gehringer_2

Same list but only 4 regular starters. Most teams can't get to 5 reliable guys anyway.

Has there ever been a GM in any big 4 sport that still had a job after 4 of 49?

polling is close to useless anymore. everyone measures the same numbers and then has to apply huge normalization factors that swamp any signal in the real data. Bottom line is all the polling is anymore is the pollster's assumptions about who is answering the poll and who is likely to turnout, and they really don't have more than a clue about either.

Good. Now lets see him do it when the Pistons are in competitive games and the other team is trying.

Can a whole team be mentall fragile? This is a weird group. Every night it's like Forest Gump's box of chocolates.

So the basic charge here is that Thomas is a 'kept Justice' by white conservative economic interests? A man willing to keep doing the right wing's bidding as long as the pay and perks are good enough? IIRC there is a term for that in the American lexicon

The question is where is the overall trade-off sweet spot between giving up a little in recovery optimization and using more relievers, which is definitely moving into sub-optimal territory.

I think part of the reluctance is that for all the science being applied, teams still don't know enough about recovery cycles to know what is safe to do, probably because no-one wants to take the risk and maybe do it wrong, which is probably the only way the data ever eventually emerges. They know the five day cycle, they think they know that if they keep a guy to 20 pitches or so he can go 2 days out of 3 or maybe the occasional 3 out of 4 (though I have my doubt about this given that reliever wastage rates seem to be worse than starters!). But they just don't have any confidence to say "we can bring a guy back after 3 days if he throws 50" or whatever the case may be - or even how he should train on the differing cycles.

Correct - you can't just go to a six man rotation, that just cuts all your starter innings even more. You have to find a way to block more longer pitching appearances - more in the range of 4 IP average, and then have a starter take those spots instead of 2-4 relievers. For the Tiger the obvious 1st move would be to coordinate use of Mize and Manning on the same game so they average 4 IP each - though it wouldn't have to be evenly split starts. They might split 6/2 on day and 2/6 another. If each made 30 appearances that averaged 4 IP, they'd be a nearly the perfect work load and you would have saved the BP over 100 IP.

Well, it's about time some clever manager figures out a way to reverse the trend of more and more innings being shifted from starting staffs to bullpens. If you can distribute 150+ IP to a 6th starter over a season that probably replaces 3 relievers- allows you to lengthen your hitting bench etc. Only a matter of time until teams figure out ways to do it.

Temptation to make a bad move probably isn't that high yet. It will probably get worse as the team gets better and the allure of deal that could get them 'over the top' grows stronger. That's when we find out if ownership is in it to be good over the long haul or will cash out for one big season.

He probably won't work much more than 100 innings or so, but 20-25 5 inning starts is still potentially a big contribution. The big question to me is his stuff. Before the injury his FB needed to improve and the happy talk is saying that with the the back issue fixed the FB is improved. If that's true, maybe we'll see more of what made him a 1/1.

IIRC the second one hit him in the side of the foot didn't it? Whatever - but on the spectrum of things that that might give a guy the yips hopefully getting hit in the foot is fairly far down the list since it's not particularly 'scary' when it happens like getting bonked in the head, even if it did produce a longer term injury...

🙋‍♂️ Only risk in that he's more expensive than the typical lower cost tiger rehab signing, even for the one year - I suppose whether possibly wasting 14M for a year is risk or not is of course in the eye of the beholder.... It's not a sub replacement Cabrera for 5 years at $40M risk, but it is 65% more on the table than in the Lorenzen signing, which was more along the line of where I thought they would end up. Of course, inflation has affected pitching.....

What did they expect? What's his strength off the ball? He's not a slasher, he's not a great 3pt threat.

Lions were hoping for that waaaay back in '68 with Mel Farr and Nick Eddy but never actually got close.

Exactly. He falls for some single positive attribute, like Ivey's speed or Duren's athleticism, or Thompson's D, all which would be fine for the 6th man on a good team, but which don't add up to 4 quarters starting NBA player.

Every year they let Weaver make another draft pick is going to be another year wasted.

Yeah - The truth is more likely that prescription drugs sales are far higher in areas where people have better insurance coverage thus stores in higher income areas are more profitable. And in other breaking news, the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow.

If anything, Henning is kind of a goof ball - always speculating out to the extremes. But for me it just mostly his writing style is so over the top with the adjectives that it's amusing - like he's trying to impress a 12th grade creative writing teacher. But that part has nothing to do with what he's trying to say. He seems like an OK guy otherwise.

What the Pistons have accomplished is legendary. They've taken a team in a sport where it usually only takes upgrading two players to make a team competitive and put themselves in the position where it's going to take 4, starting with zero tradeable roster capital. They would be three years away minimum working through the draft - if they had a front office capable of making an intelligent draft decision - which they don't. I can see little hope for this team short of pix emerging of Gores in Klan robes.

I wonder if in an odd way, the fact that both the Spurs and the Pistons are a such a mess simultaneously inhibits the league from doing anything about ether team for lack wanting to end up in the middle of a debate about 'why not the other one' or having to deal with both of them at once.

I enjoyed it. Like all Nolan movies, keeping track of the time lines is a bit of wild goose chase, but that is Nolan's thing. But it is always a little odd watching 'historical' films of events or people or events you have direct memories of however. I'm not old enough to remember WWII(!) but some of those people were still around in my own memory. For instance I'd seen a lot of Edward Teller and some about Isador Rabi when they were still around so that forces you out of 'suspension of disbelief' a little more often than for other kinds of films. I'm also curious about whether the conversation with Einstein was based in fact or was dramatic interpolation. I suppose I could look it up - guess I'm not *that* curious!

They have to come out of the gate hitting though. We can't see a repeat of the last two years where nobody hits until May and they are already 10 under.

Yzerplan needs an update to the goaltending section. Don't have a lot of confidence in this group.