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This is actually why I enjoy watching MLB Tonight, as useless as I find most of the rest of that network’s programming. When you get a couple of ex-players talking while they have a game going on behind them, you get really solid insights into what players think during games that, to your point, a pure broadcaster could not effectively contribute to.

I don’t know—Shep is going into his fourth year with these guys, so if the deference hasn’t fallen away after three years, I’m not sure it ever will. Remember, he was a teenage Tiger fan when these players were treading the hallowed ground of Tiger Stadium. They were his bona fide baseball heroes, and he has said as much in interviews. So he may never feel he is the equal he has to be in order to go head to head with them.

Not sure and in any event I’m not saying he should be able to elevate his launch angle AND hit the ball harder. All I’m saying is that both his launch angle is way up and his hard hit is down, to his detriment I do think if he can moderate his launch angle to something like 17 and hit the ball harder, he’ll probably do a lot better than he did last year.

I don’t know about the MLB.tv app directly on a Samsung TV, but most units MLB.tv runs through, such as Apple TV or Roku or the MLB app on phones, have a radio overlay available so you can switch to the radio call right on your app without having to coordinate the radio from another app or device. Next time a game is on, see whether you can pull up an options menu while the game is going. If you can, there should be audio options available, and if there is, switching to the radio feed should be one of them.

Maybe other teams do this too, but the Ilitch Tigers seem to have this thing where, when they know the team is going to be bad, they pull in some 1984 Tigers to distract us from that. In 2003, when they knew they team would be just dreadful, they brought Trammell in to manage and hired Gibson and Parrish to coach with him. When it looked like there was light at the end of the tunnel, it was time to broom those guys and bring in a real manager and coaching staff. So maybe when the team started going through the horrible rebuild they appear to be just now emerging from, after Mario and Rod imploded, they decided they could deflect from the terrible on the field by getting Gibson, Morris, and Petry in the broadcasting fold, and hey, how about a hero from 2006 (Monroe) working the desk as well? Yes, that should tide the rubes over … 😉 So maybe now that the is going to start winning more and everyone is going to start paying attention again, they’ll decide to get a real broadcasting team. We can hope …

Run a VPN through your router, if you have one. I don’t know if you can apply a VPN directly to the box you get from your ISP—you can’t with AT&T’s gateway—but you can do so on any decent router you lay on top of that, like an ASUS or a Linksys. I have NordVPN and they have easy step by step instructions on their website on how to apply it to your router. I have New York, Seattle, Dallas and Toronto on mine, so just in case one is struggling, I have three others I can try. That’s how I could get the game on MLB.tv although I should have been blacked out from doing so.

Austin Meadows’s launch angle did go way up, but there was more: his EV, hard hit and barrels all went down, which dropped his xwOBACON from .455 in 2019 to .369 last year. As a result his HR/FB dropped by a full third, and when you hit fly balls that don’t go out of the park, they usually get caught for outs. That’s a big drag on BABIP, batting average, SLG, and ultimately run production. Not for nothing, Austin also started chasing outside the zone more and making contact out there less, perhaps in frustration from popping up too much and falling short of the wall a lot more. Perhaps he started pressing to make things happen to change his luck. Austin spent his entire spring with another team, so I really don’t know what he worked on all camp. But hopefully they identified the problem as trying to lift the ball too much, so if he can direct his efforts toward switching out some of his fly balls for line drives, we can see lots of good things from him.

Good observation—last year Meadows had a .402 wOBA when not shifted versus a .304 wOBA against the shift, which he faced 75% of the time. In 2019 he was actually better against the shift (.398, vs .361) when he was shifted only 51% off the time. If they can address that, Austin Meadows can be an All-Star with us. Wonder if that will/would have any positive effect on Parker Meadows? ☺️

It hit the wall! That’s a game winning hit!!!!!!

Looks like Austin Meadows has discovered triples alley!

Wow! Tie the game twice against the hands-down best relievers in baseball! Eric HAAAAAASE!

Nice little comeback courtesy of the sure Hall of Famer!

No meat on Friday during Lent? Are you Catholic now?

Holy shit on a stick

My understanding is that the Russian people are overwhelmingly in favor of the special military operation to denazify Ukraine, or whatever it is they're calling it. If their media can convince them that Бог is on their side in this, they can probably be convinced that they can come out of a nuclear exchange unscathed and victorious.

No wonder people from that part of the world are so morose. Their food is horrible. Maybe that's why they flee to America. We've got better cuisine here.

Division winners: Yankees, White Sox, Astros in AL; Braves; Brewers, Dodgers in NL Wild card winners in order: Blue Jays, Rays, Angels in AL; Phillies, Mets, Padres in NL Tigers will win 77. We’ll score a gaggle of runs here and there, but the bullpen is still a mess, and the back half of the rotation still seems unsettled. Really, it’s gonna come down to which teams are healthy and which are gimpy. It almost always does.

HAPPY REAL OPENING DAY!

It would have been even funnier if you’d said you assume there were pizza parlors involved!

Right, virulent racism was everywhere, in every part of the country. We see evidence of that today in widespread support for racist political policies. The difference for people who lived in Jim Crow areas during the Jim Crow era was the awesome power of local governments and police that was used to humiliate and dehumanize the target of their hate down to the most minute levels.

Maybe he's just saying stuff to stay in the good graces of that fine hunk of woman standing next to him.

Remember, there was an entire section of the country fiercely devoted to maintaining legal second-class resident status to an entire class of people.

You just had to know this grooming shit the Republicans have been on about lately didn't come out of nowhere.

I can't decide whether to believe they are paid operatives or merely useful idiots.