gehringer_2

Yeah - you've hit on what is sort of the odd part. I think an alternate explanation might be that he suppliment binged, overdid it and ballooned up some. And the issue at the workout was cramping - which could also fit that scenario.

I got lost on the sequence. He left the scene, called a friend, told them to go to the scene, the friend immediately rolls over on him and tells the cops who sent him. So how does AC get back there again? Did the cops call him, bring him back? He just showed up? He's in walking distance? And he has no shoes? Whatever....

I like Hinch is some aspects - I think he has been great with the bullpen. I think he has squeezed a lot of performance out of a lot of marginal pitchers out there. OTOH, I simply can't escape the feeling that there is something in his approach to managing that negatively affects this team's offense. Yeah - it's all shadows and innuendo but it too many things keep pointing in the same direction - for instance - the team offense was pretty good in ST, sure it's ST but a lot guys were looking relaxed and ready to go at the plate - and the season starts and it's like switch flipped. But what was something I remember Hinch saying?: It was more or less "We don't do a lot of preparation for ST games, but when the seasons starts we'll be much more in depth" I hope they wake up and look good once they are away from the TB pitching staff and I can persuade myself I am wrong.

I know, it's irritating to have links posted to paywalled stuff, but there an excellent NYT article offering a retrospective of how Sweden's low mandate Covid policies actually turned out in the end. There is a lot of good stuff in there if you can get access, but I'll excerpt a few conclusions and summarize by noting a couple of things: 1-it turns out there is no such thing as 'herd immunity' for Covid - it's just not that kind of virus so all the conversation around that question early in the pandemic was futile. Wrong infection model. Covid has never and will never recede because of infection resistance in the population -rather it has become and will remain endemic. The corollary to that is that Covid vaccination does not stop populaton transmission - what it does do is protect the vaccinated from severe illness. To try and give an explanation of this: Covid is a virus that can replicate and spread via the nasal mucosa - so you can have good systemic immunity from it via vaccination - while you can still be 'infected' and spread it because you can carry it 'superficially'. (What has now been achieved in unvaccinated population is simply past exposure immunity, but that came at the cost of the unvaxxed populations suffering higher mortality rates.) 2-For Covid what turned out to be important was raising serious disease resistance in the popuation via vaccination. That is why Sweden's experience did not turn out to be much worse than average despite the lack of mitigation mandates - they didn't push mitigation that hard but they did get very good vaccination compliance. (And they got a lot of voluntary compliance with other 'guidlines' as well as they are a socially cohesive population.) final word from the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/opinion/sweden-pandemic-coronavirus.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-variants-shadow-lda-unique-diversify-time-cutoff-30&alpha=0.05&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=710496947&impression_id=cca9189e-d21a-11ed-a71a-b71ef5b5bdcc&index=6&pgtype=Article&pool=pool%2F5bffce26-a993-4ed4-af7d-8894fdf413ca&region=footer&req_id=251251044&shadow_vec_sim=0.35518996439878153&surface=eos-most-popular-story&variant=0_pers_bandit_diversified

Sure, Maton and Vierling and Nevin and Ibenaz and McKinstry may turn into solid adds and in 6 weeks it will be clear that Harris is a bottom feeding talent procurement genius. I'm just waiting to feel the vibe. 🐻

It's not only a matter of the marque free agents. It's generally the case of there not having been much of anything done large or small that made you think, "Hmmm, that was clever." You can't help but contrast the Tiger's off season to that of the Lions, where Brad Holmes has been impressing at each turn. So we'll grant that baseball is a tougher environment, I still kept holding out hope right up until last Thursday he would make at least one move of some kind that gave me me one of those "Hmmm,.." moments on the Tiger's ledger - but none have come.

The other point is that just because a couple of better signings don't turn your team into a winner doesn't mean you don't start somewhere. Every team is built up through acquistions and development over time, you don't coast along and then bingo - in one year you suddenly have a filled out roster. It doesn't matter that had they signed or traded for a couple of better players they might still have been swept by TB if those moves were progress toward a better team down the road in the end than the last off-season's underwhelming haul is likely to be. They are a better team today and even potentially later when it matters with Austin Meadows and ERod than they would have been without them even if there is no brass ring this season or last. Unless your only strategy is to continue tanking for top picks - and even if it is - at some point you have to start building. If you're going to tell me that the guy we hope is one of the bright young minds in the game could do no better than waste his first off-season 'cause reasons, that's just a depressing take. Which is pretty much where I am.

More than Foley, I took from how you posted it that it doesn't really matter who Hinch plays when. If I got the feeling he was at that level of dismissal of game outcomes, I'd be checking out for of the rest of the season!

Nevin to off to a hot start, should see him soon.

TBF, the Foley comment was partially facetious, but still, do we want to be 10-30 by the time it's all sorted out? If you're not going to play to win, get out of the game.

It didn't need to be a Correa, but - they didn't add *one* bat of any kind that was even a verified replacement level hitter. Soto and Jimenez went for discount lottery tickets.

1st suggestion might be not to use Foley in leverage. It's keeps coming down to this. Sure, all we can do is wonder, but against a guy like Springs today - I think I'd rather after the failure the 1st time through the order they throw away all their plans and just play 'see ball - hit ball'. All the guessing and taking sure as hell wasn't working. Again, pure speculation, but I continue to get a vibe that the Tigers over-prep the young hitters.

I have a some sympathy around the fact that the Tigers probably saw Bally's collapse coming and knowing your single biggest income stream was in jeopardy should have motivated any good management to stay somewhat conservative - but there is still a lot of room between being planning to be 'somewhat conservative' and not upgrading the line-up with a single major league bat.

LOL - !st run scored by the guy that provides *no* line-up flexibility. I rest my case.

So far Foley is perfect through, 3/3 inherited runners scored. 'Lineup flexibility' has netted us zero runs and non 3b Maton was just unable to make another play that led to a run.

well, they do currently project to score 108 runs for the season. Would that be historicially bad?

If you throw over twice, you might as well thow the third one and either give him the base or pick him off. EDIT: LOL _ as Chas just posted.....

They might want to drop Foley off 60 miles short when they come north to Detroit.

You would think that if a guy doesn't throw very hard, and you can't pickup his pitch speed, you'd basically go to dink mode and just stay back and try to dink him to death. I know, what am I thinking- - that would require the ability to shift gears in game. Part of the problem with being down by only one - they'd rather all keep trying to tie it on one swing.

I guess the best thing we can do for the Tigers at this point is start talking about Springs throwing a no-hitter......

well, Rays have a run, that should about do it.

I know I won't get much agreement on this, but I believe Hinch's obsession with this is basically deflection. It's something to do, a way to give the appearance of management control when in reality there is nothing to control and no real point to all the position churning and theoretical match-up flexibility in terms of actual impact on winning, which is probably net negative in the end for the very reason we say today with 4 fielders all looking at each other while a ball fell because of their unfamiliarity with each other's play and preferences. And I'm not even sure it's anything to hold against him, what else is he gonna do until his team turns into something more than a collections of left overs.

yup - at least until Sept 30.

Who's gonna tell the owners they've agreed to issue stock in their teams and dilute their ownership?

Well, Carpenter was a known risk in the OF. You assume he's not going to be out there that often unless Miguel stays miraculously healthy. If that happens, that probably means he's hitting well so we won't be able to complain. I only hope the tigers success with shifting in the last couple of years hasn't resulted in them being a little too lenient in judging what they expect in the true unshifted range of their IFs. The balls past Schoop yesterday, at least one past Maton today, granted they were plays an IF would have to be really good to have made, but it's the big leagues, to win you do have to be really good! Making those hard plays gets pitchers on good teams out of a lot innings before the bad things that happened to your pitcher would have happened to theirs.