chasfh

Note that they can’t play the infield in with runners on second and third and one out, with a one-run lead in the ninth. They have to risk ceding one run on an infield grounder to avoid giving up two on the outfield single.

Wow, tough break on that grounder for Soto. I would think most of the time a decent first baseman probably has that for the out at first.

Anyone care to do a rollercoaster graphic for Soto?

Concurrent sentences. Judge must like him.

Man, what a career Leury Garcia, a man of very slight talents, has been able to fashion with the White Sox. There since 2013. And they got him for two more years after this!

TORK!

For a guy who rarely draws a walk, how about Reyes taking “ball four” within the top of the zone?

I seriously have never seen what Barnhart did just now, picking off a pitch in the dirt and then running out to tag the runner between first and second. What kind of brain fog was Abreu in there?

So much for the efficacy of tanking for years on end to draft starting pitchers 1/1.

What resolution has this video been down-converted to? 160x100? I can’t tell from this that he put it on backwards.

I always thought the idea was to keep the pitcher from hearing his teammates talking about the no-hitter in progress. I didn’t think it extended to everybody all over the world talking about it to each other or to themselves. But hey, I’ll wear it, I guess. 😁

Man, are umpires just worse now? I mean, that one wasn’t even close.

Is he mentioning the fact that the White Sox have no hits or that Brieske has a no-hitter going?

I remember channel 7 having an Opening Day party for that game. Tigers won something like 16-0. Going back to work semi-drunk at 4pm was kind of a legit treat.

Yup. The boiled-down role of an agent is to represent his client to the team. If the agent were truly going dark on the team in the same way the player appears to be, that would be borderline breach of contract. And if the agent can't get the client to respond to his own inquires, that would be incompetence, and not even borderline. Given the ongoing relationship across the years between Al Avila and Gene Mato, if for no other reason than for all the deals they have done with Mato's clients, I'd be really surprised to learn that Mato is also ghosting Avila. After all, his own commission is in danger here, should the Tigers pursue legal action against the contract, so I don't see how he benefits by teaming up with his client against a team he has such a deep relationship with—especially since if the contract is voided or negotiated out, who's going to sign his client to anything more than a cheap one-year deal if that? I can't say that Rodriguez is not ghosting Mato, too, but unless Rodriguez is having some kind of truly psychotic episode, which would be awful but also exculpatory, I'd be surprised to learn that Mato cannot get a hold of Rodriguez somehow. So, I think there's a decent chance that everybody in this triangle knows where the other two are and what's going on with them, and that we're the ones who have no idea, because we the fans are being managed. I have no evidence of this so I am not making a declaration here. Just a decent chance, as I view it.

I can work on contract or retainer. Call me.

That may be true, although that doesn't mean that he isn't, or that Mato is incommunicado with Avila. They might well be in touch with each other. We do know Mato is incommunicado with Cody Stavenhagen, based on his tweeted testimony.

Every trade is putatively about making an organization better. I don't think that's in dispute. There is a difference between trading prospects for veterans, and trading veterans for prospects. The former is about winning now, which is what teams that are not rebuilding, or are done rebuilding, try to do. The latter is punting on winning now to set themselves up to win at some point in the future, which is something rebuilding teams do.

Here are some things I found interesting about Eduardo Rodriguez's agent just by googling around some, FWIW. His agent is Gene Mato, who heads up a company called Mato Sports Management in Miami. The company has no website, and the man himself has no Twitter or Facebook presence. He does have an Instagram page, though, with 477 followers, give or take. Rodriguez signed with Mato last September. The news was broke by John Heyman, who also broke news of Julio Teheran, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Maikel Franco signing with Mato. According to MLB Trade Rumors, Mato currently has eight clients: Rodriguez, Teheran, Asdrubal Cabrera, Emilio Bonifacio, Avisail Garcia, Cameron Maybin, Anibal Sanchez, and Danny Santana. Franco is not listed as a current client of Mato's on MLBTR, although his B-Ref page does say he is. A variety of tweets and googled stories reveal that additional past MLB clients include Omar Infante, Angel Nesbitt, Manny Acosta, Manny Ramirez, and Junior Lake. Of the 14 players listed, seven are either on now or have passed through the Tigers organization. I'm guessing Mato and Al Avila know each other from Miami. This may all mean nothing in the big scheme of things, other then to confirm to me that a lot of what happens in baseball depends in part on relationships, versus spreadsheet analysis or Xs and Os. But my $64 question is, if Mato and Avila know each other so well, as would be the case from doing business together a lot, including recently, why would Avila be so in the dark about the status of Mato's client Eduardo Rodriguez? That doesn't make much sense to me.

Since as how the source of the martial trouble story is MLB lapdog Jon Hack-man, a story I haven't seen even addressed by either Avila or Hinch, I think it's at best 50-50 that it's the real story, and even that might be generous, since his agent is also avoiding calls. Wouldn't one think that even of Rodriguez himself is embroiled in personal difficulties that he's managing at home, his business agent would be available to provide updates to his employer?

Most current signs point to inflation abating which, while not necessarily an anti-recession sign, is nevertheless bad news for Republicans, who want to keep it high and in front of people for at least the next four months.

I know I floated the idea yesterday of voiding the contract, but pondering it some, if I were to place a bet on how they part ways, I would bet on a negotiated settlement for an undisclosed sum in exchange for non-disclosure from both sides, rather than the public ongoing drama of fighting to void of the contract. That would seem to me to be more consistent with how we've seen the tight-lipped, circumspect Ilitch empire conduct itself.

Greatest living America? Or greatest American of all time?

Plus there's a good chance that half the red hats never even see any of this in their media, and the other half that do dismiss it as a Democrat globalist elite hit job.