gehringer_2

BRef certainly like the Tigers more - looks like once they process today's game they may rate Tigers ahead of Minny.

I'm not very confident the starting pitching holds up. The downside risks include Montero missing a decreasing number of bats, and Mize's unreliability. I was almost more optimistic about BP days than Casey's starts. OTOH, Olson could get back on track and lock down a couple games.

have you ever tried to blow up a dead lithium battery?

If a team was in every way a static entity, then you would just look at the season win-loss record and who was left to play (and their records) and the probability you'd get would be the best available predictor. I assume FG and ESPN do something like that. But we know a team is not a static entity. The personnel is always in flux, and the players themselves go through arcs of injury and health, some of which never even become public. Some young players are in a real process of getting better over the course of a year, maybe an older one irreversibly starts to break down. So the art of handicapping in large part turns on how far back do you want to go to get the 'best' estimate of a team's likely winning rate over the next X games. The further back you go, the stronger the statistical 'power' in the estimate, but the more your assumption that you are looking at the 'same' team all across the sample may be breaking down. If you take the whole season, since their records are exactly equal the best estimate would be the Twins and Tigers will win the same number of games of the next 9 so Minny end up winning by the tie-breaker (ignoring the difference in the quality of the opposition just for the sake of outlining the argument). If you look from the ASB, the Tigers would be slightly favored. If you look at the last 30, the Tigers would be clearly favored. Pay your money and take your choice! (if you like to gamble that is.......) 🤷‍♀️

Russians are finding out something that has always frustrated the West, which is that India is no-one's ally, it's foreign policy actions are about as transactional as it gets.

ESPN has them at 42%. TBH, if I were a bettor, I would rate the odds of the Tigers winning one more game of the last 9 than the Twins as better than 50% based on their current lineups.

85 might do it. More likely 86 though. 6 of 9 requires them to stay on the their current high for another 10 days. I think they can drop one game each series and still have a decent chance.

I like that the Orioles have pretty much lost any chance of catching the Yankees for 1st place. That's the kind of thing that can take the wind out of a team's sails.

well, I suppose that since the Tsar already had his own terrorist secret police, it was/is sort of endemic in Russian history!

OK grant in a way but I'll defend a more specific syntax. As leaders, Hilter and Stalin were using terror as a lever of state power, which by definition I'll grant is a form of terrorism, but in conventional parlance I think most people would take 'terrorism' to mean the program of non-state actors and that is certainly what I meant to refer to. Terror by established government terror is more conventional tyranny? Now before they came to power? There was Krystallnacht and few other events IIRC, but TBF Hilter rose to power primarily by the conventional political process and the Bolsheviks fought an actual armed revolution so terror maybe a piece there also but to a larger 'conventional' movement.

Harris is building his team out of his pieces. I don't see him trading any core present or future player. I could see Sweeney being moved but none of the others (if they regard him as purely stop gap)

He's completely the wrong profile, but I would love to see Torkelson go play winter ball. Just work on technique in a zero pressure environment.

there just isn't any bottom

3BB in 5PA is a 600 OBP for the night. He just improved his OPS on the night. EDIIT: I see this has already been noted.....) We were talking earlier in the day about guys brought up too soon - I'd say Spencer is a worse example than any of the pitchers. He never established good contact skill before he was brought up and when he put some balls in the seats last season nobody cared, but his weaknesses as a hitter were still there. 267 BA since he's come back up is his best stretch of contact since his one decent month (May) last season.

I like 9ths without drama

3BB and 2K. Weird night for Tork

Miller's problem is that he giving up an EV out of proportion to his other stats led with a 4% HR rate. He's not hit so much, but he's been hit hard.

only 24, doesn't K too much, walks some. Definitely possible upside yet.

And Johnson just lost his vote to continue government funding with the voting poison pill attached with something like 14 GOP members defecting. Odds of Jeffries being Speaker by election time just ratcheted up.

IDK - Terrorism is already irrational. Has any terrorist organization ever achieved it ambitions?

I'd argue it's a false distinction. You can either do a windfall profits tax, which has been done in many places and times and works well enough in a way, but it doesn't give the customer any direct relief per se, or you are telling the seller what they can charge. That's establishing a price. I don't where the formulation "surgical regulation" meets the road in any way beside a price control, or an anti-trust enforcement - but I'm already on board for that! But even anti-trust action doesn't produce short term price impacts for the consumer .

I don't know where the Pelfrey comp came from - not me! Bottom line is if Fetter can't succeed in teaching him to throw hard, then I guess the conclusion has to be they botched the pick. At this point I have no idea what made them project him as a power pitcher as a prep, but my best recollection is that is what they thought - or at least that was the PR, at the time. I wouldn't say it's a terrible assumption to have looked at Manning at 18 and throwing whatever he was at the time - say mid/lower 90's - that he could grow into an upper 90's guy, but it's fair enough to say you have to have more than that kind of projection to justify a top ten pick.

I think you have a fair argument with Mize - because as I posted - I don't think his stuff was ready, he certainly was not all that dominant in what time he did spend in the minors. OTOH, TBF, you normally don't expect a college 1/1 to spend much time in the minors either - though the COVD yr sort of messes with all assumptions. Manning was strong 2019 at AA, then missed 20 - well spent the year in the development camp I believe.. I would fault them less for assuming he was as ready as he would ever be in 21. And to correct myself, I guess 21 was his 4th year, not fifth.

well, let's take them in turn. Manning? He certainly wasn't rushed - he was in the system 5 yrs before his first call up. The kid has had a ton of injuries, did management have him on a bad conditioning program? Certainly possible. At this point he doesn't have much of a fastball. I think there was an assumption with Manning that with his build he would develop as a power pitcher. Didn't really happen. Coaching? The series of injuries? IDK. Maybe it was never there in the 1st place? At any rate, to me it's purely achieving consistent velo that caps Manning's potential at this point. What are your thoughts? Mize? I know people will claim I am ret-conning but I was never enthused about Mize's MLB potential going back to his draft. I don't care what the media consensus was. He was a trick pitch collegiate who came to the majors without a major league swing and miss fastball, depending on a off-speed pitch that didn't fool ML hitters. Then he blew his UCL and has taken way longer than normal for recovery, then lost more starts to a bad hammy. As far as I can tell, Fetter/et al have helped him improve his 4 seamer and build his velo to where he has a shot at becoming a real power pitcher. Maybe the old staff should have done that to begin with before bringing him up? In any case at this point he does not have ML caliber command. Does he just need more innings to get there because of the surgery, or is he just not what everyone hoped? I absolutely don't know at this point. I think all you can do is let him pitch enough to find out and hope he can stay healthy enough to pitch that much. What do you see as the prior management's contribution to his problems?

but the only way Dems can do this more broadly is with successful grass roots fund raising. Neither party will undertake serious corporate governance and business reform as long as they need corporate and business money to get elected. I don't know if it will/is changing with gen X/Y/Z but the Boomers were so used to somebody doing everything for them in life that they thought it was beneath their dignity to ever make a political contribution. But as the saying goes, you don't bring a knife to a gun fight. Corporate political money is entrenched and we aren't ever going to displace it by wishing.