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The simplistic basis of the post overall, but beyond that, the meme was in response to the sneeringly dismissive second sentence and its reductive tropes, which can't be reasoned with.

Hard for me to feel bad for fans of a team that’s 26-13.

I will fly that flag high on that point.

I think any drag on his electability will have less to do with the "establishment" part, since he has done some fairly progressive things for Illinoisans, like the Reproductive Health Act, the SAFE-T Act, the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, the $15 minimum wage when it was more controversial, banning the sale and distribution of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, legislation protecting LGBTQ+ rights and transgender students, and legislation that forbids "book bans" in public libraries. practically all the criticism he gets is from the right. I do think his being Jewish is a legitimate drag on his electability, as there will always be a marginal but measurable number of normally Democrat-leaning voters who won't vote for anyone who is that.

Yes, right now, in his third year, at age 24, he is pretty far from that class of player. There is also a chance he will never be in that class of player. I hope he will become that. But even if he doesn't, we are almost certain to get him at a bargain. or, at least, if he ends up not being a bargain, then something has gone horribly wrong, because even as a 1 WAR player each season from now through 2029, he is a bargain, and the team totally controls whether he sticks around after that. He would have to collapse to below replacement level or have a career-ending injury for this to be a net loss for the team. I have wondered whether he ever experiences seller's remorse for signing that contract for such a low amount of money for so long. Seeing what he will be giving up in arb pay starting next year, I don't see how he could never have.

Good thing Trump is dumber than a bag of rocks and couldn't figure his way out of a wet paper bag. Imagine how effective he would be if he had any idea what he is doing. 2. 💪 Ruthless primaries — a power play President Trump is flexing his dominance over the Republican Party to stamp out primaries that would bleed party coffers and fracture the GOP ahead of the treacherous midterm elections, Axios' Alex Isenstadt reports. If the party defies expectations and keeps control of Congress this fall, Trump's ruthless maneuvers to sideline some candidates while forcefully backing others will be a big reason. 🧮 By the numbers: Trump has picked favorites in more primaries than any other president in history. He endorsed 95% of the 217-member House GOP Conference, including 43 candidates running in the Cook Political Report's 60 most competitive House races. He endorsed Republican candidates in nearly two-thirds of Senate races. 🥊 Behind the scenes: Trump's hardball tactics were on display last week, when the president asked Kentucky Senate candidate Nate Morris to step aside. Trump told Morris — a friend of Donald Trump Jr. who had been endorsed by conservative activist Charlie Kirk before Kirk's death last year — that he planned to endorse Rep. Andy Barr. After Morris announced he was dropping out, Trump said on social media that he would be appointing him to an ambassadorship to be announced soon. A similar scenario played out in March, when Trump un-endorsed Hope Scheppelman in her primary challenge to Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd, then announced she'd be joining the administration. 🔭 Zoom in: Trump decided shortly after taking office last year that he wanted to play an active role in primaries. He particularly wanted to endorse vulnerable incumbents early to nip challenges in the bud, a source familiar with Trump's thinking said. 👀 What to watch: This year's ugliest primary is on the Republican side, in Texas, and Trump could have stopped it. Instead, he was torn between Sen. John Cornyn and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and didn't weigh in. The runoff is May 26. Share this story.

Talk about top flight dumpster diving: There are simply no good options a quarter of the way into the season.

Plus, I think maybe all Trump has to do at this point is put his face all over ads in red states, and Republicans will cruise to victory because red hats will be tripping balls on an endorphin rush. This assumes he doesn't commit a fatal error alienating red hats for good, which, I don't even know what that has to be at this point.

I miss when games were primarily on Saturday afternoons instead of Saturday evenings. I'd rather be watching it right now while doing other things around the house, then go out tonight without feeling compelled to check my phone for scores. Also, even less of a fan of Sunday night games.

And that's fine as far as it goes. If Heyman is tweeting this because he's Boras's boyfriend, then OK, have at it. But the implication on page 12 was that Heyman was working on behalf of Boras to presumably provide him some sort of bargaining advantage, and I just don't see how that would apply here.

Maybe it's because baseball players are not cars, in that they can't be manufactured to all throw 100 miles per hour with pinpoint accuracy, and all you have to optimize and then maintain them. Most players—most people— are inherently flawed which, when fans hear a player is "flawed", they take to mean the player is just OK or kind of good at everything, when it's probably more like they are really really good at something important (e.g., hitting or defense) while being relatively very bad at something less important (e.g., throwing a bad hard and accurately, or hitting for power). So, instead of being a perennial All-Star who's a 60 hitter and 60 defender who tops out at 7 or 8 wins, they may end up with a one- or two-time All-Star who's a 60 hitter and a 40 defender who might have a 5-win season once with a bunch of seasons between 1.5 and 4.0 the rest of the time. That's probably going to be Colt (who, remember, is only 24 so still not a finished product). And for what it's worth, that's probably Tork and Riley, too. Although I do think if Tork were to ever clock a 5 WAR, I will fall out of my chair.

Come back to the power stats his peripherals suggest he should be at. We have him on a long-term contract, but it's a super cheap contract so he is not the guy we are building around, either. If everything shakes out as hoped, he's going to be the fifth or sixth guy in importance by the time he's on the last few years of his deal. (I acknowledge it is unlikely everything will shake out as it is hoped.)

But they are not in a contract negotiation right now, so what's the hoped-for gain here? Whether Skubal comes back in late June, late July, late August, or whenever this season, he still will have to perform at a Cy Young-level to get that max contract. And if he comes out and pitches meh, will teams go back to Heyman's tweet and say, well, this here says the surgery was more than successful, so let's go ahead and give him the extra three years and $150MM? I don't see that happening. And if he were not to make it back at all this season, then Heyman's tweet will be exposed as a lie. So I'm struggling to see where the money in this tweet is for Skubal and Boras?

My concern is that with all these anti-democracy gains, the red hats are going to be super-energized and stream to the polls in November, because everyone likes backing their guy when he's so obviously winning, while everyone else is demoralized and throws up their hands and say aw **** it, we can't win, what's the use. All of a sudden it looks like Democrats may end up losing seats in both houses, and if you think it's been bad up to this point, after that it would be Katie bar the door. This is not a prediction.

And still others prefer this: BTW, this picture lives on this web page: https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/tracker/arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-oil-and-gas-development/

His eye beholds beauty differently from most of us.

I do believe that Gen Z kids are more polite to their elders than certainly my Generation Jones cohort, and certainly more than Xers, and probably more than Millennials. I believe that's because that kind of behavior was reinforced through publicly-supported policies in schools such as anti-bullying initiatives, diversity and inclusion policies, focus on mental health wellness, and probably some others I'm not thinking of. They were taught to be more empathetic than we were when we were growing up, and I think it shows in their encounters with us grownups. I'm more concerned about the tail-end of Gen Alpha (b. 2020+) and the following Gen Betas (or whatever the next generation will be called), who may end up being educated within a Trumpian dog-eat-dog tough-guy regime that respects only people of means and power, and disregards everyone else as expendable.

We've had a billionaire for governor in Illinois going on eight years, and he's been great, and I'll be sorry to see him go, because I'm afraid of what could come next. I acknowledge he has been a total outlier as a traitor to his class.

Slippery slope definitely applies here. With every victory they achieve rescinding the established rights of people considered today to be on the margins, they will try to expand it to apply to more and more people until it applies to the rest of us. There will never be a point at which they say, "OK, that's enough, we're done" until we the 99% exist only to serve them. That's their true end goal.

And now he's saying even after his near-180, he won't leave the Democratic Party, and why would he? He can be much more effective working to hollow out the party from the inside than he can trying to bombard it from the outside.

Give him time, he'll get them all to cave. He's taking names now and then he's gonna kick their asses.

Colt Keith is having a super weird year. He’s hitting .321 and his wRC+ is 113 even after yesterday, so it’s not as though he’s collapsing, but he’s in this weird sort of purgatory where his contact quality is actually the best of his career in term of hard hits, but two things are suppressing his results: (1) a launch angle drop to 9.7 that’s turning potential home runs into hard grounders and line drives, and (2) literally zero home run luck on his fly balls. His xSLG is .451 vs his actual SLG of .387, which should suggest a comeback, but his SLG has trailed his xSLG his entire career, just never like this. It’s a real question whether that drop is the result of instructional intention, since the Tigers are one of the more line-drivey teams in the majors; whether pitchers are exploiting his weakness at hitting sliders more systematically lately; and whether his more passive approach at the plate this year (much lower strikeout AND walk rate) is a slump artifact or a real change. Everything about his individual and expected metrics screams inevitable comeback, but man, it sure is hard to watch while we’re waiting.

They sure were yesterday, at least.