gehringer_2

I think we are headed for Yugoslavia. The level of support Trump is finding in the US public for cruel, hateful, murderous policies both at home and abroad has me as doubtful about the future of this country as I have ever been. This public is far, far worse than the one that took 10yrs to realize Vietnam was wrong. Sliding rapidly into irredeemable IMV. the one accomplishment of the Christian Right has been to finally reveal the Anti-Christ for us. It's them.

LOL - I suppose based on the Tigers international player track record that is probably true, but I'd call that a bug, not a feature. 🇻🇪 🇩🇴 🇲🇽

I don't think it has to be a matter of replacement - all the entertainment/social interaction sites can remain profitable - I don't think that precludes the rise of new high trust sources. There already are some actually. Ironically, I think NPR, and public radio locally, which have found that public support is strong after being cut off the government trough, is in much better shape to concentrate on the quality of their journalism now that they can stop arguing internally about the risk to the government $ on every story they do.

would an international signing be more likely to be a young prospect than a 30 yr old MiLB retread? Certainly less shame in that! 😉

the center of the this system looks like it has just parked itself somewhere around London Ontario and made itself comfortable there.

They are moving US personnel out of harm's way in Qatar, which could be the prelude to a strike, or just a feint to make Iran fear a strike. Is the admin's strategy going to be that we drop a few bombs for each protester they kill on the street? I guess that could get their attention based on how good the targeting is. If it just makes showy explosions that just make life harder for everyday people, it could be pretty pointless. I'd be pleasantly surprised if we have intelligence assets in Iran good enough hit the targets that could make such a plan effective.

I'm surprised and sad to hear that public administration in MN seems to have lapsed so badly. When I lived there I was always impressed that they seemed to run a sound good operation. I always got the impression that MN liberalism had a strongly realist view of human behavior - I guess either that was a mirage or it just got lost somewhere.

our 2 hr forecasted snow flurry is now up to about 9 hrs.

yup. I don't think I've ever seen them send plows out in A^2 before the snow stops. They'll go out and salt if it's wet and is going to start to freeze in place, but I guess they really hate to have to go back and plow anywhere twice.

ah - should have looked closer!

LOL. yes. We had brother and sister Elkhounds and we had to work on the male, who was a year older, to at least wait until his sister was done eating before trying to finish anything she left.

I figure Eugenio for 2 more productive years tops So he did really well to score a $65M AAV. 🙄

Love it. So I have a theory that not until all current forms of on-line and electronic communication have become completely polluted, fake dominated and devalued, will the demand for new systems of thoroughly vetted and reliable information become high enough that new forms that guarantee high levels of verifiability get created and adopted.

actually, I'm not sure who besides Melton is the right comparison because Keider was still pitching pretty regularly in a swing role after Morton arrived. He still got 6 starts overall in Aug and Sept plus some long relief appearance.

Finnegan was great. But what if he had brought in Finnegan but not Morton. There is your win/win! ⚾ I'll freely admit I'm biased here because I HATE seeing my team sign old over the hill pitchers. I hated when DD did it, I hate it when Harris does it. Just strikes me as letting your hope (that you get something when the odds are you won't) win out over keeping your head in the real world and making a better move.

Paddock had three starts they won in August, and got shelled twice but with a 6.4 ERA they moved him to the BP, where he raised his ERA to 8 in Sept. That meant they had to backfill starts with pitchers that were otherwise off the end of the rotation. With Morton the swing was even worse. They won 2 of Charlie's August starts as he put up a 4.6 ERA (not too terrible), but then lost all 4 of his Sept starts as his ERA ballooned to over 12. Paddock did start game 162 and gave up 4 runs in 5 IP in a loss. So part of your explanation is that two players arrived in August, but they both performed worse in Sept, with Morton becoming completely unplayable. Logic dictates that the effect of a cause does have to come after it, but not necessarily *immediately* after it.

This is why we are in so much more trouble that just electing an malevolent man-child as president, we also voted hard for his enablers. Voters get what they deserve generally. Unfortunately that leaves the other 250 million to suffer the collateral damage.

Indeed. But on the other hand, let's not lose sight of the fact that platooning also has its costs. With pitching staffs running to 13, and starters out after 2 times through the order, you can run out of hitters to match up before the opposition runs out of pitchers to cross up your match-ups. In fact, if not for the three batter rule, the length of bullpens today would make platooning even less effective.

For his life up till now, WCF is the most greeny of all the major car people. IIRC he was the fist one to embrace Obama/Biden policies for carbon control and I think Ford was the only US builder not to oppose the last set of CAFE increases prior to Trump. From what I have gleaned locally, Ford's long term focus is still EV even if the Lightning was an overreach for the current state of play. Ford's manufacturing issues have them in a wounded state right now and you have to imagine they would most like not to be pulled into the political spotlight at all. Trump probably knows that full well and is trying to leverage it.

They are getting it done mostly with the power play and great goaltending. The back end of the D and the 5 on 5 are not great. But there are still 68 points left at play in the schedule. They aren't going to get them all.

I doubt Bill Ford Jr has suddenly turned 180 politically. He's trying not to make additional trouble for his company, which is having enough trouble right now getting product out the door that doesn't have to come back.

for all the political noise going on you'd expect people to show up given a chance to vote, but just like the one MB posted about recently, nobody voted in this one either. 1725 votes total cast at 95% counted. So that 11 point over performance was all of 190 people in district of probably 25K registered voters.

I'm more concerned with Keith. His first season his split was actually negative with 88 PA against LHP, last season he had less than 50AB against lefties and did nothing - 400 OPS and a whopping 382 split. So was '24 a SSS mirage - despite that he looked quite comfortable hitting lefties that year, or '25 just a SSS transient and he should be fine against LHP if/when he plays everyday?

sure - but OTOH, what if that 100 OPS points is the difference between you winning the long half of a platoon gig and not being a starter at all. A LHH does face a different set of options from a RHH.

They question of whether never facing LHP dooms even LH batter who might be able to develop into low platoon split hitters into being platoon players always comes up, but something new in the equation are the "trak-arc"/"tra-jeckt" pitching machines that most teams have that now allow a LHB to spend time practicing against "live" left hand pitch movement dynamics. If practice time can make a difference, then these machines should be producing LH batters with lower platoon splits. But maybe they won't, and the reason would be that if a left hand batter completely optimizes his approach for RHP, and it gets him 100 additional OPS points against RHP, is it actually in his interest to give that up for 150 more AB in a season?