gehringer_2

He is two years out so his command should be a little better than a guy who came back faster, but everyone is different. If the command does improve, he'll be a force - if not, he can still keep them in a game.

Torkelson is going to scuffle until he decides to look outside for either the FB or slider and serve it into RF. He's looking for everything in and they are just pitching him away or off the plate inside and he's being totally mule-headed about it. The most obvious one was after he laced a ball down the LF line foul, you could have bet grandma's SS check the next pitch was going away - and it was 93, thigh high on the outer third screaming 'hit me' and Tork took it. You have to give an MLB pitcher some credit - he's not going to pitch you where you want it just because - you 1st have to make him pay for pitching it somewhere else.

And of course, truth is, he doesn’t need the NYT. 99% of NYT readers already support him and are more irritated at the Times in this affair than Biden. Biden has a pretty good sense of where he needs to put in effort he has the energy for and what’s just distraction.

TBF to LCA, a few of players in the arena survey noted that the only thing wrong with LCA is that it was empty -- no-one likes playing in an empty arena. The Pistons report 'paid' numbers that are fantasy wrt who is actually there.

I don't see anywhere that the two of them had a previous overlap, but they Hinch and Benetti give the impression of already having rapport based on history - or maybe that's just Benetti's gift.

QFT

What's funny to me is how flawed Sulzberger's premise is to begin with. If Trump and the current GOP should teach a journalist anything it's that what a politician has to say for himself should probably be the very least important aspect in forming the basis of your reporting. The readership and the democratic process requires hard fact, and you aren't going to get that from a poll even on the more honest side of the 50/50 split between minor liars and epic liars. Dig, research, report - what are they DOING, how are they doing it. I'm so completely burned out with this society's fixation with empty meaningless verbiage. That all the interviews and debates and ****-can them and try reporting on what's happening. Sulzberger wants that interview because it's prestigious, not because it's going to tell his readers anything important.

because no-one wants to be a wuss and order a soft-drink!

I just did an area measurement of Hart Plaza plus Woodward ave plus Campus Martius and it's about 89,000 m^2. If you have 3 people per square meter, which is probably on the high side for how close people actually are, that's what you would need for 250K. OTOH, there might be 25-40K inside the surrounding buildings.

Pure speculation but I'am going to guess Joe Kahn would as soon have made no statement about the Politico story at all, it's just inside baseball, but Sulzberger took it personally and couldn't leave it be so it came from corporate. J Rubin in WaPo has written a couple pieces eviscerating the Times coverage on journalistic grounds, but she never mentioned Sulzberger by name and NYT never said boo in response.

I usually worry more the other way - sometimes young men who mature fast streak out ahead of their peers only to plateau or get heavy and/or slow and end up left behind again. I sort of had a feeling the Tigers thought about Paredes that way - that he was going to 'grow' out of the quickness to remain an adequate IF and thus his positional value was low. That hasn't seemed to have happened. I admit that I thought that was a threat to Mike Trout's career early because he was so broad and muscled so young, but that certainly wasn't true either. Trout has run into injury purgatory but getting fat and slow hasn't been an issue! In any case, Clark seems to be having fun with things which I think is OK - until he starts talking about himself in the 3rd person.......Then we've got trouble.

Third paragragh feels dropped in or what left of something longer edited out. "However" doesn't really parse there. And 'instead' of what?

Bigger for sure.

It is odd but In this part of the world, 'soda' is what you mix with a whiskey and pretty much only that. I suppose since 'Soda' is short for 'Bicarbonate of Soda (sodium)', which is what club soda is, and a Coke doesn't have much sodium in it (compared to Club Soda), it's not a 'soda'. But I've been hearing 'soda' even in SoCal recently.

The first part absolutely, and given that they had DeBrincat and Larkin, Perron, and Kane, who are all great snipers, it's absolutely the right strategy on offense for them. SOG don't win games. BUT, OTOH, they are horrible in the D zone exactly as you point out because they don't attack possession. It was interesting to hear Moritz highlight that very thing in his exit interview discussion of what they need to do better. He gets it. The problem is that Wings forwards don't.

you can't make it up.

one report I read along the way said Clark's frame was already nearly maxed out (no pun intended). I assume that kind of assessment entails a fair amount of guesswork given all the genetic variability in the population, but FWIW I suppose if that person was right he would be closer to his power than a kid expected to fill out more?

correct.

apparently over admission of evidence about events not at trial. Unless CA lets him off also he's not going anywhere.

I guess in this case, 'culture' means mostly incompetence. I don't feel the Piston FO matches the WCF Lions FO in terms of treating players as chattel and seeing the fans as marks - but what they certainly share culturally is total lack of competence building a team. The Piston roster has been such an assemblage of incompatible misfit toys that any fan grabbed at random from section 109 to replace Weaver certainly would have done better.

Print journalists are relevant because what they write is still the raw material for most of what appears everywhere else downstream and online and even cable. Witness the big fight between the online services and the State of Ca over a bill that would force reimbursement back to the print industry. If the 'net didn't need what print was doing so badly, they wouldn't be screaming so loudly about being asked to pay for it.

I think the Pitchbot has probably done more the make the people at the Times think twice about it's headline writing on Biden stories than anything the admin has or could do. The self-righteous hate to be made fun of. Every admin gets petty with the press, but as a devoted NYT reader, I absolutely agree the Times is doing the country a total disservice in it's Trump coverage.

Sure, but they know they can't raise taxes significantly without bigger legislative majorities, so the concept of increased backing of workers rights is a practical strategy to deal with political reality. I give them credit for having their feet on the ground and not letting ideality stand in the way of working practically.

I guess they wanted a shot at home on the runner at 2B in case of a base hit - but it was only the 1st inning.

bingo - Benjamin Wittes