gehringer_2

rate of improvement becomes the key. Andre improved, but it was so marginal each year he was never going to get there. Duren is doing better, but is it better fast enough? Ausar's non-progress on his shot is the biggest disappointment to me other than Ivey. It's not like there was ever that much hope, but whatever there was he's put to rest. If you can't hit FT's you are still miles from hitting jumpers in competition. With Ivey, I wonder if the team has knowledge that he's not fully recovered but still could be or will be, or has concluded at this point that is he is just damaged good to write off.

You can add all the money you want, with Trump there is no getting the trash out of the white-trash

He also should have gone to DH the last couple of years at least. He may only have ever been an adequate SS to begin with, but fielding a 40yr at SS is not the signature of a serious team, and indeed the Yankees were out of the playoffs his last couple years.

it's *always* projection with these guys - ALWAYS.

That is what we are hoping for!

it's a demonstration that turnout is more important than any other factor. Americans are not reliable voters, so any kind of extrapolation of voting results suffers from the same reliability issues. You may know what the people that showed up for election A think, but that doesn't get you diddly when a different cross section of voters shows up in election B. As long as turn out in US elections tends to be only 1/2 of the electorate you can't take too much from results when less than half of that half shows up. It's great, but it's delusional to think it means anything bankable.

this. With the lane maintenance being all mechanized, controllable, reproducible, high scores are more common. Plus customized drillings etc. I have a younger cousin married to pretty athletic guy who loves to bowl and golf and he's rolled multiple 300s. When we where growing up everybody's parents were in leagues and we never heard of anyone bowling a perfect game.

The Dems over performed in a lot of specials before 2024 as well, what did it get them?. In the US it is all about turnout, so when turnout is low you know nothing - that's not the same as being hopeless, it's just being realistic. Look at the NYC mayoral elections. Coumo got more than enough votes to win that race in something like 10 of the last 11 elections, but Mamdani generated enough enthusiasm to swamp Coumo's total anyway. But that means he's on a fragile mandate because if that enthusiasm flags, and his voters lose motivation, there is still a huge mass of people that were willing to vote against him. It's very unlikely the next NYC mayor's race will have another record turnout. So what do we really know? Trump voters may have largely gone silent in a lot of places because they know they can't defend what he is doing, but that doesn't mean they don't still *like* what he is doing - so best not to underestimate them at any turn.

their successes will be successes when they win control. Until then it's all hopium. Virginia is real. Trends in PA is good. Nothing has been proven yet in Tx or Fla or Ohio.

that may all be true, and moving independents is the good first step, but there is still a limit to how much you an extrapolate when less than half the normal electorate shows up. It make sense that independents unhappy about the current trends showed up to register their displeasure, but that doesn't resolve whether you've moved enough the 200k that stayed home. And to be honest, it will be fine if Dems to win in 26 because of low GOP turnout. That's exactly how I expect them to win if they do. It seems to be the case in US politics that no-one ever changes their mind, they just gain or lose enthusiasm for their side and so either do or don't vote.

The Wings roster is what it is, but how many teams have a barely NHL guy like Finnie playing on what is supposed to be their top line with their top center? McLellan hasn't been giving Larkin and Raymond much to work with on the other side. That said, I agree that other than on the PP, Larkin doesn't really look like himself too many nights this season.

but at least she has exhibited some concern for the people that should be the objects of concern for leaders in this episode, which is more than Trump has ever done.

People are arguing over whether the video is a fake, though whether it is or not it's nothing she hasn't already said.

what is interesting about this election is that a second Republican, John Huffman, got 20K votes in Nov, which is what threw this to a run-off. Neither of the two candidates in the run-off appears to have picked up up much of Huffman's support as the turnout for this run-off was 18K less than Nov. and Rehmet's margin over Wambsganns was about the same as it was in Nov. Of course it may not be the same voters that voted for Huffman that stayed home, though the numbers are suggestive on the surface. The two candidates each got only slightly more votes than they did with Huffman in the race. BTW, Huffman was the candidate of gambling interests and was reported to have been funded by Miriam Adelson. You could read this two ways - one, since the GOP out polled the Dems in total in November, too many repubs just assumed the seat was safe and didn't show up for the run-off, or the other way would be that GOP voter sentiment moved away from the party just since Nov and the GOP voters stayed home because they meant not to support the party. It would be a lot more significant if Rehmet's vote total had gone up enough to indicate that substantial numbers of the GOP voters from November had actively changed sides by yesterday but that didn't happen. Now the wet blanket part is that there were about 100K votes cast here. When the seat was up in the 2022 general election, 277K votes were cast, so we still don't know for sure if the Maga are still out there ready to come out in a general election as opposed to a special. But this is certainly a much stronger result than the two priors touted by the Dems where only a handful of votes were cast.

that would be me. I haven't listened to the Wings on the radio since he took the gig. Nothing against Woods personally - but it's a pathological thing - It hurts to listen to his voice.

Interesting stuff about Warsh wanting to unwind QT (reducing the Fed bond balance). Under Powell the Fed both ran up and then reduced the asset balance some recently, but the big run up from the QE during the pandemic is still on the books along with most of the run-up after the Bush crash - almost$6.5 trillion in total. Warsh could have the Fed give the appearance of being dovish on the discount rate, while a major bond sales program going at the same time could actually be contracting the money supply and driving interest rates everywhere but the Fed discount window up. I bet the banksters would love that because it would set them up for nice carry trade profits as they are the only ones the low Fed discount rate is available to.

Yeah - I don't like it either. I've always felt like if you are not actively getting better, you are getting worse. With a young team maybe you can bank on some improvement, but most of these guys are now already what they are going to be, maybe Dingler has some upside and maybe McGonigle makes the team and impresses, but OTOH, you can bank that some other guys are going to have worse seasons than the last one. Bottom line you should be working to upgrade the bottom 3 guys in your batting ordet, your #4/5 starters every single year, and your BP every single year.

it would be really nice to win one of these where enough people voted for it to mean something!

they are just not deep enough to play over injuries to any one of Larkin, Cat, Raymond, Seider, Edvinsson or Gibson. For those 6 guys the drop off to next man up is too big. If Simon comes back and the rest of the core stay healthy, they'll be OK, but otherwise not so much.

Simon's improvement may be the largest single contributor the the team's improvement. Lose either him or Moritiz and you are looking at the 2024/5 Wings again.

nyuck-nyuck

There certainly was a tremendous amount of noise about ARod going to third, and at the time the argument he was a better SS was a good one, but my guess is he probably wasn't going to be able to stay at short much longer anyway and the Yankees probably recognized that.

Derek Jeter is exhibit one for the fact that defense is nice, but hitting is nicer. Jeter's BR page is interesting. Hit over 330 three times and had an OBP over 400 4 times but never led the the league in either category. His best bold face numbers were leading the league in hits twice (200+ hits 8 times in his career) and runs once.

Reynolds was also one of those guys who had the thankless task of succeeding a legend. He had to go to work everyday in building with his predecessor's name on it.

it's sort of the natural result of the selection process. If you can't shoot, you aren't going to get to high levels in basketball unless you have something you can do on the court to make up for it. That's either going to be being a 7'4" rim protector or being so athletic a runner and defender you earn your keep that way. It worked for Rodman, who couldn't shoot and has 5 titles. But sure it's even tougher to be that guy in today's game.