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

There can never be another Vin Scully.

From almost five years ago:

I think this means Baseball is doubling down on the home run: by mandating removal of the extra fielder from the pull side, more batters will be encouraged to try to pull and lift the ball out of the park because if they miss and hit liners or grounders, it’s more likely they’ll get base hits instead of grounding out 9-3. The wild card will be whether they keep the ball deadened or, preferably, deaden it even more to reduce homers back down to under 1.00 per team game. I don’t think they would do so if the home run is the most popular prop bet event, which I would not doubt that it is.

This is one reason they need to deaden the ball for good, and even more than it is now. If pitchers know the ball will stay in the park for most hitters, they won’t have to put 110% on every single pitch; the can pitch more to contact with versions of fastballs instead of breaking balls; less need for high spin, less pressure on UCLs, fewer injuries on the whole. Counterpoint: Baseball likes having to cycle through innumerable league-minimum options.

Perhaps because Avila had gotten the memo that this was the hot new offensive strategy a few years too late.

My fear is that we evolve into something like the Pirates going forward: luck into the occasional impact player from drafting, signings or trades; surround him with AAAA and underachieving-veteran teammates; play ~70-win ball year after year while the impact player matures; trade impact player at the deadline before they can make too-high salaries and receive underwhelming prospects in returns; rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Can you see something like that happening with Riley or TORK!? As long as this regime is in control, I can.

I was just thinking before coming into this thread about whether we would hear that Avila couldn’t move Soto, Chafin, or Jimenez because he was asking for the moon and the stars for some or all of them.

There were some other bad returns on trades besides just ours. The Cubs got a bag of balls for Dave Robertson, and they didn’t move Contreras or Happ at all.

How much you wanna bet Fulmer pitches an immaculate inning against us tonight?

RHP Sawyer Gipson-Long

Current resume of Sawyer Gipson-Long:

He might be the only one to go. What are the chances we got anything useful from the Twins?

See, now in the old days, the Republican President of the Arizona Senate would pay for this garbage with their career, because nobody put up with such unserious nonsense at one time. This Karen, though? She's gonna fundraise off it. You watch.

Blabbing about lack of interest in someone you hope to trade would constitute malfeasance in my book.

Put down your bats and pick up a gun, we're gonna have a whole lotta fun ...

I say Jimenez because he is arguably the best reliever on the team right now, and contending teams need help right now. Maybe the chatter about lack of interest in Jimenez is gamesmanship to get Avila to give up Joe cheap, although all you really have to do to get Al to cave is push him to the brink of the deadline. Joe is due for a nice raise next year, probably mid-seven figures, and Baby Doc probably won't want to have to pay him that since he is already paying too many people too much money next year, so I could see Joe going at 5:59pm for a controllable guy who was a numbered prospect once but whose career has stalled in the high minors, and 50/50 as to whether it's a position player or a pitcher.

Ah, there you go.

I think the Tigers were merely trying to showcase him for trade. Fulmer just didn’t keep up his end of the bargain, and now the return for him will dwindle. Snake eyes. I still think it’s going to be Chafin and Jimenez.

“Successful” was the word used by US officials quoted in the story describing the mission. OTOH, the Fox News chyron on the video clip in the story did not put the word in quotes.

I agree that Agent Orange never does hard time, and he almost certainly doesn’t do country club time, either. On the other extreme, I don’t think they can deport him either because (1) he’s a US citizen so where does he go? And (2) he can be at least as dangerous as a political leader in exile, where he is outside of US control, as he has been here (outside of actually being president). Seems to me house arrest someplace would be the best option. I don’t know whether it’s Mar-a-Lago, especially once they reveal all the laundered money that’s gone into that place. But it’ll be someplace where they can force him to live out his days living the upper middle class lifestyle of a schnook, surrounded by Secret Service loyal to the US and not him, and cut off from the ability to conspire with his former top lieutenants, many of whom will also be detained for the long haul. Melania will leave him and wait out Jerry Hall for her shot at Rupert Murdoch. The wild card will be the red hats. They will always be told by their media that Trump was the victim of a political hit job by the fascist Marxist BLM Antifa-addled Demonrats. How problematic that will be I think depends on how effectively the cult of Trump can be broken down, and the steady drumbeat of revelations from the hearings are effectively beginning to do just that. Those cosplaying red hats who existed on the MAGA margins are already starting to peel off from him, and if the job is completed over the next few months and he is left only with the true-believing wackjobs, their numbers will be so small that it won’t result in any sort of popular reactionary uprising. I think that’s the hope, anyway. Actually, at the end of the day, I think the real hope might be that he dies before anyone has to make the decision of what to finally do with him.

Zipper merge works great if everyone accepts the concept of late merging. But not only is that not the case, many early mergers are religiously fervent about everyone has to get over out of the lane that’s closing at the first sign, usually a mile or mile and a half away, because it’s only fair. My younger brother is that guy and he’s very adamant about it. Plus, every once in a while, you will see someone playing Corporal Lapdog, using their car to block the lane that’s closing so that no one can drive all the way to the end and late merge because, I guess, they think they’re helping maintain societal law and order or something.