gehringer_2

they won 78 last season, they need to get to >90 to be competing for the playoffs. So call it 92 wins and a 14 game improvement. To accomplish half of that this season would require them to get to 85wins - which is conceivable, but not all that likely - they would have to play 600 the rest of the way. OTOH, if they were on track for the playoffs, Flaherty would still be here, so that would add 2-5 wins. The the other view would be that if they do at least win any number greater than last year after losing Olsen, Mize, trading Flaherty and having Lange turn into a pumpkin, then the line-up has gotten stronger and they could be poised to make up a lot of ground in 25. The irony is that while you can point to all the unexpected pitching loses, it's still runs scored where they are lagging by 50+ runs of being in the same class as the playoff teams, while despite the pitching losses, their runs allowed would be competitive in most divisions.

No 'need' for Malloy in the OF either for that matter. Sweeney makes the most sense, but that all depends on how much they see Sweeney as actually auditioning to replace Javy vs just getting his feet wet.

Malloy has sort of plateaued at about 700 OPS. Not terrible, not great. But he has only hit one HR in his last 80 PA.

and he still lowered his ERA.

Going out in a blaze of glory.

Well at least the series didn't end up as 3 shutouts, which would have been pretty terrible.

Or if Dominguez doesn't double clutch. Guess he couldn't find the laces or something but it was probably the difference.

Short lived euphoria

We've seen Cora do this multiple times. Just makes no sense. What is he even looking at?

Tork with the 1st decent AB by a Tiger.

Pet Peeve with Dickerson. He talks about pitch count way more than is needed, especially this early in the game. Once you note it, you don't have to harp on it. He gets to be a broken record.

If he accepts MiLB assignment and keeps playing he can probably get a ST invite from somebody and give it another shot. He's probably an above average AAA player and that's not a bad living. But he's almost 30 so he probably doesn't have long left before he has to join the real world anyway....

Does that mean that the Nazis are smarter than the average Trump voter?

LOL - let me clarify that I don't mean "Lange" as Lange actually was, but "Lange" as the concept of what he had promised in '23, i.e. a guy there behind Foley.

He really understands nothing about economics, which may be why he's been bankrupt multiple times. If tariffs actually work, they will stimulate domestic production, which means tariff revenue will fall and you will eventually need a new revenue source anyway. In the meantime, it also will mean that government revenue will gyrate all over the place as consumption patterns change and as all kinds of factors overseas that drive the cost of imports (which are all largely out of our control) change import buying patterns and the resulting revenue stream. For better or worse, one the biggest virtues of income taxes is their consistency. Even in a major downturn, unemployment seldom goes up by more than a few percent, and it's usually lower tax rate individual that lose the most jobs, so the Gov is able to carry on in reasonable shape through the ups and downs of an economic cycle. A government that collected any major part of its revenues from tariffs would be a budgeting disaster. And of course, ALL taxes in the economy are paid by consumers - no matter what their type. *Any* tax on a product or corporation is ultimately passed on in the product price, any tax on the consumer is obviously also paid by the consumer. This is a rule with no exceptions. The most you can ever do with tax policy is manipulate which consumers pay what percentage of governments total income.

When Golda was PM, Israel still considered itself a secular country. I wouldn't be surprised if the religious right in Israel today would refuse to join a coalition gov with a female PM. People complain about 1st past the post election systems, but Israel is what you get when you don't have it - the power ends up concentrating in the most marginal outliers in a ruling coalition, and one day 50 yrs later you wake up and find you've ceded so much ground to the crazies that your country and government is becoming the mirror image of your enemy's extremism.

Pitching and pitchers always remain a mystery. Why doesn't a guy with a power arm like Foley throw a 4 seamer when he goes to the top of the zone - he'd be way more likely to get the swing and miss. I assume it has to be because his 4 seamer must be flat as a pancake. So then back to the question - if he can throw a live two seamer, why would his be 4 seamer be 'dead'. Who knows - it's pitching mystery.

Tigers need to get another pitcher behind Foley like Lange was last year. Jason not cut out for the 9th.

actually when there is a LH pitcher I like it because a left-center field camera doesn't give you the track of a left hand pitch at all. Which is why I like the CF camera directly behind the pitcher - though I know most people don't. Anyway, I'm going to date myself here but way waay back in the day they used the camera behind the plate a lot - maybe because the optics on the CF cameras weren't good enough.

Channelling John HIller.

Actually I wrote it backward. He had his RH batting glove in his left hand and he had his right hand extended which missed the plate to the outside. The left hand (the side toward the diamond) got folded under his body. So the was actually too far outside to get the plate with his right hand. So he's safe either if he leads with his left hand or if he slides inside enough to touch with his right.

two innings in a row wasting runners.

yeah - that one was counter intuitive, you normally slide to the outside of HP because the throw is coming from the field, but Tork should have slid to the inside since the throw was coming from behind HP. On the inside his left hand would have been in. Live and learn.

Didn't he put in his retirement before his unit was even called up? How is this even a discussion when the guy was already way past his 20?

In the system 8 yrs? Whod’a thunk?