gehringer_2

yeah - there is a certain paradox in looking at developing players. If a guy has great balance and good compact swing mechanics you might think - hey this is a guy we like. But OTOH, if he has all those attributes and he's not producing, where does he have to go to get better? On the other hand, if a guy looks terrible but is still having some success, then maybe your eyes should light up under your coaching hat thinking "Here is something I can work with" 🤔

if it's anyone other than Shapiro it tells you their polling is telling them that PA is not in play for the GOP.

QFT. Still, I wouldn't underestimate Netanyahu's talent for playing US politics. And I think if you approach him the way Obama did, treating Israel a US client state or junior partner, you won't get anywhere, much like Obama didn't. Israeli leaders will turn off any US Prez who tries to tell them what we think they should think is best for them - it just feeds their belief that the US has the luxury of being dilettante in foreign policy while Israeli concerns are existential. I would agree with the premise that Netanyahu has been wrong - a lot. That he is captive to a religious right in Israel that is at least a screwed up as our own, but I think our approach with him during the Obama years was also counter productive. I think Biden has done better, but there was already a lot of bad blood to overcome between the Democratic FP establishment and the Israelis

Not so much 2 days ago but comparing opening day to opening day. When the season started Wentz, Faedo, hadn't yet really proved themselves as incapable, we still had hope for Brieske, we thought Casey's availability problems were behind him. Now granted none of those things were more than optimism/projection, but having them all turn to dross definitely takes the bloom off the strength of position we hoped to be in by this off-season, when at least for me, I thought we would have XS pitching that would be good enough to land a front line position player or two in trade. The cold reality we are left with now is that we go into another off-season without any XS roster value to use as trade capital on either the pitching or position side of the roster. And yes - of course - Maeda and Torkelson....

I'm never that excited about young guys whose calling card is power whose contact skill haven't been proven. Guys who have the hit tool stand a better chance of developing power than guys with power have of developing the hit tool if it isn't there. The latter is just by far the rarer skill. So I'm not knocking the kid per se, I just don't think the power at 20 in the low minors tells you all that much about whether he projects to ever hitting in the majors.

Iran already started a shooting war with them via Hamas, whose ability to project force is 100% an Iranian project, so if you are Israel, when it comes to Iran, you'd ask "what escalation" with some justification. And as it relates to Iran, the beauty of being Israel is that Iran can't project much effective military power directly at Israel, if they want to make a statement, they have to do with some action like hitting Saudi oil tankers, which is then far more likely to draw a heavy US response. That's a win/win for Israel.

I think pitching is going to have to be the biggest priority this offseason, both starters and BP arms. Of course that depends a lot on how Keith, Torkelson, Dingler, Malloy, Meadows and Perez all finish this season. If a just a couple three of them look like keepers, the position issues will not be as dire as they looked earlier this season.

Reuters reporting that Ismail Heniyah has been killed in Tehran - presumably by some Israeli action.... https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-chief-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran-hamas-says-statement-2024-07-31/ Iran is now probably going to try something noisy to restore its honor after failing to protect an esteemed guest.

The GOP has to be in mortal fear that a lot of their business and insider support is only there because people thought a Trump win was inevitable and they needed to be on the right side, thus any serious leakage at the polls and the rats will be abandoning ship.

Clark must be PO'd that they moved McGonigle past him in the rankings. He's been pedal to the metal since he got to WM.

Finally pushed his OPS at Toledo over 800 tonight on the strength of a double and 2 BB. He's filling Malloy's empty spot as the Hen's designated walker.

he hit 24 HR in low A, at high A this year he's hit 7 in 314 PA. It doesn't matter how hard you hit it unless you can hit it with some regularity.

A team whose strength going forward was supposed to be pitching now has one of the weaker staffs and less AAA depth than average and while the pitching went poof we've seen Keith look good and Perez and Malloy look like they might stick. Net/net we've lost ground for the year.

what was that about making 'X' the free speech platform. ROTFL. Zuckerberg is probably high-fiving around the office on this news. Expect Trump soon to be selling gold spray painted Teslas on Truth Social.

bottom line we are a worse MLB team as of 6:00pm than we were this morning and no-one brought on board has a high probability of making any MLB impact. Now TBH, they were going to be worse once Flahery left at the end of the season anyway, but I'm not sure anything in these returns is necessarily better than a comp pick. Like I said before, teams like the Tigers end up persuading themselves they have to make these trades while the buying teams laugh all the way to the playoffs.

Yeah - if you don't get it some tuna it's going free agency.

One for two ain't bad.....

and they were right.

One has to assume Netanyahu has gamed out his options and if Harris looks like the likely winner, he will probably make a deal on Gaza and the show up back in DC as a peacemaker the new Admin can love again.

By the last numbers I saw Threads wasn't doing much in the US but was still growing overall around the rest of the world.

maybe they are waiting to be sure Chafin agrees to report before putting the other name out there....🤷‍♀️

Be still my beating heart - too much to expect.

Stop being reasonable, we have less to two more hours to be silly.

Maybe it will come right after Donnie decides he loves electric cars?

OK, though after only one previous season we don't really have 'normal' down yet.