gehringer_2

well, we know one team has. 😟

Colt Keith is probably feeling a bit like a ping-pong ball. No matter what they tell him in Dec about where he is going to play, it becomes inoperative by the end of ST. If as is very possible, McGonigle and Meadows both go north, he's going to end up sharing 1st with Tork, 3rd with McGonigle and McKinstry, and maybe some second with Torres. While I'm sure he's willing, I'm less sure he has the defensive chops to be able to play well moving around to multiple positions. Contract or no, he seems to be the guy most squeezed if McGonigle and Meadows both make the team. He hasn't shown the power to play a lot of 1st, McGonigle may emerge as the better hitter from the left side at 3rd, and Torres has been an everyday player. OTOH, at least one injury across those positions is almost inevitable esp with Torres' history and Javy's age.

American consumer 'the last of our concerns' should play well also.

I don't know which is worse, a President that spends his time just making **** up, or that there is a public so gullible it still believes anything he says.

I don't know if you get there via the players, maybe via the team. Something like team bonus money distributed based on winning percentage. You'd probably need to institute a league wide payroll tax to pay for a system with enough $ to make it work, so it probably couldn't happen, but it would be an approach that creates the right incentives - esp since now you'd have team mates pressing each other to play to win. The weakness remaining is that if you are facing a really determined tanking team, you can still win with guys sitting, so I guess you'd have to go after both issues.

When I think of the American voter today, there is scene which always pops into my head - from the original Keaton Batman film, where Jack is emerging from his facial reconstruction as the Joker and the underground Doc tries to apologize for the bad result by pointing to his bloody, medievally crude surgical instruments and says, "You see what I have to work with here?"

NPR inteviewed a Mississippi farmer about his prospects for this season with higher fertilizer prices. He's having to queue up for a gov bailout. He can't afford the fertilizer for Corn, he's hoping he can make some money on sweet potatoes but the market is a gamble. He can maybe plant cotton (left unsaid was that that will require more labor) - so after this long litany of woes Trump has brought him came the question - well, then do you support this war? "Well I guess so..." GMAFB. Some people can fall out of the boat and still miss water.

not dead yet!

His disinhibition is growing by leaps and bounds. Maybe it's become learned behavior because the people around him normalize it for him, but under normal circumstances that's a marker of frontal lobe decommissioning, whether it's Alzheimers, or just vascular senescence or whatever. It's a sign you have someone in a powerful office rapidly losing the ability to process consequence or make any kind of subtle judgement. And of course it's not like there is any evidence of that in his recent actions...

Tater's post is the first I've seen his name so I can easily believe I would find that to be the case. It's not like I follow all three independent school's regents issues, but what I'm afraid is happening at UM is what started happening long ago at MSU, which is the Board (I think they are called trustees at MSU) has become a tail on the dog of state capital politics. In UM's case more on the tail of state DEM politics. We really are losing the guys like Phil Power and Paul Brown who were only there because they honestly loved the institution.

Does anyone trade starting pitchers that are any good other than rentals? Seems you mostly have to breed them or buy them outright. I guess the WhiteSox did with Sale, and didn't work out all that well for them.

There are several things I look for in Regents elections. A few would be: 1-Does the person have a history with the University. I think you should have a relationship/history inside experience with the institution and it's traditions if you want a role in leading it. 2-Is the person there because their political agenda is primarily one that is beyond the University. IOW is their primarly focus on how external political issues are playing in A^2. Those are valid concerns, but should not a regent's primary focus - which needs to be service to the University, not trying to use the University to further or reflect their personal external political agenda. 2-Is the person fundamentally a bomb thrower. A University runs on collegiality. If person is too strident to work with the rest of the board and admin - esp across political reflexes, they will not be of service in the end. 3-at at this point - no more liability lawyers - have enough of that world view with Acker and Bernstein, let's broaden the overall experience/perspective going forward.

Apparently the competition was much but at least Parker handled it well today.

Right - it wasn't that Thompson was such a great player, but he was a lot better than what they got for him. Trading down in value is a quick way to make yourself into a bad team.

I never would have guessed..

Cost is always a consideration, but we don't how expensive he will or won't be at this point.

again, as predictable as the Sun in the East. Did all those fools who wanted a white only America actually think the country could function without all the workers it had imported? Did they think they were all here just for fun? It's so much ignorance. Ignorance about how the world really works vs what their self chosen media prates at them and their Maga leaders promise them. I don't know who wrote those lines for Chernobyl, but "every lie incurs a debt to the truth" needs to be tatooed on the foreheads of about 77 million Americans.

he sort of right at the edge of being a player you want to keep. His career goes either way depending mostly on whether this year is progress, regression, or even stasis.

yeah, you may think war, death, and the world on fire is bad, but what if a trans person wants me to call them 'ze'?

While it doesn't mean anything if you don't hit the ball a lot, he's still got one of the prettiest classic swings you will ever see.

he throws better than I expected to see given the all the early doom and gloom about his D.

That works. If you ever get a chance to see Robards in 'Long Days Journey into Night' with Hepburn, Richardson and Montgomery Clift you'd see him do a brasher persona pretty well. If the movie had actually been made in '62 Tony Curtis would absolutely have been up for Caffee. Would have been a different movie, but it's what Hollywood likely would have made!

Burt could do Jessup, heck Burt could do Caffee. Burt was pretty good.

It's all downhill from here. He will never have an OPS of 5000 again.

And Alabama ain't what it used to be.