gehringer_2

They've made some advances in the helmet tech - I don't know if that will be enough to make a big change or not. Between that and the rules my impression is we are seeing fewer guys going to the concussion tent than when they first put them up.

I think you answered it here: I understand the number have to do what the numbers have to do in the model, but I think the terminology used creates some odd implications - i.e.that all 1Bs are bad fielders *at-their-position*. To your answer about 1b vs SS OPS, does it seem to you that there is a general compression taking place across the league? Or maybe it's a covergence? SSs are certainly getting bigger, so their power potential is up, and maybe pitching is so hard to hit that the big guys who used to play 1B/3B have lost some of the power advantage they used to have because hitting has to be done at so much higher reaction speed where brute strength is less determinative?

Of course, just for context for why UM may or may not feel all that tethered by it's 'public' obligations, this year the disbursement to the general fund from the endowment was 40% more $ than UM's State appropriation. 🤑

It seems in hockey there are faciliators that make things go and players who can excel but only playing with those players. We saw it with Abdelkater and Datsyuk, and now we see with almost every Wing that plays with Larkin. Nothing wrong with having those guys on a team but you have to have enough facilitators to go around, and that is what the wings can not seem to come up with - and that's the big hope for Danielson isn't it? It's more than just having centers ser se - it's that particular skill set in a center and like Larkin it doesn't even need to be a 1st level all star. They want Kasper to be a center but he needs other players to lift him, at this point he isn't/can't lift the others he plays with. Kane has some of that from the wing just because he is such a precision passer. but he's no center.

i don't think they have the imagination to try that - and TBH, I don't think they could pull it off if they did.

10 years is an eternity in the current universe. But the maybe the surprise here is that it wasn't the SEC that went first. Or maybe it goes back to Buddha's point that nobody in the B10 is solvent. But think about what that implies. What is the point of the chase here if all it's doing is putting schools in debt? If Expenses are apparently still exploding at a rate faster than revenues even for schools in the B10, who exactly has any prospect of ever being solvent in the current mess? Everyone is making out here, the players, the media, the fans (in terms of more product to consume), except the institutions, which are ending up subsidizing everyone else's gains. All those people who are supposed to be smart are getting played by smarter ones who just have fewer initials after their names.

we have a stub end of low APR mortgage that will be up in only a few month now. The total annual payment is less than my property taxes are now, and if some poor fool buys this hose when we're gone and the Michigan "Headlee" and "PropA" tax limits get reset, they be paying 40% more that that.

and other than that he's a dead man walking....🤣

Do you think guys like Bernstein and Acker are big time sports fans? I really have no idea. Denise Ilitch maybe is. "According to the Michigan Constitution of 1963, the Regents have “general supervision” of the institution and “the control and direction of all expenditures from the institution’s funds.”" Pretty clear I think. This would also be true at MSU, but we don't seem to be hearing anything from East Lansing one way or the other.

And we live in relatively 'safe' places insurance wise. What is happening to rates in CA and FLA has to be pretty frightening.if you are a homeowner.

you circled back the SS that hits like a 1b, but most SS don't hit like 1Bs. Those guys are the outliers, so sure they are most valuable, but the positional adjustment applies between 1b's and SS that hit like SS's too. So I grant you that, but since shortstops don't hit like a 1st baseman a 950 OPS 1B with an average glove still gets paid as much or more than a league average O/D SS.

Yes - this is reasonable. I think from a presentation POV, all you need to do in the case of what Fangraphs does it is make the positional adjustment after the O and D piece are given instead of before.

OK - I;m going to argue the terminology here just to ornery 😜 I don't think your comparison is fair. A slick fielding big hitting SS is a relative outlier. So I thought we were just talking the defensive side here anyway. Let's talk about an average SS and an average 1B because that where your positional adjustment hits the baseline. By definition, half the shortstops out there field better than your guy, just like half the 1Bs out there field better than your guy, From that view the ease of replacing either isn't that different. I think the basic weakness is the attempt to normalize across positions. I understand the motivation, but it's just another example of why some of this gets mis or over applied. I think in the real world you have to value a 1b by how much he is an outlier among 1Bs. irrespective of the fact that all SSs are better fielders, because that is the actual marginal value he brings to the team wrt to an average 1B (or replace 'average' with 'replacement', it only a matter of where on the same scale). Or another way to put is just that shortstops don't play 1st, and even if they did, you don't get enough chances at 1st to produce the same fielding value even you if are literally a SS playing 1st, So fielding comparisons across the position measures something which is more abstract than real.

LOL - if you are Penn state at this point wouldn't you rather play Pitt than Indiana?

IDK. UM athletic dept was in the hole because of the fines but OSU is generally the conference income leader aren't they? I guess if you blow through it all it doesn't matter what your income is! At UM, with Grasso being an interim, plus a guy with no major college sports experience anyway, I don't see him with a big personal interest in his own sports legacy - IOW, I don't think he's likely to try to push the regents one way or the if they make a decision. But who knows? OTOH, I don't suppose any of the Regents want to go down as the 'guy that blew up the Big Ten" even if that exactly the kind of thing that all this is driving inevitably towards.

Steel lug inserts falling out of Al wheels. Have had a lot of alloy wheels, have never had them with steel lug inserts. - why? Honda claims only 3700 bad wheels out of 1.6M total sold, but they have to find the bad ones. 🙄 Not really a fan of steel and Al together unless you absolutely have to, it's two metals that don't play together particularly well.

IDK - It doesn't look like money is the draw - although, this is one charge. If they rigged 100 pitches in the course of a season, the numbers could add up. Or it's just the thrill of getting away with something where you still rationalize to yourself it's a victimless crime, so you don't need to feel bad about it? I can't deny there is some merit to that view. Our current attitudes toward gambling seem completely schizophrenic to me. "We are going to provide you with every incentive and opportunity to rig things, but don't you dare or we will be on you like a ton of bricks!"

Yeah - I get that, but since everyone *has* to play a 1B it seem to fly in the face of logic to automatically make a negative adjustment for the *average* quality player at that position across the board. OK - so as a formalism I can accept that you construct a model where that is a requirement for the numbers to come out, but to me that kind of oddity smacks of a deficiency of the model construction. An *average* fielding 1b isn't really costing you 12 runs in any real sense. By real world definitions the average 1b isn't adding or subtracting anything on the field. I can see there is sort of a built in paradox here that there is probably no easy way around. Of course a SS is worth more defensively than a 1B, but OTOH, you can't actually play 9 SS. So you have to pick a baseline and either way you pick is going create an anomaly.

In watching hitters over the years who do manage to move their platoon splits, my impression has been that often as not they make an adjustment in the box that has a real cost to their ability to hit the opposite pitching. The split closes with both an increase on the low side but also a decrease on the high side. With such a preponderance of RH pitching in the league, that usually just isn't a good trade-off for a LHB to make even if it means he is going to sit against a lot of LHP. OTOH, for RHH, giving up a little against left handers to stay in the line-up is a much better trade.

also well said. File under the heading of "when people tell you who they are, believe them."

Forgot about Kody. And then there was Ben Verlander - but I think we know what that was about.

something tells me this is going to get ugly. I've watched this dynamic before, where the weaker/poorer members of an organization try to dictate to the stronger/richer because they think they have voting numbers. It almost always turns out poorly. Think UM or USC would be welcome in the ACC or SEC? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks - I was thinking this thought but didn't do the work to post it.

well said. There is 180 difference between expunging false history and suppressing real history. Just another symptom of the American right wanting to live in an alternate reality of their own making rather than the real world as it is and has always been.

Sorry for your loss. One of my Grandfathers was a tremendous storm of a man, and sure enough, the day of his funeral was a rip snorting July thunderstorm. At one level you know it was just a random thing, but that didn't lessen the feeling of total appropriateness experienced.