gehringer_2

So much to look forward to.

Yup. Strip away all the breathless anxiety and hidden agenda's, here is the reality: If Biden withdraws, I simply do not see Harris emerging with the nomination at the convention, and if she doesn't, and Black America says to itself - "this system is always going to shaft us no matter which side" and stays home, the dems cannot win anyway. On the other hand, if Harris were to be the convention's choice, then it's a pointless exercise because she is already next in line if Biden is incapacitated - all it does is create likely convention chaos for people for all angles to get their panties in a bunch over.

Dems had a big hole to dig out of after the mess at the Chicago convention. The country wasn't used to seeing that kind of thing - it must have been the Dems' fault. Mayor Daley made it easy for anti-war liberals to hate their party, the anti-war side made it easy for the Scoop Jackson wing (the anti-commies) to hate their party.

He definitely fell off a little last year, though that could just that he played hurt some.... Funny thing is one story said the Rangers were moving Trouba to clear cap space and they wanted Kane. Ooops.

Shelby Miller has become so radioactive I'm surprised we're not seeing a blue aura around him when he take the mound.

He had 8 whiffs on 31 FBs last night - maybe not JV level, but not terrible. He was not getting much S&M on his slider - only 2 whiffs on 24 of those. All we/they can do is see how it goes the rest of this season: can he learn to sequence more effectively as more of a power pitcher; can his slider command keep improving; will the % of non-competitive pitches of all types decrease? As long as he can be competitive in his starts as per last night there is no better alternative anyway.

Vaguish stories floating around about "serious family concerns." I don't know if that's just code for the SO not wanting to leave the big Apple or if they think all the schools in the US outside Westchester Co are the blackboard jungle.

Good question - they pitched around him a lot, so he did have a lot of walks at ASU, but what that looked like at finer grain I have no idea.

In all seriousnessn, I think a good exemption to the three batter rule would allowance to immediately remove any pitcher that hits someone in the head.

I don't know if he needs to be particularly worried. The big injury was the CS and that generally does not recur after surgery is done.

I would guess that closes the books on Peron. But who knows.

FIFY

Not sure why the 1st HR wasn't enough for Hinch.

tying run on deck. You can't make it up

depends on how many batters Miller is allowed to face apparently

How much is it going to cost us to give away Shelby Miller before the deadline?

Pitcher runs 50 ft. Take him out. Whatever - fine outing for Casey.

7 run lead. Is 7 enough?

What a total misread. Johnson didn't withdraw because it was 'popular' he withdrew because he didn't want to be embarrassed by losing the nomination in a party that wanted the war over (or alternately splitting the party so badly he couldn't win). Johnson was at the end of his rope over Vietnam - he had no idea what to do next and everyone, including LBJ, realized he was paralyzed. He knew if he pulled the plug the US public - the voting public that had won WWII, would never accept a 'loss' (which in 68 was absolutely still the case), but he also was figuring out that the DOD had no idea how to win either.

Nice play by Kreidler.

Tigers have two catchers that throw well and a bunch of pitchers that go to sleep on runners. That's just a matter of discipline, which appears to be lacking.

Singer ended up about as projected, a 2/3 kind of starter. He was projected as a possible #1 pick the year before but his last college year he was not as good. Mize impressed everyone with the K rate on the split, the problem is it didn't fool MLB batters and they didn't swing and since it's not a strike, Mize struggled. The conventional wisdom often seems to go overboard for guys that are basically trick pitch guys in college but don't have great swing and miss on their fastball. Ironically, post back and TJ, surgery, now Casey actually has much better fastball and if he makes it I think that will be why.

I don't question whether this FO is as good as it gets with its analytics capabilities, but that is not the same thing as having the vision pick up when the game may be moving fast enough to invalidate their assumptions. It was also interesting at one point last night that Benetti and Petry talked about teams trying to play against their tendencies as being the next gambit to counter teams doing deep tendency analysis. Had to happen of course. Since Monroe may be gone, I'll quote the one bit of wisdom he once offered that I think was spot on about prepping batters. He said he didn't like it as a player because if you couldn't tell him with 100% certainly what a pitcher would do, it was useless because without certainty you still have to be ready for anything at each at bat and that's easiest to do with an unbiased mind. Now that said, Craig was no HOF hitter either.

Yup - the original sin with Torkelson was not leaving him at AAA until he learned to be a better all around hitter. Now he has to unlearn what he probably still believes got him to the majors. Same risk is still in play with Meadows, but I think he's actually further along the curve at this point.

I wouldn't get too exercised about Tork's K rate in the minors, Ks were not his problem against MLB pitching, I don't they are his problem against MiLB pitching. I hope what you are seeing is that they are trying to get him to improve his plate coverage and he is swinging at more pitches across the board. If that's true I'm OK with it, but he's still taking too many hittable 1st pitch strikes. That's seems to be so ingrained he can't leave it. Unfortunately he's not Joe Mauer.