gehringer_2

They are getting it done mostly with the power play and great goaltending. The back end of the D and the 5 on 5 are not great. But there are still 68 points left at play in the schedule. They aren't going to get them all.

I doubt Bill Ford Jr has suddenly turned 180 politically. He's trying not to make additional trouble for his company, which is having enough trouble right now getting product out the door that doesn't have to come back.

for all the political noise going on you'd expect people to show up given a chance to vote, but just like the one MB posted about recently, nobody voted in this one either. 1725 votes total cast at 95% counted. So that 11 point over performance was all of 190 people in district of probably 25K registered voters.

I'm more concerned with Keith. His first season his split was actually negative with 88 PA against LHP, last season he had less than 50AB against lefties and did nothing - 400 OPS and a whopping 382 split. So was '24 a SSS mirage - despite that he looked quite comfortable hitting lefties that year, or '25 just a SSS transient and he should be fine against LHP if/when he plays everyday?

sure - but OTOH, what if that 100 OPS points is the difference between you winning the long half of a platoon gig and not being a starter at all. A LHH does face a different set of options from a RHH.

They question of whether never facing LHP dooms even LH batter who might be able to develop into low platoon split hitters into being platoon players always comes up, but something new in the equation are the "trak-arc"/"tra-jeckt" pitching machines that most teams have that now allow a LHB to spend time practicing against "live" left hand pitch movement dynamics. If practice time can make a difference, then these machines should be producing LH batters with lower platoon splits. But maybe they won't, and the reason would be that if a left hand batter completely optimizes his approach for RHP, and it gets him 100 additional OPS points against RHP, is it actually in his interest to give that up for 150 more AB in a season?

Sounds like a great guy. Hope he still has the energy. My first impressions from the two videos was that he looked a little drawn and tired. Maybe that's just his natural look, or the last week may have been a bit of whirlwind. Mark Bernstein remarked in his intro at the Regents meeting that Syverud was the Prof in his 1st class on his first day at Michigan Law.

I think we have seen both the pinnacle and the death valley of Hinch's managing. The way he managed the pitching in the '24 run was unprecedented creativity, nobody's come close other than maybe Maddon. OTOH, he clearly had to be tearing his hair out not being able to find ways to pick-up a team in such a collective slump and pressing as at the end of '25. You can't blame him for them slumping the way you have to credit his pitching management, but OTOH, if there is anyone who can do something for a clubhouse vibe gone bad, you hope it's the manager. A+ tactician, maybe B- inspirational clubhouse guy.

It appears so. ESPN's baseball page has an off season progress report paragraph or two on each team. The Tigers' begins with "I'm not sure I get the passive Tigers." and ends with "The time is now, folks" 🐌

It can be more than that. A profit making venture has a positive obligation to generate an excess to make a return to its owners/investors. This also generally generates an imperative for growth. Missional non-profits are a) not specifically seeking income above their operating expenses b) are often quite content to sustain their mission at status quo scope - i.e - they are much less driven by growth imperative - though without question there are plenty of non-profit operators with growth ambitions - religious orgs commonly! But in the rest of the charitable service world I've worked around, it is absolutely a different operational mindset. As a more concrete case with college sports, the tradition at Michigan was that profits from the revenue sports were not only plowed back into those sports, but were directed to fund recreational facilities for the general student body, faculty and staff. If you have PE guys waiting for their cut, they're not standing still for that kind of 'extravagance.'

even with the OT, McLellan managed to keep all the forwards' TOI under 20min, but Simon and Seider were at 26 and 28.

We just got another one today. This one has even been to independent ball and back. https://www.freep.com/sports/tigers/ I know, I know, Edman will tell me I shouldn't be snide about refilling the minors, but they keep tossing raw meat to my cynical side. 😉

It's been raised before, but oddly enough this morning I just came across a news story about how non-profits in North Dakota have a special federal carve out from paying taxes on gambling income (so called rifle shot legislation aimed at a single case) that noted that under federal tax law, income to tax exempt organizations from profitable activities not connected to their core non-profit mission are fully taxable. When does the shoe drop on that? Maybe when someone finally actually makes money out of this mess?

if you were to try the most Machiavellian take on this, it would be that Boras would just as soon lose in arbitration if that loss strengthens Skubal's resolve to refuse any offer from the Tigers and go to FA as an aggrieved party because that's where the payoff is for Boras. To me, Skubal gives the impression of young man unlikely to manipulated even by his own agent, but I can't deny that's in Boras' interest to have a deep understanding of what makes his star clients tick and Boras is pretty good at looking after his interests. 🤔

Syverud made an intro video that went up on the staff newsletter today. Didn't mention sports. 🤷‍♀️

lIf we can believe that figures here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nhl/comments/1imymae/deep_dive_on_backtoback_games_in_nhl_is_rest_day/ That's a pretty substantial differential.

I could as easily say, be serious. If you don't think that is how the system works, fine, but it is. 😉

Class continues to be dead. Celebrating yourself when you're still playing is what we would have called bush league once. Not to mention he is already wearing a big '23' on his jersey - so even weirder.

It is what its is, every dollar they borrow to day is worth 2% less (minimum - more like 3% now). It's been the secret sauce that combines with growth to prevent the debt from completely eating the debt as % of GDP figure, which is of course still rising now faster than ever because all the budget controls are gone completely with this admin - so no arg there. But that is why for the 70 yrs since WWII no-one has ever cared if the number of $ of the debt goes down. 2-3% inflation, a couple % of growth, and they've kept debt as % of GDP under control (which is how they judge it), but they are trying damn hard to completely lose control now, which is why your gov wants cheap money more than they care about inflation.

Funny thing is on the opening Canes' penalty I was going to post about how aggressively the Canes attacked the Wing's powerplay, which I would like to see the Wings do more, but of course then they gave up the PP goal so it didn't actually work out for them. 🤷‍♂️ I don't know how much of that late/leading passivity is McLellan's idea of game management or if they just don't execute what he actually has in mind, but their late/leading play is leaving a lot to be desired. I also wish we had a quicker player to use in the penalty kill than Rasmussen.

we are all very concerned.

the ref didn't miss it, he was right there looking straight at it. He decided not to call it. Sucks to give up a point to Carolina after leading by 3 but at least they got the 2.

Ghost didn't get the call because he dove as soon as he felt Cat's stick - you can see the way his weight was distributed he was helping push himself forward to go down.

WTF was Raymond doing there

this has been the challenge for Wing teams for at least a half dozen years now. Too often they can't match another team's push.