gehringer_2

Yup. Well noted. That is exactly what makes you wonder. Hinch will tell you that the results are getting worse because as he gets older his approach is getting less tenable=more reason to change. The Tigers are paying the bill, they get the choice about which to believe.

If you want to go back to the comparison with Malone - in his first two years in the league he was a worse FT shooter than Duren, but Basketball reference doesn't have shooting % by distance breakdowns for the 1st several years of Malone's career. He was about 50% on long twos by the time BR has the records, but that was about 10yrs in for him.

This is true, but I think that given the direction they are pushing Javy coaching wise, if the coaching is successful it's more likely to appear as OBP, in which case it will have to be a significant upgrade if it is not accompanied by more power. Of course we've talked about it before, the nightmare fail scenario is that under Tiger coaching Javy just continues to spiral down and he get released, only to land with another team that leaves him alone and he ends up back as the old low OBP but useful power guy he was before he came to Det all while being being paid by us. Note I'm not saying the Tigers are wrong to try to 'fix' Javy, just that 'fixing' batters is a crapshoot that always has some possibility of blowing up in your face. You probably have to try though.

Fielding % is almost as bad a stat as pitcher wins, but that said, no doubt Javy's attention did wander too many times last year - he remains capable of elite play with the glove. What amuses me about Javy's career is that as good as he is with the glove, he is one of the consistently worst throwers to 1st I have ever watched. He's got a canon but zero accuracy. What he has had is the almost magical luck to have spent most of his career throwing to Rizzo, one of the best ever, spending the year at 2B after he lost Rizzo, and then lucking into Torkelson, who graded either tops or maybe it was #2 league wide at saving throws. If he had normal luck of the draw in 1Bs I absolutely believe he'd have been forced to 2B long ago.

Maduro didn't have Chavez's charisma either. Once you break the system it doesn't matter.

'lack of' is putting it mildly. In 113 professional games Duran has not made a basket >16ft.

Maybe the disconnect is mostly because my field is engineering, but I don't think I've ever been through any kind of in depth interview process where anything in the process had anything to do with my competence or likely success level in the job. I always got the impression the processes were mostly designed to justify the employment levels in the personnel depth. The only things I want when I hire someone is detail on what they have already actually done, and to talk to the people who have working with them in the past. Never saw much value in anything else. We have this conceit in the US about talk - it extends in all kind of areas - employment interviews, politic decision making, you name it. We put far too much stock in what people say when we should simply be looking at what they have done. Talk is cheap, and never cheaper than when money or jobs are on the line. The idea is to hire the best person to DO the job, not the one who can tell the best stories about doing it.

I'm not optimistic. Oil is still huge in Tx and only gets more politically desperate with each EV sold.

I'm more than willing to cut them slack for while Willie was there, but the problem extended through the whole broadcast when they didn't have a good excuse. To keep it simple. Craig is talking too much, both on the radio and tv.

The only thing you can count on with NFL rule making is that they never admit they made a mistake by just changing a rule back, they will change some other rule to try and get back to where they were while leaving the change it turned out they didn't really like in place.

Mormon's are under conflicting forces. The are generally on the side of the cultural conservatism of the GOP, but being a minority sect that has been considered heretical by other Christian groups in the past, they are also uniquely sensitive to 1st amendment establishment issues and should also be/are concerned about the threat of evangelical Christian nationalism.

I also wonder how the unavoidably obvious shrinkage of the GS Lake intersects with GOP climate denialism.

Hmm. Under current rules you also get a touch back to the 25 on a fair catch so that would have to be repealed or moved back also or you still would't get a return on most kicks inside the 10.

Nate Cohn with another dive into polling issue in the Times. An interesting outcome he is seeing is that there is a split between web polling and phone polling and it tracks the age of the voter. Obviously pollsters don't like web polling because the sample self-selects, but ignoring the actual outcomes, Cohn says that in web polling he doesn't see any of the supposed drop of in Biden's support among <30-35 voters, that is only showing up in phone polls. I think it's just another bit of evidence that beginning with Millennials, phone polling now probably generates just as self-selected a sample as a web poll because the young generations do not have the same predisposition to answer their phone just because it rings that much of the older generations are still conditioned with. No longer being able to get a reasonably unbiased sample by just ringing phones at random is the 700 gorilla in the corner for the future of political polling.

stat of the day from reviewing Northrups BR page: In 1968 a 770 OPS was good for a 129 OPS+

Yup. It was probably years ago - Al and George in the booth maybe - talking about always having 3 gloves - a new one worn in practice to get it broken in, an already broken in spare, and your game glove. So if you are playing IF/OF/1B with any frequency you're immediately at 9. Wasn't Kelley also an emergency catcher? That would have been another one for him.....

That's what happens when you make yourself toxic to both parties.

I remember when Cade McNamara started playing for MI, everyone was initially struck by his self-confidence and seeming command. But then we started to see he was actually a little off the deep end and detached from reality in his own self-assessment. A lot of fine lines a star has to be able to stay on the right side of. 🙄

I don't think they have shown any reluctance to sign FA's per se, they just don't judge the risk/reward to be so good at the top end of the market so they have shopped mostly mid market or lower -- and that's just a reflection of their basic view that depth is going to win you more in the long run than having small numbers of top of market players. Other than at QB I tend to agree that is probably the right approach.

And Johnny Kane has to go. He can't get through any kind of interview without either making it about himself or breaking down into schoolgirl twittering. He's embarrassing to watch and when, as it usually does, his silly mugging starts stepping on the game play, you've crossed all the lines with me. Enough already.

People's motivations are always more complex than simple explanations, but you really can't help thinking that at least in part, Monte took this gig looking for the payday and figuring it was a bad team and poor management and he didn't have the support of the GM so he was bound to get fired pretty quick without having to put in too much effort. And while all the first part of that is speculation, the last part doesn't appear to be!

I can believe this. Another factor that may be in play is Monroe showing off for Pena. Monroe has on more than one occasion told the story that when they played together they were sort of blood brothers, both aspiring to get into broadcasting and doing mock PBP together. Now that Carlos has joined the group Monroe has even more reason to strut his stuff.

Both Listening and watching games this preseason it's almost like the guys have forgotten how to deal with the pitch clock and. are constantly expecting to have more time. Monroe especially is too long with everything he's trying to say. Obviously a color guy today has to figure out how to break his offerings down into pieces he can slide in between pitches. Plus Jason has a lot more to say than Shepherd used to so Monroe has less time altogether. Also, if we recall, with Step, he would often just let plays go uncalled if someone was still talking, one of the worst aspects of the previous Bally broadcasts. Benotti not so much yet (and hopefully never).

he and Dickerson were also running into one another Sunday. Maybe Dan had gotten used to his sideman not offering a lot in Jim's last couple seasons but they spent much too much time talking over one another Sunday.

I think the unknown for JJ is where the ceiling is on his deep ball accuracy and he just doesn't have enough attempts to have a sure projection. He just wasn't asked to show it much. So maybe he goes to a team that designs the O around what he can do now, which is a fair amount, and they hope the rest develops in a few seasons and they have a top QB.