gehringer_2

the only hope for this court is that somebody dies, or the Chief can pry Barrett or Kavanaugh away from Alito and Thomas, but TBH, it's never clear how much the Chief wants to. It's hard to know if the Chief has actually grown concerned about the quality of law the court is making, or just it's public image.

there were certain points where Boyd could get a little extra on the FB when he wanted it and command that good slow curve. When he had both those things working, you could say he was a pitcher with good stuff. But he he really couldn't maintain both those pitches working consistently together. The max FB tended to fall back to 92 and the command wasn't always there. I suppose this is the way it goes for a lot of guys. The have good stuff at their best, but are not at their best enough to be winners. We certainly learned that with Armando Galarraga. On days when he could command his best fastball and best slider all day, his stuff was no-hitter quality, but he couldn't do that very often.

so much for the guy that had trade value....

and it was deja vu all over again with Mize.

Skubal out. Right move.

yup

well, someone on this team ought to get mad. Javy nonchalants a throw last night, Harold drops on today,....

this is an interesting way to put it. I would expand it some... Coming out of the early 20th cent you had the classic ideological conflict set up between Marxism and Capitalism, and early American and European progressives had a lot of sympathy with communist/socialist revolutions. Probably right into the 50's and maybe the early 60's there was still a feeling on the left that you didn't have to fight capitalism directly because it was dying anyway. Even Kennedy talked about 'the long twilight struggle' against communism in a way that practically assumed the battle would be lost eventually. The fierceness of protecting those dominos was based on a lack of confidence that any domino that fell could ever be stood back up. But then came the 70s and the economic stagnation in the semi-nationalized Euro zone and the obvious and growing signs of collapse and rot inside the Communist world. By the 1990s, to the surprise of all of us that grew up under the pessimism of the post WWII era, it was Socialism/Marxism that was left on the ash-heap of history. Totalitarianism certain still stood in places, but any idea it was based on evangelism for a new economics instead of ordinary tyranny was long gone. Now interestingly enough, in Europe, this didn't seem to create a crises in political/economic governance. England and Scandinavia moderated the worst socialist excesses that were dragging down their economies and Europe largely carried on with with understanding that capitalism was here to stay but that things like government social welfare, public investment, labor unions, regulation and public input to corporate boards had to be part of future. The situation in the US was much different. We got the worst excesses of a less regulated triumphalist capitalism, a period of insufficient social investment, and argument over whether the government should even have any role in social services. So that has left the American left in sort of in a quandary. You can't preach classic industrial socialism, it's too thoroughly discredited (not that Bernie didn't try!) but in the absence of some easy to define alternative like socialism, the US left doesn't seem to know how to articulate a vision or program to get to the better form of capitalism most of Europe has already started to figure out. Maybe as you say - they are too radicalized to even want just that or I guess it's just too mundane/boring/lost in minutia. Elizabeth Warren has tried arguing for capitalism with reform, didn't get very far. If the left doesn't want that, whatever else it is they are selling or trying to sell on economics remains a mystery. Rhetoric about what you don't like (i.e. railing against corps and the rich) only goes so far on economics, you have to propose the vision of how to get to what you want. With no understandable, 'marketable', economic reform vision to sell, the US left has devolved mostly into throwing isolated economic ideas at the wall (tuition forgiveness), identity politics and its own sexual culture war, and not much of that charges up the electorate. I think if the dems do well in '22 they will have mostly revulsion to Trump and the GOP overreach on abortion to thank rather than that they found any magic of their own. Heaven knows that should be enough, but it still doesn't say much to recommend the Dems on a programmatic basis.

yup - everything is so well telegraphed in advance - really exactly so markets anticipate things and don't go crazy.

disagree here. The 'science' is completely settled. What remains is that nothing in life is absolute - but that is true of *everything*. It's true every time you walk out the door of your house, get in your car, step off the curb. The 'science' is that the COVID vaccine represents no excess risk compared to virtually anything else we do in life everyday. You might as well decide to refuse to drive or take any of the drugs in your medicine cabinet, eat a vegetable, or go for walk. Any of these things might hurt you because of some odd confluence of rare circumstances, but they are risks we normally assume because otherwise life is paralysis. The COVID vaccine is exactly the same in that regard.

yeah - I think election polling in the US is still largely missing the boat on the issue. The hardest question in US politics is not figuring out who supports whom, it's figuring out who is going to vote. I think the swings in voter participation are larger than the opinion swings in the electorate. For a long time we have had this model where there are dems, repubs and indies, and changing the minds of the indies swings the election. We all tend to talk in those terms all the time. But what I think may be more true is that you have dark red and pinks and you have deep blues and powder blues. And what really swings elections is not whether you flip any reds to blue or vice versa, but how many of the pinks and powder blues show up to vote. It's not a matter of changing minds, it's a matter of changing motivation. Understood that way the great success of the GOPs cultural fear politics makes sense.

Hill hasn't hit a lick in Toledo. Thinking that ship has sailed.

I wonder if the Tigers 'discovery' of spin has contributed to this. In Fulmer, Faedo and Jobe they opted for guys whose breaking balls were their calling cards, and conventional wisdom has always been that spinning breaking balls is what is hard on UCLs or in Mize's case the split, another high strain pitch. Obviously I'm concerned for Jobe.

I think this is pretty accurate. The danger is that Al has done the worst when he's been under pressure to 'do something' at the deadline - as in JV and JD. I'm afraid he is going to end up making a poor trade out of desperation to be doing something.

Cook is always skeptical about apparent Democratic strength. And he's been largely correct.

the thing is, trading Skubal at this point is probably pointless. Trades by nature start out as a zero sum proposition. The way they provide value is you either find a team in distress willing to overpay or you deal from an area of excess on your team to fill a gap. Starting with the 2nd first - there was point this season went it looked like the org did have excess starting pitching depth - but that is long gone now. Faedo, Manning, Mize, Wentz were all possibilities at one point who are questionable now and Turnbull's return to effectiveness is also open. So trading Skubal leaves as big a hole in the pitching as the position player that returns is going to fill, unless 2) you can rob a team in distress. But the truth is that in recent years teams have pretty much refused to play the 'all in for this run at the playoffs' game as much as they used to, plus by nature that is a scenario where the team that is willing to overpay - at least in theory, wants to do it in prospects since moving their established players runs counter to the aim of making a run. So there you are back to the rebuild paradigm. I tend to think they are stuck. Producing present tense net improvement in a very low value roster through trades is very hard unless you are dealing your own prospects a la DD. Al had the right idea 5 yrs ago - you rebuild through the draft supplemented by free agency. He was not wrong, he just hasn't executed. Pivoting to a strategy that probably won't work just to change things up isn't going to help that.

in that sense true, but my meaning was "not a war we decided to start" - as in Iraq.

Yeah - big swing. But I don't think he swung at anything as bad as some of what Javy has swung at, but then again, he wasn't facing an MLB quality slider either!

I've thought Harbaugh was a nut ball since he was a student, am I only allowed to say "What a nice guy - but gee, I do disagree with him a bit"? Criticism of what a person believes is by nature 'personal' so my question is where is your proposed line in this case? Clearly advocating university action against him, doxing etc, crosses the line, but I would say that in political criticism 'snide' is absolutely in play as it usually related directly to implied hypocrisy. And it's also rich in Harbaugh's case who has always been so quick with snide criticism of other coaches and opponents.

I'm as curious as the next guy regarding what the Tigers will do at the deadline, but my base assumption comes from the other direction than the Rosenthal story. "The rebuild is over, we aren't moving our young players for prospects..." I think that still applies in the minds of the Tiger front office. My guess is that for good or ill, they still believe in this team and are writing off this season's outcome as the confluence of a bunch of terrible luck and "wait till next year." That being the case I'm not going to be surprised if they don't do much. I'm actually not sure what you can do when there isn't a single player on the roster to 'sell high' on other than maybe Greene, or Carpenter and/or a reliever. So I tend to agree with the idea that the BP is where a move(s) may come. Plus Al has shown a propensity to trade relievers in the past.

Rotation may not be looking so bad by Sept - maybe Skubal, Manning, Rodriquez, Brieske, Turnbull. Of course by the time they are all back to take one final turn in the rotation before the season ends, they will have already lost 95+ games.

If you wonder why the gentle rustle of the river water seems to be getting louder, that's the waterfall you're rushing toward....

"Unintended" is both incorrect and too generous. Predictable, understood and judged irrelevant is more accurate.

They shouldn't, but is Chris I. willing to do the homework to find a guy he has to look for? We can only hope. I'd still put the odds higher that he just tells Avila to hire his replacement and move upstairs. Path of least resistance.

Also - another mansplaining for his absent wife.