chasfh

To your point, one can have the goal of working toward a fascist Christian autocracy and still not give a crap about Christianity, or even know anything about Christ. Christianity has evolved away from being a religious calling and more toward being a divisive political cudgel. To that end, I am increasingly seeing people refer to themselves in on-the-street interviews, social media, etc., as being a “Christian”, or a “follower of Christ”, or quoting non-sequitur Bible passages in their profiles, things of that nature. That is generally the first thing they want you to know about them. My reaction to that is, if they have to sell me on what a good person they are by telling me right off the bat that they’re a Christian, before I learn anything else about them, then I immediately have my doubts about how Christ-like they are. They usually preface something Christ would never say with this selling point.

I don’t know how much more of a drop-off Schoop can have from last year. A big one would put him in Christian Pache territory and have the Tigers considering DFA’ing him after all. I think he rebounds to at least halfway back to average, which still isn’t good, but possible. I’m thinking TORK! will have a good season and, bold prediction, Riley has a legit All-Star year. They will be two highlights. Javy will be MVP-level for 300 at bats, Schoop-level for 200 more, and somewhere in the middle otherwise, so he’ll be a net gain. Haase may drop some, but Jake will be a big gain over Tucker. One of Maton/Vierling will surprise with a good year while the other one struggles. Carpenter’s bat will keep him the job all year. Austin Meadows is the only one I’m not sure will recover. He hasn’t been good at all this spring (still no homers!) and I’m betting on a hunch he will see significant IL time, but we have more OF options than before to cover him. Miggy will be ziggy. The pitching is a complete wild card to me. Fetter’s work with the bullpen last year was outstanding, but. Can’t be sure it wasn’t lightning in a bottle, and this corps looks more tattered. The rotation could go either way, too, although it’s hard for me to see how it could be worse, since all that’s really different is we won’t have a half season of Skubal this year. The pitching, I think, is what could make the difference between us pushing 80 wins and pushing 100 losses.

HAPPY OPENING DAY! No, I am not kidding you.

If you believe Baseball Reference, Willi had 1.2 WAR in 392 plate trips last year, which is basically the level of major league regular over a full season. Sure, he’s probably never gonna walk, and he’s almost certainly never going to be a perennial All-Star. But if he can stay versatile and average even 1.0 WAR a year, he can find work into his 30s.

I said in another thread that we’ll be north of 75 wins, and I’m gonna stick with that.

I’m not so surprised. I thought Willi might be the one guy from the Avila corps Scott would keep. He’s only 25, and has enough underlying skills that might work at the big league level if someone can figure out how to unlock it. Of course, he could completely flop, too. But I won’t be terribly surprised if he’s still playing big league ball in 2028.

Well, you know the old saying—you can never have too many left-handed-hitting outfielders.

Especially in a closed forum of—and no offense intended because I’m one too—nobodies.

Jomboy FTW, as usual:

Me, I think it sucks that the season doesn't start on Monday anymore. Now we have a situation in which every team has either Friday or Saturday as a scheduled off-day, rather than Tuesday or Wednesday. That just feels wrong.

Does anyone else read this guy's posts to themselves in a Russian accent? Or am I the only one?

Sure, that would be great, but you can't change that by passing a law, like we might could with guns.

I think the value we get out of McKinstry will be directly related to the amount of success the coaching staff will have working with him. I don’t think anyone is expecting he is going to step right in and contribute. I’m pretty sure he’s a work in progress. If he doesn’t pan out relatively quickly, I think he’ll pass through waivers and become organizational filler. On the other hand, at age 27, even if we do get improvement, I think he’s a short-term solution anyway, so I wouldn’t expect him to be here beyond a couple years at most, even if we get 100 wRC+ out of him.

And of course, its corollary: Hate - Guns = STILL LIVING

lol breitbart

Great. So the system works.

Who the fuck is Steven Shaviro and why should I care about anything he has to say?

I think Biden is doing great, and assuming he still is by next November, I'll be happy to root for him to win again.

Maybe we should abandon the thing that’s been proven to not work and try something new that might work.

Also, 2012.

And that's when we start burning witches.

lol zerohedge

Sure, but as a tactic in the service of the objective to undermine effectiveness of and confidence in government in general, which is what the Banana Republicans want, might this not be a sneaky good one? There's no penalty among their base for acting the fool—in fact, there appear to be rewards—so it might be a low risk/high reward tactic for their purposes. I wouldn't doubt if they've at least batted around the idea.

This is great. Perfect way to get it all down on the record and in front of those American people who care to see it. Although I am struck by his being able to spool out his entire schtick uninterrupted, which seems remarkable in this era of bad feelings. I wonder at what point, when a congressman starts off on a thing like this, someone on the other side, e.g., a bombthrower like MTG, starts shouting them down, creating a ruckus, forcing the sergeant at arms to remove them from the room, and then going to their friendly media to loudly complain how the woke Congress of the United States suppresses free speech among duly elected representatives of The People, or something like that. That could be another norm they completely destroy in their quest to destroy good government and the rule of law overall. That’s gotta happen at some point, doesn’t it?