gehringer_2

nice little rally runs out of gas on the soft underbelly of the lineup.

7-8-9-1 four batters in a row, 162, 156, 125, 181. Best odds of two consecutive hit is 2.5%, that's once in 40 times through the order.

QFT

Montana is doing something like this also. Corporations operate under state law. A state can decide what kind of corporate structure and purpose they allow. I'm sure there will be some kind of challenge under the ICC eventually but we'll see. The flaw in Citizens United has always been the fallacy that sits at its heart, which is that the 'corporation' has some kind of independent existence and thus some kind of standing under the constituion. They do not, they are 100% the creation of statute law, and thus what they may and may not do under terms of incorporation must be subject to statute law under any consistent logic. State legislatures could decide tomorrow that every current corporation in America ceases to exist and then recreate corporate existence on a different set of operating principles.

the argument going into the season was that if you had a chance to win, keeping him through the season would be worth more than any likely return. So the part about the return not being great hasn't changed, what's changing rapidly is his potential value to a team that isn't going anywhere. How good does the return have to be to be more valuable than the difference between finishing 4 and 5th? Chasfh is correct you can't really do anything until he is pitching again, but that could still be substantially before the deadline.

mistake was probably made years ago when they decided to have one super fund instead of breaking things up by municipality or district where each fund could be judged against its peers. Now trying to reform it is a too big to fail situation.

No, you save that for your left fielder....

so given this and your post about the likely future of any Tiger team that went 2-15 - is the inescapable conclusion that the only rational thing to do is offer him (and anyone else over 26 that will bring back value) in trade while there are still 4 months left in the season? If you're ever going to get to the top of the mountain you have be ruthless in your self-evaluation.

so for this season, Jack's best inning is his second with a 2.45 ERA. In the first inning of his 11 starts he has a 5.7 ERA with 6 walks, 15 K and 3 HR. But still, since for Flaherty so much of his success seems tied to his FB velo - it he can come out throwing hard that could be a key to better success in short outings. OTOH, throwing harder might send his command completely into the toilet. But what else are they going to do? They have to try to get some kind of value out of him.

Thing is, even if Hueter ends up on the 60 eventually with a more serious muscle strain, that's probably a decision they would normally prefer not to make until a week or more on the 10 day after they see how it's responding. Of course what they 'prefer' to do is probably swirling down the drain with the rest of team's chances.

this is true. But to be fair, I think there is at least some synergy to hitting; as the number of dangerous hitters in a lineup falls, it gets easier for the opposing pitchers overall and I think that tends to make it tougher for the rest of the hitters as well. Or another way to put it is that unless you are Barry Bonds, it's tougher to be a good hitter on a bad hitting team.

yeah - the guys I would care least about losing are position players but that's a mismatch since it's pitchers that are coming back.

You and Hinch both. He has appeared in 47 games this season, has only 17 complete games - he either went in as or was lifted for a pinch hitter in 30 times in 47 games. That's quite the indictment of either the player or the team that spent to buy out his arb years. Or just a manager under so much pressure to win he's doesn't care about player development any more. But this relates to a previous discussion. Keith once had a lot of trade value, today he has about none. Either their evaluation of him when they extended him was just wrong, or they've messed up his development - either way, he was a high value asset as a prospect/rookie and as of today that value is largely squandered. He needed to either be traded or made into a good player. That's an example of an organizational fail. So no org will win 'em all, but the more you lose the tougher it is.

apropos to this - Just happened across recent research linking Picloram to early onset colo-rectal cancer. Picloram is another organochloride broad leaf killer. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/pesticides-may-help-explain-rising-early-onset-crc-rates-2026a1000fsc?ecd=a2a

I'm not all the way to the 'just play 9 guys' limit, but I'd like to see Colt given 100 games at 3b - everyday (subject to rest days) - no other gloves. Same with McG at SS - and when Javy comes back he is the CF so McG stays put. Also would give give Torkelson a few more regular days off than Hinch usually does, though obviously he did sit him the other day. He's played 159,150, 155 the last three seasons. I'd like to see if he benefits from that dropping to ~145.

It's the Pres that's expecting it, that's the part that makes it not silly.

If it was a clean break Meadows should be back to 100%, but at this point he has lost so much development time that may be 100% of not much. high ankle sprain could become a chronic deficit for an athlete but pretty fair chance Javy will be fine. Gleyber seems like he is just starting to break down, a major injury a 3 consecutive seasons now. Likewise - over his 4 full seasons Carpenter's availability has been 57%

yup - if a guy comes in with the objective of carrying an agenda for the guy that sent him and the other 11 don't agree with him, it's going to make policy formulation even more a mess than usual. If he acts as a team player with the rest of the them he risks ending up under indictment like his predecessor.

I think is certainly true for most players, though I wouldn't say all. There are guys like Javy (maybe to a slightly lesser degree McK) who are just what you'd call natural fielders - they have all the right instincts no matter where you put them and have total confidence in their own gloves. If you have even a couple guys like that a manager like Hinch should be in heaven. Thing is, most players, are not like that. They are the guys you are talking about who have to work to learn positions, need consistent work to stay sharp and need to build confidence in order to play free and easy. I don't believe you can force feed a Colt Keith into being a Javy Baez. I think the Tigers as an org would prefer that not be true, but it is.

So Warsh is now sworn in - the next Fed meeting is Mid June and at least one governor just came out for removing the guidance that the Fed 'bias' is toward another rate cut. So when Warsh was on Fed the before (during Bernanke I guess?), he apparently was strongly opposed to QE, wants big reductions in the Fed balance sheet to get it unwound finally. I suppose that is one way to fight inflation without actually raising interest rates, so maybe that's the needle he wants to thread. Problem is that when the Fed starts selling its holdings faster, that depresses prices, and since banks hold a lot of the same kinds of securities, that stresses bank reserve requirements and the bankers don't like that. At one time Powell tried to increase the rate of unwind in the Fed's balance sheet the banks screamed bloody murder (and IIRC one bank went under or had to rescued or some such) and he backed off. Should be interesting if Warsh goes that way again.

LOL - touche! Moving guys around a lot is maybe one where I think there is some consensus around here that there is at least some defensive cost involved, but how do you quantify it and decide if it's a net plus or not? Again it's coming down to someone's (mostly Hinch's) judgment because it's just too multivariate a problem with too shallow case data to generate useful analytical guidance.

I can't argue that from where we sit, the decision that young Riley was an everyday player and young Colt is not seems pretty arbitrary. I suppose it was at least partly because Riley graded very well in the field the first couple of years - though that's seems to be over now.

Right - at some point you just have to decide what you believe. I'm sure there are guys out there on team analytic staffs doing exactly what you are talking about, trying to figure out what term is optimum to get the best predictor for particular outcomes, The problem is that like Soylent Green - IT'S PEOPLE! and they tend to confound whatever you do to try to predict them. My personal observation would be to always down weight previous seasons at least when you see guys do things in the off season that result in them coming back as very different players - for instance Riley two seasons ago and Keith this season -- and pitchers in general because they always seem to vary from year to year just because almost no pitcher can stay 100% healthy season to season -they almost always have something not quite right. Other than that a manager just has to figure it out as best he can! In Hinch's case I think you can make the argument form watching him that he likes to take the longer view. Is he right? IDK - It's not working now, but that doesn't mean it's his choices that are the reason.

This is what I mean about Hinch being a guy who doesn't want to be told about short term trends. Jones' OBP against LHP is less than 300 *this* season. Any rational approach to llne-up construction based on recent outcomes would not have him in the 3 spot, but his OBP over the longer term of with last season was 398 - sure bat him 3rd against a LHP. You can have all the data and analytics you want, but at some point you still have to apply judgments about how to use the data that are beyond what the data can tell you about the player.