gehringer_2

That was truly terrible. Jones is the only one the least bit interested in keeping the PBP on track or has that any useful analysis, but his elocution is so bad he's hard to listen to. I like him but he needs to go to radio school if people are going to keep putting him in front of a microphone. It's testament to how bad they know the regular broadcast is that these are even getting on the air. Should we/can we assume Shepherd is gone after this season?

Not that I care about Acker, but to be fair, these are big institutions with a lot of different voices and internal constituencies. Maybe Acker did lobby and vote against expansion when he could (pretty sure he wasn't there for Nebraska or Rutgers/Maryland). That's probably giving him more credit than he deserves, but I have no idea one way or the other.

QFT

Depends on the artist, there are holdouts and purists, but sure. Autotune is a digital tech, but splicing and overdubbing goes back as far as good studio tape machines (1970's). It was done, just not to such a fine grain and it was more work. What I wonder about is how much of the digital tech is used in a typical live show today. I'm sure no artist would want to admit it, and of course in small venues with little or light amplification you are going to hear a real voice in real time, but in stadium level shows like Swift, or even auditorium size venues where the volume is cranked to >110 db, no one will hear hear any of the actual voice going into the mic, only what the PA system puts out. Any mixing board has plenty of equalization and compression options but I wonder how far beyond that live tech goes now.

This regime really loves the slider. I understand why, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I still believe it's the hardest pitch on an arm.

Whether honest or not, I think his complaint is that the schools find themselves having no choice but to put out current fires (i.e conference re-alignments) because the NCAA has failed to do any fire prevention (system reform). I haven't seen anything about what kind of debates have taken place inside the UM regents about any of these decisions but it's a fair question. Press reporting was that the decision to let UCLA move was contentious for UCal. But again the reports were that the financial pressure at UCLA was so severe UCal Regents didn't see any other option for how the program at UCLA could survive without the injection of income the B10 offered. I think at some schools, maybe in the AAU or where research and medicine are really huge $$, top administration looks at their AD depts as a "We have people for that" situation. They only tend to be involved themselves when there is a crisis.

it goes back that Lee talked about. You are exactly correct, the young voter skews left. If that voter stayed the same, then a blue bulge would pass throught the chart above like a pig in a python, but as noted, it hasn't happened because there is an average fade right with age that keeps the chart looking roughly the same from cohort to cohort. Now as a boomer, I wonder if boomer's may actually drift less either way because we were so strongly radicalized by Vietnam in our political formative years. Will that make our preferences stickier? There is an assumption that the boomers do drift right because old voters skew GOP today, but for there is a false premise at work there. The boomers ar always assumed to be liberal because of the srength of 60-70s left side activism, but that was never a majority of the boomers. The majority of us were always straight arrows, Young Repubs for Reagan, etc.

I thought the comment at the end about revenue sharing was curious - or at least a lot easier to toss out there in principle than to make workable in practice - which I take is your point. I thought it was interesting because it goes so exactly against the direction I think college football is inevitably going to trend, which will be the rich getting richer and cutting out the rest rather than sharing with the rest. I mean, I can imagine a world where every dollar of FCS television revenue is put in a pot and then doled out equally to all 13x teams. But imagination is as far as I get with the idea. The other question is how representative of the whole board is Acker's take here? Based on politics, he's pretty much in the same pod (Dem) as the majority, but I don't know that there is any predictable red vs blue take on NCAA issues. If his is a common view on the board, you wonder if it's common to any of the other schools, or at least some others with independent boards.

My SO's 96 yr old aunt informed me just the other day that she 'used to be a republican, but not anymore' But GOP electorate does skew older than the Dem. The only question is does the skew change over time or not. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184426/presidential-election-exit-polls-share-votes-age-us/

UM Regent Jordan Acker unloads on the NCAA: https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2023/08/michigan-regent-pokes-ncaa-mall-cops-for-standing-idle-during-big-ten-expansion.html or https://twitter.com/JordanAckerMI/status/1688240170682769409

I believe there is progression that enough people go through in life to show up in average survey data . When you are young, your are hypersensitized to injustice, the world always appears grossly unjust to a child and you carry that with you into early adulthood. That tends to drive left, but not always, it can also result in a move into any rigid ideology like fundamentalist religion that promises neat resolutions of all moral ambiguity. Then in adulthood one takes on responsibility for other people, accumulates property and gradually preservation of your own interests, particularly your economic ones, tends to drive you to conservatism - mostly as regards economics, taxes, and opposition to any social change that threatens the existing economic hierarchy you are situated in. Then the final stage can go either way. For the larger number, post retirement the circle of social concerns/awareness begins to shrink, social empathy falls, if you fear loss of personal agency or security with your aging - those can all drive you right. OTOH, apparently it's a lower number for whom the reverse happens. Age lowers those intellectual personal preservation barriers you constructed to justify yourself in middle age and you become more intellectually flexible and there is a return to some of the idealism of youth.

looking at some more pitch data for Manning, this season he's increased his slider usage about 30% at the cost of the his change and curve. I'm going to guess he did that to chase a higher K rate against RHB, but as has been noted, his slider isn't that good, and it doesn't give him as much delta Velo as he had with more curve and change-use. And without the change/curve he's now he's giving up an 815 OPS against LHB (657 in '22). Tell me again about the brilliance of Tigers' pitching coaching? They don't seem to be pushing the right buttons with Manning.

the most recent reporting I've read about this is that while there is a certain amount of rightward drift with age, gen Z is more monolithically blue than any ever seen in the past, so the normal equilibrium is going to be upset. At least that's the theory.

Colt Keith with the extra inning game winning RBI double leading off the 10th for the Hens. Wenceel drives him in with an insurance run Sac Fly. Keith 2/5, Malloy 2/4, Meadows 1/2 BB SF, Wenceel 1/3 BB SF Hens had a shot to win in the 9th with a man on and Malloy and Meadows coming up, but Meadows was HBP and Malloy K'd.

These numbers are certainly correct, the question is why it doesn't show up in any polling data. Of course we know traditional polling is becoming more difficult to do with each passing yr. Probably none of those 32 million have a land line or answer their cell phone on a conventional ring for an unrecognized number so maybe they are invisible. Has anyone heard of a pollster doing a poll by SMS or Instagram? Would probably be the only way to catch them. There certainly are web based solicitations to participate in various poll, but the very fact they only catch the interested biases them in other ways....

Under Avila, I think you could argue that a big problem for the Tiger org was letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. To at least some degree, the Tigers persuauded themselves a bunch of players either weren't worth keeping or paying because they thought weren't the ideal they wanted. You can put Paredes, Iglesias, JD, Castellanos, Adames, Suarez, Smiley, Alex A., Robbie Ray, Candelario all in that catagory to a more or less extent where they moved a player but got worse at the position. I hope they aren't about to do the same with Jake.

also suggests they are happy to tank the rest of the season.

It would help if he would keep his FB velo up. He was trending toward 90 mpH with the FB and throwing his slider up to 84. That's not enough velo difference. Manning should be able to keep guys off balance timing wise with his curve, but he doesn't have enough command of the curve, he's either hanging it or missing with it completely.

RIght, but in that case he's opting out so the Tigers will not be trading him - that's what I meant by the linkage. It's heads you win, Tails I lose for the Tigers with ERod.

Unfortunately, the two things likely go together: If he opts in it will be because his agent informs him that he is considered damaged goods around the league, in which case the Tigers will be hard pressed to get anything for him in trade either. Best play for Det is he opts in, pitches decently in '24 and the tigers move him either during 24 season or that off-season with 2yr of control left. That would be a trade that might yield something good. Either way I don't want to see them pay anything to buy back his option.

Manning gave up 9 hits - 7 on breaking balls.

"He asked him in an aspirational way,” LOL - As usual, there is nothing new under the Sun. They've been using this cover story all the way back to Henry II in 1170 and his feigned surprise when some one took him up on his "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" 'aspiration' and murdered Thomas Beckett.

If you think this is going to be a piece of the MLB team, then every week of experience he gets against MLB pitching puts him that much closer to being the piece of the team you want him to be. Or in short, at this point he is wasting weeks of a short career. That's the tradeoff. We can argue what the opportunity cost is and what course yields the optimum return, but it is not zero.

Every hit on a breaking ball. Stupid pitch calling.

I don't like the approach. At least the 1st time throw use your FB more until they start getting around on it. You're doing a hitter a favor telling him he doesn't have to look for velo right out of the gate.