gehringer_2

Velo data isn't available before Clemens last season, when he was 44 and fangraphs has his vFA at 90mph. I don't remember that much about what he was doing late in his career with his half season appearances etc -- but for a lot it his out pitch was his split. Johnson with 100 mph 4 seamer - probably a good comp in that sense. With Johnson he was so long with a release point that made his FB really play up even more. JV has made his living on his FB spin/life. I guess another guy that pitched into his 40's with tons of FB spin was Bartolo Colon. Obviously he wasn't as good overall and didn't have the matching velo (low 90s at best) but guys still always had trouble catching up to the life on his FB even near the end of his career.

depends on the player. e.g - I think it's been a mistake with Keith who is not a confident or comfortable glove guy to begin with, but McGonigle looks a lot more like a baseball rat like Javy or McK. Might not bother him at all. You just hope Hinch can tell which is true.

Downside there is that guys with inconsistent command are a bigger risk in the BP since the 3 batter rule. He's 25 this season, so still at an age when command might improve and he's still under 800 IP for his total career. His demeanor seems solid though. Another guy that's 50/50 to still have unrealized upside.

Dan said JV had 7 wiffs on his 4 seamer. Amazing the guy can throw a swing and miss FB at 43. Has anyone else done that since Nolan Ryan?

7 of JV's last 8 pitchers were 4 seamers, all the pitches to Ramos were. So he was just airing it out at that point and Ramos could just look dead red. The good part was that JV's velo was still good at 75 pitches (~95), and that's big for him. only 4 baserunners for each team so far.

Skubal has a very controlled follow through, he never really loses sight of his pitches. JV is pretty similar - he falls off maybe a little more but not much.

But he could make the team and play 50/50 SS and 3b. Javy plays 50/50 SS/CF and maybe some 3b. Parker just plays 50% or doesn't make the team. Assuming they do keep McGonigle, there are too many combinations to contemplate until they also decide which of Meadows/Perez/Jung/Jones may also make Opening Day.

The problem with the interchangeable payload concept of the LCS is that is was put out there at the same time the US was reducing it's overseas basing platforms. It's not very practical in the heat of combat to have to steam all the way back to SanDiego or Norfolk for a reconfiguration. The other thing is that Navy ships are going through constant metamorphosis at each refit, you have all those off board packages sitting around and you are tying yourself down to their compatibility when you need new function elsewhere. It's one of those concepts that sound good on paper but turns out to be at odds with the way the Navy operates in practice. They also F'd up the powertrain design in one of them, but that's another whole story.

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.