gehringer_2

Just read a piece today that the whole system may be an example of unintended consequence. The slot system supposedly ended abused like no-one being willing to pick up Porcello because he had made it plain he wanted big money, and also on the theory that it prevented big market teams from outspending the small. But in reality, drafted players cost so much less than FA acquisitions/retentions that a team can easily overspend the average on the draft and still be a very low cost operator - draft player acquisition is just not a big part of team's potential total spending toward the (non)cap. What increases the value of the draft for a team is more money spent on scouting players, and even that is more a matter of effort than dollars when compared to a potential $200M+ player payroll. So Maybe the old system where a small market team could overpay and attract players that the big market teams hadn't bothered to look hard enough to find actually supported the ability for small market teams to rebuild effectively than the current system..

they can't square that circle though, you can't be a closed society and be merchant to the world, the contradiction in that won't fly. Xi may want it both ways but no-one has made that combination work. If he closes China, he is going to kill it's economy and technical progress. China may have enough momentum built up that it may take a while, but it will happen. What Xi wants to do is make the Chinese want the leadership model he wants to run. That's a big component of what his COVID strategy was about, prove that his model saved more lives. In the West we tended to miss this aspect and only see that he was 'being repressive' because that's our model of him. But to a large extent he was trying to sell his system by providing a result he could market as a better mousetrap. That's why it was so easy for him to turn on a dime and walk away. He was not dumping an ideologically driven program, he was marketing his management as a product and it was time go with V2.0 of the product. And the other problem is that the cult of personality leadership system has this problem of dying with the leader. The Chinese are supposedly the world's longest term thinkers. On that premise there have to be other constituencies interesting in the future of China on a time frame longer than the rest of Xi's natural life that know better than to like getting on the cult of personality train (again). What I think Xi wants is a society open for business, education and technology, but politically repressed/passive by choice. He wants the Chinese to view Western style politics as 'disharmonious' and thus counter to deep cultural preferences. And who knows, maybe he can pull it off, it is a different place with 3000 yrs of diverged cultural DNA from ours. Of course Putin/Russia has achieved the passivity with a repressive program, but it's the passivity of the dead, and comes only at the cost of gutting every other aspect of the nation.

So when MX was proposed, being young and impressionable still in full Vietnam anti-war reaction mode, I wrote Carl Levin to oppose it. Got back sort of form lettter kind of thing. But I almost fell off my Lazy-Boy when a number of years later, after all the deals had been done with the proper assignments to the ash bins of history, I got another letter from Levin, unsoliticited - that basically said, "See, this was the plan all along, I really am a peacenik at heart!"

🙏 👍

Not to underestimate the importance of Taiwan in the current US/China chill, but even given that, I have to wonder if the US foreign policy establishment isn't ratcheting things with China more than just a little bit deliberately. My thesis would be that since we operated under the "wealth and markets would reform China organically" paradigm for so long, we were willing to pretty much give away the store in 30 yr of the previous relationship. With the realization that the paradigm was faulty, the US finds itself with no bargaining chips left - so what to do other than create some new ones. I think this is why the hardeneing toward China has been so bi-partisan. I don't think we really need much of what the last two admins have been hitting China with for our own purposes, but we do need to establish a bank of concessions to make in order to re-establish a more balanced negotiating status with it. And of course the howling from China must be at least in part because they see what has been basically a free lunch in previous negotiations with the West coming to an end. Maybe this is true, maybe it isn't, but I were a US President, it is precisely what I would be doing. Much like the way Reagan drove the Soviets to the table by increasing pressure with things like the MX, that were in the end, created expressly to be bargained away.

The fans, as usual, misdirect their anger. Javy in the lightening rod becase of the contract, but that's sunk cost, forget about it. A SS with a great glove is the one place a team can afford to carry a non-productive bat. The Tigers real issue is the line-up is too short overall, particularly at 3B, OF, an C. Greene, Torkelson, Rogers (who doesn't play enough), Carpenter, Vierling, and I suppose Cabrera, just is not enough hitters - period. It would be nice if SS was another big bat, but there are other positions they need to put better bats into where there is a better probability of finding one, and a better glove at 3B would be nice as well. I even get the impression the team is fine with Baez being the focus of frustration because it diverts attentions from the other deficiencies.

China is rolling out renewables and EVs at a pace the US can only dream about matching so the MAGA can save their glee. The problem with China is not that that they aren't moving faster than pretty much anyone on renewables, it's that their development aims have been so expansive that they are still rolling out new fossil at the same time as well -- we aren't going to change their mind on that, but it is also a transient situation, the former is going to overtake the latter. Barking at China about global warming is wasted energy, they are already more committed than we are by any objective measure, but Xi is going to act difficult and confrontational because that is his general stance to the US. He's not going to give any US admin any kind of positive PR. I'm sure given the relative volume of renewable power the two countries have rolled out this is another case of the Chinese viewing Americans as both presumptuous and uninformed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China India is where things need to change.

The MLB Draft is hard: So far Spencer has more career HR than the rest of the top 30 draft picks from 2020 in their combined MLB careers. Actually only 4 other position players from the top 30 picks have made the majors that I could find: Nick Gonzales(7) - who's played only 20 MLB games but is starting at 2b now for the Pirates. Patrick Bailey(13) - now the Giants starting catcher, 44 games total-all this year. He's got the job because Joey Bart has been sent to AAA Garrett Mitchell(20) - Brewers catcher. He was called up last year, apparently won the job this year but promptly messed up his shoulder after 16 games and may be out for the season. Also 44 career games. Jordan Walker(21) is a starting OF for the Cards called up this year 55 games. 781 OPS so far.

After all the unmade plays in LF in this one make you pine just a little bit more for Parker Meadows - who hit another double tonight.

the only question about this one is why Hinch left Skubal in so long. It wasn't like KC was having BaBIP luck - Tarik couldn't throw a breaking ball for a strike and could hardly get his FB in the zone. In hindsight, if he had gone and gotten him a run or two sooner...... You assume that if they were still in a playoff chase he would have managed differently..... ...wait, what?

think so.

went to injured list recently.

completely lost the breaking ball that inning.

Played some 1B/RF for us in 2019 - 119 games actually. Exactly 0.0 WAR in Detroit career Not bad for an Avila pick-up!

Yeah - he should at minimum be ahead of Short....

It probably depends on whose out their with them on D as well. If you have Edvinsson and Seider out there with a smaller front line it's going to matter less. Scotty did mixing and matching along those lines shift by shift in a game, don't really have a feel for how much Lalonde cares to mix and match in game yet. IDK - is he maybe a less rigid about lines than Blashill was? Not something I was paying that much attentions to last season.

and Greg Monroe was the 6th highest career scorer from that draft.

there is no free lunch! More seriously, I wonder though. Most pro athletes don't suffer from self-doubt - I don't think you can if you are going to succeed. So how many believe they would find themselves in a situation like that because they didn't perform? But I agree that from the general angle that if a team develops a bad rep with players it certainly matters.

maybe - but in general it's not strength that goes first, it's reflex speed. So in that case getting shorter to the ball could certainly help - it's sort of what Cabrera has done - shorten everything up and give up his power to maintain his abiity to get to the fastball to at least maintain some OBP. But look at Javy in the field - does it look like his reflexes are going? The curse with the Tigers hitters seem to be 'being in between' - which you see looking at Haase, Maton, and some times Torkelson and the fix for that is as much mental as physical. But javy is so abnormal at the plate that it's admittedly hard to tell what's going on with him just watching. Obviously some of these guys just can't hit MLB pitching, but some like Haase and Javy have shown maybe they can.

If the Tigers want to be rid of Javy they can just bench him and he will opt out. Of course it could get pretty ugly in the clubhouse but that would be the price. Of course if they can't put some kind of reasonable replacement on the field in his place it might make for an interesting MLBPA grievance.

Maybe it was a packet and it was sent UPS/Fedex and then subcontracted to the USPS for Sunday delivery? AFAIK USPS still does not to Sunday delivery of US Mail but they do sub-contract delivery on Sunday - which is what the recent SCOTUS case was about.

How he votes on bills is not as important as that his vote keeps Schumer in place instead of McConnell, No comparison matters much beyond that one because that is what stands between us and effective control of Capitol Hill by the Freedom Caucus.

Because in a normal world it's probably considered abusive, prejudicial, and even malicious for the legal system to make any public announcements about prosecutions other than the actual filings. When he is charged it becomes a matter of public record - that's how it's supposed to go. The system doesn't really anticipate perps using their prosecutions as means to politically martyr themselves!

So lots of reporting about Javy's current problem being that he's late on the fast ball and all kinds of mechanical prescriptions about what he should do. But all this ignores that Javy didn't used to get beat on fastball with his current mechanics. I believe Javy's problem on the fast ball is the same one Tork has had, which is that you are late on the fastball when your confidence sucks because that uncertainty delays your natural reflex ability just enough that you can't pull the trigger quickly enough. Watching this team try to 'control the zone' is mostly telling me that there is a point where too much concentration on looking for pitches just makes it more difficult to hit any of them. I've becoming pessimistic that this current Tiger org has enough understanding of the important *non-mechanical* aspects of hitting to be successful coaching their hitters.

never underestimate the vanity of an American politician of any party.