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Thank you for putting "pennant race" in quotes. I want to win and play in the playoffs as much as the next guy, but despite that we are in second place and only 2-1/2 games out, we are still just 22-25. That's substantially below .500. Not only that, but our pythag record, an estimated winning percentage based on runs scored versus runs allowed, is 18-29. That's equivalent to a .383 winning percentage. We are 29th in runs scored, and that's not due to being unlucky, because we are also 27th in on base, 29th in slugging, 29th in wOBA, 27th in wRC+, and 29th in base-running runs. We come by our offensive futility honestly. Our run prevention is only marginally better. We are 20th in ERA, 21st in FIP, 22nd in xFIP. We can't strike guys out (25th) and we can't keep the ball in the ballpark (24th in HR/9). The one thing we can do is pound the zone (9th among teams in that) and not walk guys (4th lowest rate), but that mainly tells me how much worse the run prevention would be if our walk rates were even league average. In short, we are not ready to be a playoff team. Not close. I'm frustrated with the past seven years, too, just like everyone else. But what would frustrate me more is if this front office were to make moves now to trade future assets for marginal players as rentals in a quixotic bid to squeeze into the playoffs with a barely .500 record as the third division-winner, only to get smoked in the wild card round. (I get that the playoffs are a crapshoot yada yada, but come on, let's be real: we would get smoked by the AL East 3rd-place team in the wild card round.) And the the rental leaves in the winter and we are out not only him, but also whatever prospects we would have traded to get him. I do not want to mortgage the best of what little future we currently have in-house in order to Dombrowski our way into the postseason at all costs. That's partly what got us where we are in the first place! I won't speak for anyone else here, but I am happier with our situation knowing that we are not yet a playoff team, despite our current relative standing in the division. We are a still a rebuilding team—in fact, a rebuilding organization. If we can make the playoffs by sticking with the Harris-Hinch plan and without making any trades to get there, I would be beyond thrilled. But that's so unlikely that I'm not even hoping for it, and that's OK. It's a beautiful dream, but that's not the goal for this team this year, which is why I am not all in on winning this year. It's simply not our time yet. In the meantime, I'm not going to get too attached to the Kreidlers and the Wentzes and the Nevins and the Workmans and the Lipciuses and the Shorts and all those guys similar to them that are littering our system today. Most of them will be gone in 2024, perhaps all of them in 2025. This organization is going to look vastly different by the time 2026 rolls around, and by then our top prospects will be names we don't even know today. That's the day I'm really looking forward to. And if Harris does it right, we'll be looking back at 2023, remembering how much faith we put in guys like those I listed above, and we'll be asking ourselves, "Jesus, what was I on?"

Haven’t we recently seen the effects of rushing minor leaguers before they are ready and trying to force them to learn at the big league level?

Man, even when Lange is kind of bad, he’s really good. It’s his time.

Ha ha ha ha haaaaa naw

Counter-rationale: with just one more out to lose the game, put the guy with the best chance to get on base up first. If he gets on, then send Haase up to hit the grand slam, or maybe 3-run double. Either way, Haase still struck out to end the game.

Their current political champion has publicly called for the U.S. to default on its debt. because after all, they reason. who's going to get blamed for it when next year's presidential election comes around? So, yes.

Just a recent example that no one escapes streakiness: Last season, from June 24 through July 3, Aaron Judge had a ten-game period in which he went 4-for-34 with 11 strikeouts and a .118/.231/.324 slash. This was in the middle of one of the 25 greatest-hitting seasons of all time.

If they even live to use them. If they don’t, they paid in for nothing, except for meager survivor benefits, if they even apply. By the way, here’s a tip: as soon as you qualify for 100% Social Security benefits, take it. Do not wait until age 72 or whenever to get 125% benefits or whatever it is. That’s an enticement to get you to delay and gives the government five more years to hope you don’t live to take even a penny.

Agree. It is far less important to actually prove malfeasance than to just loudly allege malfeasance. In the end, all they will remember is the loud allegation.

I’m not clear on whether this is actually bad for US and how much, but either way, I don’t know, I just can’t bring myself to become indignant over technical violations by a country trying to preserve its very existence.

Some people simply cannot abide sharing equality with “lazy” people. After all, if everyone ends up equal no matter what, what’s the point of working hard to get what you can?

Why am I just a little surprised that rather than ”request a meeting at [his] earliest convenience”, they didn’t simply demand that Garland immediately come to Mar-a-Lago alone for a little chat.

You may remember I mentioned that Miggy is the last player standing who played regular season games in Montreal. There is only one other active player who played against the Expos, and he’s starting against the Tigers tonight.

Because Chapman is left-handed, and if there’s one remaining thing Schoop can do, it’s hit left-handers. He’s actually better against southpaws than Haase is. In any event, we can’t simply never play Schoop ever again as long as he’s on the roster.

We already know why one boat anchor in particular is still playing. Owner fiat. The best we can hope for is 60-day IL, which seems unlikely unless he becomes literally debilitated.

Most hitters are streak hitters.

He also spearheaded the rescue of the economy after the Bush crash, passed Dodd-Frank, stopped Iran from nuclearizing, normalized relations with Cuba, improved America's image abroad dramatically, and, oh yeah, 86'ed bin Laden with extreme prejudice. And he did all of it without even a whiff of any scandal. Obama was no joke.

Not for me. Never heard it before.

LOL "pull a Deuce". Sounds ... messy.

Is it weird, though? Back when the World Series was the only really sports championship, you really did the best teams in baseball, or at least one of them was based on the win-loss record (pythag and cume WAR aside). So America had a running start with the idea before the dilution of playoffs from other sports and, ultimately, from baseball itself. I think people are always going to believe a league's finals winners are really the best team, regardless of regular season record, if for no other reason than they were the best when it counted. And without looking too deeply into it, they may be right in some cases.

I did not imagine originally that Musk bought Twitter to amplify Russian propaganda, but I do now. I don't think Musk is necessarily in the pocket of Putin, per se, in the way many think of Trump as being so. I do think they are all fellow travelers with an interest in destroying democracy so they can destroy the need for competition in general and gather up all the money unto themselves. And if they were to somehow emerge victorious—I don't know how, but if so—it'll be a short honeymoon because they will then turn their guns on each other and ultimately destroy themselves, the way rival despots have throughout history. World keep turning.

I swear to god, when I clicked through to the article and saw the subhead, I thought it read, "People of color compromise two-thirds of GOP primary field". I had to re-read it a couple times to make sure I got it right. Anyhow, two things about this: It was America itself—in fact, the ideological forebears of the Washington Free Beacon—that came up with the one-drop rule in order to segregate people with any African "blood" whatsoever from polite white society. So it doesn't matter whether Obama's mother was white or not. If you're even partly black, the people around you identify you as black. Not white, or half-white, or Halfrican, or anything else along those lines. You're black. Period. I will bet you dollars to dimes that Tim Scott, whom the article acknowledges had ancestors who were brought to the United States as slaves, has at least a little cream in his coffee himself, basically because his ancestors were brought to the United States as slaves.

I found an even worse example than the 68 Bulls: the 1952-53 Baltimore Bullets, with a record of 16-54, made the playoffs, and that's only because they were in the same division as the 12-57 Philadelphia Warriors! The Bullets were in fourth place, 29.5 games behind the third-place Boston Celtics. That's gotta be close to a record spread between third and fourth-place teams. That may not have happened even in baseball, with double the games. So how could this happen? The NBA allowed eight of their ten teams to make the playoffs. Talk about the meaninglessness of regular season games.

One more for now: I love county-level US maps, and this one is super interesting to me: Macomb County is super Catholic, Oakland County is less so, and Wayne County is basically protestant.