gehringer_2

I used to say " I blame Hollywood" tongue in cheek, but I do believe too many people who might otherwise take more reasonable positions don't because they have a completely fantasy mindset about the usefulness of guns as defense against other guns - and that contributes to the problem.

I think Chris saw both teams go boom and bust under his father and by all evidence decided to do it differently. I think he is more patient than his fan base. He's the chief tortoise in the mix so we are stuck with his pace.

I could well be wrong, but I still have more confidence in Chinese society as a whole to believe they will let Xi lead them over a cliff. To me, philosophically, we see China's draconian internal policies in terms of just being evil, but internally the Chinese leadership justifies them as being utilitarian. Xi wants to demonstrate he can *save* more lives with his Covid policies than we have in the West. Political Chaos must be suppressed in China because it is historically too deadly and bad for economic development - etc. But that's a harder logic to apply to starting a war. I think/hope there is still a difference there between that and Russia, where Europe's ancient and deep 'Glory of the Motherland' mindset can still be tapped into by a Putin to justify a war of ambition.

Completely agree. Hunting is fine, but no hunting (or target) weapon needs to be more than single shot.

I think there is a lot of truth in this for pitchers - maybe relievers especially. I find it odd that people don't find it odder that relievers suffer just about as much UCL trouble as starters at 1/3 the IP. That would argue it's not the reps, it's particular reps.

I think we are getting back to more conventional epidemiology. The 'curve' is now pretty flat. Vaccines and Paxlovid have mitigated the threat to where the public is accepting the slow burn of the virus through the whole population. As an aside, this implies China is going to have to accept a pivot to a more effective vaccine or the lock downs there are going keep creating chaos for years more.

If this were china vs Taiwan, I could see it, but the population ratio between Russia and Ukraine just isn’t great enough for Russia to overwhelm through numbers alone.

Yes, Kenny got the Cul-de-sac. “We are happy to keep paying you in retirement for past services but your present services are no longer required.

Actually, if you want an honest knock on Avila, I'd say one of them is his penchant for falling for what I would call 'faux switch hitters" i.e., guys who stand in the LH batters box against RHP but actually have worse platoon splits against RHP than the average RH only hitter. Goodrum, W. Castro, Reyes all examples. When your OPS platoon split is >200 pts, it's unclear why you aren't just hitting from your better side.

Pretty ironic that the big knock on Scherzer early was that almost no-one believed he would be durable. Still, give me a guy that throws FB, change, curve and keeps his slider %low and I'm going to feel better about his future. JV had never thrown more than 30% sliders in a year until the year before his UCL gave out. Just sayin'. In fact Scherzer, despite a reputation as a slider pitcher, actually throws it < 20% of the time.

good to see him put a barrel on 98 mph. At 39 you can't get your hopes up for anything, but he's off to one of his better starts in a few years.

that is the problem. Reyes and Hill don't hit RHP either, but at least are reasonable OFs. I suppose it depends on the upcoming pitching matchups mostly. Are there more LHPs in the offing? Willie will probably crash once we see a string of RHP, and about then an OF gaff will cost another game.

Because I still tend to believe Willi's hot streaks with the bat will end up a mirage and there is no place safe in the OF to put him. If we want to ride a hot streak till it ends, sure - why not, but I'm still unconvinced he is a long term solution to anything. They've been able to give him ABs against LHP, but LHP are only 25-30% of the AB that eventually have to be played. You need OFs that can catch and hit RHP.

LOL. In the end, pitching will out. It's still the name of the game in Baseball.

We've lost 3 starters - now a forth, plus a reliever here and there, and the team ERA is 3.52. But Avila is incompetent.

that's part of his charm.

They need to stop screwing around and let Peralta stretch out from this outing to take Pineda's spot.

he's getting caught on in-between hops. He could either try to be more aggressive charging the ball when he can instead of letting it get to that in-between hop, or take another step back and take the ball after the hop - but maybe his arm isn't up to that.

That slide by Schoop is the first that I've seen that is serious competition for Prince.

when did Peralta come up with 97?

well, this doesn't look like it's going to age well. Mize back to Lakeland, Pineda hit in the hand with a batted ball...

another broken hand?

It looks like he took C Mo's advice to simplify and just do one thing, and right now that is pulling the ball, which is fine. He can expand his comfort zone on varying his approach once he has the 'get out front on the fastball' thing down.

I've always pretty much assumed this lyric was John's: "But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"

I'll go back to what I said about the hitters - one of the things that keeps guys keyed up when things are going bad is fear of losing their role. The take the role away so they can't worry about it any more. That may be the quickest way to get them back to where you can give them the role back.