gehringer_2

Zach Logue will be able to lose pretty much as effectively.

Right. Trump has learned that the key is to simply never leave the cocoon of your own alternate reality bubble. Debate depends on the debaters at least agreeing that they exist in the same universe, but Trump does not. You can't pierce his confidence by showing that what he says is contradicted by objective reality because he never admits objective reality as a premise. So it's basically like talking to a person suffering paranoid delusion, what is true in your world doesn't matter as they are not in it. What's bizarre here is not so much that Trump is able to act out this approach with skill, it's that it works for him. And it can only do that because of the rise of a deep enough alternate reality media system that large numbers of people who are immersed in it can also accept his reality as the one that is objectively true. In this sense it matches the essential properties of a cult in every way, but a cult supercharged by having a mass market media support structure. Now in practice, we haven't see mass marketed cults in the US other than in the religious domain. And it was hard to get alternate reality cults off the ground in the US because the US was a nation already steeped in post enlightenment Protestantism. The US has been a highly religious country, but the religions it practiced, regardless of how they saw their spiritual side, were still all in the post Enlightement philosophical fold of science and philosophic empiricism. Even Catholic intelletualism was largely pulled into empiricism after the Enlightenment. But in recent decades 'mainstream' Protestantism in the US on the decline and we've had the rise of Biblical literalist Christian fundamentalism. Biblical literalism is at its very heart a rejection of the system of post Enlightment empiricism, so this is one deep subtext to the successful rise of unreality based altermate media and politics. The other sociological trend that is probably just as significant but is not as widely recognized is the loss of 'community' connectedness throughout US society, but particularly in the non-college educated classes. People are getting more of their intellectual inputs from media, which is profit driven and always has its own agendas (with truth often not being on that agenda), as opposed to person to person interaction - especially cross generational interactions as families have atomized across the country. Cross generational family (and in the day in church congregations) interaction tends to keep people grounded in a broader set of perceptions of the 'real world' and that is something we continue to lose rapidly. The non-college educated classes get a double dose here as they are both the most socially disconnected, and many of those are do have social connection find it largely in those non-empiricist fundamentalist churches.

actually it would be more ideal if they had a high level fielder for Keith to be able to watch/work with when he's not playing. Sadly that's not in the cards either - at least until Kreilder is ready to start working out again, and I'm not sure that will even be this season.

How many 100 point season/scoring championships did Conner McDavid and Mario Lemieux win when their teams didn't even make the playoffs? You have build the strongest whole team or those guys don't matter anyway. That's going to take the Wings a few more years yet of picking players for their total win added potential across their whole game, and in that time all you can do is hope that one or two of the guys they draft, which could even be a Danielson - end up out pacing their projections and becoming the scorers you need, or they swing a deal for one, or they win like Vegas did without them. The conventional route to getting an offensive star by tanking has been denied the Red Wings despite no lack of their trying, and they don't get traded much, so the Wings are going to have find an alternate model -possibly like Vegas'

and had never completed a game.

and stayed under 100 pitches. Sadly, "A's" is for "Asterisk" .....jk

and at only 93 pitches

So read 'So far the best offers are still only pennies'

IIRC he wasn't/isn't very good with his footwork trying to play 1st either. Apparently not cut out for Swiss Army Knife Duty.

so the next question is who has a shot to make it to make the team this season? Soderblom and Edvinsson for certain. Mazur?

For me it depends on whether they are pulling the plug on JHM as a 3b. if they are, then fine, you have 2 3b's to give time to: Keith and Maton, and since you want to give Keith time at 2B as well, no problem. The Tigers are so desperate for a competent 3B that if you still believe against all odds Maton can improve there, fine. But that means you are giving up reps you could be giving to a younger, higher ceiling (supposedly) player, so I hope they are pretty confident that JHM will never be a ML 3B.

they gave up a grand slam in the bottom of the 9th so the game could go to extra innings and Keith could get on base for the 5th time.

Wentz probably the least prepared of the guys they have had to use this season. Just a bad situation.

If if makes you feel any better, both Maton and Camargo have throwing errors from the left side for the Hens tonight. OK, didn't think it would....

good skater, big body, plays strong in his own end, makes himself available for the outlet pass. Those all match up pretty well with glaring RW needs. Don't know if he'll be a plus player but it won't be because the fit isn't there.

yea - the Rasmussen, Sundqvist, Soderblom line was certainly fun while it lasted.

well, you have to cut the interviewer some slack, you would never expect anyone who didn't work the word 'organ*I*zation in to the conversation with the heavy accent on the "I" could possibly be an NHL GM.

and goal tending is a huge quesiton mark.

That's the a shot to persuade you that a checked swing broken bat can be real.

you mean for a 2nd then? Ok, sure. At this point every pitcher is at risk at all times. My original post about Skubal was for the langauge joke, not the science. The counter example is maybe Anibal Sanchez. Again, have forgotten the exact details but at the time we got him I didn't think his arm had a chance of going much further after what it had already been through, but the guy made though another 1200 IP after his trade here.

Tigers should probably think about making the organization a 'Perez free' zone. Too many bad experiences with that handle already.

It's just Trumps usual strategy of throwing stuff at the wall in the Court system trying to muddy pools, taking advantage of the excessive forebearance US courts have traditionally had about dismissing nuisance suits out of hand. If there is anything good that could come out of America's experience with Trump, it would be a little more confidence on the part of Judges to refuse to entertain crap cases. People like Trump who abuse the court system that way create just as much denial of justice overall as an occasional unrighteous dismissal would. The idea that *always* erring on the side of admitting cases doesn't eventually create a net loss of justice is a logical fallacy.

Yeah - the 2023 version of Boyd looked pretty much like Matt has always looked so that part was smoke. OTOH, $10M for a single year to 4.5 FIP/90 ERA+ FA is not a serious enough overpay to complain about. Really in baseball today almost anything you give a guy if you can limit it to one year is not so bad deal for ownership.

Hopefully they both are and some misguided GM is willing to give up something better than bag of practice pucks for one of them.

Mercy! I'd still be in PTSD recovery therapy if I'd suffered your fate. Could never stand Barr, Could never stand Allen.