gehringer_2

that's easy to say, but it's just human reality that a competitor with no reasonable chance to compete can't give you his best. It's the situation that drives those competitive hormone releases. There are individuals who probably aren't affected but when you take a whole team, some effect is inevitable. And some of it is more objectively real. When you can't pitch and are always behind, it snowballs - you take pressure off the other staff, give the opposing manager more options to use against you.

the street will love the cost cutting, but if their route back to relevance is investment to catch up to TMSC and they cut thier CapEx plans to chase quarterly valuation, they are punching their ticket to being IBM V2.0

IDK - for a while I was watching his AB's to see if he was being more aggressive on strikes early in the count and it was maybe some days yes, maybe some days not so much. The increase in his walk rate this month is striking though - could be he's done something to get quicker to the ball to give him more time on his pitch recognition but that's purely speculative. He had high walk rates in college and the minors but was never consistently above 10% in the majors. If he sustained a higher walk rate on his return that would be worth something.

Six times leading the league in OPS+ is going to get anyone a lot of votes, but they'll still be folks who think the counting stats are not enough (<2000 hits, <400 HR through the rabbit ball era) - but he's still got time to work on that if he can put together a couple more healthy years.

certainly. But if the walk rate against MLB pitching ends up 10% and he looses 20pt of the BA on the transition, he'd be close to where he was when they sent him down. I think I'd like to see another 50+ AB with the Hens, but my guess is that he's coming back up quite soon.

Ouch.

It's a beautiful symmetry isn't it? Trump is a narcissistic sociopath whose empathy ends at his own epidermis, while the people that go to work for him almost without exception see him as nothing more than the means to their own ends.

yeah - still a little cloudy with Tork. He's got an 820 OPS for July, with a 396 OPB, but that's because he's got a >20% walk rate, contact wise he hit only 226 for over the period. Call him half-way there maybe.

on the bright side, Torkelson just hit one 441 ft in Indy.

needs more K's but that may come later if the stuff is there.

Can't really complain about Kieder. He had a QS if Hinch had taken him out at the end of 6.

2 hits and run. Can't win for losing.

Morans.

Players know that management has thrown in the towel. Hinch can say what he wants about everybody playing hard every day. They won't. And even if they do, it won't matter. 😢

Funny how context changes perspective. Knowing you don't have to extrapolate out 4 yrs, you watch him at the podium today there's no issue with his ability to do the job for now.

OK - we have an internecine dispute between two international organizations about an issue that I doubt can ever be resolved to universal satisfaction in a sport I'd just as soon see go away permanently. Well, as they say, whatever floats your boat 🤷‍♂️ But as Rhett said to Scarlet at the end of a long day, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." (as always, YMMV, offer not available in all states, void where prohibited.....)

But Detroit's system was miles behind in data, tech, training, coaching, International, everything. Avila wasting all the team's current assets was undoubted huge. But it was not the only thing that left them in a hole for so long. How many more picks might have turned into something and helped the Tigers avoid the length and depth of this collapse we'll never know. Not that Al exactly got much fixed very well, but he at least recognized the problem and has to be giving credit for beginning the move to modernity, and also getting the owner on board with that being the needed direction.

I know this is serious business for the competitors, but I can't help the amusement because these arguments are so futile. There are no right answers. You have gender, as how a person self-identifies, you have biological sex, as in what reproductive organs a person was born with, and then you have genetic sex, as in what chromosomes/genes a person is born with. And guess what? The three can either "align" or "mis-align" in every possible way. In the end, things like who should compete against whom is going to be a judgment call with a high level of arbitrariness involved. No matter what is decided, it will be unjust for someone - because we have to have those boxes that nature refuses to play neatly in.

DD could have been forgiven for trading prospects if he had done the companion work to get the scouting, drafting, and development science deployed to the minor league system so that the Tigers' pipeline would replenish after his trades. It wasn't the trades themselves as much as his lack of attention to the development end. The system didn't have to be barren just because he had traded a few guys.

Thnking about Sparky, I'll tell you what I think his biggest failing was, it was not using his credibility and stature to go to his owner than him that the management he had in place was doing a bush league job and needed to be replaced. It was funny because he took a stand against league management when the strike came, but he wouldn't do it for the sale of baseball in Detroit when he could have earlier.

Trump is not winning MI again.

This is what is so rich. Human beings have to have everything in neat little boxes. The problem is that nature itself doesn't give a damn about the little boxes that Society ties itself to, and is busy doing stuff all over the map all the time and the people with their little boxes have never been able to stand it and have since time immemorial been making life hell for all those perfectly human children of God, who were born exactly the way nature made them.

Israel today also claiming confirmation that they got Deif earlier this month. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/01/israel-hamas-war-iran-haniyeh-hezbollah-news/

he is one sick puppy

Bingo.