gehringer_2

TBF, 2 ER is not a disaster of a start, but the 3rd and 4th were the Jack we don't want to see.

wow. when the last time the Saudis were the good guys? Of course they may have blocked Trump more out of pique than principle, but I'll take it either way.

Starting staff is a total mess. Put Flaherty in the pen and stretch out Holton?

well, maybe the pistons can play deep into June and by then the Tigers will be watchable again.

another out on the bases.

so tonight's contribution about broadcast timing. For the 1st time in a long time I'm listening to the game on the WTKA OTA broadcast. I have gameday open, and gameday is just about 7 second *ahead* of the OTA radio at the end of the last inning, but almost 17 ahead on the 1st pitch of the next inning, but again by the end of the inning the difference was back down to ~8sec. These are fairly rough approximations since gameday is not completely consistent, but on average it appears that they are overextended the inning break on the radio by 10sec. Doesn't seem to be consistent from inning to inning though.

Andy Dufresne-Boyd Redding dichotomy.

true. Do you suppose player agent/lawyers take 30% of the net for the representation in a successful suspension reduction?

This is true, but I think whether as a matter of justice, the hammer finally lands on some of these guys is a separate issue to whether it continues, increases or decreases its importance as a political liability for Trump and/or his political enablers. From that perspective I'm not even in the loop. We were just hosting a friend with conservative siblings and she was telling us that even now, her brother, to whom she will not talk about politics, quite literally doesn't understand what she doesn't like about Trump. I mean, even if you support him, how can you not even understand the sources of other people's doubts/opposition to him? That seems inconceivable to me, but I met her brother years ago, he's just an ordinary Indiana guy. So at this point I try to remind myself not to bother weighing what I think MAGA may do against my own sensibilities.

Hard to see any point in appealing. If he doesn't appeal and starts serving now, he has a start moved back a couple days. If he appeals, maybe he get's it cut to 3 but they'll have the ruling come down so it still falls into his next start schedule and it will have to be moved back.

I get the compromise, but I still don't like when screenwriters put 21st century dialog in he mouths of mid 20th century real people. It's good dialog but it's not terminology either of those men would have used.

Let's see what Netanyahu tries to do to torpedo it.

Up until Iran, I had felt that the combination of Democratic turnout energy and GOP voter disillusionment (as in "i'm not voting for anyone") would be the bigger factor in this cycle that the number of voters that actually change sides. e.g. MB just linked a tweet from the Ohio primary claiming that participation on the GOP side of the primary was down. But depending on how Iran ends and how long it takes for gas prices to come down, I think the calculus on how many people do actively switch sides can change.

for me that's the difference for this team as opposed to Isiah's or Chauncey's, I thought those teams should win the championship, whereas I think we all have a good deal of doubt that this team, despite the regular season record, is at the same level as OKC or SAS, which does make it a little more fun in a way.

A good new story about ex-Piston Vinnie Johnson. He gets a news bit on Yahoo Finance for his automotive parts business building out new production capacity on the old Palace site. https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/former-detroit-pistons-vinnie-johnson-150432087.html

Do you think it's out of gas at this point though? What I mean is that they've survived the pressure to release anything more to this point, and I don't see where there is any leverage left to get past the current stonewall. So you have the possibility that like everything else with Trump, it will just recede into the rear view mirror. Fox will latch on to some story about a trans high school athlete and the RW outrage machine will back page Epstein. I have the same question about IRAN. It's done more to dent Trump's popularity than anything, but will the voters remember 30 days after if gasoline prices start back down?

yeah - I don't know what Keith has to do to get a shot to play everyday - hit a few HR I guess. Hinch does love the long ball - not without good reason. He's had a total of 7 AB against LHP this season, 1K 1H.

Whether Hope is Good Thing or a Dangerous Thing is the question.

In Indiana, Trump challengers in GOP in state house primary appear to be winning 5 of 6. Hopefully that will mean losses in the general.

This admin is wearing out the old cliche that it would be comic if it weren't so tragic.

in retrospect it was pretty silly to deal for a player for 3AB.

No good info on how much of the refinery Whiting has back up and running and they still have the employees locked out so management/engineering staff is doing operations. That might mean no maintenance is being done because even if the engineers know how to operate the plant, they don't have the skills to fix stuff that breaks, not to mention no engineering work is getting done. They are probably also double shifted so the question is how long they go before they start making mistakes. OTOH, they might already have a non-union maintenance staff. Not uncommon for operators to have gotten operations and maintenance split into union/non-union.

You look at Flaherty's pitch charts and not much jumps out, velo and break on his pitches are all similar to last season, but the pitch value of his FB is way down. The only thing I noticed is that he is throwing the curve less, probably because he's landing it for strikes less, which I suppose reduces the amount of change of speed that batters are seeing. It is the only pitch he throws that gets him to a 10mph delta from his FB. Without good change of speed life is gonna be harder.

speaking of 5' 8", McGonigle's load up is pretty similar (mirror image of course) to Altuve's. He doesn't pick up his front foot quite to the same extreme but overall the step is pretty similar, maybe even a bit longer.

If they manage to hang on and get to the playoffs this season after these pitching losses it should go down as one of the most unlikely seasons ever. The starting staff that won 87 games last season has now had injuries to Jobe, Skubal, Mize, Olson and a potential starter in Melton while adding Valdez and Verlander, with the latter being a non-factor. To that add that Flaherty has been bad. Valdez was a great add but it's still +1 against -5, which isn't good math.