gehringer_2

I've skipped through a lot of games quickly on the DVR but never got through one in 15 sec.......

this is something I have found really intriguing. So in all the years I'd watched baseball "pretech" there was always this debate about using live pitchers in batting practice - was it worth it, and whether a more realistic batting practice setup would improve hitters etc. So when the hi-tech pitching machines appeared that gave hitters the chance to stand in and practice as much as they wanted against what ever spin and velocity they could dial in, I figured there *might* be a potential for a revolution in offense across the league. But not much discernible has actually happened, things all seem to be within the usual norms. I think that argues that hitters already have/had ways to get in as much useful work as they could, and that good pitching will remain hard to hit. It remains more a matter of not knowing or being able to recognize what is coming even if you have the chance to practice against it. So for batters the practice tech hasn't been near the revolution that letting a pitcher actually practice and refine his exact pitch physics pitch by pitch has been.

I agree - I think teams have caught on to the need to hit and pitch against their tendencies when facing the Tigers. I don't think that's the reason they've slumped suddenly though. While it's possible, I can't think of a good explanation that all the opposing teams would have suddenly changed their approach to Detroit in unison 2/3 of the way through the season - I think they've been adjusting that in regard ever since this season began and the Tigers were still winning anyway.

two unsuccessful or two total? Two total could be a joke if an ump is just consistently wide.

yup. And I think it will be a boost for most RHB. That extra ball width/inconsistency that so many umps regularly give RH slider pitchers is murder on RHH.

In the sense that other teams are doing the same thing so Tiger hitters are having more trouble, or in the sense that what the Tigers are doing isn't as effective and other teams are now hitting them better? I'd agree with the first, but the second is more complicated. Using the tech to teach pitchers how get their pitches to move works - end of story there. Hitters don't seem to be able to get better with familiarity or more practice against good movement - and the lack of impact of Trajekt on league offense seems to prove that. But given that the Tiger pitching staff's problem this year seems to center mostly around too many walks, it may be that they have just gone past optimum on their pitch designs to where guys are trying to throw designer pitches they can't command well enough to keep the walks in check.

A lot of the time she was trying to be funny or satirical but she had really lost the handle on where the edge of the cliff was.

or think of if in terms of living there with it and the lights on, or living there without with the lights off. 🤔 We stayed at a place with one of these visible out the window. Took a day or two to notice what it really was. Once you know I suppose you can't unknow though...

I've always wondered what brought him back to Detroit. Maybe the Tigers just made the best offer and there is nothing more to read into it.

and zero sacks allowed. Granted the Ravens were down a pro-bowler on the Dline, but still pretty impressive.

That and 'carbon dioxide capture.' Start running away when you hear either one touted.

If I'm Flaherty, I'm looking at what the Tigers do to shore up the bullpen. His OPS against just explodes in the 6th inning, he needs to be on a team that can protect him better than the Tigers have been able to this season. Now to be serious, I doubt any player thinks that way, but if he wants to optimize his market value he should.

this is the big downside risk - the pitching could end up pretty bad next season and we don't really have the depth of position players to bring much pitching back in trade without gutting the offense. This particular team may well have peaked without ever having gotten quite good enough. OTOH, every other team has problems too.

SB - I happened across a football film breakdown podcast, and the all the commercial inserts were from an outfit called CROP America and they all featured Ohio farm families talking about how leasing some of their land for solar panels was saving their family farms. Lots of cute sheep munching grass under the installations, etc. Is this getting to be legit or it just PR noise?

Fiber in town here is mixed underground/above ground. These hurdles are not technical or even cost. Last mile/first mile, it goes back to the lack of a mandate to operate as a public utility or in the public interest - again - all bad politics and screwed up government. Somebody once wrote: "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." Someone did that for us once. Everyday it's more obvious that that once new gov has pretty much lost any connection to its original charter. It's incredible really that we sit here in the most technically advanced and richest country in the history of the world and we can't even do the simplest **** for ourselves anymore.

It'll keep them hungrier starting the 2nd half.

I don't know if hard hit rate and GB rate are considered predictive, but this season they are pretty much the worst of his career.

If they have electricity that means the road and the poles are already there so it's not that expensive. It's just the political will to admit that not everything paid for by taxes is bad.

yup - what they should have done in the first place.

I was forced to sit through "Bye, Bye, Birdie" 🤮 in a theater at an impressionable age, and it's just been downhill for me with Musicals ever since. 😉

would that be just Bloomington or the IU system though?

well, if it turns out to be for making false statements to Congress, I can't think of an admin more at risk for having establishing a precedent for punishing that.

He's going to have to give up something to get something back so there is lot of potential for disaster. Which goes back to the fact that the pitching pipeline that Avila built has dried up. We knew a lot of those guys wouldn't pan out, which is why we needed to have a lot of them. After Melton, AA or AAA look pretty bare of top flight arms. Last time I looked our highest ranked pitching prospect was #10 in the org (Hamm) and he's 2-5 with an almost 5 ERA. That's not going to cut it.

IDK, tour planners would be plugged into that level of detail and it might figure into what kind of recommendations they are making to clients yr to yr. Don't have any idea how many Euros use tour planners though. If I had to guess, politics would play more with Euros, cost and convenience issues with the US traveler. I was just doing a little browsing and reporting on Disney park performance seems all over the map. Looks like maybe revenue is up YOY but '24 was a bad year. Since prices are up, revenue may be better than attendance. Short term the suits don't care about that point, but long term it matters. I remember once, as CEO of GM, Roger Smith said he didn't care how many cars GM sold as long as they were making money. IIRC, he was out not too long after that.

I do know a fair number of people who have made a political decision not to spend money in Fl, but that's Ann Arbor. We did a ST trip this year so in our case fandom was stronger than politics. I also wouldn't discount the terrible traffic in Central Fl as more mundane disincentive either. You can't get anywhere and this year there has been a lot of freeway construction making it even worse.