can you imagine what this court is going to be like when Democrats control the White House and both sides of Congress? It will be practically open war.

Future Hall of Famer alert here at Wrigley Field.

I mean, yeah, we already knew this, but seeing it laid out in print like this really punches us in the gut. https://www.vox.com/scotus/24134882/supreme-court-donald-trump-immunity-calendar-delay How the Court games its calendar to benefit litigants on the right By handling requests from Republican litigants with alacrity, while dragging their feet when a Democrat (or someone prosecuting a Republican) seeks Supreme Court review, the justices can and have handed big victories to right-wing causes while simultaneously sabotaging liberals. Before the Trump case reached the Supreme Court, this penchant for manipulative scheduling was most apparent in immigration cases. During the Trump administration, lower courts often handed down decisions blocking the former president’s immigration policies, and the Court (often over the dissent of several justices appointed by Democrats) moved quite swiftly to put Trump’s policies back in place. In Barr v. East Bay Sanctuary (2019), for example, after a lower court blocked a Trump administration policy locking many migrants out of the asylum process, the Court reinstated this policy about two weeks after the administration asked it to do so. Similarly, in Wolf v. Cook County (2020), the Court reinstated a Trump administration policy targeting low-income immigrants just eight days after Trump’s lawyers sought relief from the justices. Once Biden came into office, however, the Court hit the brakes. In August 2021, for example, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — a Trump appointee who is known for handing down poorly reasoned decisions implementing right-wing policy preferences — ordered the federal government to reinstate a Trump-era immigration policy known as “Remain in Mexico.” Though the Supreme Court eventually reversed Kacsmaryk’s decision, it sat on the case for more than 10 months, effectively letting Kacsmaryk dictate the nation’s border policy for that whole time. Similarly, after another Trump-appointed judge struck down a Biden administration memo laying out enforcement priorities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Court waited about 11 months before finally intervening and restoring the administration’s longstanding power to set priorities for law enforcement agencies. The point is that, even in cases where the justices ultimately conclude that a conservative litigant should not prevail, they frequently hand that litigant a significant victory by sitting on the case and allowing a Republican policy to remain in effect for sometimes more than a year. (Given the slow pace of most litigation, this might not be particularly remarkable — except for the stark difference in how the Court has treated suits against Trump and Biden’s policies.) The Court’s ability to set its own calendar allows it to manipulate US policy without actually endorsing lower court decisions that cannot be defended on the merits. The Court’s behavior in the Trump immunity case is a close cousin to this tactic. Again, it is difficult to imagine even this Supreme Court ruling that presidents may commit crimes with impunity. But the Court does not need to explicitly declare that Trump is above the law to place him above the law. All it has to do is string out his immunity claim for as long as possible. —Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent

Let him. He'll get crushed, and we will enjoy watching it.