gehringer_2

I'd like to know what he does in practice. Sometimes with a super high energy player like Thompson they can hit shots in practice all day but under the pressure of game conditions there is too much adrenaline and they just can't marshall that instant of composure needed to get off an accurate shot. I'd rather it was a matter of form or footwork that he can practice his way through than that it's his style of play that make it hard for him.

agree with all this. I don't think the Tigers are worried about the offense either. Most the key players are still either still approaching or in their primes - almost no-one on the downside other than maybe Javy and McKinstry and fair chance of adding at least one ++ hitter in McGonigle. The flip side is that other than McGonigle and Anderson I don't see a lot of depth if guys start getting hurt. Two of the "insurance policies" from last season - Baddoo and Malloy are gone. But there are no perfect teams.

Speaking of gambling, Bitcoin is down 47% since October. Worst stretch since 2022. And the fun part, there is no theoretical bottom underpinning its value.

I've always felt there was a fair amount of revisionist history about 2017. I imagine part of it was just that JV wanted (quite properly) to say good things about his new team and team mates - and I don't care what anyone ever says, nobody gets traded from their first team and doesn't have mixed feelings at best about the management they are leaving. The truth was he was already back pretty much to 100% form in Detroit before he left. In his last 11 Tigers starts his era was 2.31, he struck out 84 in 74 IP against only 20BB, and only gave up more than 3 runs once. The idea that he had to get to Houston the figure how to pitch again doesn't really square with the facts. That's not to say Houston wasn't doing a much better job with their analysis, just that that wasn't what made the difference for JV. The real change came in about June while he was still in Det and recovered his old arm angle, which he had gotten away from during the abdominal injury. That brought back the old fastball, and with the better FB, the effectiveness on all his breaking stuff, which he said Houston helped with, went up. But every breaking ball is tougher opposite a better FB.

The headline sentence appears to just be wrong. He's actually excepting years in actual recession (2008,2009,2020). Sort of saying "the worst year except for the ones that were even worser." Worst non-recession year since 2003 is still saying a lot though. Another example of how GDP, which is what defines recessions, is not really coupled to the economic outcome for most workers anymore.

How do stats measure mental stamina? Flaherty's problems don't seem to be related to his physical pitching abilities at all, the deficits seem to be more in his concentration/mental energy. That could be one reason besides just bad luck that his stats look better than his results. Of course if that is that case it's also the kind of thing a guy might get better at mastering as this matures more.

One thing about JV is that he has always seemed like a guy with his feet firmly planted on the ground. I can respect a guy that reported his situation with that kind of candor and tact.

actually that is more or less where I was going. If you find both options that are viable candidates to win morally objectionable, no-one is forcing you to vote, but whether you don't vote or vote Quixotically you haven't helped your cause either way, which why I think the choice if you are concerned about an issue that is not at play between the viable candidates is to look for some other avenue to be active on that issue. But TBH, I don't think we are being particularly realistic by allowing the voter to say he *really* can't see enough difference between the two viable candidates to make a choice he believes is better overall. I'll allow that in 350M people I am sure there are some for whom that was really true, but most who parroted the cynicism that 'there was no difference between the parties' and then cast a 3rd party vote in any election since 2016 were either being willfully blind or unserious citizens. That is about as clearly as I can state what I believe on the issue.

Look - you engaged me in this thread - I was responding to @ewsieg. You asked me a question - I gave you an answer and you've got your panties all in a bunch. If you don't want an answer, don't ask a question.

No hand waving at all. Your vote did no good, it made no difference. That sucks when you want to believe voting is a chance to stand for what you want, but it's the reality of it. The reality of who may win an election and who can not is not a matter of my hand waving or yours it just is what it is. Not all change is in play in any given election, it may have to be worked at by other means. Which is why if there is no choice you can make that you can realistically believe is both useful and morally supportable, don't vote -- go work on the issue by other means.

The weakness in your logic is that your vote still did nothing to help keep your spouse stay alive and if it helped elect candidate A instead of candidate B maybe you helped kill someone else's spouse. In this hypothetical, your vote is going to make no difference to the policy that may kill your spouse regardless. You simply have to find other ways to work against that policy than your vote.

If a person seriously can't decide which of the candidates that has a chance to win is overall better for the country, my advice would be for them to stay home.

Every morning, I wake up, and I smoke a cigarette. And then I eat five strips of bacon. And for lunch, I eat a bacon sandwich. And for a midday snack? Bacon! A whole damn plate! And I usually drink my dinner.

Why does a person vote? Is it an exercise in ego gratification to make himself feel good, or is the purpose to try and make his country a better place for he and his fellow citizens? The fact that a person 'made a statement' with their vote does exactly who besides his own ego any good?

Easy enough to understand if Miller assumed Dunn had touched the ball - and since Dunn was signalling to Miller to pick up the ball why would Miller think anything else?

I take it back, I have just the answer, they can fill up all those warehouses that DHS is buying that have no other good purpose.

WTF is the Pentagon going to do with coal? Sit off shore of the South China Sea and chuck chunks of it at the Chinese PLA?

here's a link to a more complete story https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/11/joint-cartilage-aging.html I would guess the trick here is getting it to grow where you want but not where you don't want.

Labrum used to be Sayonara for a pitcher but the surgical techniques get better every day so we can hope.

yeah, nice to see JV in the old English D again but I'd rather have a healthy Olson.

but that wasn't the actually the point I was trying to make, which was about the raw visual stimuli value of watching something. If you are a baseball aficionado like us, watching a pitcher delivery a high leverage pitch has suspense and drama value and maybe we even appreciate the movement on the ball, but there still isn't much visual stimuli value there compared to a ball in play, where people are moving around on the field, possibly athletically, and compares still less to the kaleidoscope chaos of a snap in football with 22 guys in day-glow unis going every which way at high speed. All to say that to love baseball, you have to know baseball. The entertainment value is less in what you are seeing than in your understanding of what you are seeing means at higher levels of abstraction.

expanding the House would be a good step toward getting actual democratic balance back. And an anti-gerrymander rule that says re-districting must drive toward minimum boundary length. It's a simple rule and would cut down on maybe 80% of the abuse. The bigger problem is the Senate. I think a good system would be to have a 100 member Senate reapportioned by population but all the Senators in each state continue to be elected at large state wide and each state guaranteed only one. Or maintain two per state minimum but raise the total to 200. That would still be unbalanced but less than now. Of course to get there requires major Constitutional surgery, expanding the House does not.

any announcement from the Pistons on what they are doing?

this is a good point. Third parties here do get coopted for the purposes of the other main parties too often.

Snoop was a UM Dad at one point.