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That's cool. As of today, that's Baddoo, Hill, Grossman, and literally nobody else. Get them out there all day, every day, no days off, play through your owies and your fatigue and your slumps. Fine by me. We're not winning either way, until the roster changes.

With a roster as poorly-constructed as this, on the kind of skid we've been on, I'm not blaming Hinch for trying something anything to get the team untracked.

I know, anecdotes. I get it. If you don't like Willi out there, then get Willi out of there. I don't care. Let's put Baddoo in left and Hill in center, and then we can blame Hinch for running terrible hitters out there every game. It's all in good fun. If people want to blame Hinch for driving this team into last place because he tried Willi in left for 33 innings, that's fine, go ahead. All I'm saying is, I don't agree that Hinch is the main reason we're 8-19. I think it's mainly the roster. If I stand alone on that opinion, that's fine, then I'll stand alone on it. I'm used to that. 😁

As long as we don't mind their meager bats in the lineup every day, then sure, that's fine. The roster is simply not good.

Playing Willi Castro in left field is how Hinch is losing us ballgames? I don't know ... Fangraphs has him at -0.1 defensive runs in 33 innings, while they have Grossman at -0.5 in 35 innings and Meadows at -1.1 in 113.1. I suppose Erik Haase is the best left fielder we have at +2.0 in 42 innings, but unless we run him and his 41 wRC+ out there nine innings a game every day, I'm not sure that Willi is the worst alternative. Statcast has all four left fielders right around the same, with zero OAA and similar success rates. So they look like a wash. Unless there's a specific Willi left field anecdote you're pointing to, which ... yeah, don't know what to say about that. Play a guy long enough someplace and he'll lose you a game with this anecdote and win you another game with that anecdote. So, dunno.

I guess I'm not clear on what Hinch is doing that's making them lose ballgames, whereas a neutral manager would not have lost them ballgames.

That's fine, you can conclude that Hinch is largely at fault. I disagree that he is largely at fault. We can leave it there. I'm not saying that Hinch is blameless, and I've begun to explain as much, but people want to believe that's what I'm saying regardless, so ... 🤷‍♂️

Hinch had nothing to do with any of the roster decisions prior to 2021, but the organization is overwhelmingly populated with players from before 2021.

Oh, I’m not saying Hinch hasn’t made any mistakes. I’m saying he’s not the main reason, or even a big reason, we’re going to be 8-19 tomorrow morning. That’s mostly roster-driven, with a dollop of Pythagorean bad luck added in. I’m not convinced things like batting TORK! too high or running Jimenez out there with slim leads is actually evidence of Hinch losing us ballgames. If there’s anything on the ground leading to poor performance, it’s probably coaching. I’m thinking specifically hitting coaching. And to the degree that Hinch is responsible for the hiring of Scott Coolbaugh, then yes, Hinch deserves the blame.

Avila gets much more of the blame than Hinch. Avila’s the guy who oversaw the roster construction in the years leading up to now. Hinch can only work with what’s been made available to him.

What are these numbers? There are four different possibilities.

Even Dan said just now on the radio that it felt like the Astros had the lead even when it was 0-0. When even the guy being paid to put a diplomatic spin on bad play says something like that, thats a real indication of how rotten things are under the hood.

Oh, look, were the worst team in the league again. How about that.

Control Trump? Maybe not the man himself, but they are certainly in control of the political fallout from his passing through the scene.

That’s what you get when you google “mass abortions”. So Bunker is either pulling the term out of his ear, or this is a phrase developed by the Internet Research Agency that's in the early days of field testing.

Failed how? Looks like everything important to the Republican Party is coming to fruition. Even Trump’s loss in 2020 strengthened them on the state and local levels, while emboldening them on the national level. Starting in late 2022, we’re going to start seeing exactly how much.

Apparently, when George Carlin said that Republicans “believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state”, he was not engaging in Alarmist Non-sense.

If it takes nine months to knit a sweater and after four-and-a-half months it’s only half done, I wouldn’t call it a sweater yet.

“Mass abortions”? You mean, like, get 10,000 pregnant women onto the Ford Field football field and force abortions on them all at once? Is that what a “mass abortion” is?

Dr Oz may or may not like Dr Fauci, but Dr Oz definitely knows that the only people who would vote for him don’t like Dr Fauci.

While it’s true the bullpen are performing much better this year than they have in many years, it’s also worth reiterating that the idea of the Tigers bullpen being among the best in baseball was really always a mirage. Going into yesterday’s game, the HR/9 rate of 0.36 was so low because the HR/FB rate of 3.4% was also by far the lowest in baseball. HR/FB is widely considered a measure of luck rather than skill. This helped lower their BABIP to .235, second best in baseball, and also a luck measure. The bullpen was in the bottom four of thirty teams in K/9, while being merely middle of the road in BB/9. They were also seventh best in stranding runners on base, also largely a luck metric. But most concerning should have been how hard the ball was coming off the bat with Tiger relievers on the mound. The barrel and hard hit rates yielded by us were fifth highest in the majors, and average exit velocity was seventh highest. Swinging strike rates were also middle of the pack, and called strike rates were along the lowest in the game. All this means that Tiger relievers were missing more bats than most teams, allowing more balls in play, and opposing batters were seeing the ball better and hitting the ball harder than against most other teams, but the ball had been seeing its way into our gloves far more than normal, resulting in more outs and fewer runs given up, so, lucky us. All this helps explain why even though our bullpen ERA was second best, and our FIP fourth best, our xFIP, which takes quality of contact into account, came in at 27th, better than only the Rockies, the Diamondbacks, and the Reds. So, the luck was always going to run out at some point. Maybe this is that point. Or maybe we’ll get lucky for another several weeks and continue to overachieve, which would make sense, because baseball.

With all the revenue that comes from owning a major sports franchise?

I don't think so. I think he sees the big picture. What we are seeing now is not the culmination of the big picture, particularly with so many pieces out of commission. E-Rod may or may not necessarily understand that.

E-Rod hanging his head in the dugout asking himself, "why the fuck did I come to this team?"

Welp—the pitching is finally catching up to the hitting in responsibility for losing ballgames.