gehringer_2

you know what the complete comedy in all this cultural warfare is? It's upper class liberals that live the most morally 'conservative' lifestyle of any segment of American society. They have the most marriages, the fewest children out of wedlock, the highest proportion of stable two parent households. The right in American has their head so far up their asses they don't understand the difference between being free to do something and forcing other people to do something. Liberals are completely happy with conventional lifestyles, we don't denigrate them at all, all we want to do is make room for people to be free to do it differently if that is their choice. The right just can't figure out this simple equation. Wanting to allow people to be free is just that, and nothing more than that. But of course, "that" is a lot. The Christian Right's problem (as well as the RCC ) is that they want the state to mandate people to do what they can't persuade people to do because their doctrine is just too unappealing. They call themselves "Evangelist" after the Greek for "Good Tidings" but their "news" just isn't so good and when people see it and don't like it, they want to be entitled to police power to enforce it.

so far this season there is no reason not to play him everyday. His platoon split is pretty much a wash: 30pts better OBP against LHP, but 100pt better OPS against RHP (he has hit his HRs off RHP). DRS doesn't give him a lot of love but I think we are pretty certain that over time the numbers will bear out that he is a plus OF, even if he is only an adequate 3B. But on this team that makes him 2nd choice only behind Urshella.

Sure, you will have an oil industry - lubricants, plastics production, those are small by volume compared to fuel. What will keep it going in largest volume in the immediate future is Diesel and Jet fuel, as non fossil replacement techs there are still over the horizon. But Gasoline is 60-70% of every barrel refined today. And the rest of the world is going to follow the path to EVs so you probably can't count on that much increased export. The refineries that remain operative will need to be reconfigured to re-balance output between gasoline and diesel, which will also cost the refiners a fortune in capital expense for the facilities they can keep open.

Yup. The supply is not very elastic - it won't just fall because prices do and it's hard to convert to other uses. The only way to get rid of office space is conversion to residential, but commercial buildings tend to have wide interior spaces which make them undesirable for conversion to residential because people demand windows. The other segment that is going to hit a similar demand drop crisis is refining. It costs a fortune to decommission a refinery and it's cost prohibitive to run it at low capacity factor. It's not so much an issue from the banking sector as real estate, but when the US eventually finds itself with 50 million EVs on the road and way, way long on gasoline production capacity, the collapse of oil co profits is going generate a lot of howling and gnashing of teeth on Wall Street. Some of majors have already sold off refinery capacity to independents who will probably declare bankruptcy and leave the public on the hook for cleaning up abandoned facilities.

But you will always see this kind of mistake when players are playing next to guys they are unfamiliar with, don't know their voices, their calls, their tendencies. Of course Keith should have yielded, but do we think he ran into Baddoo on purpose to cause an error? The situation overran his ability to process it because they had never had adequate time to learn each other. This is unavoidable to some degree, everyone is unfamiliar with the other guy at first, but the more you move guys around arbitrarily the more you increase these risks. Players that play together regularly get over these kinds of mistakes. Keith hasn't even played 80 games yet and he's had 8 different RF's behind him whose ranges and styles he has to learn and keep straight. In fact in that play, Ushella is also going out and Keith has priority over Gio in that situation, so may be thinks he is hearing Gio - who he also has not played next to much, and thinks he is rightfully trying to call him off? Baddoo also has a history of colliding with his fellow OF's so I wonder if he just isn't loud enough.

Malloy's issue is going to be exactly what you could have guessed by what he did at AAA. His K zone judgement is indeed impeccable. But it's not enough just to let the the bad ones go by, he has to prove he can hit it when they throw him strikes. Bottom line not really much different from Tork's issue. You can't succeed in the majors waiting for what you want to hit, granted you can't hit everything, but the more of K zone you can at least defend, if not hit, the more success is available.

and an additional irony is that Vierling's OBP has dropped despite improving his OPS. He's under 5% walk rate this season so the guy is succeeding, such as he is, but doing it pretty much in contradiction to the grand plan.

which is also surprising as he did not show much in the way of soft hands as a SS in Det. Willi just happens to be the exception to the rule that guy's at 25+ don't usually improve their foundational fielding skills.

I don't buy it. If they keep aiming for some point out in the future then have fun being the A's, you'll never get there.

Sounds a lot like the White Sox plan of few years ago. I guess by '31 we'll be the White Sox.

I will admit that I was surprised Castro managed to get himself to adequate as an OF after as bad as he looked there when the Tigers decided to try him there.

This org is nowhere near as clever as they think they are. This loss was an unforced error brought to you by management.

A Tiger taking too many pitches. What else is new? You just cannot end an inning on a called strike with a man in scoring position. Shouldn't 'control the zone' include defending it? In general the Tigers have done a good job of staying alive today but not that AB. And Miller isn't any better since he's come back.

Does the IRS still pay a 20% bounty if you turn in a tax evader? Sure it's been all over the media, but do you suppose anyone has formally dropped the dime on Ol' Clarence? Hmmm....

Players unfamiliar with each other leads to one run and using a LF that can't even keep a guy from getting to third on a FB leads to another. Hinch being the smartest guy in the room.

Regardless of any particular case, if looking for the players that fit your system mean you pass on other good players that can help you win, you are putting system over success and that would be a pretty dumb approach. Systems don't win games, good players do. It's perfectly fine to use a system in development because you think it helps improve your odds of producing good players, but given a good player, you should never hold his style against him if he performs. No system works for every player and to exclude good players you may be able to get is purely counterproductive.

Of course they were. The West will never bring itself to understand the ME.

I haven't looked through the whole schedule to know if it's any kind of trend with the Tigers or not but this is not the 1st time they have been flat opening at home after a road trip.

As terrible as it is, the Tigers are doing it right. If you are going to be one hit, you might as well pick that night to give up 10 and say screw you to Mr Pythagoras.

On an 88mph cutter. Apparently the Mudhens have a deal going where no-one with a 95+ FB is going to pitch against Torkelson. It's great he's cleaning up, but it would be nice to see it against something at least approximating MLB heat.

At this point, even under the most radical case the fed still isn’t going to cut more than 25 basis points before the election, which isn’t going to affect much of anything in the real world. So it’s all psychological and people will spin things every which way.

That may well be true, but regardless of what they really are, anybody owned by Murdoch has a credibility problem because we know that the Murdochs are willing to force coverage to conform to what they want at any time.

The big hits are often just so much luck though. One of my student aids was a gamer with high level video horsepower. He started mining bitcoin almost at its origin and had something like a dozen. He wasn’t investing, he was just playing around. He kept them for a while then sold them on a lark. If he had kept them he’d have started out life with an investment stake big enough insure easy investing from then on. It was a completely random decision made when there was no accurate way to see the future. If he had kept them and made his stake it would have the equivalent of being struck by lightning.

Not the greatest test last night. None of the Iowa pitchers very threw hard -- Tork's hits were on pitches <90. Hit one 94 mph FB hard for an GO. But 3/5 still beats 0/5

LOL - as of the end of the game tonight his MudHen OPS is 1.083