gehringer_2

Two Tigers combine for a 7-2 W. Jobe 4 IP 5H 2R 1ER 2BB 4K HR Flores 3IP 4H 0R, BB 2K

LOL - I'm plenty happy they won, but I'd be happier still if they started looking more like a potential playoff team. They are at the point where they are much more fun to watch than 2-3 years ago, but that just means the expectations have been whetted. This team still needs a lot of work. Other than Larkin's line they looked slow - the rest of them will need to skate (read "work") harder to keep up with all the teams that skate as well or better than Tampa. And I think folks that have bought the company line that the D has been upgraded in a major way are going to be disappointed. I expect it won't be the same 7 on the roster by mid-season.

Drinking game around how many times Boras says "no-hitter"?

Wings still way too soft closing out points in their own end, and I'd love to know Lalonde's thinking on Veleno being out their on the 6 on 5. He was making it look more like 6 on 4...... Petry could have cost them the game twice late but the refs swallowed their whistle for him. Lalonde says the D is now 7 deep. I'd say so far it's more like 7 middle of the pool.

Everybody gets a pass on one bad game, but Williams hasn't looked like much through the 1st 3 Qs.

Part of it was they never asked Brady to do too much - whether that was because they didn't see the capability or because it wasn't there yet is a question lost in time. Rick Leach was never a great QB. He was a good runner and he was Bo's boy and was going to play no matter how well he did or didn't or could or couldn't do. To the point that Bo insisted on playing him through the end of his last season when his shoulder was so torn up he literally could not throw the ball 10 yds. But that just meant Bo had all the more reason not to call any passes!

Hard to know if the the service time angling by both sides is going to produce long term rancor or if both side just accept it as playing the CBA correctly for each. Could certainly go either way. We might also get a little insight into how harshly the team takes it when players push their prerogatives with how fast ERod does or doesn't end up with a different team.....😇😖

I haven't watched Williams so I won't argue how good he may be, but JJ is at least the best all around QB we've seen at UM since maybe Harbaugh himself. And that Brady may be the NFL GOAT doesn't count as he never showed that at UM.

I don't think there is any particular evidence that Tork is behind where he would have been if he had spent more time in Toledo. He took a few hundred AB to acclimate to MLB pitching. There is no way to prove that a few hundred more MiLB AB would have made any difference to that process, and you can argue just as easily it would just have delayed him getting to where he is now. And Riley put up 1.4 WAR as a rookie in a little under 2/3 of a season. If you can play at at 2 WAR/season rate in the majors that is where you should be. The Covid years cost those two, but I have problem with when either of them was called up.

A Title IX rights org has brought suit against several Michigan schools for spending more on their men's athletic programs than on their women's, which of course, they do. So in that context, I wonder if at some point as the successive fig leafs fall away from college football revealing it to be a professional endeavor and it starts getting re-organized more as such, if the Universities don't at some point try some kind of legal jujitsu to get football removed from Title IX jurisdiction, which could, as the result of all those expenditure now going into non-student athletics' accounts, end up a huge blow to women's college sports. Be that as it may, if I'm a major college AD I don't know how I would not be thinking those thoughts.

the return of "Michigan Time"?

That question is sort of in limbo until he proves he can still pitch. He might be one of the unluck few percent who can't recover their command after TJ. It does happen.

It's about time the middle realize when they have just as much power as the extreme. No-one is going to get 'Primaried' over blocking Jim Jordan.

Quothe Mike Pence, "I was not aware...." Sort of says it all.

Your typical non-championship baseball FO, if they did want to trade him, would call him up ,to the majors first and hope he hits enough to burnish his trade value, and just endure 200 bad ABs if he doesn't. It's what the Tigers of yesteryear would have done. Soon enough we'll see what Harris does.

I guess it depends on how bad 'bad fielder' means. Almost no-one comes up from Toledo and is as good with the glove as his billing with maybe the exception of Parker Meadows, who does look exceptional out there. I would have to guess that means Malloy will be even worse than we suppose. I guess OTOH, Carpenter has not been as bad as his rep. Sure there are things he is pretty bad at which means he always fails the eye test. But his numbers argue he does enough ordinary stuff well enough not to be a serious liability (-2 Rdrs)

Jim Jordan doesn't know how to write legislation, Jim Jordan doesn't know how to pass legislation. I guess that does make him the ideal GOP chief legislator.

LOL, Jordan increased his vote by 11 over Scalise. So at this rate in another 10 sessions he might get to 217.

Why do get this constantly sinking feeling about Cade....

Yeah - fixed that - I thought he had gone back to the OF but that was wrong also - he came back at 1b.

I think Harper is a somewhat comparable case. He had TJ on his at the end of last Nov was back in the field in June of this season but at 1b

QFT

this is always the amusing part. But it's part of the myth structure. Humans crave determinism in a Universe that is stochastic right down to the atomic level and they will just invent it anywhere they can't find it really exists.

Have you traded Greene? I guess I could see Greene and Malloy at DH and LF as the season opens but as Riley rehabs he's going to bump Malloy out of left probably by mid-season.

I'd put it that the fact that the outcome of an unbiased playoff would be random means exactly that what you do with the format does matter because the format can change an unbiased result to a biased one. So you want to be intentional in designing formats to either avoid bias or at least get the biases you want and avoid ones you don't. For example, leaving aside the question of whether it actually does or doesn't, if we assume just for the sake of argument that layoffs hurt teams and that could eventually be shown, then you certainly did not want to disadvantage the best teams by "giving" them a bye. Home field is the other obvious candidate bias , as most teams do have higher winning percentages at home, though without looking it up I believe that in all sports home-field advantage has been shrinking since replay arrived. I'd guess it could disappear nearly completely in baseball if pitch calling is automated.....