gehringer_2

This absolutely. I think Shep is taking the fall for a broadcast that is weak across the board. The loss of Morris hurt. For as much issue as anyone would have on his old school takes about the game, he did have a high level of presentation skill/talent. I wonder if the Tiger org may be deluding themselves that because Al Kaline rated well without having a high level of media skill, that media skill doesn't matter in the player in the booth. But it does matter. No-one else is, or will be, Al Kaline. It was not only his level of insight as a baseball mind, but also the fact that he was still on the field working with all these guys all Spring every year which gave him even more insight into the team than being just a run of the mill ex-player.

They've moved on. More likely to get Mike Morris' mom.

and I go back to my original point - I don't see that you can argue it's necessarily favorable to either O or D if the period whistle is late. Why wouldn't the offensive lineman be as likely to let down in anticipation of no play as the D men? You either stay ready to play or you don't. That kind of lapse can happen to any player on either side of the ball. Maybe it happened to the Lions, maybe the execution was good enough the Lions would have given it up on that play if the play had been run 2 minutes earlier in the qtr. The Lions could have as easily given up the yards on the 1st play of the next qtr. I think there is a little bit of fan paranoia that anything that happens out of order has to have been detrimental to my team.

actually an interesting gambit might be for the Dems to nominate Mitt Romney. I've never agreed with any of his politics but I do trust he would be an honest broker and you might get enough GOP crossovers for it to happen.

IDK, I don't follow football rules issues that closely, but every official on the field has a whistle don't they? You hear the whistle you stop?

Right - so how does that get you closer to a successful baseball franchise?

To me the thing with Monroe is that I know he could be better than he is. He forces things when he is in the booth, and there is always too much force or tension or growl in his voice. He'd be much better if he'd lose that and just be normal. That and his basic game breakdown sucks. I'm close to catatonic with the number of times he has told me that a guy who has absolutely zero intention to is going to try to 'use the big part of the field'.

I thought the official game clock is kept by an official on the field - or at least it once was. That's why the ref often tells the scoreboard operator to reset the clock to whatever?

Do you get the impression that Ray's ownership is whistling past the graveyard with the notion that a new ball park at the same spot is suddenly going to draw more fans? I'm very skeptical that whatever co-development they do in the area will make any difference to baseball attendance either. Buying tickets to a sporting event is pretty disconnected from any consideration of whatever level of civic activity is going on around the venue. There just isn't that much connection other than maybe having places to eat - and probably more than 3/4 of fans see eating in the ball park part of the experience. Maybe the presence of a ball park benefits commerce in the area around it, but I don't think the equation works much in the other direction.

This was the pretty much the take on him before he ran for Speaker. He does have one sort of striking feature I noticed with all the video of him this week, and that is his absolute stillness when he pauses while speaking. It's almost mesmerizing in a weird way. I was checking my internet connection to see if my feed was freezing.

Hard to know where the Tigers are on Kieth vis a vis 2nd vs 3rd. I don't want to bring in a 2b if that's going to be Keith's preferred position - things are already getting log jammed there. If Keith is going to play 2nd, go find a honest to MLB glove for 3rd. If Keith is your 3b, commit to him there.

LOL - Lengthy process? I guess the read the ratings reports verrry slowly.

I suppose in 20 yrs when people are retired and writing books it might become more clear - or not since book writers often write with the express purpose of re-inventing history! - But it's not hard to believe both that that McCarthy expected the CR to go down, and Gaetz expected McCarthy to survive, and the actual events only show neither had a clue about what they were doing. It's an old story - if you are going to manage a legislature you better be able to count votes before you ask for them to be taken.

And of course, BSD is a dead-man walking entity itself. The people that made this decision could themselves be gone at any time.

It's what I said before - for Repubs like McCarthy their very psychic identity is so tied to their tribal membership they can't act rationally in their own or the greater public interest if it implies a compromise in that identity. They are are all in a state of psychological paralysis. They are de-evolved, basically examples of pre-civilization homo-sapiens.

How many guys are going to take one look at who their supporting case is going to be and politely decline the offer to interview? Probably most anyone worth their salt.

Don't you think Urban would chafe in E. Lansing? Not a big enough stage for him I would think.

The disappointing thing to hear was 'all the analysts will be back.' If they run the same production but just replace the PBP voice they are already capping their potential improvement.

I think this is true.

Agree in the main here. Not a huge fan of Mario either and would as soon they do better, but TBF, in their last few years part of this was because of the tension in the box. Mario would not engage with Rod because he believed Rod wasn't pulling his weight, and since they didn't get along, there were few conversation points from out side the game call. I clearly remember Mario doing the occasional game when Rod was out, and he came across as almost a different person. Gibson could really draw him out. You can fault the Fox management keeping two guys together that were holding each other's better selves down, and both of them for being too stubborn individually to get out of a situation that was stunting their professional performance before it eventually blew up on them.

Not sure if I would call this doing 'due diligence'? or 'due negligence'....

I'm sure it would be a futile attempt, but I'd still take some of Cabrera's money and make a pass at Tirico - just because you never know.

One of the issues with quantitative based management is you can fall into the trap of missing unmeasured variables. This is not unlike corporations that make bad strategy moves because their cost accounting systems tell them to try to save money in one place, which ends up costing them a lot more money in another place, but they don't have any way to know it because that place doesn't have the right cost measurement metrics in place to tell them. Let's posit that 'moving guys around' causes a deficit of 'X' in a team's Rrds over a season, and an increase 'Y' in the teams runs scoring. As long as Y > X we are golden. What if it isn't? How would you even know? We all know the team can measure 'Y', can any of them measure 'X'? How do you assign a weight to how much a player playing multiple positions contributes to a play not made? I'll posit the defensive metrics and sample sizes being what they are, it's not an easy thing to do. Plus every player may respond differently. But it's always a dangerous thing to assume that just because you can't or don't measure something that it doesn't exist.

apparently Kimbrel has done this before - in particular in extra inning games where he preferred the man on 3rd where he couldn't steal signs. Of course he could just use PitchCom....

It so reassuring to know we have such small minded, venal men running the GOP.