gehringer_2

Don't get me started!

RIght, it's certainly true that the current rail network doesn't support *high* speed, but on clear ordinary welded rail current Amtraks can safely sustain 100mph in most places if they had track clearance around other traffic. So even within the limits of the current system Amtrak could be much faster, but the system isn't even uniformly up to it's current potential standard in enough places and of course the faster a train goes the more clear track it needs with no other trains on it.

It really hurt that starting maybe 20 yrs ago or more they started removing all the double track between here and Chicago. That has made scheduling passenger trains around the freights is way more difficult than it was in the post WWII era when trains were still the major inter-city connector. But then probably all the train routes between NYC and Chi had double track.

The war is getting hot for the Russians now. More reporting of deep strikes into Crimea again today and also at C&C targets near Kherson. The Ukrainians now apparently using Excalibur(TM) rounds that can hit a rat's ass on the 1st shot, going a long way to neutralize the Russian advantages in numbers of shell deliverable - at least in strategic terms. I can't help but wonder if the Ukrainians have figured out that even if culturally they might want the eastern territory back more than Crimea, it's Crimea which is the Russian's soft underbelly. The Russians cannot resupply or defend it in the face of Ukrainian long range fire capability so I'm starting to understand that is where Ukraine has decided to go for the jugular. Not to mention that strategically Crimea does more to guarantees Ukraine's Black Sea access than eastern acres.

I think this is correct. You see a lot of short outings at the lower levels that are do not appear to be performance issues. The Tiger philosophy seems to be to keep young guys on a consistent schedule but limit the total amount/stress of pitching they do.

Yeah - the Tigs are in a weird situation. They have a lot of middling guys that have pitched decently in limited MLB auditions, but that were were not big prospects and still haven't proved much, while our top pitchers are all getting hurt. And TBH, if I were a GM looking at our system from the outside I'd have to be at least a little leery about any ranked pitcher that came through our system.

TBF, Boyd was originally expected to be ready at or before the ASB - his recovery has not gone as easily as hoped. We can take that as a good or bad omen for Skubal!

Say 16 teams, 7 years, that's about 62.5 million per team/yr. Given that by the end of 7 years the current inflation cycle will have cut the real value of those dollars by something like 20-40%, that would be ~$40M per team by the end. They may be desperate to get out of it by then!

However, the 'Retread' issue is not comparable between field managers and general managers. As has been beaten to death for years here, a field manager has very limited upward influence on his team's win total. A bad manager can make it worse, but even the best is completely constrained on the upside but the absolute talent level of his players, and he has little or no control over that. So many of field managers may be perfectly capable of winning but never do until they fall into the right situation. A general manager is directly responsible for that talent level so team performance is much more directly his responsibility. I suppose a bad manager can mishandle a good team that a GM assembles, but in that case firing that bad manager is still part of that GM's job. The only thing that limits a GM is stingy ownership, but that is often pretty obvious to see from the outside. In fact, those are probably some of the guys you want to be looking at, guys from orgs with poor resourcing who show promise of being able to do more if they had better resourcing. Tl,DR version. I mind a 'retread' manager who may not have won a lot less than a 'retread' GM. The 'win' burden for a GM hire is higher.

right - a trend shown by two polls with the same methodology is more like to be real than the absolute value of the results. But trends are usually movement in the undecided blocks, so even trends can be a bit deceiving if you don't have a good handle on the number of true undecideds left. If you run out of undecideds before you catch the other guy your trend was for naught!

For Hens tonight Torkelson 2/4 1k, Kreidler 1/4 2B, Wentz 5IP 3H 0R 5K

and he's finally hitting a few hard.

Norris 5 IP, 1 run. Feels like 2015.

Strike all over the map tonight. Riley rung up on a terrible call.

it's been a struggle for Norris but he's making some good pitches when he's needed to.

Ump misses a perfect 1st pitch of the inning

did you hear he had 6 K in his 1st 8 AB?

it's true, as many elections are lost as won.

he didn't even have the story right, Francona got thrown out over the Straw K in the 9th not the Baez play. Geez. The call this professional broadcasting in Det?

Akil with one of his better recent swings there.

Scrappy Daniel as well, as he escapes bases loaded 1 out with no runs.

Wild Daniel in the house tonight.

yeah, there are no moral victories when it comes to elections.

I guess it was good that it was not the ACL again. The report was pretty vague, on the one hand they said it was 'exploratory' but they obviously did some kind of repair or clean up as well.

LOL - yeah - Just because you are totally transparent does not mean you are doing it on purpose by actually being truthful.