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The idea would be to discourage the spin race by making it practically impossible to spin the ball as we see now. I might even say that spin rates have gotten so high that there must be pitchers who are overtly trying to break the record for highest-spin rate, just for the recognition.

If being critical of Israel, and not co-signing onto the resolution flatly equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, is itself anti-Semitic, then the Republican campaign to set the bar at "you can be either pro-Israel or anti-Semitic, choose one" has been wildly successful.

That might be countered by fewer pitches per at bat, which I believe is a worthy goal.

Then how about changing the ball to limit spin? Lowering the seams would probably do that. They could also consider changing the surface of the ball from leather to some synthetic, and maybe even include microtexturing to the ball, to produce more symmetric boundary-layer separation that suppresses seam-shifted wake effects. Maybe another way to skin that cat would be to redistribute internal mass outward toward the cover of the ball, to increase rotational inertia without changing total mass. One last way, which is probably the most radical, is increase the size of the ball itself, maybe by a quarter inch and a quarter ounce. But even without that, if you put all three of others together, you could probably reduce max spin by 500 or more RPM, with the effect of reducing strikeout rates, increase balls in play, and tilting the advantage away from flame-throwers and toward command pitchers. If they coupled this set of changes with true robot umpiring on every pitch, which would force pitchers to have to come into the a hitter's zone to get strikes at some point, I bet they could move the K/9 rate from mid-eights to mid-sixes or less overnight. Counterpoint: MLB Marketing and Players would both hate this.

No, "being unhinged" and "knowing what you're doing" are not mutually exclusive by necessity. "Unhinged" typically means acting wildly, unpredictably, or outside social norms, e.g., impulsive rants, bold risks, or chaotic energy. "Knowing what you're doing" implies competence, awareness, and deliberate control over your actions. Trump exhibits both. You're going to focus on the "competence" part. Trump is not anything like competent when it comes to managing the economy, for example. A president absolutely should be competent when it comes to managing the economy. On that, we can agree. The breakdown occurs when we contemplate the difference between "should be" and "is". I would counter that managing the economy is not even his goal. Trump does not care about the economy. He cares about his own aggrandizement, control of others, and personal enrichment. He is very competent when it comes achieving those goals, and the economy is merely a tool in the service of those goals. This line of logic may enrage you. Certainly defensible. I don't like it, either. But just because he is incompetent in something that is traditionally important for presidents but that he cares hardly a whit about, it does not follow that he must by definition be incompetent in everything else, and in every way imaginable. Trump is unhinged. Trump also knows exactly what he is doing. It's simply bad luck that that which he knows exactly what he's doing is in an area that doesn't help the American people, or the rest of the world.

That would be nice, but the presidential electoral setup all but forbids this from happening. Setting aside structural barriers such as ballot access restrictions, the U.S. uses a winner-take-all, first-past-the-post election system, where once a presidential candidate beats all their opponents by at least a single vote within a state, they are awarded 100% of all the votes in that state that ultimately matter. This discourages voters who might otherwise be inclined to vote for a third party from doing so because of the concept of wasting the vote on someone who's destined to lose (something that also happens, BTW, when your major party presidential candidate loses your state anyway.) There's also the general tendency of countries that have single-member districts, instead of proportional representation, to emerge as two-party countries. Both the US and UK are emblematic of that. If we truly want more than two strong parties, we would probably need to move from a winner-take-all system to a proportional representation system, at minimum. Almost none of us here will ever live to see that happen.

That said, this would be a challenge because strikeouts for pitchers are as important to them (not to mention as marketable to the business) as home runs are for hitters. It's all about burnishing the personal brand. You don't get featured on Quick Pitch for inducing ground balls to second for an out.

If you believe in the Better Angels societal evolutionary and/or the Arc of the Moral Universe theories, it should happen eventually, because as long as there is an active, collective effort to do so, we will get there. The only way that can be reversed is to exterminate the intelligentsia and their educated acolytes, outlaw free education altogether, and remake society into a replication of the serfdom era.

I think one day it will be, but a lot of terrible ****, and then defeat and truth and reconciliation, is going to have to happen first, because we are nowhere near the level of peak fascism the country has to experience to finally wake the **** up. You and I won't live to see that entire cycle, probably, but if I were a bettor, I would bet that sometime in the next 25 to 75 years, the outlawing of gerrymandering will happen.

Either the name Orban is the Hungarian equivalent of Smith, or that woman is related to Viktor, and then I wonder what the family dynamics at Christmas dinner must be like.

Being unhinged and knowing what he's doing are not mutually exclusive states for him.

Change the ball to deaden it so as make contact less damaging than it is now?

I feel differently about the Tigers giving him #99: I don't think it's a lack of organizational confidence thing as much as it is a style thing, because uniform number 99 has a unique history in sports, much in the way the number 00 does. Gage might have even asked for it. But I think if the Tigers truly wanted communicate the ephemeral nature of his tenure with us with a spring training numbers, I think it would be more like #74 or #87 than #99. I have a feeling someone like McCoskey or Beck is going to write a feature piece contemplating Gage's uniform number 99. Who knows, they might be working on it this very minute.

The Tigers' training staff compound:

No, that was the Twins.

He is so ****ing unhinged and so many people are just eating it all up. I’ll never understand it.

I really liked when the camera showed the top of the Royals dugouts where they had emblazoned pennants with the year they made the playoffs, and 1984 was prominently there.

I like how the NBC guy asked Gage Workman, “how did you get here?”, apparently expecting a different, more metaphorical answer than the dry explanation Gage gave him.

Tigers week-by-week* team wRC+: Week 1: 99 Week 2: 96 Week 3: 102 Week 4: 146 Week 5: 97 Week 6 (thru Sat): 44 Skubal injury: Day one of Week 6. Coincidence? 🤷🏼‍♂️ I report. You decide. * - Weeks runs Monday to Sunday except Week 1 (March 26 through April 5, 11 days total),

If there have to be billionaires at all, Ted Turner was everything one could hope a billionaire can be.

CJ was the guy who was supposed to be on the mound when the Cubs won Game 7 of the 2016 World Series, and he did get the first two outs of the inning in tough hitters Mike Napoli and Jose Ramirez. But then he gave up a walk to Brandon Guyer and a run-scoring single to Rajai Davis, bringing the Series-winning run to the plate in the person of worst-hitter-on-the-team Michael Martinez. Maddon trusted CJ so little to convert that out that he replaced him with Mike Montgomery, who induced the famous slipping groundout to end the 108-year drought.

He has been given to that problem his entire career. I think Tork might be one of those guys who come into the majors expecting to excel on the sheer force of his innate talent—an easy psychological trap to fall into for a #1 overall pick—such that they don't work so hard to maximize it. Miggy was that way, too, but then, Miggy was innately otherwordly talented in a way Tork could never even dream of working his way to be.

I don't know whether we come back this year, but I agree that the Tigers are at the core a good team and getting better overall, but that the pile-up of injuries—which no team, except maybe only the Dodgers, has the depth to overcome—is on the verge of ruining our chances this year.

I think this is related to the (probably false flag) assassination threats against Putin, as if anyone outside the vetted inner circle could get anywhere near him.