gehringer_2

and I thought baseball rules could be weird.....

less of a problem on Cabrera's off days as Carpenter can DH and that opens the OF spot. But if Cabrera keeps up his high OBP there is a lot of motivation to play him. LOL - I never dreamed that at any point in this season I would be saying that Cabrera's positive production could be creating hard choices for Hinch.

at best, Ibanez is too old to be part of any future core even he plays well. But I don't have a problem with that - any good team is going to have transitional guys making contributions in a given year who are not 'core'.

Platoons are based on left hand hitting starters that have large platoon splits . Then you can generally find cheap RH hitters that can hit LH pitching but since they can't hit RH pitching they can't hold down a starting role anywhere and thus don't cost much. If you start with a RH hitter good enought to break into a starting line-up, it's generally because they either have a small platoon split to being with, or only have a platoon split because they hit LHP pitching at some all-star rate and still hit RHP better than the average average part time LHH that might be available.. Thus little platoon motivation. Platoon splits run higher for starting LHH batters across the league for this reason - a RHH batter with a big platoon split is simply less likely to ever become an everyday player. The shift devalued LH hitting more than RHH so it's demise should re-establish the generally higher value of LH hitting starters and one result will be to increase the number of starters that benefit by being platooned so as to avoid facing LH pitching.

Always good to try to get a team to bid against itself if you can. Have to hope Yzerman won't

With neither Maton nor Nevin having worked out, the 2B 3B platoon is pretty much blown up. We are pretty much going to have to play both McKinstry and Ibanez full time, one is RH, one is LH. I'd say they are about equal at 3rd but Ibanez grades out better at 2nd so you have pretty much a non-platoon IF of Tork(3), Ibanez(4), McKinstry(5) and Baez(6). Short can start in place of McKinstry against LHP but that's going to be about as much platoon as you get on our IF now if you want to keep the best team on the field. History also argues Short is going to run down if he plays a lot. The platoon dilemma is playing Baddoo over Vierling. Baddoo is more disruptive but Vierling has been the better hitter even against RHP. If they think Baddoo has upside potential we haven't seen (or think Vierling is playing over his head) then I guess you make the investment. Or you're just looking at individual pitcher/hitter matchups.

I'm with JC on Vierling. He has close to zero platoon split for his career and negative for this season so far. He's as close as we have to someone who should play every day after Greene. Hinch is playing him almost full time. It will be interesting to see if that continues once Baddoo is back.

He's gotten stronger on his skates - which as Buddha notes - has improved his play in the corners.

The average LW in the NHL is 6' 3/4". Zadina a 6-0 190. He's a whole 3 lb less than freaking Conner McDavid. He seems smaller because he plays smaller. If he's going to play for Yzerman that's what he has to change. And injuries kill careers, no doubt about it.

you've got the wrong manager.

LOL - Schoop would be pretty easy to forget about at this point...

Vierling has a total of 26 career chances at 2B and 3B and he's never played SS. He's not exactly a drop in replacement for Zack Short.

yzerman talks about a guys having the will to play in the NHL. That is what Zadina lacks mostly. The inability to finish is perplexing, but he could still be a nice two way contributor if he just played harder, but he doesn't. You get a shift here and there where you see flashes, but then the light goes dim. Now maybe he just doesn't have the physical constitution to go hard every shift at NHL level (i.e. pain level) and that never showed in juniors when he was better than most guys he played against and didn't have to go full tilt 100% of the time.

good riddance I'd say. Catchers jerking pitches all over the place has gotten ridiculous. The batter shouldn't suffer for a catcher's ability to fool an umpire. But much like the ptich clock, the umps brought this on the game by their own lack of use of their own authority. The first ump that saw a catcher jerk a ball back into the strike zone should have told that catcher that on any pitch where he didn't stay put where he caught it, he would automatically assume it was a ball.

I'm sure Hinch would love to have another RH OF, I just don't see where you get him on the 26. You'd be down to one IF on the bench unless they they go to 12 pitchers, but that seems pretty unlikey also.

damn - just lost a post At any rate - i wouldn't compare Zadina and Ras at any point in their careers. Ras was hurt half the year before they resigned him but in 21-22 the improvement was obvious. Plus he has more potential because of his size to contribure to the team Yzerman wanted to build. Yzerman still holds that he could turn into a decent player. We are probbly going to get to find out because odds are he will be back at camp.

LOL - 'everybody said so at the time' about the pick too. Still wasted money if he doesn't play for them, just as wasted as the pick was. You can't really separate the two.

sure, as a general value proposition Jimenez may not have been enough to bring a starting 3B. But that's tactics, the need to fill 3b was a strategic requirement.

It's NHL, not the NBA, IDK if I'd call 3x$1.8M/yr small by NHL standards. It's about the middle of the RW salary list and he's been less than a middling player. Of course maybe he was just being diplomatic but Yzerman was still holding that he thinks Zadina can make it in the NHL Asking to be traded sort of tells you he doesn't want to play for Lalonde though, which could make it tough for him if no-one picks him up and he has to come to RW camp.

IDK - Pence doesn't seem like he'd be a bad guy to have to spend non-political time around. Believes a lot of bat-**** crazy stuff yes, but he's sort of an old school polite, courtly kind of guy. To me he's like Romney without the chic and the Saville-Row suits: A guy I'd trust my stuff with, just not my government.

It tells you how odd Fla politics must be. In most places it's generally hard to get elected to anything if you generate that kind of personal miasma around yourself.

My singular memory about Zadina was on a PP one day. Pretty sure the Wings were trailing and needed the goal. They gave Zadina a PP shift and the 4 other Wings went all in for him. They must have set him up for at least 7 SOG from the slot, and he put every single damn one into the middle of the goalie;s chest. It was an encapsulation of the team having gone out of their way to help him succeed and his inability to justify it.

LOL - Keith and Malloy took a night off but are right back at it. Keith 3/4, Malloy with the HR and 2 BB

I assume in hockey if they pick him up they have to pick up the contract - unlike baseball where you get a waived player for the minimum? If that's true he's stuck here. Also makes the contract a pretty terrible decision.

absofreakinglutely