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It's only going to get more like that as we get closer to November. The main thing we have to hope for is that the Trump party doesn't find religion and put on sheep's clothes so they can look like a normal political party until November 6. And, also, that they don't violently overthrow the election system altogether and take power by force.

I don't think changing the composition of the ball is necessarily a de facto confession to all prior accusations of doctoring the ball. But they defintiely do admit doing it in 1920 gto make the ball livelier, and I think they could admit it this time as a once-in-a-century sea change, as that was. The debate is all hypothetical, of course, because ain't no way they're gonna change it. The economic incentives to maintain the status quo of massive homers, wipeout strikeouts, and next-man-up pitching staffs are too compelling to give up.

Erstwhile closer Alex Lange now getting garbage time down five in the ninth.

God is punishing red states because he is mad that they allowed Democrats to steal elections nationally and in other states.

This is my take on the issue. Why do pitchers throw at max velocity with max movement on literally every pitch? Because they want to induce swing and miss. Why induce swing and miss? Because any hitter in a lineup today can jack bombs, and giving up bombs is the worst outcome a pitcher can experience. Part of that is due to the increased size and more powerful swings of hitters. Part of it is because of shorter fences. But the biggest, most controllable part of that equation is the live baseball. So, to me, the easy answer is: deaden the baseball. If the home run becomes less of a threat, pitchers won’t have to induce swing and miss on every pitch. Sure, they’ll still have to throw max effort to get swing and miss out of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. But they could actually pitch to contact to down-the-order hitters. That would mean less need to throw at max velocity and max movement. For the lesser hitters, it can be more like “here you go—hit it and get yourself out.” Less velocity/movement means less stress on elbows and shoulders. Less stress means less injury. Less injury means better careers, longer careers, and more engagement by fans with players across their careers than is possible in the current “next man up” era. And bonus: more pitching to contact means fewer strikeouts, more balls in play, more action, and a better, more aesthetic game overall. One counter argument to this is: chicks dig the long ball, and dudes dig strikeouts. That’s why they make up 60% of all highlights on the Quick Pitch clip show, and Quick Pitch is nothing if not a marketing tool. And longer careers also mean higher salaries that the owners—who own the whole game, including how the game will be played—would have to pay. And they definitely don’t want that. Another counterargument, which you brought up, is that pitchers will not necessarily want to … ahem … lay down their arms. And I can see this point. If the ball were deadened today, pitchers would not change their pitching approach tomorrow, or next month, or maybe even next year. Certain pitchers today would never change and would keeping maxing out until they limp away from the game. But eventually, pitchers coming up to the majors would figure out, probably in concert with their data science coaches, that maxing out indiscriminately is a bad long term strategy, even if it’s the right thing to do in certain situations, or to certain hitters. Max effort wouldn’t go away completely. But if a #9 hitter comes up who’s slugging barely .300, pitcher could lay up on the guy and invite him to put the ball in play, if he can. So who knows what Baseball will do. I don’t know, I’m not psychic, man. All I know—all I think I know, anyway—is that deadening the ball would eventually make a big dent in the problem of way too many pitcher injuries.

I like Bobby Scales because I think he adds to the broadcast with his commentary. But to your point, maybe my baseline for him is different than it might normally be.

Not necessarily. At the risk of avoiding putting too fine a point on it, Craig Monroe is a black analyst in a black majority city in which the political costs of firing him would presumably be starker than that of firing white Matt Shepherd. I also don't think the calculus for how an organization handles a player, whose performance metrics are available for all to see, is by necessity the same as how they handle off-field personnel, whose performance metrics are available only internally and are shielded from us. And to your point, the internal performance metrics they view may be nothing like the actual performance we so obviously see and judge out here. You can't deny that the clear majority of us believe Craig Monroe sucks as an analyst, and we are almost all very savvy baseball fans, so we know something about things. But internally, he might be hitting and exceeding all benchmarks.

I don’t know, a two-year-old article written by a beat guy who needs access to the team for his job doesn’t exactly strike me as gold standard stuff, particularly since the article was written during the Al Avila regime. Like Toddwert, I have seen a lot of the same criticisms of Monroe in other forums that I have seen here, and overwhelmingly, people dislike him by something like 9-to-1. I find it hard to believe that despite the overwhelming negativity we see of his performance, that this regime, the Scott Harris regime, is thinking, Craig Monroe is great, he’s the best, couldn’t improve on him if we tried. Speaking only for myself and no one else, that doesn’t pass my personal smell test. On the other hand, what you are basically saying is totally true: no one inside the Tigers organization has told either me or you that Craig Monroe is terrible; no beat writers are writing articles saying he’s terrible; and colleagues like Dan Dickerson and Jason Benetti are not being quoted in interviews saying he’s terrible. There’s no way to know, proof positive, whether they think he’s terrible, and there is in fact written evidence that at least Dickerson is quoted saying glowing things about him as recently as two years ago. All the documented evidence available to us points to Craig Monroe being entrenched with the Tigers indefinitely, and the only evidence we have to the contrary is that practically everyone we know personally who watches Tiger broadcasts hates it when he’s on the broadcast, and beyond that, us just extending our palms toward him and saying, aw, come on, just listen to him! I think the one thing we can all be fairly certain of is that, barring surprise developments, Craig Monroe will survive at least this entire season in the Tigers broadcast booths.

I used to wonder how long it’s going take for Baseball to realize that deadening the ball will go a long way toward reducing injuries, among other ways to improve the game. Now I wonder at what point they already figured out that deadening the ball will do all that, but rejected it because they saw right away doing so would reduce home runs and strikeouts, both of which they need to feed the Quick Pitch marketing machine. Yes, I am cynical about the good faith of Major League Baseball.

Okey dokey!

Yeah, I addressed the make-a-decision thing in the part you cut. There's no right answer here at this moment. Just a couple of Internet randos sharing their opinions.

BTW, I said this to amuse myself, but I don't regard myself of having zero evidence that Benetti and Monroe might not be clicking. I posted my impressions in the game thread of the first spring training broadcast they did, where I said it seemed pretty obvious Monroe was big-timing Benetti during that broadcast, and Benetti seemed uncomfortable with that, so it looked like a rocky start, and you know what they say about first impressions. But I also accept that anyone who didn't see that broadcast, or did and didn't sense that happening, probably doesn't believe that constitutes any evidence, too. After all, it was just me saying what I saw at the time. Maybe it's all fixed now. Or it's on its way to being fixed now. We'll see. It's a looooong season still to come.

Well again, I don't think even Benetti would snap at Monroe if he's annoyed by him, which, I don't know, I guess could happen. But we're in the second week of the season so far, so unless someone is setting the booth on fire, I wouldn't think we'd hear anything by now anyway.

I didn't say things were bad between them, per se. I said, "You can tell Gibby likes working with Benetti, and Benetti appreciates Gibby’s reactions to his bon mots better than Craig Monroe's reactions", which escalated into, "Chas thinks Benetti hates C-Mo, for which Chas has zero evidence, but I think C-Mo is just fine." Which is on me. I admit to taking that bait. 😁 But I do maintain my belief that Benetti likes the verbal interplay he has with Gibson better than with Craig Monroe. And I also think the Tigers can see everything we see—that Monroe is simply not good as a professional broadcast analyst, despite the high level of talent around him that might elevate his analyst game even a little—and that they might have to actively make a decision about him, even if it's to keep him to avoid blowback for letting him go. We may never know that has ever happened, but I'll bet they're talking about it, a speculation for which I have zero evidence as well. 😄

What sorts of indication will you waiting for? Specific hypothetical example of something you haven't seen yet that you would consider indicative would suffice.

And the stuff that he repeats too much is basically the same kind of word salad ex-players engage in all the time. It's one thing and even understandable when you're a player being interviewed. It's another when you're supposed to be making the leap to broadcast professional, and ex-player or not, you should be and are held to a higher standard.

sure you did ...

I'm telling you, Bert, if you're not trading on your looks for a career as an old man fashion model, you're missing an opportunity.

As with anything else, if you don't see the evidence, it's not there, and if you do see the evidence, it is there. I just found it funny that your implied standard is that Jason Benetti has to say it in so many words or else there's no evidence. There's obviously no way even he would ever do that. I also found it funny you changed your line of discussion away from the subject at hand and toward the people discussing the subject at hand which, if I didn't know you at all, would come off as a bid to shut the discussion down. But you're an active and respected participant here, and you understand this is an active discussion board about literally all thing Tigers, so I know that was not your intention. That's the remaining reason I'm still on the subject at all. I can drop it here.

Yes, because if Benetti were to have any problem with Craig Monroe, he will tell us, out loud and in so many words, because that’s the only standard by which we can speculate. And, of course, if he says nothing, then there is no way on god’s green earth that there could be any issues between them, because otherwise, Benetti would be saying so in so many words. 😉

I really dislike how far behind DirecTV Extra Innings is behind live action to the point where I see tweets telling me the Tigers have lost before the action crosses my screen.

I don’t think this can be stressed strongly enough. The job of the Commissioner is to maximize the value of Baseball and its franchises to the benefit of all relevant stakeholders, mainly, the owners, but also, broadcast and corporate partners. It’s not like they don’t consider traditional fans at all. They do, but only as an adjunct constituency, and even then, their base level of fandom is assumed to be immutable. The real consumer constituency they have discovered and are actively courting are gambl … er, betting enthusiasts. That’s because it’s a constituency that has a chance to grow substantially whereas traditional fandom is considered static. Or, even better, they can convert traditional fans to betting enthusiasts in order to separate them from more from their money. Bettors can circulate far more money through the system than fans attending games can. Which is why playing at a minor league park with a geographically-unbranded team is not considered a problem given the current environment of the game. Any revenue shortfall at the ballpark, and even loss of goodwill among the non-gambling public, will be made up through the increasing revenue generated by betting enthusiasts. Plus, with Vegas certain to get a team one way or the other—90% chance it being the A’s—there’s a whole market of betting enthusiasts who will embrace them in a way Oakland or Sacramento can’t, even before they move to Vegas. And I promise you that once the dust settles and the team become the Las Vegas A’s-or-whatever, that team may well become the second most-popular team in the entire country, behind the Yankees. Because there’s a whole subculture of Americans who love love love everything about Vegas.

Now I’m curious as to how “fake violinist” actually works.

If Monroe is trying to take over the broadcast from Benetti then by definition there is an issue between them. Or at least with Monroe himself. And a double for Carson Kelly with one out in the eighth. We are down four, but it’s to the A’s, so it’s not like we are out of this game.

You can tell Gibby likes working with Benetti, and Benetti appreciates Gibby’s reactions to his bon mots better than Craig Monroe's reactions. The Tigers are in kind of a tough position with Craig Monroe. They don’t feel it yet, probably, but they definitely will long before the end of the season comes, and they are gonna have to make a decision, even if it’s doing nothing.