gehringer_2

Victor is about as much a mismatch to the players in the league today as Wilt was when he first came into the NBA.

absolutely this is exactly the downside risk, and I think there is precedent in the way Dem voters failed to energize around Clinton or Harris or the 2022 Senate races.. Thankfully the ongoing poll results do seem to be moving the other way - for instance Dem enthusiasm appears to be running ahead of GOP enthusiasm in OHIO. The problem there is that primary and by-election results are not all that much to hang your hat on, even if they do point in a positive direction. It's too easy to see Trump somehow extricating himself from Iran, gas prices falling, some stupid Dem misstep, and all of a sudden all is forgiven.

Black in the US are more socially conservative than the average white progressive, maybe even more than the average white liberal. It comes down to the argument about "order". People suffering life in highly disordered places like US urban cores, develop an appreciation for order that can seem paradoxical to the rest of us when the agents of order are also usually the agents of repression and abuse, but life is complex. Mainstream Black America doesn't want fewer cops, they want better cops.

well whatever you want to call it, it is about giving people back a sense of control over their lives. IMO the greatest danger to the constitution order is people deciding they don't care about the niceties because it's not working for them anyway. What good is a constitution that's supposed to guarantee your liberty if you feel like you are living the life of a slave?

That's always been politics though - Lincoln may have been one of the more intellectual presidents we ever had, he ran as 'Rail Splitter Abe'. I think the only guys who are insulated from being dinged for being classy were the War heroes from WWII. I don't think a guy who talked like he was from Harvard and looked the part too as much as JFK would have a chance today, but the guy was a war hero who proved how much a grunt he could be by being blown out of the water and then swimming to safety with some poor wounded GI on his back. There is no way for a classy guy to buy those kind of Bona Fides with the everyday public today. Obama was an exception of course, but he was the exception to everything - maybe exactly because everything about his past argued he shouldn't be who he was?

BTW, AES now running on the fact that AIPAC is supporting his opponent as a positive campaign argument. Another measure of how much times have changed.

Platner doesn't hide the things he disagrees with Progressives about. He's primarily an economic progressive. That's what the Dems have to coalesce around to win. Forget fighting on the culture stuff, hammer the economic and political oligarchy. David Brooks tends to be all over the map, but he wrote something recently that I think hits the nail spot on the head - the reason the vast majority of people in the US are so ticked off is the feeling of loss of empowerment. Everything in this country has gotten re-engineered to where it only serves the rich. Everyone else has to deal with a million indignities their parents never faced, from not being able to get a person on the phone at customer service to their votes being negated by gerrymandering, to not being able to afford a house, or even Disneyland, you can't afford to stay home and raise your kids, if you go to work you can't afford day care, and looming over all of it is that they are afraid to get sick or lose a job because the path to upward mobility has been blown to smithereens. Don't get pulled into winless debates about who is more at fault in the ME, or the border, or your preferences about transgender athletes or defunding the police, you can not win there.

any decision driven by how much Jahmai Jones plays is a mistake.

yeah - it's weird isn't it?. I think if you take all the data together - his swing is pretty similar, he's seeing the ball better - which implies he's now quicker - able to wait longer, but as you note, despite having the same swing plane, and same pull %, his launch angle is significantly down. So I guess the conclusion is the stance change has shifted the relation between where his eyes are and where the bat is and he hasn't quite adjusted to that. He 'just' needs to swing a little lower than his eyes are used to telling him he should. That's why fiddling with the way you bat is so terrible - you can make a change that fixes a bunch of things but if it changes one other thing you can't fix, you are screwed. Can Colt make the adjustment? Nobody knows. But we are going to find out.

I've never quite understood why training guys to throw better seems to be the one great failure of Kinesiology/exercise science. Nobody ever seems to get better at it. Weird.

LOL - nobody confuses John Fetterman with AOC.

pac money is not the reason big donors have issues with national party membership. It's more doubts over the quality of the leadership. And it's quite possible the old guard donors are wrong and Martin is right - I'm not in a position to argue that, but party level donations are lagging. The Corp-PAC pledge is individual candidates, not the DNC

We may be able to hold out until we get mize, melton, and skubal back but what's going to help this BP? Hard not to suspect Vest is on his way to TJ. Melton maybe - but I have been assuming they are going to need Melton in the rotation - at least until Skubal gets back. So best case, Flaherty straightens out (he wasn't horrible last time out), the rotation settles at Mize, Flaherty, Valdez, Montero, Mleton, then eventually Skubal and Melton can go to the BP, but I'd really like to see another BP arm from somewhere. Now all we need is for Mize and Melton to actually get back and the rest to happen before they end up too far back to catch up.

Voters choosing candidates is so, so 20th century. Today candidates choose their voters don'cha know?

The answer for the Dems isn't that hard - you run AOCs where progressives can win and you run Fettermans where they can't win and when you get in power you pass the parts of your agenda you agree on and try to build consensus if you can for the stuff you like that doesn't have broader appeal. That's what representative democracy is supposed to be about. But both sides of the party want to be in control, neither side willing enough to go with the fact that some of the answers can be different in different places

that contract is looking a little less favorable for the Tigers this season.Definitely counter expectation that a player that should be developing more power at this point in his career has seen his ISO go basically to zero. Superficially, one would argue that much like Riley's shift last season to the super uppercut, Colt's shift this season to the super short approach has been an over compensation. Last season Riley did hit more HR's but became a worse hitter and is having to fight back from that now. Colt has gotten his AVG and OBP up but so far at too high a cost in ISO. Hopefully Keith can make an in season adjustment to get to a better compromise instead of this being his MO for the whole season.

Bad BPs make every manager look bad - damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you are losing ballgames in your BP, blame your GM, or just bad injury luck, or both.

Read a bit yesterday that as a party the dems are having trouble raising money. Dem Candidates are doing fine, but the party fundraising is way off, party accounts trailing the GOP about 2:1, donors bitching about Ken Martin etc.

I think I'd rather see McKinstry in the OF than Perez. Wenceel reminds me of Raburn a little bit in that there is no lack of athletic talent but he just botches too high a proportion of plays just out of the blue. It would also be nice if Riley could figure out a way throw from the OF. If wasn't a factor today but he has to be one of the worst OF arms in the AL. Do I recall there is some injury history there that makes that a lost cause maybe?

I don't think there is any kind of decision to do so, but they are getting more immediate feedback and my guess is that is having an effect on those umpires who used to be more liberal calling strikes to the outside - where I think the 'worst' strikes called out of the zone have usually been.

I guess we can debate if there is a cost in defensive precision for moving guys around a lot, I think there is at least some, or we could just bemoan the fact that the tigers have some guys who are not great defenders no matter where or how many places they play.

Zach Short signed for his defensive reliability......

wrong ball one to challenge.

should have challenged ball one......

Nice comeback for Hurter there.