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Deep MTS Cut: I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I quit!

What's the "racist" angle?

What, you don't trust patriotic Virginians to be responsible with the freedom to choose when they can pass a stopped school bus safely? 😏

Wasn't Steve Scalise doing that in his preamble leading up to one of the votes the other day?

That caucus has already demonstrated tat there are no number of concessions McCarthy can give them to get them truly on board. They apparently made those demands so McCarthy would reject them and they could point at him to their base and say "See? He's a secret Democrat." I would say McCarthy is wasting his time, but his time is worth nothing in the context of Congress, anyway.

If it's correlation you want, you will like this: correlation of attributes to weighted runs created, 2000 through 2022, n=690. Take from it what you will. AVG: 0.64 OBP: 0.65 SLG: 0.61 ISO: 0.39 BB%: 0.26 K%: -0.42 1B: 0.74 2B: 0.84 3B: 0.35 HR: 0.76 Again, this is correlation, not a regression analysis.

I think it’s partly about players who won’t learn to go around the shift, and also about teams not promoting players who can’t hit home runs over the shift. Analytics might be telling front offices that more runs are scored by a lineup anchored by low average-high strikeout-high homer pull sluggers than by high-average-normal strikeout-doubles-hitting spray hitters, so they focus on bringing up the former at the expense of the latter. But in the end, I think it’s about what the chicks dig. We’ll find out this season if we see a home run spike, assuming same or livelier ball.

First of all, who are Chash and Barnhardt? 😉 I’m not saying I agree that the Tigers should not give stopgap free agents two-year deals—I’m saying I believe the Tigers don’t want to give stopgap free agents two-year deals, which is why at least in part I think they haven’t signed any of those yet. I also believe we were caught by surprise by the free agent market being such a players market, the more that being the case, the less attractive Detroit looks as an option, especially to a hitter who sees our ballpark, sees how little support he would have from the rest of the lineup, sees how we lost 96 games yet again, and concluded, thanks, pass. I’m with TD on his implication that we should not sign a major league position player free agent just to get one on the roster. I don’t like the idea of Brian Anderson at all, especially coming straight from the National League, and I especially don’t like the idea of two years of him. And FWIW, I’m not on board with Tommy La Stella, either, especially if it means moving Jonathan Schoop out of position, which we did in 2021 to craptastic effect.

I agree with basically everyone here that the Tigers should not have been an active competitive player for free agents, of which I think of as two basic types: impact free agents requiring many years and dollars, and stopgap free agents who can be used to plug a hole in the short term and perhaps be flippable at the deadline. Good or great teams play in the impact sandbox, which is not us yet; and mediocre to bad ... or rebuilding ... teams play in the stopgap sandbox, which is us at the moment. I believe we fully expected to pick up one or two stopgap position players on the market, the way we picked up two stopgap starting pitchers. But, probably because of the new CBA, the market unexpectedly flipped over on top of us, the proof of which is Tucker Barnhart, coming off the worst season of his career, getting two guaranteed years from a mediocre team that can still challenge for its weak division. I think that's really the crux of the biscuit: the years. We didn't want to sign stopgap free agents for more than one year. We did that with Jonathan Schoop (which was an unforced error, for sure), and look how that's working out for us. This front office didn't want even two-year guys, apparently, or else couldn't make one-year deals work versus other teams. Every position player with a projected WAR of 1.0 or better who signed a one-year deal did so with a team with pretension to contention, with one exception: Jeimer Candelario. As mtu has pointed out, there's time left, although the pickings are getting slim. Given the likely perception of the state of our franchise, we may have to play chicken and pick up whoever is left who doesn't have a job in mid-March, or, go with what we have and concentrate mainly on rebuilding the foundation of the house.

Fact is, Chris McCosky is probably close to the truth on this—i.e., Tigers will probably be relying on in-house assets for offensive improvement this season—which is something I think most of us have come around to in the past couple of week.

Based on articles filed this morning, looks as though Corey might be ready to shine a harsh light on Harris: Although Chris seems a tad more eager to use the power of his pen to maintain his team access through good public relations:

I’ve never said that Baseball’s deadening the ball was realistic. Whenever someone either inside the Game or out would complain about how the game has evolved, I’ve said that deadening the ball would solve a lot of their problems, those related to too many strikeouts, too few balls in play, use of the shift, pitcher injuries, too much station-to-station, pace of play, length of games, etc. But I’ve also said that Baseball is addicted to home runs and strikeouts, the mano a mano outcomes that constitutes 60% of their marketing materials, so there’s no real incentive for them to consider it, and that it’s more likely they double down on the so-called True Outcomes, which I think we may see a resurgence of in 2023.

If it's gotta start, then it's gotta start with a coordinated effort. Someone has to either coordinate it, or someone with tremendous influence has to bring everyone along by example. I nominate you. 😁

Honestly, I would have thought the number to be way higher than nineteen.

I have two Twitter accounts, one for following baseball, one for following news. I post almost nothing to either one, although I do reply occasionally.

So, no idea, huh? 😉 I was just curious about the technical aspects of something like that, how it would work on a practical basis.

I don’t know whether this has already been discussed here, so apologies if it has, but what would be the practical implications of a Democrat like Hakeem Jeffries presiding as Speaker of the House over a Republican-majority Congress?

How does he even get in the door? Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Where'd he get all the money? Who's paying him? Who is he really working for? What are his plans?

When I was basically eight until maybe age eleven, I was scared shitless I would have to go to Vietnam. When they announced that the draft would end, I felt a little better. At last until the Hostage Crisis, which took place when I was 18. I already had to register with Selective Service, but this made that whole exercise feel more real than I imagined at the time. The Iran thing was the actual impetus to get me up off my recently-high-school-graduated ass and get myself into college for what I assumed would be a student deferment!

I think the dunking I've been seeing more of occurs using a screenshot of the tweet, versus clicking retweet or quoting the tweet which counts toward views and engagement for the OP.

As good as this advice is, this unfortunately that would require a level of behavioral zeitgeist that would never, that could never, happen. Individuals doing individual things on an individual basis never unwittingly band together suddenly to change their behavior from one direction to another en masse. There has to be some impetus from the outside, one that is compelling and practically unavoidable. So what could that be in a case such as this?

I wouldn't mind going boom with Marisa Tomei.

People in danger of flunking life can be very dangerous people, indeed.

Or hustle. Or beg. Or borrow. Or steal. Whatever it takes to keep from starving.

Part of that might be because in the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps self-made-man culture, there are no solutions that can be applied top down—only individuals achievements from bottom up. And if you don’t make it that way, it’s your own damn fault, wait, no, it’s the immigrants’ damn fault!