chasfh

Their Orange Jesus telling them "don't worry about it" is all a third of the population needs to hear to be comfortable with it.

It occurs to me that if, miracle of miracles, Perot had become President, we'd've seen a similar kind of pro-oligarchy, anti-labor, deregulating regime we are seeing now.

I can see why people were so doom and gloom about the franchise, given the decade that preceded the 2024 playoffs, which they seemed to treat as a one-off (and maybe still do, who knows). Some people are simply the type who like to say they're just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think part of it is, nobody wants to be disappointed, so they prevent themselves from developing expectations, or even from hoping. What I hope is that we're past all that and we can see the Tigers for what they are: a franchise on the rise, with a chance to step in among the elite of teams for a little while, rather than a team that simply got lucky with a bunch of nobodies for a couple of years and is destined to go splat any day now due to operator error.

We were ranked 7th in runs scored before stumbling down the stretch. I don't think the problem was that the offense sucked. I think the problem was that a good offense stumbled down the stretch. I am not tearing my hair out over lack of All-Star bat added the offense. To all appearances, Harris is counting on improvement from hitters we already have on board. He's got us to within one game of the ALCS two years in a row. I know I'm on an island here, but if he does not add an All-Star bat to the offense, then I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Interesting how he said when he went to Houston in 2017 he had his "mind blown" by the analytics.

Alternate take: They want to assure that independents can feel good about voting Republican again.

Dream on, Eddie. They'd never sell alternates at the Pro Shop on game day that way.

I have been repeatedly assured told that you can never have too much starting pitching. I can only assume they mean that "literally" in a literal sense, and not "literally" in a figurative sense.

That's how it usually happens, all right.

I'm thinking more in the eyes of a reasonable voting person, someone in between, say, first and fifth quintile extremes, if you can imagine such a thing as being measurable, which I grant it's not.

I think we are seeing that with this president and this Court, the Constitution is negotiable.

Notable that this ran in the Murdoch Post. On the one hand, you could argue that it's very unusual for them to run a story that makes MAGA and red hats look as bad as this. On the other hand, it could be argued that running this story on a website beloved by red hats is that it's giving them all but explicit permission to murder people who don't like Trump, even family members who know how to get all dolled up, because, as you can see, they're going to get away with it as long as they do it in the right place.

Harris fail. 😁

Well, the motives here aren't suspicious at all ...

Yeaaaaah, it's gonna happen, god damn it ... Although if I am reading the "leak" tweet from the Tigers right, there are going to be two colors, including navy blue. Well, the traditional look was nice while it lasted, but I guess the kids were always gonna end up winning that battle.

S***! Please tell me these are new City Connects and not standard colored alternates they will be wearing throughout the week at home and on the road. Oh, who am I kidding? That ship was always going to sail at some point. It's just a bummer that I had to live to see it.

My post contemplates only the thinness of the case for Mize deserving his 2025 All-Star bid. I contend that even though Mize was on the All-Star team, his season fell short of being what is reasonably considered All-Star level.

Honest question: is there a historical case that winning parties ended up changing their policies in the wake of a significant third party vote tally? I don't know either way.

OK, but stepping back from the very-specific, very-rare-as-to-be-practically-non-existent spouse-killing scenario, I myself believe there's a difference between voting third party because the positions of both major candidates are complete anathema to everyday life that would bring active harm to you, versus voting third party because even though you would be fine with one of the major candidates' winning, the third party guy is only marginally better than the major, or has a position you like the major doesn't that doesn't involve killing your spouse. In this case I could see the position that in the latter case, it would be better to set aside the slight preference of the third party guy in favor of the guy you would accept if he won instead, while in the former case, a third party vote is very defensible. Would like your take on this.

As would your recent advice that the voter just stay home if they're not going to vote for one of the two front-running horses. Both voting for the third party guy and staying home yield the same result for the two horses. So what is it we really talking about here?

Both, and more.

We are in danger of tipping over to the point to which this will never matter ever again.

This would be the highest-value opportunity for Republicans to kill off the filibuster once and for all.

The gambling craze in this country is even more out of control.

Also, while it's true Mize was named to the All-Star team, it was not necessatily because he was having a transcendent season. First of all, Mize wasn't even one of the 59 qualified pitchers in baseball by July 15. He'd pitched 88 innings by then; a qualified pitcher would have pitched 96 innings. But even if we widen the qualifying lens out to 81 innings, which results in 96 [ninety-six] pitchers, Casey would have ranked 50th in WAR, 31st in ERA, 32nd in ERA-, 44th in FIP, 45th in FIP-, 17th in xERA (pretty good), 47th in xFIP, and 43rd in xFIP-. Aside from the outlier xERA number, this is a solidly 50th to 60th percentile pitcher among all such qualifiers, not a top-of-the-league All-Star. There are two reasons Casey was named to the All-Star team: (1) he had a 9-3 record, one of only 18 guys with nine-plus wins, thirteen of whom were named All-Stars; and (2) his team had the best winning percentage in baseball, good enough to yield six All-Stars, including Zach McStinky, of all people.