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Two out of three from the “best” team in the National League. And we put up a six-spot against the lowest-run-allowing pitching staff in baseball. AND we shut them out. AND Reese Olson. AND we’re shorthanded so many regulars. I mean to tell ya … We’ve got to start getting serious national media love for this, don’t we?

When I was in between colleges I worked at a place called Duff’s Smorgasbord, a competitor to Sveden House. It was located on Van Dyke between 11 and 12 Mile. People would pay an admission price to come in, find a seat, then go to the food wheels to pick up their dinners o and sides and desserts. It was all you could eat all the time, and there would have up to half a dozen bussers (or “busboys”, if your prefer) walking around at all times passing by tables looking for dishes to clear. That was me. I was about 20 or 21. Again, in between colleges. My favorite day to work was Sunday, because the black churches in Detroit would let out about 100pm or so and a lot of folks would come to Duffs in their church finery for a family meal. I saw so many regulars that I learned their names and stories over time. I could ask follow-up questions based on what we talked about weeks before. I remember they were such fun people to talk to, so genuinely nice and friendly. Or at least it seemed so—it was the early 80s, so maybe their antennae were up higher then and they may have been more cordial to me because of my whiteness, but I think they also appreciated that I was so into chatting and joking around with them that it felt like true friendliness to me. It was not a place where people tipped, but some of them would throw me a buck here or there. It was my favorite grunt job of all, and i had a whole bunch of those before I started office work when I was 25.

Fair point!

Wow, just a phenomenal start by arguably the lowest-profile guy in the rotation.

Man, Javy is rocketing up the center field depth chart today!

OK, try again: https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET202405140.shtml?__hstc=205977932.1377b18de91767275975f4a4ca4e5597.1732978134135.1745431473617.1745433887012.104&__hssc=205977932.4.1745433887012&__hsfp=3110353702

If we keep scoring runs late like this we might have to bring in Maeda for garbage time … 🦆🦆🦆

Why can’t they go after both? 😉

This run is big because it gives Reese a few extra minutes to catch his breath for the eighth.

Wow, that faceplant has got to be an error on Gonzalez in right field, right?

Here’s his best game so far: https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET202405140.shtml?__hstc=205977932.1377b18de91767275975f4a4ca4e5597.1732978134135.1745431473617.1745433887012.104&__hssc=205977932.4.1745433887012&__hsfp=3110353702 Eight innings, three hits, no walks, no runs, six strikeouts. And he got screwed out of the win because this was the offense before August 11.

Reese Olson is pitching a masterpiece, and in fact, he is in a position to throw a Maddux here.

It’s a Dixie thing.

I’d totally vote for Lauren Underwood. Pritzker would never go to the Senate. Why should he go from being the billionaire executive of one of the most important states in the union to being one of fifty mopes tilting against the windmill? I don’t know that he wins a presidential campaign, though, for three reasons: (a) he’s Jewish; (b) he’s enormous; and (c) he’s Jewish. He is emblematic of the Democrats’ dilemma.

There has got to be something in their literature that promotes culling the population of “weak” and “stupid” people. There has to be some connection based on between that and their choice of cuts.

I’m pretty sure they think of RW media as being on the team, since it serves such an important role as a conduit between them and their handlers.

Our boy Malloy!

I don’t think the choice is between tear it down and build for the future, versus go for it and ignore the future. I think that’s a false choice that prior front offices conditioned us to accept as the way things should be. And to be fair, that was the case at one time. But I don’t believe it is now. And as great a pitcher as he is, I don’t believe we’re in a “Skubal or bust” situation, that he is necessarily the linchpin of our contending for the indefinite future. Sure, we’d like to keep him for a few years after 2026, ideally for the rest of the decade. But I’m with what Ed suggested: if we try to sign him for good money and ends up walking anyway, we take the comp pick and trust our pitching science team to build a winning rotation without him.

Aw man, you mean by listening to Dan and Bobby on the radio feed instead of Benetti on TV, I’m missing out on Indy Car talk? Darn.

Can the Tigers both score and also threaten but do not score? Because I feel like they just did both.

Right, and that's a winter of 2026-27 problem to solve when we get to it.

OK, and that's why I was asking for an example of the major leaguers you'd accept a trade for. If you mean an Austin Riley, a guy who's established his big league cred and is solidly controllable for a long time, OK, you got my attention. OTOH, if you mean someone like a Junior Caminero, someone of prospect age who's yet in the majors and has great potential but hasn't yet established himself as a consistent contributor, then I'm not so sure. But yeah, I'm with you on what I would accept in trade for Skubal, which is not prospects. I just don't see any trade out there right now that both sides would do that makes sense.

I said that because the part you snipped speculated that perhaps Pipeline doesn't really know how to value prospects, probably even more true in practically pre-analytics 2015, so Norris may not have been "all that" anyway—which you yourself mentioned by sharing your own thoughts you'd had when you first saw him. Maybe Dombrowski was just relying on the Pipeline ranking by taking him and the Jays knew better. That wouldn't surprise me, because deep knowledge of prospects was outside the scope of Dombo's expertise.

How did the DEMS slip into this? Weren't we talking about the Church? You were suggesting in this post that numerous Francis appointees may be getting rolled by reactionary forces in the Curia and won't vote liberal in the next conclave. But literally 80% of the conclave was appointed by Francis, so it would take something like two-fifths of them to flip for another Ratzenberger-type to win, and even that assumes all the non-Francis cardinals going hard right on their ballots. So, short of actual information anyone might have that this has been happening, I'm not even going to speculate that even might happen. Of course I could be proven wrong on this, but absent mere hunches, I gotta believe a liberal will have the inside track, particularly if the next guy comes from Africa or Asia, as has been the strong speculation.

Somehow merely saying it's "highly alarming" isn't a strong enough response. It sounds borderline mealy-mouthed and punch-pulled.