gehringer_2

Torkelson is not going anywhere.

one of the worst ABs we'll see from Riley.

One might question the basic assumption that it is possible to play great team defense without letting players settle into regular playing positions. But if one did, they wouldn't be working for this FO.

Tigers wasting a lot of good pitching already this season.

Will Canha still be in the game when they come back from break?

Sometimes you get a corner playing center and no-one takes charge. Perez had been playing CF in Toledo, he forgot to yield.

Catch the DAMN ball.

Wenceel is going to turn him into Wally Pip

Tork has really changed his approach the last few games. Lots of nice controlled swings and balls to the opposite field.

My first recollection of him hitting national media was the messy break with Ivanna and subsequent interlude with Marla Maples and its ending. Tons of 'Enquirer' level ink on those. Then he started showing up in places like the Howard Stern program. He was a regular in the grocery check-out aisle media world. So he was a pre-formed vehicle to draw the reality TV audience demographic when NBC put together 'Apprentice'

Compher can forecheck, the only thing I've seen Copp do on defense is get caught up ice. I see it as one of maybe three things. 1) the wingers know they are slower than the opponent with possession so won't challenge because they are scared of ending up completely out of the play 2) they are being coached not to commit because the coach believes #1 is true whether or not it is 3) they just don't have the heart in their game or physical stamina to play hard at the boards on D. Take your pick. EDIT: I agree Fabri tries hard but his anticipation is poor - he just ends up chasing plays mostly.

Didn't even make it to May before starting to lose starting pitching depth.

Just listened to the Yzerman presser. He seemed to want to entertain two contradictory views, the first being that the team had to get better, the other being that he seemed to love all the current players. Not sure that isn't mutually exclusive! I thought one interesting thing was that at one point Lalonde said they had made significant progress reducing grade A chances against, but OTOH, he went out of his way to praise the goaltending. I guess it's just good politics since goalies are hard to come by in recent years and you don't want to prejudice you case with any goalie you might need to bring back, but it seems undeniable that if grade A chances were down and goals against weren't your goaltending could be better. Maybe since they know they're not likely to make any moves for a goalie, the best thing is to not to knock the current crew. Yzerman seemed to be putting Cossa back at GR next season-though at this point we expect him to talk like that. I think based on the way Yzerman hit the issue of poor defense by forwards, Lalonde has his work cut out. He has to get the forwards to play harder/more effectively in their own end.

Of course it does.

I think I did this pretty much this math earlier. If Seider and Raymond go for $16.5M, that's about a $14.5M increase (each now cost just under 1M). If you cut bait on both Kane and Gost that leaves you with up to $12M. That's still major money in the NHL. BUT you have to be willing to do all the rest of you fill-ins from GR, which Yzerman is probably loath to do.

As much as we rag on the Wing Dmen, and as much of it is justified, I also wonder how much of the defensive deficiency is how little quality two way play we get from our forwards. All things being equal, look at our GF/GA and to me a Dman should be a higher priority than a Center, but.....all things are never equal. I think it could well be that another forward player or two that plays two-way as aggressively as Larkin, esp at Center, might make guys at the Chiarot and Maata level look a lot more effective than they do now. How often do you see the Wings regain possession between the half-boards and the blue line? That region is not the responsibility of your Dmen, and the Wings do not generate anywhere near enough puck pressure there.

Was it Nokes or Fick who was the dead pull hitter - virtually every ball in the air right down the 1st base line?

I'll go out on a limb and say I am. There is still a chance he is back, but only if no other team offers him >2yrs. And I'd almost be surprised to see the Wings offer him 2.

Another note to throw in the mix is that Saban complained about the players on this team on his way out the door. Might just be be sour grapes on his part, or maybe he wasn't getting as much of the kind of player he wanted recently.

No doubt something to this.

I'd maybe put it in 'categorical vs continuous' variable terms. They have control of some things and no control of others, e.g, they have zero control over the House agenda and scheduling, but they certainly do control whether Johnson survives a motion to vacate.

Seeking moral clarity or consistency from any profit based organization is an exercise in futility. Such is the nature of activity in the pursuit of profit. That shouldn't be taken so much as a bad thing as just a recognition of reality. You don't get maple syrup from an orange, you don't bother listening to anything a corporation says about its "beliefs" or "ethics" because it can't possibly have any. By definition, everything a corporation does is transactional. Whatever they tell their employees (or any other segment of the public) does not flow from "belief", it flows from marketing to those employees in the pursuit of a workforce to produce profit and will be non-operative as soon as it's seen as an impediment to profit. That's just the way it is. Anyone who goes to work for a corporation expecting more is as logically impaired as a Supreme Court justice that voted for Citizen's United. 😉

I think he is certainly leveraging his critics' believe that putting him in jail will only help him to keep pushing boundaries to prove his power. But like everything else with Trump - it's a con. Throwing his ass behind bars it won't gain him one more supporter he doesn't already have and blowing up the facade of his invincibility will only depress the supporters he does have.

What's striking is how this kind of projection derives so directly from Russian paradigms. It may not prove direct Russian penetration of the GOP, but it does at minimum show how aspirational a Russian system of politics is for them.

we have one guy back - and that's Riley. After his 1 for 12 start in March, with today's 2/4 BB, his April OPS has climbed over 900.