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I didn't get any of that from watching Schiff. I thought he managed the questioning rigorously, thoughtfully, and with the proper degree of decorum. If you're going to insist he went off on a five-minute grandstanding rant, I'm going to ask you to produce a clip of it, because I don't remember anything like that.

I don't think it's either media bias or meltdown to write a story about a woman who is emblematic of millions of Americans and to delve into the underlying issues that led her to believe what she does. That's one of the things I like about the Atlantic, especially.

The Athletic is not walled off from all other media. They are part of an environment in which media vehicles feed on each other. It’s not as though only people who subscribe to The Athletic are the only people who will hear about the story. To the degree that the story is available to be referred to and quoted in other media, its reach and impact will move beyond the Athletic, and could spur questions and follow-up stories in other media vehicles. The question now is whether this will get any legs in any other media. Not MLB or beat media, of course. But there is no hard silo preventing other vehicles from picking up on the ideas in the story and following up on it.

I don’t understand what the problem is with this story?

They thought they could starve it of oxygen and it would die in the crib since MAGAnation would never hear about it, except as some kangaroo court like the impeachment trials were. But, also, since January 6 was merely a bunch of tourists, participating in any commission designed to make it look like more than it was would make it look like Republicans were admitting it actually was more than it was. Seriously, they were check-mated on this.

OK, I’ll bite: how did Schiff do some grandstanding the other day?

lol states’ rights Loc up, mf’ers, shit’s about to get real out there.

It’s true that the article will mean nothing to the organization if Ken Rosenthal and the Athletic are an isolated silo in the media world and don’t affect anything around them.

“I like James McCann. He’s a good-looking player who’s got grit. There’s a guy down the street from me named McCann. Good guy.”

It was calculated that it would look worse for the organization for Al to avoid going on record to defend the Tigers as best as he could manage.

Rosenthal may have been protecting Cody Stavenhagen, as someone else here keenly observed, but Rosenthal himself needs to maintain access, too.

Honestly, this organization is so tight-lipped and obfuscatory about everything, I don’t know what to believe when they say stuff.

tl;dr: As long as Al Avila delivers on the business goals set forth for him, Chris Ilitch has no reason to either fire him or kick him upstairs. The problem I have with Baby Doc, based on the aggregate of my observations and readings, is that he has appears to me to have no real interest in the game of baseball. Nothing I have seen of interviews of him, articles about him, or even statements from him, show me any real burning desire to put a consistent winner on the field. If sports are important to him at all, I view him as much more of a hockey guy than anything else. Yes, he threw money around this winter, as businessmen seeking a return on investment occasionally do. But just as he almost certainly wouldn’t get involved in franchisee relations or ingredient procurement or lease negotiations, he almost certainly won’t get involved in the baseball operations of the front office, and definitely not in the decisions regarding the field itself. I believe his interest more or less stops at the bottom line for the business unit, and as long as that line shows sufficient year-over-year growth versus goals, I would guess he’s satisfied. And given how exquisitely Baseball has developed and optimized revenue streams from so many varied sources, sufficient year-over-year growth is relatively easy to achieve. I assume Baby Doc recognizes a constituent-facing role for himself on occasion, which requires him to go through the agony of in-booth interviews one game a year and travel to owner’s meetings, but make no mistake, this guy is not now and never will be Steve Cohen. He will never learn the inner workings of this particular business unit enough to make tactical or even strategic decisions at the operations level. That’s why he has Al Avila, after all. Al has executive responsibility to make sure that baseball operations are helping the Sports & Entertainment business unit deliver on the goals set forth for them at the beginning of the year. And to all appearances that is happening, since Al is still in charge of Baseball Operations, despite the ongoing and highly-visible baseball incompetence that has plagued this unit in full view of all of us for years. I will say that the Rosenthal article might fairly be viewed as a shot across the bough. Tycoons love fat bottom lines, but many of them also appreciate how bad PR can threaten those bottom lines, and the article definitely makes the baseball operations unit and its leader look bad. That can represent a threat to future revenue growth for the unit. But given all the different non-game revenue streams feeding baseball these days, it’s hard to imagine them getting into a situation where they lose real, actual money. The bigger threat is leaving money on the table by not delivering on growth goals, which to a tycoon is the same as a losing money. It’s going to be up to Avila and his front office team to manage the media fallout so that this article doesn’t turn into many articles, which could damage public perception that the Detroit Tigers are single-mindedly focused on putting a winner on the field. As long as they can keep the backlash confined to this single article for a while, the baseball operations unit can continue to focus on its own business without interference from above and fear of media mutiny from below. And as long as the bottom line remains fat, everything will be just fine.

Fangraphs has Tucker at 1.1 WAR in 2017. Shows how, to your point, catcher defensive stats are so nascent that two of the top stats site would come out so different on their numbers. FWIW, Statcast is far more down on Tucker’s catching abilities in 2017, especially in pitch framing, than either B-Ref or Fangraphs. As far as I’m concerned, it’s neither here nor there anyway, because 31-year-old Tucker was probably never going to be as good for the Tigers as 26-year-old Tucker was for the Reds.

I stand corrected.

Nobody may have expected Barnhart to be at -0.3 fWAR right now, but last year was his career year as a 30-year-old catcher: 1.2 fWAR. Various projection models had him coming in at 0.6 and 0.8 this year. YMMV, but I don’t necessarily believe that’s worth seven and a half bills. The wild card here, of course, is whether Barnhart is earning his keep through superior “handling of the pitching staff”. The aggregation of the various defensive stats aren’t all that kind to him, but as for whether he is spurring better incremental performance by his pitchers when he’s behind the plate versus Haase or Garneau is hard to either prove or disprove. FWIW, his CERA and Haase’s are practically identical, and both are half a run worse than Garneau, although small sample size applies there. Bottom line: unless Barnhart has some kind of second half surge, this is going to go down as a failed sign.

Well, if you’re going to fold in the ninth to lose the game, you might as well do it quickly, I guess.

I believe the first two words I posted here about Tucker Barnhart was “hard pass”. And my first post after we signed him was, well, he’s ours now, so I’m rooting for him. Sucks to be disappointed on both ends like that.

I saw plenty of him at Wrigley Field.

You were warned.

This is the second straight game Javy alligator-armed a very catchable ball hit to him, costing us an out. That has got to be an error since it was a very ordinary play for a big leaguer.

That said, Javy was still the brightest star in that Cubs constellation.

We're just coming out of two-plus years of socially-imposed isolation and were basically discouraged from traveling. The last few months is the first time in two years people feel free to move about and enjoy traveling and vacationing without COVID restrictions. People have been denying themselves since the winter of 2020. No way are people going to deny themselves the opportunity to hit the open road for the first summer in three years so they can feel free once more. This is one part of the perfect storm that has led to $6 gas.

I hate to say it, but goddammit, they’re right on this one.

He was at age 31 already the one of the worst-hitting catchers in the game, and coming off successive 75 wRC+ seasons and moving into a stronger league? I don't think it's out of the blue. If anyone would have predicted to me that he would get off to a 50 wRC+ start after 50 games, I would've said yup, that sounds like it's within the range of outcomes. I would agree that it's at the low end of that range. But I would not agree that it's completely uncharacteristic and wholly unfathomable or unexplainable.