gehringer_2

Tigers left it all in NY. This team seems to be consistently worse that usual in series openers.

I'm still pretty optimistic about Torkelson. Last night he hit 3 balls for a total of 1200 feet, walked, and then took three strikes looking for a perfect pitch to cap his night with another long ball but didn't get one. The bat to ball skill is pretty singular. To me the biggest question is his attitude as a hitter. If all he wants to do is hit the long ball, he might limit himself to being a 40hr/800 OPS hitter - sort of along the lines of Stanton. If he's willing to become a more tactical hitter like Miguel, I think there might be a better hitter in there.

He's got the walk rate looking good, but he might be too greedy to become a high average hitter. That last AB last night - he K'd on 3 called strikes. To me that was him looking hard for a third dinger instead of hitting what was pitched. Not what I would have called a very 'Cabrera-esque' approach. For Tork the hitting part is coming along nicely - where his head ends up as a hitter is another question!

I don't know what a good answer around this issue could have been. The uncapped benefit had become politically unsustainable and was going to change, I think regardless of which party was in control. Would a veto have produced a better bill eventually? Fair enough question. OTOH, don't pretend the Gov, whoever it was, would not have taken a political hit for vetoing a concept the public was on board with big time - i.e. insurance cost reduction. (and of course, given the public's capacity [i.e lack thereof] to process policy nuance.)

Torkelson has hit 21 HR in his last 81 games. Still needs to pull his OBP up but a 40hr/season bat at 1B ain't bad.

LOL, wouldn't be surprised!

"English Sh*t"

this is an interesting point, because it highlights the difference in the two aspects of intelligence analysis. One one hand, they were probably accurate in their quantitative measurements of the Afghan army's resources and capabilities, but the strategic analysis of the human factors failed, just like it did in Vietnam. Just because an army can fight, doesn't mean they will. In both 'Nam and Afghanistan, the situation was that the army we left behind realized that without us, they could not win in the end, so there was no point in prolonging the conflict. And that is the perfectly rational analysis of the situation. The US top level strategic analysis simply assumed those armies would fight because if would be convenient for *us* and our domestic politics if they did, and that was the major failure of intelligence vision.

I would guess that varies from player to player. What does or doesn't put a hitter off his feed is probably as individual as each player.

That an easy one. Same reason Afghanistan was Joe Bidden's fault.

It seems like more than one baseball management around the league has stumbled - getting stuck in 'rebuild' mode - unable to make the transition out of planning to be better to actually being better.

Ukraine attempting drone attacks on Rostov-on-Don last night, Russian Southern Military HQ. Maybe too well defended to hit but that's probably the point; keep some Russian air defense capabilities tied down there.

can somebody please get the kid some shoes made from hockey skate uppers before he pitches again?

Leyland is the kind of guy who would do that. Hinch, I doubt it.

Zwieback maybe.

Yankee's had enough luck early to win two games. But down to two hitters again, the Tigers will be playing for lottery balls.

I'll believe he sits when he's actually sitting...🤕

probably set off by school starting. Definitely a lot of it about.

there is sure a lot of love for the Lions out there for KC to only be favored by 4.5 at home.

the one big difference is that BH draws its water from a lead free source and never made any systemic changes that would have ld anyone to think anything in the system could be driving lead levels. (and one of the things that is irritating in these stories is that there is always companion talk about smelly, yellow water, and those things have absolutely zero to do with lead contamination. Lead in water doesn't smell and has no color.) What is probably true in BH is that there are local service lines that contain sections of old lead pipes and those have to be found and replaced, and there is a large program in place to do exactly that. It's not a matter of a political policy issue like switching water sources was in flint, it's a matter of relatively micro level system maintenance/repair. Like almost everywhere in older American cities, BH is decades behind on their infrastructure upkeep.

Interesting question, especially for players in the reserve clause days who had virtually no freedom of mobility. But on the other hand, if you were an athlete you probably had to learn to deal with or make your peace with that stuff long before you reached the majors. And even a guy like Gibson is just a guy, doesn't mean another teammate won't/can't lay him out if he pushes too hard. I suppose a lot of what guys like Gibson did was just sophomoric stuff, which other guys could just ignore. And of course doubly ironic that by the time Gibson got to LA it was the Dodgers' lack of seriousness that T'd *him* off.

If you want to do a little alternative history exercise on the Detroit metro area - imagine what would/could have happened if cross-district bussing had been the decision. White Detroit may have sighed in relief when the decision came down, but it was the death knell for their town. I would argue the level to which Detroit fell would not have been nearly as severe if it had gone the other way. All cities did badly in the last decades of the 20th cent, but it didn't need to be as bad in Detroit as it was if people hadn't been given such an easy choice to flee.

that concept was trotted out wrt Riley at one point as well. You can call it cocky and in some cases that's probably true, but in some cases it's just not understanding what you don't know yet. Think about JV coming up for those two starts in 2005 and getting hammered. He had to experience that a FB good enough to put away any MiLB hitter still needed secondary pitch support in the Majors so he went back and learned what he had to. But it's not like the confidence he had wasn't justified based on his experience to that point.

having lived in Detroit at 'ground zero', which is to say a neighborhood about to go through 'white flight' in the late 60's 70's I would say you are no under no obligation to call this a theory, it was fact. There were two good sized Catholic parishes in our area of NW Det that both operated schools, St. Mary's of Redford and St. Scholastica/Benedictine and I knew any number of kids that moved back and forth between the public and parochial system. There were three primary reasons a family sent their kids to a parochial school. 1) the family was devout 2) the student had worn out their welcome at Public School and it was suggested to the parents that their child (well OK, mostly 'he' ) would do better in an environment where discipline was meted out somewhat more sternly. 3) the fact that Detroit was making even modest efforts to integrate our public school and that a bigger busing case was moving through the courts was more than many families could take.

Pretty much