gehringer_2

IIRC, one of the reason they were never high on Paredes is that they though he'd never hit of any power. Bigbie's HR rate has picked up this season, granted he is a couple years older than when Isaac's power finally began to emerge.

Coaching can be key here. If you have QB with lots of physical talent and not much else, your offensive coaches may have to swallow their pride and just redesign an offense the QB can run instead of the one they want to run.

I think for now it's all in a holding pattern waiting to see if Congress does something to put the genie back in the bottle, and who knows, they might do something to push the current systems back into viability. But since Congress is a mess (can anyone in college sport be thrilled knowing their future is hanging on Tommy Tuberville's legislative chops?) and 2024 is like a wall beyond which the shape and function of the Congress can't be guessed, everyone is just muddling along with deck chair rearrangement on the USS NCAA-Titanic.

I'm mostly surprised how many years the 'system' of keeping numbers down - which is mostly subtle and largely underground, has persisted. OTOH - In general I don't begrudge docs their money that much - I'd rather see them be well paid than Ad men or banksters, and TBF when you look at Docs' raw income numbers is that before or after the cost of their malpractice ins and all the debt a lot of them end up carrying? Just in the last few years an older pediatrician friend of ours was looking to drop back to a part time practice, but just retired instead because she couldn't cover her ins costs working part time.

Even they are all healthy, Skubal strikes me as the only one with Ace level stuff and you do have to wonder if his arm stays together. I'd put Mize as a solid #2 level guy. Unless his FB comes back better after the surgery I don't see #1 level in his future. Manning appears to be OK but middle of the rotation also. Turnbull could surprise to the upside. He didn't look good this year but he might once he has some innings in post TJ - just don't know with him. So I'd agree, enough arms but not necessarily a dominant staff without more help. They do have depth of back of the rotation depth with Faedo, Wentz, Brieske, Olson. The deep bench is nice.

A righty that is not a strictly pull hitter is probably your best bet for a player with no platoon split. I know, he's not a fair comparison to anyone - but Cabrera, with the ability to use an inside out swing when he wants to, has a negative career platoon split. More down to earth - Torkelson's is pretty moderate so far in his young career, and he also knows how to take the outside pitch to right when they are throwing him away. He really should do it more than he does. I think this is also a place where you want to look at OBP as well as OPS - at least for LHH. I wouldn't care too much if a LHH gives up his power going the other way against LHP in order to avoid making outs. That's not a guy I'm going to worry about platooning even if his OPS split might be >150 because no HRs. Can he still keep the line moving? Riley is an example here. 130pts on his OPS split but less than 20 on his OBP. (because Riley hasn't hit a HR off a LHP this season)

US Medical schools colluding to supress enrollments goes back a long way before Reagan. Not an excuse but realize that that was just another play from the same deck the AMA has been dealing from for much longer time. If I had to guess it goes at least back to their realization that the WWII GI bill was a threat to grease the skids for the creation of a lot more Docs than they wanted to see.

The conundrum for the UMs and OSUs is that they want to keep the market value of "Big Ten" but the conference bylaws don't allow for expelling members so if they want a new org, they can't remake the B10, they have to leave it behind. In the end, the only way the top schools in the power 5 can maximize their income is to stop sharing it with teams that do not suppport the value of their conference income shares and create a new league of more evenly matched schools, leaving the rest behind. The system survived the situation for a number of decades, but as noted, the diversion of income to the athletes has turned a situation that in the past was only a strain into one that is untenable.

TBF, the Tiger FO *might* have made ERods conduct appear worse than it was - we don't know one way of the other. The normal assumption would be that no matter what is going on, he should have kept the team aware of things at least to the point where they were not out there in public saying they had no idea what the situation was. That part was pretty absurd. Again, maybe the Tiger FO was only acting cluless as a matter of PR choice - who knows? The other choice being "Yes Eduardo is in communcation with the team but we won't/can't talk about it." Doing the former might be a lazy way to avoid continually being asked any more questions on the topic. All seems rather unlikely but if you want to give a person the benefit of the doubt you can usually find a way.

Wenceel, Parker and JHM need some MLB audition time -- even if they don't think any of them are slam dunks to make the team out of ST next spring.

there will be a lot of arms on the market this off season.

but do the arms look more accurate?

he and Meadows both. That often goes away at MLB because the average slider quality is so much better but it's still a better starting point for promotion than a bad split is!

This. The biggest problem in college football today isn't figuring out how to divy up Div IA, it's that Div 1A is an obsolete construct.

Parker showing no sign of slowing down. And his OPS against LHP is 878.

Granted all this, my argument still holds, which is that while he was within his rights to try to negotiate whatever he wanted, after using a last minute demand at the deadline after a deal had apparently been agreed to on all sides, he shouldn't be surprised if people label him dishonorable. And of course it didn't get him want he wanted either. And If I'm Harris I'm not giving him that yr 4 @ $20M either unless I'm sure there will still be an off season market for him at 4yr @ ~17.25M AAV.

If he has a good bat, you can get him more AB if he can play a position. A RHH is going to get the short end of the playing time at DH because odds are a team has a good LHH that can't field. In the Tigers case, that is Carpenter. who is already in line to take most of the AB at DH once Cabrera is gone. As to whether he can do it. probably not, but you you never know until you try. He supposedly came up as an IF so he should have the arm. Granted catcher is something you probably don't ask a guy to do, he volunteers to try. But they need to keep thinking outside the box.

I think he means Kreidler is playing tonight for the Hens and he's 2/4 so far. Parker Meadows and Malloy each with a HR also. 17th for each. But Gipson-Long abused for 6 runs in 4.2IP. They should send JHM to winter ball to learn to be a catcher.

so pretty much 2 full years without facing MLB pitching for Meadows? Next season he's a yr away from 30. It's getting to where he might not be able to recover his hitting timing again even he tried to come back.

Two 10pt bucks in velvet in the woods down the block today:

So Diane Feinstein's daughter is a lawyer and has been a judge. But she also has step siblings. Hubby has already preceeded Feinstein to the grave and now the steps are at each other's throats in court over who gets what money. So who cares about 1%'er family problems, right? Except the rich part is that Daughter (the ex-Judge who probably knows whereof she speaks on legal issues) claims to have the Senator's power of attorney. A sitting US Senator's POA. Let that sink in for minute. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/03/us/feinstein-husband-estate-family-fortune.html government and politics in the US has descended into farce on so many levels it's hard to even keep track.

But that's not what he's being dinged for. It he didn't want the deal all he had to do was say so in the beginning and everyone moves on you have two orgs and two fan bases that are still happy. By stringing people along to the last minute then either changing his mind of failing to extort the Dodgers for more money (which it was doesn't really matter), he ran out the clock on two organizations trying to make their teams better for their fans. You can say all that was within his contractual rights, and that is true. But if his team was dishonest with people, which seems the most credible reading for how they got to 4:30 Tues thinking they still had a deal, then the story is less innocent.

>Tigers have released Franklin Perez And thus comes the FP era to a close. How Six Years have just flow by, almost as though we never even saw him......

I'm trying to be generous. Entertaining thoughts that he is incompetent this early in his tenure is too depressing. 😟

And I will give Harris credit that he has kept his absolute cool in public. He hasn't whined or slammed anyone even though he has to be madder than hell. It's a good sign that he appears to have the discipline to avoid making the poor situation worse.