Shelton

Fortunately Jansen only threw 11 pitches last night closing out the game so he will be available again today. I think my app is buggy though because it does not give Skubal the win, and as far as I know we don’t have a pitcher named Lopez. Gonna look into it.

Yes, the is the boring and obvious solution, especially if McKinstry is nearing a return (and it sounds like he is). I think it certainly means they aren’t going to put a guy like gage workman on the 40 for such a short term need. Same goes for potential Mize replacements. I hear sammons name thrown around and that just isn’t happening. If sammons is called up I will eat my hat (nacho hats allowed).

The boring part of speculating is it could be for naught within the next few hours, so it hardly feels worth it. That said, it’s a low bar. So, I will say that I’m not sure a hot start by workman so far this year is enough to justify a 40-man spot, and I think Scott Harris is “loathe” to give those up without good reason. We know that Clark is likely to occupy a 40-man spot in the near future anyway, and for a long time to come. If you add workman now, that requires a move. If you add Clark in six weeks, that requires another move. I’m not sure giving a 40-man spot to workman for what might be a short term need is worth it. As for Clark being “ready,” I’m not going to put too much weight into GM speak. Even if they would prefer waiting, things changed last night. They can always send him back down when other options become available (and/or if he is struggling). He can play CF and bat 9th and we can see what happens.

I saw that yesterday and couldn’t find details of how the play-in round would work. If it just means eight more bubble teams get in, and they have to play against the other 8 at large teams that were on the 9-11 seed line, then whatever. Even better, get rid of the play-in round for those two 16 seed spots. 76 teams. 24 at-large in the play-in. 52 byes. 13 seed lines with a bye. Three seed lines for bubble teams needing a play-in round. Protect seeds 1-8 and 12-16, with seeds 9-11 being the play-in teams. Seeds 12-16 can simply go to the 20 lowest ranked auto-bids. The at-large vs AQ line usually falls right at 11/12 line.

I think Kevin actually could just play SS everyday. If something happens that prevents that, you can get through the rest of the game with an emergency option (Torres? Lee? Vierling? Wenceel?). If it is going to be six weeks until a true backup SS option is available, then fine. But in the short term I think you can just ride with Kevin. It’s also true that our starting nine is without a CF now. So I think it is definitely an option to consider calling up Clark. Vierling and Wenceel can fake it there, but I’d rather have a fake backup SS than a fake starting CF.

Cannot tolerate this my chemical romance commercial any longer.

The catcher wears special equipment and there is a narrow rule related to issues arising from this special equipment. What else is there to discuss here? If a pop fly in foul territory falls through the neck hole of the catcher’s jersey it is ruled exactly the same as what we saw here with the pitcher. No need to get all twisted about in play and out of play etc

It’s not an out. The rule is right there. You can’t use your jersey to make a catch, just you can’t use your hat. It makes no difference that it wasn’t intentional. And, no, it’s not the same as pinning ball against your chest with your arm or whatever and the ball happens to touch the uniform. I’m sure there are some borderline cases where the rule could be argued but this wasn’t one of them.

I think one factor that gets lost in the lineup order discourse is that it really just doesn’t matter what position you bat in (for the most part). The larger factor is more who is actually in the lineup. After that, batting 3rd or 7th makes very little difference. Of course, you have to give guys enough PAs to find out how good they are so that you can make that decision. Paradoxical. I think the faster you can determine who is good and who is bad, and then actually acting on that as opposed to falling victim to inertial roster construction, will have a big effect on your success.

I noticed the same thing. Pretty interesting.

I actually think it was the pitching!

He started batting leadoff on April 12 and stopped on May 23. He also batted cleanup during that stretch. I don’t think the switch out of leadoff in May was a substantial factor in their late August turnaround.

Here is the breakdown. I believe most of the leadoff batting was in April.

I think you are correct that if you generally just put your better hitters in the group at the top of the lineup and your worst near the bottom then overall it’s going to be ok. But I don’t think it’s true that it is worse to put one of your best hitters (or single best hitter however you define it) at leadoff vs third or cleanup (cleanup typically better for run producers because third hitters come up with bases empty more frequently due to batting third in the first inning). I agree that a leadoff hitter is not going to get as many RBI chances batting there. That’s not really disputable. But it’s also true that if you bat in the this spot that will score more runs by being good and getting on base and having those 2-3-4 guys drive you in. I think if you are good at both getting on base and slugging, you are going to be fine both leading off or batting cleanup. For 2024 Riley, he scored 23 runs when batting leadoff (139 PA). As cleanup hitter, he only scored 16 (173 PA). But he drove in 21 as cleanup and only 13 as leadoff. It’s a trade off.

Ok, my bad. Sorry. It looks like he did bat leadoff 31 times in 2024. I didn’t really visit this site much back then and admittedly don’t remember whether or not there was Riley leadoff discourse here or elsewhere two years ago. I do remember the Kerry leadoff talk recently. Happy to argue about it now, though. Wanna pretend it’s April 2024 again?

What do you enjoy?

He was almost certainly thinking of Kerry. And the “maximize the ABs” argument was because of the platoon issue and teams starting to bring in lefties to face him, so it would force an early decision onto the other team if they wanted to avoid giving Kerry a third AB against a RH starter. Riley leadoff discourse was never a thing.

As buyers or sellers? Trading Flaherty for Liranzo was bigger than Soto for Vierling. As a buyer, probably Paredes for Austin Meadows. Challenge trade was porcello for cespedes. Before that you had the Jackson and smyly and adames for David price deal.

Twice now I’ve gone to lunch, hoping to catch the game. And the restaurant doesn’t appear to have access to the new network via Comcast, but they had FSD.

For me it was that the streaming audio was behind enough that I could pause the directv feed via the built in DVR by a second or so. I couldn’t use the radio because that was far ahead of the satellite feed. But the streaking audio was a different story and allowed for easier “pause-play” on my direct remote until it matched.

I said sorry. But noted.

Listen, I’m not trying to start a fight. I got the impression that you are singling out the tigers as being the only team that doesn’t care to fix the sync issue. In view of your established disdain for Benetti and preference for Dan, I can see how this would be irksome to you. I don’t think this is the case. You did say the other teams don’t have this issue. I disagree because I continue to experience this problem on other broadcasts. But if it were the case, I think it’s fair to infer that you think the tigers and mlb have the means to address it and are choosing not to. I admit to being a bit fanciful in how I worded that earlier. Sorry.

I think it’s clear that if this point is being implied, it was by you and not G2, because G2 wasn’t talking about mlb.tv audio overlay.

I agree with you. I think it’s clear it was Chas saying that the tigers were sabotaging their broadcast tech. I didn’t mean to suggest you were implying that.

I think you guys are talking about different things. Maybe I’m wrong, but G2 is simply referring to the general delay in providing the live game broadcast (tigers channel being shown on directv, comcast, spectrum, mlb, whatever) from the source (real life), relative to the shorter delay for over the air radio. Based on this conversation I’m envisioning G2 describing what happens what you set your radio next to your tv and turn up the radio volume and mute the tv (which I have definitely done in the past). Chas appears to be referring to the feature on mlb.tv services where you can select between listening 97.1 Dan or Benetti via using the audio overlay feature provided by the app. That said, I have experienced poor video/audio syncing on the mlb app for various teams and sources. Sometimes the delay is the source audio. Sometimes it is the overlay. I don’t think I have ever experienced 10 seconds. I find it to be consistently inconsistent for multiple teams/games. Usually the video broadcast audio is fine (but on rare occasions it has been off). The radio audio overlay seems to be 50/50 whether it will sync. I don’t believe that the tigers are somehow adjusting the “dials” in the background of their mlb.tv hosted broadcast to make a niche feature less functional so that more people will listen to benetti’s ad reads when watching the game on mlb.tv.