gehringer_2

Tork always fronts in his interviews that he isn't really changing anything - 'just working on his timing etc.' but I don't really believe that. Judging by his AB's in Toledo he was either told or finally decided to start swinging at a lot more pitches in the zone. That has led to more K's, but also a good number of hits on 1st pitch strikes, which was a big hole in his profile before. Best case scenario is that on return he goes back to being a little more selective while still being more aggressive in the zone than when he was sent down (which was not very). But we'll see. Tork also made comments about 'not being able to work on stuff at the MLB level." If they do bring him back maybe tell him the rest of the season has shifted into development mode so he doesn't have to worry about that! 🤔

Bligh has been the classic unscouted call-up. Nice performance out of the gate when the adrenaline is high and opposition hasn't seen him - then reality hits. His OPS has been crashing recently.

Ezra Klein with a another good interview in the NYT with a couple of people who study gender issues. Some interesting stuff. They divide the gender gap men in the GOP into two groups. I'll call the first the 'bro' group. They don't have big issues with modernity, or abortion, or even women's rights per se, but they feel they are being disadvantaged in the workplace unfairly, and what they really don't like culturally is that the fun part of Bubba Culture, which is wearing your sexism/libido in public, is being taken away. The hate to lose their right to be crude, crass and sexist. They see being civil to women 100% of the time as being a denial of their masculinity. The more insidious group are the medievalists - the Peter Thiel/JD Vance type who are basically holdovers from Nazi eugenics and their concerns pretty much boil down to purity of the gene pool. They are desperately concerned about population decline, 'replacement' by the brown hordes etc. Their aims are only met by women who stay home and procreate and that's what drives them to embrace 'Handmaid's Tale' culture. The only verse of the Bible they remember is the one about 'subdue the earth' - and there is a lot old style RCC sex and patriarchy theology still current with this group. These two groups don't intersect on a lot of things, but LGBTQ folks make both groups nervous (for different reasons) and that has become a big point of alliance between them. And anti-immigration also sells well with both groups.

Not even worth mentioning that Miriam is a dual US-Israeli citizen for whom US citizenship has never been much more than a means for her to support lobbying and influencing for her primary allegiance - which is Israel. She should be registered as such but Sheldon's money bought her out of it.

GOP pollster Frank Luntz's line on CNBC today talking about Trump ticking off the UAW. "There are billionaires watching this show who are spending a lot of money on Donald Trump and they don't understand why he's committing political suicide." The hilarious thing is that even as Luntz is criticizing Trump for messing up his approach to the working class, his premise starts with Trump being the candidate of the super rich and he doesn't even sense the absurd contradiction that creates in his argument.

have to think it was #4. Looks pretty good here.

didn't see the whole game - did either Sweeney or Yung have any tough chances in the field? All the plays I saw Sweeney make were pretty routine.

IDK, maybe they did it to do Gio a favor since he still be playoff eligible if he catches on with a winning team. Or maybe they just did because Gio would have a FA at the end of the year while McK is under control. But I think the Tigers would be nuts to offer arbitration to McK anyway so odds are he's gone in '25 too.

Cole make the perfect pitch on Jung. Cole had him looking breaking ball and got him on two fast balls.

What should he care? His predecessor wouldn't even resign him.

they did do a little practice blowing a bridge in Kursk today though https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-destroyed-bridge-over-seim-river-in-kursk-oblast-russian-official-claims/

seems like a bit of a turn for a woman who wouldn't even accept a condolence call from Biden in the immediate aftermath.

this is has been tried before in countless times and places - it won't work. But the odds are nothing significant will pass so they will never get far down that road and do too much damage. You keep prices competitive by keeping industries competitive. Fix the 2nd, the 1st takes care of itself. But that is too complex a story to tell in a campaign ad.

Well, I would have said "Busch's", which is our more upscale foodster in A^2, but it wasn't as good a rhetorical fit. Actually, in this area the Kroger's are quite good IMO, but they don't have to compete on price since their only serious competition comes Busch's, which as notes is upscale, as opposed to downscale. The only thing I won't buy from our Kroger's is fish.

A 4 seam fastball gets a natural backspin imparted to it as it rolls off the fingers. Every other kind of spin needs to be explicitly imparted to the ball, and that means the arm must import torque to the ball in some way which is not natural to the normal throwing motion (i.e. the 4 seam fastball motion), not that that throwing motion is even 'natural' for the arm to begin with. So the baseball world can deny all they want, and claim you can't pick up any kind of signal between how pitchers pitch and arm injuries, but the physics is the physics and no matter what they deny, you wear out your UCL torquing your wrist and you torque your wrist to spin the ball. Those are just mechanical facts. The rest is window dressing.

Another Repub still living in the middle ages. I wonder if Ben Shapiro even knows that the reason spices were valuable in his beloved dark ages was that there was only half rotten food available in Europe most of the time. But of course Ben probably never walks into a Kroger's to notice the utter surfeit of fresh things to eat in 2024 - that's probably way too modern for him - he might run into one of those uppity independent women that drives her own car and is blocking his path to the ready to eat counter.

it would almost certainly lead to a huge spike in fatigue induces injuries when guys can't get out of innings. Stupid idea. You don't get where you want to by just forcing the square peg into the round hole, you have to recognize that the problem is NOT the pitchers - they are giving you their all, it's the GAME. Pitchers will go deeper when you change the game to reduce the stress on them, not by increasing it. Idiotic suggestion. If you actually want to use fewer pitchers but are unwilling to fix the game, then adopt the ST rule, let a pitcher sit down after 25-30 pitches in an inning and then come back into the game next inning.

I'm glad we are going to get to see these guys, but we can't assume we are going to like what we see once we see it. For instance I have a suspicion we may not like Sweeney's or Jung's glove - but that's what the team needs to know and now is when to find out.

An effective anti-trust regime would have the same effect without the downsides.

Gio is a FA so if Jung is not the answer at 3b you have to go get someone in the off-season anyway - or start a little game of musical IF chairs and see if between Sweeney, Keith, Yung Baez you can come with a 4 IFs all playing their position well enough ( e.g. the Keith/Yung swap that has been mentioned). At any rate the point being that the downside risk to let Gio (or McKinstry) go now is not that great.

I could see it go either way on McK vs Gio. You have Javy to play SS if Sweeney flops, if Jung flops maybe you want to retain Gio - who has been the better fielder and hitter than McKinstry. So I could see them parting ways with Zach. You still have Vierling that can go IF <--> OF.

If today is the result of playing hurt, Javy needs to do it more..... ...

Yeah - you have to assume with another 3B showing up that Vierling stays in the OF for the time being. Vierling, Carpenter, Meadows, Malloy and Riley is probably back in a week so Akil is on the bubble. How much are they going to hedge their bet that Yung can actually play a competent 3B at this level?

Gio and Zach can join the quilting circle for the rest of the season. Seriously though, I'm sure McK did not do himself any good with Hinch by failing to get a game tying runner over two days in a row.

Does the phrase "Lightning in a bottle" ring a bell?