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Since June 16 Javy is .267/.310/.491 in 174 PA with a 124 wRC+. Depends some on where you start your start point. He still hasn’t had his big third-of-a-season 1.000 OPS run yet, and when he flails he still looks bad, which he always will. But even with this modest run, he is arguably the best hitter on that team since that date, and bonus: his 21.3% strikeout rate is third-lowest on the team of anyone with at least 50 plate appearances, behind only Miggy and Harold. (Highest is Eric Haase at almost 30%.) He could either go big on the way out, or flail helplessly. He’s certainly capable of both. No predictions. But for the last seven or so weeks, he is the tallest dwarf in this circus.

Riley Greene is 21. I think it’ll be a few years before he ages out of center field.

"trumps" ... nice touch ... I continue to be flabbergasted by otherwise intelligent people truly believing that certain still-active Republicans (Meijer, or Rubio, or whoever) are different, like in the old days. If they are still working, or trying to work, within the party, they are not different. If they are different, they are Adam Kinzinger and they get out.

Wait until November. And December. And January. And February ...

I don't know. I always thought the value sliders are meant to fool hitters into thinking it's a fastball until the last moment. If it's about stealing a strike off the plate, that would seem to mean a four-seamer aimed there that the batter thinks will be a ball but the umpire rings him up on. If the goal is swing and miss, then the slider, the split, anything that darts at the end, really, are all valuable for making the batter think it's going to pass through the zone, but that puts high pressure on all the ligaments when thrown repeatedly. Deaden the ball and the pitcher can, at least to down-the-order hitters, serve it up saying, here you go, hit it and get yourself out. They can throw less taxing pitches like four-seamers, two-seamers, changeups and the like more often, and not worry so much if they give up even hard contact. They'll have to pitch Juan Soto and Aaron Judge the same way, of course. They just wouldn't have to pitch the Robbie Grossmans of the world (at least the 2021 version) as though they are Soto or Judge.

The phone call with Francesca took place on November 12, 2010, at 3pm Albuquerque time.

There were no expectations to trade off Grossman, but then, I don’t credit Avila with this anyway since he went on record that he was sitting back and waiting for calls, not going out to make anything happen. The Phillies needs right-handed platoon hitting—ironically because Castellanos has sucked so bad this year—and Grossman has delivered on that all season.

Same with Tork. He was the consensus 1/1 so it’s hard to fault any team in that position for taking him there. So if the problem is not that they took the wrong guys 1/1, then that kind of narrows down where the real problem lies, doesn’t it?

I think it’s because the nature of pitching has changed, basically how hard pitchers work to get swing and miss on every single pitch.

Has he engaged the services of Jeimer Candelario’s personal hitting coach?

I had long thought North Carolina could not support a team because the population is so scattered and it would be more difficult to fill 40,000 seats every night, but as times goes by, I think that’s less important than it was maybe even ten years ago. Nowadays they don’t depend so much on high game day attendance to ensure fiancical success, so they could build a stadium in the low 30s, even high 20s, that could look fuller for the optics. But a new franchise would probably be a financial boon for everyone involved almost regardless of where they put it or how many show up for games.

I think D is right overall, regardless of the megamillions ticket, not just because of the reliever trades he made, but because of the reliever trades he didn't make.

He's not wrong.

I don't consider how much Dickerson talks as being a negative. I like hearing the insights he provides, and I like the volume he provides. He digs deep beneath the surface and I appreciate that. I also like when he goes into discussions about the intricacies of baseball, whatever the actual topic may be, with whomever his partner might be at the moment.

I don’t think hitters en masse could change their approach to hitting in a single year, basically because it probably takes at least that long to recognize the change as being persistent and not transitory. I would think that it would take two, three, maybe more years for such a change to be completed on a league-wide basis. And even then, not all players who today rely on launch angle at the cost of high strikeouts in the service of chasing home runs would be able to hack it in that new game. Because of that, I believe a deadened ball with the shift still in place, one that eventually would create a sea change in hitting to spraying more line drives around, might result in a different composition of players playing in the majors in the first place. Some current players wouldn’t be able to hack the change and crap out quicker; others who might not make the majors today because they can’t jack bombs but are decent at spraying line drives around would have a better chance. I think just that change in player composition due to the reprioritizing of skill sets would make it a very different game—and one I think I would enjoy more.

While Henning acknowledges that Ilitch will probably have to fire Avila, basically only because the fans are screaming for it, his article reads more to me like he is exasperated by people criticizing Avila, to the point of saying in as many words that it is reckless of fans to criticize the 2017 return on Verlander and J.D. through 2022 eyes, and that it’s practically not Avila’s fault that he walked into a seven-year-long ambush following the firing of Dave Dombrowski. Henning could not even bring himself to flat out say that the rebuild didn’t have to be this bad for this long. He had to qualify it by saying that “some will say”, “maybe correctly”, that it didn’t have to be so bad, and qualified it again by saying “they might be right”. He simply can’t bring himself to putting that opinion on the record, who knows why—perhaps out of respect for all the dinners, drinks, and off-the-record conversations he probably had with Avila over the decades. Henning is an executive’s beat columnist. He’s not going to drive the bus over Al as long as Al is still here.

If they put it up to a vote in all 50 states, the pro-choice position would win 50 out of 50 times and abortion would be safe, effective, and legal everywhere. So the only real strategy Republicans have is to remove voters from the equation entirely, because otherwise the people would just get what they want.

They'll probably get slightly more balls in play, but not because players would be changing their approach and trying to spray line drives all around the field looking for base hits, which might have happened over the course of a few seasons if the shift were to continue apace and the ball were to continue in its current slightly-deadened state. A sea change in general batter approach was never going to occur within a single season. But what the continuing shift plus deadened ball might have accomplished is hitters finally waking up to the idea that not only is the ball not going to fly out of the park like before, but that failure to hit as many homers would result in even more outs because the rate of homers hit over the shift would fall below the ROI breakeven point due to making outs by hitting into the shift, which might have led hitters to find other ways to get hits, i.e., change their approach to hit around shifts. Now with the removal of the shift starting next year, players can continue to try pulling homers out of the park, and when they fail to barrel the ball sufficiently to do so, they can be rewarded with the consolation prize of more base hits into right field, and they can then just try to pull it out of the park again next time up at the plate. Their behavior won't change, but the results will be marginally better enough for them to keep trying. That strikes me as a recipe for continuing elevated rates for home run and strikeouts, two outcomes Baseball loves because highlights (and, presumably, prop-bet gambling). What I will be interested in seeing next year is whether the ball is livened up again and homer rates go back up. Based on whatever my understanding might be of what makes Baseball as a business tick, that's at least a 50-50 proposition.

I would actually be surprised if there were much Venn intersection between the two at all.

And heeeere co-o-ome the pretzels ...

The Avila regime has been taking a lot of heat lately for the failure of their past drafts and development efforts, so I can see them front-burnering promotions of multiple Pipeline-ranked prospects desperately seeking some win, any win on that front. In that same vein, I also would not be surprised to see Sawyer Gipson-Long appear on the mound for the big club sometime before the end of the year.

"You must tell the truth while you testify. This is not your show." BAM!

Would they?

We've been noting here for years how top-heavy it was.

There can never be another Vin Scully.