gehringer_2

yes. We had weak teams without 'everyday' players under Leyland, Ausmus and Gardenhire, but my strong impression is that Hinch still makes a lot more lineup, PH, and field subsitutions than his predecessors. I think he has a more 'interventionist' mindset that just 'let the boys play'. Logically you would have to if you are big into analytics. They don't do you any good if you don't make the active moves to implement what they suggest. And take his views on relief pitching. He is sold on the idea of using relievers in patterns based on varying their stuff and delivery as an active way to make the bullpen more effective in aggregate. That's not something we've seen here before. And I'm not knocking it at all - it seems to work - but it betrays the strength of his mindset that says "detailed in game management makes a difference"

to tie this to may last post, if LHH hitters do end up getting more ABs in aggregate since the shift is banned, then more plays will go to 2B.

I made the argument the other day that maybe with the shift banned we may see more LH bats getting to be everday players again. I'll stand by wanting to see how that plays out.

To push back on that some, I do think Hinch does have a passion for having buttons to push. Whether he would get over that should he have a team where he doesn't need to is definitely the question.

Surprisingly for 3B though, he was a pretty poor 1B. Never seemed to get the footwork down.

Since I'm being the designated Pollyanna for 2024 today I'll add one more. In 2020 you had a polarizing Nancy Pelosi in full force in the House, and a master tactician Mitch McConnell still in full control of his faculties helping to engineer positive legislative spin for the GOP in the Senate. Today the House GOP leadeship is a clown show and Mitch McConnell has recently become a shell of his former self. Aside from the episode last week, there are a lot of reports around out that his energy level inside caucus leadership is way down. This stuff is not so much a Trump/Biden factor but their poor Congressional performance is another contribution to general GOP party weakness with independents.

Don't you think it's a higher level combination of skills? You have less reaction time than at 2nd, need to be able to dive then get up and make a SS quality throw, and you're expected to hit for power. I think the fielding std is higher for a 3b than it used to be. Back in the day a 3b with a decent bat was only expect to stand at the line and try to prevent doubles. Now they need to be able to play D all the way out to SS on the soft shift but are still expected to hit 20+ HR.

This could be well be true - but I'd counter that given that Malloy was seen so quickly to be a bust at 3b that doesn't say much about their evaluation skills, and likewise, there wasn't really much going into this season that said the chances of Keith staying at 3B were very high either.

I hope Harris's memory goes back far enough to remember that JV might hold his decision until 1 minute before 'midnight' again. If you're waiting for JV you may wait yourself right past the deadline.

this is important. Harris did bring in some IF's but we've seen none of them are adequate 3Bs on the defensive side. (even putting aside hitting issues). To me it's not moving on from Candelario per se that's a mistake, it's moving on but failing to find and a replacemnet even as good at the 2022 Candelario that made it a mistake.

Also - "Loser" is a very hard tag to overcome in American politics. Nixon did it, but against a really damaged Democratic party and with third party draining even more Southern Dem votes on top of Johnson's Civil Right stance.

I don't think this kind of stuff actually holds up very often. I used to know a little CW/Patent law but it's been so many years since I worked in those areas I've forgotten most of it. But be that as it may (), Trademarking a single common word like "Tiger" is actually complicated. To protect your use of such a word against a competitor depends on there actually being some possibility of product confusion. The classic case being that Apple Records could not prevent Apple computer from using 'apple' because computer products are not music. (LOL - at least not in the days when that case was brought!). Another would be that the Domino's sugar people could not prevent Domino's pizza from using their name when they went national. So even with both being food products, bagged sugar and a pizza were too far apart for the court to recognize overlap. I can even see a Court ruling that there is no market confusion between an MLB team and a college football team or maybe even at the limit between two college football teams in conferences that don't intersect. Of course what you can usually do is trademark any unique logo design. OTOH, you can't Trademark "Apple" for your particular new species of MacIntosh fruit at all, because you can't trademark a word already in common usage for *that* particular thing. For instance, Kimberly-Clark could not trademark the word "tissue", for a tissues in a dispenser box, they had to invent the word "Kleenex"

Well, it is true that as PT Barnum famously said, "No man ever went broke overestimating the ignorance of the American public."

I'll be surprised if any of the trials are completed before the election.

Well, that's an excuse, but not really a reason. If they had spent even another $20M on JD before trading him, that would have been maybe 20% of one year's capital appreaciation of the team. Interest rates were near zero so there was virtually no cost of capital to be concerned with. You may certainly be correct that Ilitch may have been hot to pull the plug on expenses but it would have been a classic pennywise/pound foolish move because the loss of roster value and attendent loss in future income was certainly greater than what it would have cost him to handle it patiently. The thing to remember, and maybe the mindset that a guy like Illitch couldn't step out of, is that the Tigers don't have stockholders to report to short term, he's free to take a longer term view. Maybe lack of imagination there too.

But this is why it works. As long as everyone on the blue side stays appropriately paranoid, Trump has no shot. If I didn't sense so much paranoia out there I wouldn't be as confident.

I think there are a few dynamics behind this, but the main one would be that polls measure who people are for, elections mostly measure who they are against. In that NYT poll that showed the race close, 14% showed undecided, but there really are no undecided voters in the US anymore - the polls reflect people who wish the dems had a different candidate but are going to go vote against Trump regardless.

absolutely.

Radicalism on either side drives turnout on the other. Since the 2020 vote, when Dems were already scared ****less, you've had Jan 6, the attempt to steal the election, if anything, the GOP both at state and local levels continues to drive to ever more radical legislative proposals. Thomas and Alito continue to keep the SCOTUS front and center as a threat source, Pence is out there pushing a Federal abortion ban. The HOR will be running Biden impeachment hearings next year and will probably have shut down the Gov for some extended period before this year is out. And Trump's rhetoric is more unhinged than ever. Again - it's pretty hard to imagine the 2020 Dem voter that's sitting around next fall thinking "Oh, it's good to know that the GOP threat to the body politic has finally subsided." And finally, the new 18-22yr old voters in 2024 will skew blue. Since these are both old men - some kind of medical scare situation is in play for both. Trump obviously won't get the nomination if he drops dead. A medical scare would be the biggest worry for Biden as well. But that's not a 'political' risk per se.

The 'unknown' is always out there, but in terms of the more probable futures, my current take would be that the most likely 'downside' economic outcome is that the Fed already has inflation coming down fast enough that they overshoot on the target to the downside and they end up with a growth-deflation. If that happens they will have to start pushing more $$ back out - and that won't hurt the incumbent.

you should be, but that is also the answer. Hard to imagine anyone that voted against him in 2020 will not do so again. Or to put it another way - what voters/constituencies can anyone identify that are growing or that will vote for Trump in '24 that didn't in '20?

Desantis is toast. The nomination is Trump's. He can't lose the nomination and he can't win the election. The drama in 2024 will be over Congress, and whether Trump actually ends up convicted somewhere before the voting so we have the first Federal Election in history with a convicted felon on the ballot.

Avila lacked imagination - never saw that he had alternatives. They could have at least tried to sign JD to a reasonable extension. It didn't matter if was more than they wanted to pay because as a controlled high value hitter they could have moved in him the following off-season or even in a year at the next deadline for a better return as controlled player. As long as the contract was reasonable enough that he was stil tradeable, the Tigers weren't going to have to pay much of it.

Here is the story as recorded at SABR.org "Price began his career with Kingsport in the Appalachian League in 1960, playing third base and first base. He started catching in ’61 with Grand Forks of the old Northern League, where he spent two years and started developing some power. In 1963, Price began catching full-time, earning Carolina League Player of the Year honors at Kinston while hitting .311 with 19 home runs and a league-leading 109 RBI. At that point, however, the catching prospect’s career stalled. Sent by Pittsburgh to Triple A, he spent three years with Columbus of the International League while awaiting his chance to break into the Pirates’ lineup. After losing out to Jerry May in 1967 in the battle for the third catcher’s slot at the end of spring training, Price told the Pirates that he wouldn’t go back to Columbus again. Since the Tigers had been asking about Price for a couple of years, the Pirates promptly sold him to Detroit for a reported $50,000 on April 7."

and then there is the whole Murdoch saga overlay. Rupert has repeatedly been reported to be "done" with Trump, but he seems to get pretty flexible when the bottom line is involved (of course why a 90 yr old man still cares how much money he dies with seems beyond any logic). And at some point relatively soon he won't be running the show. Will Lachan be Continuity or has Cobb's team implanted Lachan with the idea he has to create a new and different thing?