gehringer_2

So we sat almost behind the plate at 5/3 tonight and twice when an Omaha player asked for an appeal on a called strike, it was overturned and called a ball, and then he struck out anyway. Was interested to see the challenge system work though. I don't really like it. Suddenly the game stops and your not sure why if you missed someone tap their helmet (the appeal signal), then 15 sec of mill and dawdle waiting for the call. I get the idea that the league doesn't immediately want the umps to lose their practice calling balls and strikes if you give them every call electronically, but it would be a better fan experience that way.

He made a couple of decent 3B->1B throws also. Nothing extraordinary but routine plays properly made.

Gipson-Long 1H 12k after 6

Colt goes deep! 1-0

Gipson-Long has Kd 7 of the first 9 outs for the Hens so far

Could get back to 10 under!

Makes sense because you get Wentz today on the 27th man double header roster waiver. You'd have to do a regular call-up if you wanted to use Manning today and Wentz later.

Oh - we've had enough roster crunches. The problem is that the typical Tiger roster crunch has been 4 guys who are all equally mediocre vying for 2 jobs.

actually, I think some team named "Indian" should keep their name and change their mascot to a Ganesh. Just put a baseball bat in place of the sceptre

OTOH, Anibal Sanchez pitched years after enough surgery to have led to a much lower expectation. I don't know if the surgeons can tell anything about what kind of prognosis they expect based on what they see and how the procedure went but unpredictability seems predictable....

the other difference is that Skubal's stuff is miles better than Fulmer's.

Lynn's big suggestion for the future is to trade Skubal, because so many teams win WS without staff aces.

Mortgages and that 10yr bill tend to track and right now the yield curve is still inverted. If the Fed does not begin to reduce short term rates soon, long term rates will still be seeing upward pressure as the yield curve begins to normalize post inflation - so mortgages would follow upward as well, and that will pressure housing. If the Fed relents, then maybe not. The thing with the Fed is that talking tough in public to set psychology is almost as important to their success as their market moves, so even if any of they were thinking rates could come down soon, telegraphing that it is the last thing they will want to do.

Correct, but you're describing a symptom, not necessarily a cause. If he was still physically unable to go hard because of the knee, or that they didn't want him getting tackled, that is one thing, but he had no excuse not to know the offense if that was an issue. So it reads whichever way, depending. For now his coach is still talking him up. As long as he doesn't burn that bridge he'll have the chance to prove himself.

In those first few games after the trade, I remember that Brooks was reporting life/spin on Norris' FB way into the top percentiles. But the constant tweaking to try and fix the unsustainable unreproducible delivery and the various assorted injuries along the way soon enough resulted in that FB being long gone. The last time we saw him I didn't recognize anything interesting in his pitch dynamics. It's too bad, he seemed like a good guy at heart, but for all his supposed athleticism, his body just betrayed him as a pitcher. It made/makes no sense that a guy that athletic could never coordinate himself into any semblance of a normal controlled delivery.

Because you read Elmore Leonard?

Weather Underground future radar projection has the rain starting at 6:30 in Cleveland at moving out by 9:45. Not too promising. On the other hand it looks like some of that could be light - almost drizzle. I agree though - if they try to start it, maybe start Brieske or Holton and hold Skubal for the inevitable resumption.

you are what your record says you are.

Copa might have him over-swinging - it does that so some guys. But other peripherals like K rate, walks and doubles argue the other way. So it could also just be half a dozen warning track shots that didn't clear the fence at COPA. It has not been a hot Summer in Det. COPAs HR park factor this season is 91 so far. Carpenter has a big Home/Away HR split as well. Then again, and conversely, Jake has hit most of his at home. No-one else on the team with enough to mean much.

There is a kernel of truth in saying that people expect the government to control the game more than it should or can. The government's job is to control the rules of the game. At best the game runs largely by itself. It's up to the gov to keep watch and push it back when it starts crossing the wrong lines.

Simple is good. I like simple.

One should always game out every contingency, right?

I do think Tork has to learn how to play every day in a long season. I think he is a guy that carries himself with so much confidence that his coaches don't realize he is probably still getting run down. And I hope he does not get too greedy. At some I think he can be a better OBP hitter if he'd be more willing to take fastballs to right field. He has the talent, you see it on occasion but he doesn't commit to it with any regularity because he's having too much fun pulling the ball ---- for now.

I think that is pretty generous. Unless it was because his knee was still not 100%, his near total inability to contribute once he came back last season is red flag that's hard to ignore.

Lack of effective communication between players who have not played next to each other much is inevitable and largely self-correcting with more time together (one of the constraints on constantly mixing and matching), but it's a different issue from the player's ability to execute plays at the position.