gehringer_2

Absolutely. If the dems weren't also so unpopular as party the risk wouldn't be so clear - but this election could be anything from a record turnout to everybody on both sides is jaded and stays home - who the heII knows?

OTOH - there were other reasons to defend making a move sooner - he was at 54 pitches and 30 in the inning so he was over exteneded, his FB was down off his better level, and his strike throwing was faltering as he got deeper in the inning.

baseball pitching has made a terrible devil's bargain in the modern era though. Pitchers are brought to a performance level where their wastage rate is now so high that team's success in a season has as much to do with injury rates as the talent level at the starting gun. We've come to take it for granted because it's now mundane, but if you stop and think about it, if TJ surgery had never been invented, half the pitchers in the majors would be out of the game. That's a completely absurd situation. So here's a different take - the increase in strike out rates is partly because of the ability to fix pitchers' arms who do things that pitchers didn't use to be able to do and stay in the game.

this is exactly it. Every strategy is based on a set of premises. When the premises in your situation have failed, it doesn't matter what the global data set says is optimal strategy. And you still have the larger question of whether the Tigers care if they produce a platoon player instead of an everyday one. There can be a divergence between what is in the player's best interests vs the team's. There is certainly a short team downside to letting a LHH work through hitting against both sides.If for whatever reasons the team doesn't regard the long term payoff as significant, why should they do it?

yeah. anyway you look at it I feel bad for him, he took the initiative and did the work to try to get better and it's not working the way he had it scripted. He's not in a good place now and a manager under the kind of pressure to straighten out his team that Hinch has been under since last Sept would not be at the top of his list for team situations to be in having to work through his individual issues. I actually hope they send him back to Toledo to play one position every inning of everyday, then bring him back and park him there. But I see little likelihood they will.

yup. And you can get a 4.1 sec 0-60 for less than half of the Tesla. That about 2 seconds faster than your best glory years muscle cars. You can buy 370 HP in a very mid market EV that with the perfectly flat torque translates to about the same performance level of at least 500 ICE HP. It's a completely different world on the performance end.

Truly Keith has shown no aptitude for stealing bases, but TBF, he is otherwise fine on the bases and is positive runs as a base runner. The power thing is what I think has him in the dog house this season. I can imagine the change in stance probably either came from a private coaching shop or in some way without team input so he's probably getting no slack from the staff over his disappeared launch angle. For my money, if you have a guy that has shown the kind of contact skill Keith has flashed you work with him because everything else can follow if the skill to get the bat on the ball is there. Riley is the cautionary tale here. He made an adjustment last season that had a lot of people ready to write him off, but he's been able to back of the extreme place where he was and he's being very productive so far this year. Like Riley, Keith has to come back some distance from the extreme of this short/flat approach but at this point it may not happen this season.

and there is more to it. An MLB batter makes choices with their set up and approach that can change their susceptibility to the slider away (the big driver of platoon splits). Tell a LHH that LHP is off the table for him and he's going to maximize his approach to hit RHP, at that point he will be less prepared against any LHP he has to face. That's the self-fulfilling part. Now it's possible teams have decided that that by having their LLHs optimize to hit RHP combined with RH platoon players further combined with the 3 hitter rule for relievers, they just don't care about having everyday players; they are prepared to just keep switching all the time. But then you get into a talent constrained situation like the Tigers are in and it's easy to believe that if he had a chance to work at it, a player like Keith would be better hitter against LHP than the pinch hitters the team actually has available to take the other half of his platoon ABs. That's where the potential loss is.

I think the Tigers need a resiliency trainer on the staff. The number of injuries this team is suffering in the course of fairly ordinary game activities seems out of any reasonable proportion.

or they'd all be dead the first year after being sent out every 4th day

I saw that play start and figured no way Hanifee gets to 1st..😱 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️

win one game lose two pitchers. Is that a good trade? Just can't believe Mize throws 4 innings and goes down again.

and now the fun begins

If Suter were a Tiger that play would be a 3 month trip to the DL

Spencer "No I'm not hitting for a cycle" Torkelson

Dingler on fire with the challenges tonight (as usual!)

Hinch 0-2 with his pinch hitters

true, but the Tiger team led the league in HR and IIRC the #2 team was not close. They could afford a .135

I think there is another aspect as well. The difference between good players and bad players is mostly consistency. Even a poor major leaguers can throw great pitches, make great plays and have great AB, they just can't bring that level often enough. So if you want to maximize the odds of success, having players who perform consistently means your projections of what do will be useful. If you have poor players, all outcomes become more random, as those players are less reliably projectable, and the ability to do game planning that makes a difference falls.

can't disagree. Who knows, maybe there is a mentor out there somewhere who has the key to his lock but it's just random chance if he ever runs into him.

I love old machinery for its elegance and the craft, but I have no desire to be at speed on a modern road in it.

so there is a ton of truth in this clip. The most fun to drive car I ever owned was a 70HP deisel Rabbit, because you could flog if full out all the time in everyday ordinary driving and never worry about the constables. But there is one place I disagree with him. Absolutely on an ICE car, having direct control of the tranny is the key to driving enjoyment, at any power level or config. That's basically because the car can never know what you want to do before you do. And I thought I would really miss that in an EV - but I don't. Once you start driving a well powered EV and all that torque is instantly available at any time, at any speed, and the upshift/downshift is all built into the regen braking, you have all that same control without gears, and the itch in your right hand does quickly fade away. I was more than a little surprised at that.

fair enough - but for me the fact that Wenceel screwed up is no excuse for letting Vest work himself into such a deep hole. Philosophically, as much as I generally like Hinch's handling of pitchers, I still take the general view that he ofte - not just last night, tends to let guys get in more trouble before making a move than the arm chair manager in my recliner would. I assume it's mostly because he has a match up plan worked out, and I assume that's what he's trying to stay on. I never want to have to bring in a guy with the bases loaded, that just too terrible for the guy coming in - I don't want to wait that long. But as a long time fan, that is something more generally that i've always taken issue with: how often you see a pitcher get pulled after giving up 3 seeing eye infield bleeders "because he's in trouble", while you have a situation like last night where Vest's velo isn't good, he's giving up hard contact, his command isn't great - but "he's my guy". So my complaint about that is a more long standing level of scepticism about the conventions of baseball managing.

yes - the caution here is that the Dem turnout in Tx, despite being better than the GOP, is still less than a third of what they need to win the general for Talarico. you'd never expect a primary vote that was more than a fraction of a GE vote, but it still means 65% of the voters haven't been heard from.

I started looking for the Dem side turnout last night but got distracted so thanks for posting. I try not to put too much stock in primary turnouts, but the fact that those who didn't like Trump's middling did NOT come out for Cornyn at all is some sign that at least somewhere, some frustrated GOP voters are now crossing the line all the way to the other side. The utter collapse of Cornyn's support among the 6 million that voted for him in 2020 should also disabuse (as if they still needed it) any remaining GOP 'never Trumpers' that their old party is anything other than dead and buried.