gehringer_2

LOL - I could place what it reminded me of, but you nailed it!

We can be frustrated with the hitting in general but the pitching lost this one.

yup. The year before COVID I looked at this team with Betuzzi and Larkin and thought - 'They are only a couple of Dmen away from being competitive", and every year since then, there has been this illusion that they are not that far away. So initially the D was terrible and it's improved a lot, then they got an at least decent goalie, but here we are several years later and we find ourselves down to a mere 3 bona fide offensive players. The illusion is gone, they are not close. The front lines have decayed as fast or faster than Seider, Edvinsson and Faulk have built up the D.

Tork deserved to be hit after missing that center cut fastball on a 2-0

So I need to revise what I said the other day about this team likely having trouble with run prevention on 3 out of 5 days. I was two days short.

Pretty funny actually.

Not a bad AB by McKinstry - just didn't hit it far enough or low enough

doesn't know the K zone and can't barrel the ball. Any other issues?

Keith got some serious EV on that (105). Nice to see.

17 AB, 1H, 1BB, 2K Well, they aren't striking out a lot....

I'll grant Cossa has been inconsistent, but he was simply outstanding for a long stretch in GR, there is some kind of talent there. Maybe playing 2nd string would have been exactly how to break him in successfully. But we'll never know.

That's a laugh. I'd take any Chicago Priest in a test of wills with Trump.

ex-refinery guy here. The picture is actually very complex, many interdependencies. Each refinery is pretty much set up to run optimally on one type or mix (which may or may not also mean one or one set of sources) of crude oil. The flexibility of a given refinery to do something else varies with its particular equipment but profitability (ie prices go up) will almost always suffer, at least short term, if they are forced to switch crude slates. In the US, most midwestern refineries run Canadian crude or oil that comes by pipeline from the gulf. East coast refineries import more, West cost refineries source some local (CA is a big producer but nowhere near CA's consumption), a lot of Alaskan, some ME. Refiner's generally hike their prices the instant world oil prices go up, though in reality they have several days (not months) supply already on hand and any oil at sea may already be paid for, though that varies also, some tankers do arrive with the oil un-purchased and the deal is cut on arrival. I'm few years out of the biz now so I don't have any inside sources any more, but I would estimate that in the US, total imports from non North American sources are low enough that given the fall in demand that the increase in prices will produce, I doubt we will see outright US shortages, but don't ask me to bet on that, and there will likely be some local dislocations. The situation in Europe and in particular Asia is much different. They know their vulnerability to supply upsets so in general Asian refiners keep a LOT more crude inventory (month+) on hand, which is the only reason why you haven't had Asian nations (i.e. China) making more noise about retaliation against the US (trade etc) if this doesn't end soon.

I can't see them giving Jones much more rope but other than that: Parker and Javy aren't actually doing too badly, Torkelson's last three games were good, Yesterday it was Keith, Torres and Dingler that went 1-12 and those are the guys who had been playing well so far. Green is scuffling but you know he going to get more room to straighten up than anyone else on the team.

If the docs say there is no risk, then starting now and giving him the longer ramp up to playing full game minutes seems like a fair strategy - assuming they do limit his minutes. The paradox with Cade is that he's so much an end of game player you wonder what you'll get playing him 15 min. 🤔

whether we agree or not, I'm sure Iran's position is that a cease-fire means Israel stops shooting at their clients and that surely hasn't happened either.

Use auto-tune?

I think this is a good take. Talbot was pretty useless this season and we knew from the beginning that a lot of the team's early success was Gibson and the temptation would be there to burn him out. I just don't get this reluctance to see what a guy can do, what the worst that can happen - he shows he's not ready? It's not like you'd be sitting prime career D. Hasek to look at him, he would be stepping in for just barely there Talbot.

Intel, left for dead 8 mo ago at $19, just hit $58

Right. The thing with McCarver is that he was never gracious enough to admit the Tigers were also a pretty damn good team that year. Even Tom Izzo will admit when he plays a good opponent! 😉

I was really hoping we'd see a Riley that has moved away from the extreme swing but I'm not seeing it. I see Riley as a guy who can either be a very good 20 HR hitter or a pretty useless 35 HR hitter and he seems determined to be the later. He's just not built to hit homeruns without the long swing. His frame can't generate the power that a big guy like Judge or Cabrera, or even a more compact but powerfully built guy like Trout can without having to over commit on his swing. And the over-commit is going to leave him a poor OBP hitter if he won't change it. Be a good hitter and let the HRs come on the good barrels and he'd be fine (IOW if he had just continued to let his '24 approach improve)

Correct. Max has some personality, but I don't see him as the type to come into a clubhouse the tear into it and a HOF manager the way Gibson did in LA at all. Max is more what I'd call a "Peacock" on a Myers-Briggs scale. Outgoing, likes to be seen. Gibby was a piranha.

Kudos for the return of the MiLB reports!

No arg there. That was sort of my point about why good managers are rare and valuable. It's easy to have a long resume (say like Trammel) and get a managing gig and just try to always go by the numbers or by a 'system' (like his reliever rotation idea), but a good manager does have to have sort of 6th sense about his team and players that goes beyond the data. I didn't mean to imply Hinch wasn't as good as anyone at it, just making the point that that is always the manager's biggest challenge - and where his decisions can have the most impact, especially in such a data driven environment where it's always easy to justify "I was just following the numbers"

Not that it needs re-iterating but... ETTD.