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At least in its current form, and we can no longer simply vote our way back to whatever we nostalgically regard as normal. At this point it’s probably going to take something very dramatic (or drastic, take your pick) to change things for the better on a permanent basis, and it’s well within the range of outcomes that a frightening number of us—both old and young—may not be alive to see it.

They’re counting on people being too distracted by endless entertainment options to notice.

Another thing I wonder about is how the introduction of grizzled veterans like Kenley and Framber and even Justin into the clubhouse mix may have affected the bonhomie the team has enjoyed the past couple years. Justin especially has been known to have clubhouse tangles here and there. There’s also looming free agency for key players and the dark cloud of doom that kind of thing might cast as a pall over a clubhouse. Players are people, and off-field drama can definitely affect focus, concentration, and ultimately performance of people’s jobs, and left insufficiently checked, can snowball into a crisis situation. I have seen that kind of thing in my own workplaces during my time running the hamster wheel. This is mere speculation, not a diagnosis.

Yeah, a couple ticks down, spin was way down, and his misses were all over the place, specially up. Wouldn’t be surprised to hear he’s hurt again and has to go back on the list.

Yeah, why can’t they just collude to stop it?? I mean, come on, it’s been 40 years, no one will remember, right? And in all seriousness now, this particular government would probably be sympathetic toward remaking precedent and law to restrain the free exercise of labor agency, especially for a federally-protected monopoly.

That’s why I think it’s fair to question A.J.’s effectiveness at managing the team during this stretch. I’m not talking about ready blame fire, because it might be that no one could effectively stop this kind of stretch dead in its tracks on a moment’s notice, but I would bet A.J. Is learning on the fly about managing this particular group of people.

Yeah, it seems as though the goose is way too golden to kill. I can see losing a big chunk of spring training and maybe—maybe—first half of April, which would be bad enough since they’d be ceding a lot of the landscape to basketball (and, in some areas, hockey). But to exit the stage entirely for month at a time and forfeit a maybe a couple billion dollars or so each month is business suicide. It took maybe a couple of decades to recover from 1994-95. I can’t see them having the appetite to go through that next year. Forced to predict, I’d say they settle in late March, have a two week ST, open the season April 10 to 15, and play a 154-game season.

I think Riley was sitting on a yakker from a wild pitcher on a 1-2 count, which is reasonable, but yeah, you could also argue he should have been still ready enough for the heat enough to at least foul it off.

I wrote this during the bottom of the ninth.

I would argue the 2025 Rockies, 2024 White Sox, 2019 Tigers, and probably at least several dozen other teams are more inept than this team is. This is a bad stretch, not a death knell.

“It’s pretty ****ty right now.” It sure is, A.J.

We’re going to lose this game because Riley let a fat meatball go right down Broadway untouched for strike three.

Is it time for the Alarmist Non-sense yet?

This Is the long-term effect of Brexit: by delinking from Europe and hitching their wagon to the US, they have fallen prey to Trump’s demands that they become Great Again, and “cosying up” to Moscow is front and center in Trump’s agenda.

Out of reactions today, but Thanks. Disappointment is directly connected to expectations, so if Susan Collins is telling us she’s expecting ethical decisions and behavior out of Trump, she is either pathetically disingenuous or galactically stupid. As for Mike Johnson, he is simply a Pharisee straight out of Matthew 23.

It’s not solely Harris’s fault if teams don’t want to trade their blue chip prospects and perennial All-Stars to us for whatever it is we have to offer.

I don’t know that thousands of baseball clubs and schools will want to move their mounds back however many feet it would take. I think changing the ball over a period of time might be a better solution, although the tricky part will be doing any of this without precipitating a rash of injuries, something that has already happened as pitching incentives coupled with team demands have dramatically changed.

This is the immediate problem. The real answers expected to come from the minors are later this year and across the next two years. There are more answers due to come off the List but that’s only once they can. This is one of those tough stretches organizations can go through even when there on the right path. I don’t think we are anywhere near the blow-it-all-up-stage, but I can’t argue that it’s not so tough to watch.

That was two outs we avoided right there: Hao-Yu Lee was picked off at first if the catcher just made a halfway decent throw to the first baseman; and Riley was out at the plate if the strong-armed right fielder had thrown a strike to the catcher.

See Angels, Los Angeles.

I thought that was actually well-known about that organization. Maybe not as well-known as I thought it was.

Also a major fail for Cornyn, who tried the ball-slurping move of naming an Interstate Highway in Texas for Trump.

Out of reactions, but Like.

Batting 8th is a lot better than 9th, psycholoogically.

My point is not that Carpenter could not make a difference in his eight games in May, it's that one of the reasons the Tigers' offense is down overall is that Carpenter is not delivering the same kind of everyday performance in May as he did in April, and that goes for a lot of other guys. If Carpenter were healthy and delivering in May what he delivered in April, the Tigers' May wRC+ would be better than 74.