gehringer_2

they could start with a hybrid system. The laser calls the plate by beeping in the ump's ear, he decides on the up-down and then makes the final call. Probably 80% of the worst bad calls are on width rather than height so you'd be rid of all those. Or just do it by %of height. Bottom of zone is x% of the batters standing height, top is y% of his height - whether he wants to crouch or not will not affect what he has to cover. That would be as fair to as many players as whatever the Umps are doing now.

I don't think they are supposed to be. Way back in the day, the National league moved away from the outside chest protector and the AL did not, and that did lead to a difference for a number of years because AL umps were looking from above and NL umps from the side. That meant the AL zone was more accurate left right but the low strike was approximate while in the NL up-down was more accurate but the outside was more approximate. The leagues eventually all got on the same page with inside padding and positioning. The definition of the zone was always the same, but the batters still got a different effect.

I predict it will make a lot changes in the game. There will a lot more 4 pitch walks, a lot more 3 pitch Ks, Batting averages will go up, scoring will go up (well, unless they just set the machines to call a bigger zone), and the differential between great players and the rest will come down because the machine won't be biased toward giving 'benefit' of the doubt to either Cy Young winners or a batting champions.

There can be certainly be inaccuracies in the "Bally Box" and as a matter of fact, when we used to be able to get strike call maps from Brooks baseball in real time, the umps were often more accurate in that box than in the (then) 'Fox Box.' But that aside, there is no excuse for what happened today to Niko where the ump gave the pitcher 2 ball widths additional on both sides of the plate in the same AB! There is no perspective or video inaccuracy can explain/excuse that. I have a fair amount of sympathy for the umps when players bitch about calls missed a little low or high, but umps should not be misjudging pitches on the horizontal axis.

Could be, but I doubt he will be. Mantha plays like he thinks he is Wayne frickin' Gretzky. He wants to float around above the fray and wait for some hard worker like Bertuzzi to set him up. Problem is that he is about 1000 goals short of earning that kind of deference.

If Manning had had the K zone Niko just got, he'd have pitched a shutout. Ridiculous umpiring with the game on the line. OTOH, if Niko had even the hint of rumor of a rep for knowing the K zone, he might get one of those once in a while.

the difference with Ras is that he can flash a certain level of physical dominance. Of course so could Mantha, didn't make him a good player - only meant that you could project a possible scenario where he is. Freely admitting that I haven't seen that much of him, to me the question with Zadina is whether he has the skill to ever draw your eye to him as a dominant player on the ice other than when he is working at an exertion level he can't sustain.

I liked this part (from the same NYT citation):

Yup - it's gotten to be a pattern that has become self re-enforcing because of it goes get more social media attention. Once is an accident, twice is a co-incidence. After that it's a plan.

If we won 1st overall we'd expect Connor McDavid, of course!

I used to say that Tiger Stadium had 10,000 of the best seats in the major leagues, but also 40,000 of the worst. Basically the box seats were fantastic places to watch a game - none of the rest were worth much because of the poles. The upper deck was the mixed blessing. There is probably nothing comparable to how close the upper deck boxes were left at any modern stadium, but the poles holding up the upper deck meant that just about the only good seating in the lower level was the box seats which were out in front of them. The upper deck was great close to the rail - again those were all 'boxes', but it wasn't steep enough for the seats further back to be very good and then you got to the poles holding up the roof. EDIT: HaHa - LS was typing the same post give or take a few thou...

Watching Tiger shortstops this season has been the one deeply masochistic aspect of this year's fandom.

no, Haase is a nice backup/utility guy and he might be a great platoon with a young Alex Avila, but I don't see LH platoon catcher candidate out there.

Manning got out of it despite being really squeezed on a couple of pitches.

I'm not strictly against term limits per se, but the ones we have in MI are so short they are counterproductive. I think something more like 12 yrs would force sufficient roll-over without creating the incompetence churn we have in the lower chamber now.

Yup, that's the one. I'm have no dog in a fight over whether Reyes or Hill wins the battle for more PA, but the rest is where they need to end up by sometime in May.

I still have a little hope Rasmussen turns into an asset. Fading fast for the others. Yzerman keeps saying nice things about Velano, but it's probably just GM speak.

Excellent JB! I have a whole catalog of fungi shots from a couple of trips to Isle Royale. The joke for me being that the SO is a mycologist.

I yearn for the day next season when I will see the first lineup without Niko or W. Castro.

One would hope so. If it's true that Patricia was a truly bad coach (widely assumed), both from the Xs and Os as well as motivationally, then certainly better scheme and discipline should yield better results even with the same personnel. If this weren't true then good coaching vs bad coaching wouldn't matter. And if we assume that on offense some of that improvement is going to be negated by the change to a less gifted QB (also assumed), then it would be the defensive side of the ball where the most difference would appear - plus improvement is easier the worse a unit is to begin with, and the Lion's D started this season from about as bad a starting point as you could. Or another way to put it: They still won't be able to play beyond their talent level, but that could still be better than it looked last year.

YES! An outlet/GFCI tester is definitely something that should be in every kitchen junk drawer.

well, either way the idea is to keep playing for yardage. It's the same calculation - even if you get the 1st down if you still have too much clock left you keep playing for yardage - till you either score the TD or get the clock down where you kick and leave them nothing on the clock. There was too much clock left to fold the tents when they did.

the other thing is that there was too much time left to leave the Raven's with a short enough clock to try to sit on the FG. You had offensive momentum and the Raven secondary on its heels - keep playing for the TD once you got down there. I'd much rather give the ball back to a team with 2 minutes and 2 TOs that needs a TD than to a team with even 40 seconds that only needs a FG. Decision to only rush 3 on the 4th and long was also a head scratcher since it was the rush that was working so well for the Lion's 'D'. Football coaches think too much.

Yeah - really hate to see another Detroit team having to play (not play?) a season for draft position, but that may be the most productive thing this team is capable of.

yeah - that's a slick workaround. Occasionally you run into certain loads that won't work on GFCI's, but sure they can be a cheaper choice than tearing up your walls because you don't have existing wiring! Speaking of GFCI's, I ran into a weird thing with one house I owned where the the GFCI's for the outdoor circuits were built into the breakers in the panel instead of using GFCI outlets. Elegant - except the damn things constantly tripped when I tried to use the outlets. Replaced them (expensive!) - no help. So on a guess, I switched out the CFGI breakers for plain ones and switched out the outlets to local GFCIs - no more problems. Apparently between the outlet and the panel, the ground system to those circuits was picking up enough stray field energy - probably from the back wall of the house which was aluminum sided, that the setup couldn't work. Previous owners had apparently just never used the outside outlets in 20 yrs.....