gehringer_2

That's about right. The idea was playing clean and pitching well would give them a chance without an offense. The offense hasn't come around but they aren't playing clean or pitching as well as was expected either.

And thanks Wenceel who can't execute what should have been an easy throw, or Jake who can't make a play, or the whole batting lineup that left the bases loaded and got nothing early. And of course, a pitcher that gives up a completely unforced run by issuing a bases loaded walk. maybe or probably, it's because expectations are higher, but this team seem to be more mistake prone than last year's and that's at least as irritating as the lousy offense.

He seems to hitting 'backwards' doesn't he? Looking for breaking balls and taking FBs. You'd think it shouldn't take long for even AAA pitchers to put a stop to that.

team just has no basic offensive skills. Can't even move a runner, let alone score one.

amazing how many ways they find to lose.

Tigers have had more than their share of bad luck with good and even great players that should have been fixtures in the lineup but ended up with injuries that sapped or even killed their career. Austin among the worst cases. 19 WAR in his 1st 4 seasons, then he couldn't run anymore.

how can a guy that came up as SS not be able to throw? EDIT: I guess on 2nd thought, his arm is why he's not still at SS or even 2B.

Miller? Don't like

This is also so much a class thing. Poor nutritional upbringing effects are strongly income correlated.

21st century GI Bill. Serve 2 yrs, go to college of your choice for free. Kids would be lining up. And the bonus is It would put the Federal gov's interest in the position of demanding lower tuition rates from US colleges instead of just subsidizing more bank loans. Win-Win

No doubt.

i don't think anyone could honestly argue that Biden hasn't gotten physically frailer, but TBH, I don't care about that, it's not a prerequisite to do the important parts of the job well. Shrub was healthy as a horse, he was a disastrous president. To me the only place it figures in the calculation is wrt whether he lives out his second term, but even on the grounds that Harris is a largely unwritten story, i'd still vote for her even up over Trump or anyone Trump is likely to picks as a VP so even there, it doesn't weight negatively on the scale. When I look at the operation of the Biden administration, I don't see any lack of vision, consistency. I don't see idiosyncratic actiions, senseless windmill tilts, or other evidence of an erratic hand at the tiller - so that's what I have to go by.

I don't see it quite that way. I think the NYT's issues with Biden stem less from 1%er economic concerns (a lot of the NYT crowd are the 1%ers who are willing to pay taxes...) than from a sense of entitlement to a special place at the table in any Democratic admin, and for whatever combination of history and circumstance, they aren't getting it from Biden and they don't like it. And Biden doesn't seem to care that they don't like it, which they like even less.

FIFY

Notable that Roberts gave all the 'correct' answers. It's not that hard not be an idiot.

Well gvien enough anecdotes, you eventually have a valid sample......

you know what the complete comedy in all this cultural warfare is? It's upper class liberals that live the most morally 'conservative' lifestyle of any segment of American society. They have the most marriages, the fewest children out of wedlock, the highest proportion of stable two parent households. The right in American has their head so far up their asses they don't understand the difference between being free to do something and forcing other people to do something. Liberals are completely happy with conventional lifestyles, we don't denigrate them at all, all we want to do is make room for people to be free to do it differently if that is their choice. The right just can't figure out this simple equation. Wanting to allow people to be free is just that, and nothing more than that. But of course, "that" is a lot. The Christian Right's problem (as well as the RCC ) is that they want the state to mandate people to do what they can't persuade people to do because their doctrine is just too unappealing. They call themselves "Evangelist" after the Greek for "Good Tidings" but their "news" just isn't so good and when people see it and don't like it, they want to be entitled to police power to enforce it.

so far this season there is no reason not to play him everyday. His platoon split is pretty much a wash: 30pts better OBP against LHP, but 100pt better OPS against RHP (he has hit his HRs off RHP). DRS doesn't give him a lot of love but I think we are pretty certain that over time the numbers will bear out that he is a plus OF, even if he is only an adequate 3B. But on this team that makes him 2nd choice only behind Urshella.

Sure, you will have an oil industry - lubricants, plastics production, those are small by volume compared to fuel. What will keep it going in largest volume in the immediate future is Diesel and Jet fuel, as non fossil replacement techs there are still over the horizon. But Gasoline is 60-70% of every barrel refined today. And the rest of the world is going to follow the path to EVs so you probably can't count on that much increased export. The refineries that remain operative will need to be reconfigured to re-balance output between gasoline and diesel, which will also cost the refiners a fortune in capital expense for the facilities they can keep open.

Yup. The supply is not very elastic - it won't just fall because prices do and it's hard to convert to other uses. The only way to get rid of office space is conversion to residential, but commercial buildings tend to have wide interior spaces which make them undesirable for conversion to residential because people demand windows. The other segment that is going to hit a similar demand drop crisis is refining. It costs a fortune to decommission a refinery and it's cost prohibitive to run it at low capacity factor. It's not so much an issue from the banking sector as real estate, but when the US eventually finds itself with 50 million EVs on the road and way, way long on gasoline production capacity, the collapse of oil co profits is going generate a lot of howling and gnashing of teeth on Wall Street. Some of majors have already sold off refinery capacity to independents who will probably declare bankruptcy and leave the public on the hook for cleaning up abandoned facilities.

But you will always see this kind of mistake when players are playing next to guys they are unfamiliar with, don't know their voices, their calls, their tendencies. Of course Keith should have yielded, but do we think he ran into Baddoo on purpose to cause an error? The situation overran his ability to process it because they had never had adequate time to learn each other. This is unavoidable to some degree, everyone is unfamiliar with the other guy at first, but the more you move guys around arbitrarily the more you increase these risks. Players that play together regularly get over these kinds of mistakes. Keith hasn't even played 80 games yet and he's had 8 different RF's behind him whose ranges and styles he has to learn and keep straight. In fact in that play, Ushella is also going out and Keith has priority over Gio in that situation, so may be thinks he is hearing Gio - who he also has not played next to much, and thinks he is rightfully trying to call him off? Baddoo also has a history of colliding with his fellow OF's so I wonder if he just isn't loud enough.

Malloy's issue is going to be exactly what you could have guessed by what he did at AAA. His K zone judgement is indeed impeccable. But it's not enough just to let the the bad ones go by, he has to prove he can hit it when they throw him strikes. Bottom line not really much different from Tork's issue. You can't succeed in the majors waiting for what you want to hit, granted you can't hit everything, but the more of K zone you can at least defend, if not hit, the more success is available.

and an additional irony is that Vierling's OBP has dropped despite improving his OPS. He's under 5% walk rate this season so the guy is succeeding, such as he is, but doing it pretty much in contradiction to the grand plan.

which is also surprising as he did not show much in the way of soft hands as a SS in Det. Willi just happens to be the exception to the rule that guy's at 25+ don't usually improve their foundational fielding skills.

I don't buy it. If they keep aiming for some point out in the future then have fun being the A's, you'll never get there.