gehringer_2

He's gotten stronger on his skates - which as Buddha notes - has improved his play in the corners.

The average LW in the NHL is 6' 3/4". Zadina a 6-0 190. He's a whole 3 lb less than freaking Conner McDavid. He seems smaller because he plays smaller. If he's going to play for Yzerman that's what he has to change. And injuries kill careers, no doubt about it.

you've got the wrong manager.

LOL - Schoop would be pretty easy to forget about at this point...

Vierling has a total of 26 career chances at 2B and 3B and he's never played SS. He's not exactly a drop in replacement for Zack Short.

yzerman talks about a guys having the will to play in the NHL. That is what Zadina lacks mostly. The inability to finish is perplexing, but he could still be a nice two way contributor if he just played harder, but he doesn't. You get a shift here and there where you see flashes, but then the light goes dim. Now maybe he just doesn't have the physical constitution to go hard every shift at NHL level (i.e. pain level) and that never showed in juniors when he was better than most guys he played against and didn't have to go full tilt 100% of the time.

good riddance I'd say. Catchers jerking pitches all over the place has gotten ridiculous. The batter shouldn't suffer for a catcher's ability to fool an umpire. But much like the ptich clock, the umps brought this on the game by their own lack of use of their own authority. The first ump that saw a catcher jerk a ball back into the strike zone should have told that catcher that on any pitch where he didn't stay put where he caught it, he would automatically assume it was a ball.

I'm sure Hinch would love to have another RH OF, I just don't see where you get him on the 26. You'd be down to one IF on the bench unless they they go to 12 pitchers, but that seems pretty unlikey also.

damn - just lost a post At any rate - i wouldn't compare Zadina and Ras at any point in their careers. Ras was hurt half the year before they resigned him but in 21-22 the improvement was obvious. Plus he has more potential because of his size to contribure to the team Yzerman wanted to build. Yzerman still holds that he could turn into a decent player. We are probbly going to get to find out because odds are he will be back at camp.

LOL - 'everybody said so at the time' about the pick too. Still wasted money if he doesn't play for them, just as wasted as the pick was. You can't really separate the two.

sure, as a general value proposition Jimenez may not have been enough to bring a starting 3B. But that's tactics, the need to fill 3b was a strategic requirement.

It's NHL, not the NBA, IDK if I'd call 3x$1.8M/yr small by NHL standards. It's about the middle of the RW salary list and he's been less than a middling player. Of course maybe he was just being diplomatic but Yzerman was still holding that he thinks Zadina can make it in the NHL Asking to be traded sort of tells you he doesn't want to play for Lalonde though, which could make it tough for him if no-one picks him up and he has to come to RW camp.

IDK - Pence doesn't seem like he'd be a bad guy to have to spend non-political time around. Believes a lot of bat-**** crazy stuff yes, but he's sort of an old school polite, courtly kind of guy. To me he's like Romney without the chic and the Saville-Row suits: A guy I'd trust my stuff with, just not my government.

It tells you how odd Fla politics must be. In most places it's generally hard to get elected to anything if you generate that kind of personal miasma around yourself.

My singular memory about Zadina was on a PP one day. Pretty sure the Wings were trailing and needed the goal. They gave Zadina a PP shift and the 4 other Wings went all in for him. They must have set him up for at least 7 SOG from the slot, and he put every single damn one into the middle of the goalie;s chest. It was an encapsulation of the team having gone out of their way to help him succeed and his inability to justify it.

LOL - Keith and Malloy took a night off but are right back at it. Keith 3/4, Malloy with the HR and 2 BB

I assume in hockey if they pick him up they have to pick up the contract - unlike baseball where you get a waived player for the minimum? If that's true he's stuck here. Also makes the contract a pretty terrible decision.

absofreakinglutely

he was playing something like 50% but it needs to get to more like 60%. They keeping thinking a switch is going to flip for Haase, but even if you throw out this season, Haase's HR rate over '21-'22 was one in 20 PA. Jake's HR rate this season is better than that anyway (one in ~17) and he's the better catcher. I understand keeping him healthy but he'll still get plenty of rest playing more than Hinch has been willing to use him. At this point there is little reason to play Hasse more for the sake of offense.

Ain't it the truth.

So much for Lanford and Crews both being *clearly* better than the rest of the field?

Sure - maybe just a moonshoot there, but then again, you can't give Harris a pass for not putting a better 3b on the field (or in the near pipeline) by saying he knew the guys he picked up as possible replacements couldn't play there in the first place. >Was there, in your opinion? Not my job man! If you have a working knowledge of league personal and you know you aren't going to find a 3b, why do you let Candelario go? And of you say Ilitch didn't give him a choice I'm going to say he may have already failed as a GM if his relationship with his owner is such that he can't move him on a $7M decision. That's my angle on it. I was fine with letting JC go because my assumption was Harris was going to competently fill the hole. Now in retrospect, my hindsight view definitely swings 180 because he didn't. Now that's not to say I'm grabbing a pitchfork. As posted above, I've liked most of his personnel moves other than 3b - nobody's going to bat 1000. But I'm not going to give him a pass and blame 3B on some forces outside Harris' control either.

So I was just looking at Jeimer's splits for the last few years and what's interesting is that his performance as a RHB has been pretty consistent in the 675-725 OPS range. But it's his performance as a LHB that has yo-yo'd up and down from year to year - up to over 800 and then back down into the 600's. Now the funny thing is the wrist issue was in his left wrist and supposedly bothered him batting RH as per here. That actually dovetails with that fact that his RH performance has never gotten close to where it was in 2018 since. But it doesn't explain why his LH batting has been up and down year to year.

The odd coindence is that what I would say were Harris' only two misses both related to 3B, Maton and Malloy. And Malloy may yet end up a valuable MLB hitter, he's just apparently not going to do it at 3B. A couple of possibilities: 3B just happens to be an unusually hard position to fill right now, or who ever was assigned to grade 3B glove work wasn't up to the task.

The whole Superior coast. It's best to do this not too long after the spring thaw when water levels are high and the wildflowers are peaking, but if you start at the WI border and work east on the Superior shore you can spend two days just stopping and hiking into all the waterfalls. Awesome