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J Ro's batting ninth still? Damn ...

I remember the first time I'd ever heard the term "false flag". It was only about a decade ago, and it was by Ballmich on the old site. I seem to remember it was something—maybe Benghazi?—that he was trying to accuse the Obama administration of perpetrating. I'd never heard anything referred to in such a way before that. Now seemingly everything is a goddamned false flag.

That's fine by me.

I'm sure they're not.

I don't know, either—Jung? Keith? Flores? Whoever this year's 1-3 pick turns out to be?—but just as a general statement of principle, I prefer they not mortgage any future pieces now in-house that they've determined would be top contributors for run at a ghost of a chance this year.

Thank god John Candy isn't alive to see the Canadian right to dress in drag abridged.

Here's another way of looking at it: This breaks down batting averages in for ground balls and line drives, both overall and by handedness. The row at the top is 2023, with the shift ban in effect. So far, the results show increases in batting averages in all situations to varying degrees this season versus last, although this compares this year's partial seasons to last year's full season. It being only early May, it remains to be seen whether teams are going to moderate their positioning to become more shift-oriented than they have been so far. For example, speaking just anecdotally, I seem to be noticing more shortstops positioning themselves right up to the imaginary second-base middle line for LHH—basically, playing right up the middle—whereas earlier this season I thought they had been shaded more toward the traditional shortstop position. But this is just one guy talking more or less out of his ear—surely someone has positioning data they will be looking at and reporting on at some point during this season. But point is, these 2023 figures may change as teams presumably become smarter on how to position themselves vis a vis the new rule.

Baseball America shows here that it did not affect BABIP at the minor league level: https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/banning-shifts-had-almost-no-effect-on-batted-ball-outcomes-in-the-minors/ As for the majors this year, MLB BABIP through yesterday, 1,058 team-games so far, shows a BABIP of .298. Last year, through May 17, a total of 1,060 team-games, BABIP was. 282. That's a pretty substantial difference, and runs counter to BA's finding for the minors. Is the difference in the majors due to the banning of the shift while the minors was an anomaly? Or is the majors the anomaly and the minors the real difference? I think probably somebody would have to dive deeper than just raw BABIP to find out.

Perhaps but, FWIW, I posted standings yesterday showing our performance since 2-9, and even though our record had been 13-9, our pythag was still about .500.

If we do way outperform our pythag, enough to legitimately contend for the playoffs, I hope the Harris admin will stick to their long-term plan and not make any ill-advised moves so they can take a shot at the third wild card spot this year. I assume the temptation and pressure to do so would be very great.

I wish they loved children as much as they love guns.

You were obviously hanging out with the wrong 35+%!

I also had no idea there was this ZIP code-like system to international calling codes.

I had no idea that Stockholm, Sweden was essentially a bazillion islands.

Raise your hand if you would have guessed that Italy would have the best-smelling people in Europe.

If we somehow got the political will to enact national legislation calling for high gun taxes and licensing fees, maybe the revenue could be used to fund buybacks. It could become a platonic ideal of a virtuous circle. Of course, if guns were made too expensive to legally buy and maintain, that would surely precipitate a very active black market for guns, which of course would be bad. But would that create a situation that's worse than things are today? I don't see how that can possibly be. 2A people like to say, "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns", which has a sort of surface logic to it. But those same outlaws are already getting guns now, and beyond that, it's a virtual certainty that the ease of obtaining guns is leading some people who might be on the fence about which direction their life could go into becoming outlaws in a such a way. In that very narrow sense, it's not unlike the recent proliferation of gambling: the shocking ease with which people can gamble now, on almost literally everything, is making gambling addicts of millions of people who might never otherwise have been exposed to it. It's one thing for someone to work to seek it out, and quite another when someone is constantly being enticed into it. Which is to say, just because an active black market would spring up for guns, were they heavily restricted, is no reason for keeping guns as easy to obtain as a six-pack of beer.

I won't share the actual tweet here—I'll leave that to those sympathetic individuals to share if they want to—but I just find the language being used in the headline really interesting, because practically nobody I have ever known has ever used "jackal" as an insult, political or otherwise. You know who does use it? Putin and the Russians. "Jackals" is a super common political insult there going back to at least Soviet times, along the lines of "running dogs" used by the old Asian Marxists. It's the little clues that reveal things ...

That’s actually kind of a bad omen for the rest of the season as the Tigers are likely, as teams probably are, to find their level back toward pythag. (That would be an interesting study: how do teams that perform well outside their pythag at various mileposts during the season end up playing for the rest of the year? Could it be more of a skill than we give it credit for?) OTOH, we should always remember that this was always going to be a transition year in many years, including the weeding out of non-hackers and the acquisition of playoff-caliber talent throughout the system. Even if they still end up winning fewer than 70 games, I think it’ll hard to fault anyone along the way. Me, I’m enjoying the ride while it lasts.

Incredibly, even this morning, Fangraphs projects the A’s to have a better record from now through the end of the season than the Reds, Rockies, or Nationals.

Well done, Ob. Nice explanation by his camp, too. If it comes directly from him, even more impressive.

Mississippi, so awful in so many ways, comes up 50th on that map, too.

Is it because she’s from the islands, mon? 🇯🇲😁

I might use African American as an adjective, but almost never as an noun. For what that’s worth.