gehringer_2

Speaking of OSU. Ewers is gone. QB goes to Columbus, doesn't play, walks away taking a 7 figure $$ NIL deal through the portal with him. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32781078/ohio-state-quarterback-quinn-ewers-set-enter-transfer-portal the team, the team, the team,..............my deal, my deal, my deal!

maybe that is part payoff from some of those early wins when we all expecting them to start working on the passing game but they just kept pounding the rock. Maybe their approach was that an O-Line gets more out of running the ball in live games than they could get ever get in practice.

crappy showcase for Thibodeaux. One sack.

Pay half a billion for two SS and have them play 2nd and 3rd? It's not my team so works for me! But something we know from watching Mike Ilitch at the end - there is a difference between signing bats and building a team.

Football is a game of unit to unit match-ups, and for all the reasons you describe, this M team was a bad match-up for OSU. Especially when M was able to score first. What I wonder is whether Harbaugh and his staff sat down last off-season and decided to design a team that could defeat a Ryan Day squad (OSU has been going with pretty much the same game plan for a few years now), or whether they dumb lucked into it. The other factor is that M stayed relatively healthy this year - esp on the D side. I was not fan of his, but in fairness to Don Brown, IIRC one of his teams that got torched by OSU throwing crossing routes over the middle had lost 3 or 4 LBs from opening day.

doesn't seem likely this is going to end well.

that's all we need now, a Michigan version of Ruby Ridge in Hillsdale Co.

To me they violated the 1st rule. They spent a lot of money to replace a position where one of their best players was already playing. Kiner-Falefa had the same WAR last year as Seager and was still arb eligible. Though TBF, Kiner_F probably goes to 3B so the comparison should be to Brock Holt, who was more like replacement level last season.

Rangers had a -190 run differential. Rangers had the 3rd worst ERA, 2nd fewest saves, fewest shutouts, 2nd fewest strike outs, 3rd worst ERA+, and 2nd worst FIP in the American League. They have added a career 107 ERA+ pitcher. Meanwhile, in the field, Kiner-Falefa was +9 Rdrs at short, while Nick Solak was -7 Rdrs at 2B. They totalled -16 batting runs. Seager and Semien totalled +9 Rdrs and 48 batting runs. So with 75/yr million spent I figure they are still short of closing half the run differential to get to even.

TBH, Correa not that much betters in the 'antics' department - depending on how you like that kind of thing.

Schoop is an odd one. A little like Upton in that when he is slumping, he looks so unable to find the ball that he should have been out of baseball two years ago, then a week later he's got the zone down cold and is hitting every ball hard. In Schoops case it is way more than just the random BaBIP noise that all hitters go through. He literally does go from a great to a terrible hitter and back again. Sleep issues? Allergies? Bio-rhythms?

over 9K cases per day for the last two days. We are in a full blown rout. I just took a test today as I have come down with something- feels like an ordinary cold but at this point you have to check on everything.

Brooks goes and dies and the County administration turns to mush in 2 years.....

question: Who is going to want to take this case? These folks don't look like they have the money to hire OJ's team. The Oakland county public defenders office is probably not a happy place since this tragedy

Iowa needed 4 INTs to beat PSU and lost to Wisc and Purdue. Cade is the most careful QB in the conference. On paper there is no game here. Of course 20 yr olds can come up flat for mysterious reasons, but aside from that always there underlying risk of them not showing up, there isn't any kind of football based analysis you can do to persuade yourself MI is likely to lose this game.

Sorry son, I know you are on trial for crimes that may put you away for the rest of your natural life, but we are facing a class D felony and are booking it out of here. Good luck. -Mom and Dad.

I would say that as of last year Cabrera did have long stretches where he saw the ball pretty well, but the knee would come and go - you could watch to see if he was picking up his left foot from day to day/week to week or just swinging flat footed. There's always a possibility the layoff or some off-season routine or treatment will help the knee, or it could just get worse. So I won't try to guess what Miguel can contribute. Clearly last season he was not ready to go when the season started (329 OPS in his 1st 17 games, 747 the rest of the way) - . Hinch had given him 40 AB in ST, could have done a little but not much more there.

but didn't call the cops or the school immediately? Have they determined if he was just picking victims at random?

1st a live round that magically appears and now a gun that magically fires itself?

I've seen 3 weeks given as the minimum ST for the pitchers - so 1st week in March?

Notre Dame promotes their DC to HC. Marcus Freeman is in. Probably saved some $$ there. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/2021/12/03/notre-dame-promotes-freeman-35-replace-kelly-coach/8851561002/

kitty-corner has an interesting history. Nothing to do with cats https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/kitty-corner-a-word-history

I felt really bad about Dirks. What I couldn't figure out was that last time he went to Toledo after having back trouble, he got hurt again stealing a base. WTF was he doing stealing bases rehabbing a bad back? IIRC, it was shortly after that he was done. I always wondered if he had done that on his own, of if the manager had called it, which if true, would have been a pretty shitty thing to be doing.

yeah - I've seen that. I think if you insert a quote and then delete the entry cursor - for instance you put in a sentence and then delete it all the way back the beginning, you lose the cursor out side the quote box permanently, even though you can still edit in the quote box. The way out is to ctl-Z to reverse the deletion you made. Then edit what you want but sure not to delete the entry point again.

you know me, I'd do something more radical. How about a scheme were the league pays everyone's minimum at about 2 million, and the teams all pay a revenue based tax to the league to fund that. All the guys at the minimum would go into a draft every year, which would include all AAA guys with 5 yrs. You pick the guy, you get him for one year. If you like him, you can sign him to an 'extension' contract, say a minimum of 2yrs and 25% more than the minimum, but otherwise for as long and as much as you want and you leave the luxury tax in place. When contracts run out, guys with enough seniority (say 5 years at MLB) are FA. If a FA doesn't sign during the FA period, he can go back to the draft pool with the rest at the minimum salary. If you are at the min and don't get picked up, you are a minor league free agent. That would leave a lot of decent players as a performance floor for bad teams to turn around quickly with and you could weight the 'draft' rules even more heavily toward bad teams - say multiple picks in the 1st round to the worst teams. You 'own' your minor leaguers for a fixed number of option years much like now, but if you don't give them the 2yr +25% deal in 5 yrs, they go to the pool. just a sketch - but the idea is to increase minimums and give poor teams more options to turn over their rosters at moderate cost. Insulate players from cheapskate ownership since the league sets the floors. Let journeyman players move and maybe help keep good players with the same team. It doesn't address what to do about albatross contracts, but I think in the long run that is self correcting because the teams that give them out almost always do suffer in the end.