gehringer_2

Correct - depends on whether 2023/4 Hronek is going to be 2022/3 Hronek or 2021/22 Hronek.

The SO and I go around about it once every couple of years. I'm a Chem E by training, and she's a Microbiologist so no newbie to chemistry wise either - I won't let her have a service put 2,4D on our lawn and she gets frustrated with me over it. You really need a better reason than dandelions to spread halogenated hydrocarbons around your environment willy-nilly.

The two for me have been the Vrana saga and the Hronek trade. Yzerman can easily win the latter if Pellikka turns into a better player than Hronek. Other than those I don't have anything to complain about. Well, I might have been tempted to trade Bertuzzi before last season, but for all I know maybe they tried.

the standard needs to be that a year of college at a state university should not cost any more than a student can reasonably be expected to earn in a summer job. In any society interested in participating in the future of civilization there needs to be at least that level of support for higher ed. That's the correct compromise between free - which would waste resources on the unserious, and still allowing any student with reasonable desire the chance at a degree.

fair point.

But that the Tigers were anywhere near that particular problem.....

well I know we have given up lead runs on balls bounced past Maton's right. Whether AJ would have had Candelario there had he been on the roster and whether he would have made the unmade plays we can only speculate.

I still don't understand the theory behind making betting in a certain *place* against the rules. The NFL appears to be the only sports org with that twist.

Since he's young player (<26) they can buy him out at 1/3, so they save about $2M. The cap saving is similar but it gets spread out over more years.

well for certain we don't get to see all the wheels turning in the Yzerman FO so not everthing necessarily looks like it makes sense. Just looking back at the Vrana situation - there had to stuff going on that they just have kept to themselves. Not implying there is anything wrong with Yamamoto at all, just that whatever the reasons are that they aren't interested, we're not likely to learn them.

I guess I'd turn it around. If he's not part of your plans, buying him out is fairer to him and saves you cap.

and also maybe a little wet behind the ears hubris on Harris' part to the effect of "I can find a better 3B than Jeimer for less money." TBH that is exactly what I expected given the hype around Harris' hiring.

except that the skill 'progression' around the IF is not completely linear. A SS needs more range than a 3B so maybe you try a SS with limited range at 3B, but a 3b needs more 1st move quickness than a SS so not every adequate SS is going to be adequate at 3rd. Peralta was the case study there. People assumed that he should have been better at 3rd than SS because he appeared range limited, he wasn't good at 3rd. To my eye, Maton does not have that quick 1st move - esp to his right. If he can't play SS then if you think the bat will eventually prove out and you want him, you have to find room at 2B.

I'm just sad because the pitcher (and hitter) leading the team in WAR are still leading it after being out a full month.

Not so much forgot - more like promoted out of 'cub' status. He is the #1 catcher on the ML team and becoming a top half catcher in the league, even if for some reason his own team doesn't talk about him in those terms.

I guess what they also saw was: "if we're not going to be good, why spend $7M to be marginally less bad" Of course now that comes back to bite them with the division being so bad they can be bad and still contend.

right. and that is where the basic problem is majoritarian democracy. A minority that is segregated into a small number of legislative districts will never have enough political leverage to reverse these kinds of decisions and is in fact the recipe for attracting them. I'm not saying the answer to America's race problems is to throw out democracy, but that we first at least have to understand the basics of what is going on under the hood before we can figure out how to make the system work better for everyone. The weaknesses inherent in the system have to on the table for discussion instead of wrapped in a gauzy shroud of Founder worship, secured by American flag lapel pins. Otherwise we waste our time and energy arguing peripheral issues that never change anything anyway. But it goes back to my basic contention about almost all of human existence: Humans build conceptual models of how things work but they are never more than approximations of the underlying reality. So the trick is not to fall so much in love with your models that you fail to see that every model breaks down, requries constant tweaking, exceptions, regulation. In the US we have become really bad at this. We over commit to or cannonize models when most things are only good ideas up to a point: 'Free' markets being one easy example but the list is long and hits things at both ends of the political spectrum. And yes the current Constitution is even one. There is a reason they made it amendable, but you woudn't know it anymore.

The theory being that a single here and there is more available against a shifted D anytime a player is willing to take it, like when your team is really scuffling against a pitcher having a good day? That's not unreasonable logic. OTOH, I think the end of the drought in the present case is easier to see simply as the result of a confluence of events leading to a particular team management putting a really terrible team on the field.

I should give Vierling more consideration - He is the guy any OF promoted from Toledo will have to beat out. He's team controlled, he covers a lot ground on D even it doesn't have the showiest glove, he has little or no platoon split (everyday eligible) and one of the few hitters who's managing an OPS+ > 100.

Sadly, Thomas jumped the shark a couple of decades ago.

the French Agriculture Research Institute?

looking for a starting 9. I don't see who is likely to be more productive than Ibanez - yet. McKinstry is the #1 bench guy going into next season I would think.

Maybe a little counter intuitive take here - but in June his OBP was nice with walks and singles to right, but he was looking for more ISO. He moved closer to the plate to turn on more pitches, but I think he got a little too close - he was was windmilling on inside pitches, lots of pop-ups and misses, then the last couple of days I'm pretty sure he made an adjustment to his adjustment - backed off a little bit, and bingo - found the the sweet spot and put a few in the seats. The pitchers are going to adjust again - but Torkelson now seems willing to keep responding with his own adjustments maybe in a way he wasn't last year. If he has the talent, then he'll get better at making his adjustments, they'll come faster, the adjustment slumps will be shorter, he'll know how to get in and out of different approaches as part of his toolbox. But the thing that makes me optimisitc is that he is showing a lot of different tools. He can work a walk, last month he was showing a good approach to RF, now he's pulling screamers down the LF line into the seats. If he gets to where he can combine it all together, we might have a pretty nice hitter.

Absolutely this. When a hitter has natural ability, get the hell out of his way and let him use it.

Of course the key to uplifting the under class lies less in any legal remedies than in economic ones that compress income disparity by raising the standard of living for the bottom quartile (or so) of wage earners. When lower quartile families are able to amass social and economic capital, then the economic mobility of their children is enabled. When you look at some of the great destructors of Black family capital in the last century - one was the Wilson purge of Black Americans from the US Government employment, which was certainly intentional government action, but the second and probably larger one was the destruction of Black home ownership equity (and thus destruction of any nascent post WWII Black middle class) in the post 1960's collapse of so many urban residential areas in places like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis, Philadelphia, SoCal, etc. Surburban white flight was a total economic catastrophe for Black Urban America, and while it was absolutely contributed to in very large measure by government policies, it was largely policies that were not intended or even undertood at the time to be overtly discriminatory, though there was a lot of discriminatory behavior on the part of non-government actors in real estate and banking. Then the collapse in high wage union employment that began building directly on the heels of that disaster, sawed off one more ladder for who had suffered those loses to climb back. So the interactions between class, race, federal trade and economic policy, private racism, as well as law, *all* drive the economic and social disparites that comprise the litany KB Jackson details in her dissent. The solutions in turn have to comprise more than legal ones as well. As an example I rank Biden's efforts to rebuild high wage employment for non-college educated workers as having far greater potential to reduce racial disparity in American than wherever the law lands on college AA policies.