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I am wondering whether there’s something more to all these Republicans suddenly threatening to retire mid-term than just they think they’re gonna get smoked in the election. There’s money to follow somewhere here and I’m interested in finding out what that is. The proposed ban on insider trading that might well pass very easily could be part of it, since no MAGA* in their right mind would voluntarily abandon that gravy train. * This is not to say only the MAGAs in Congress engage in this, but as soon as they started hammering Pelosi on it, I knew that was telling us what one of their primary goals of getting elected was.

I don’t like any rule changes that upset the basic integrity of the game. Not all rules changes do this, but some do. The Golden At Bat would upset the basic integrity of the game, if a team can just bat any guy out of order any time during the game. I think that’s a bad rule change. One recent rule change, the pitch timer, actually supports the integrity of the game since it enforces the already-existing time limit between pitches. Some recent rule changes, such as slightly larger bases and the three-batter-minimum rule, I think affect the integrity of the game some, but not enough to matter so much. Others, such as the elimination of throwing pitches during intentional walks, I think do upset the integrity of the game since, in this example, there are well known instances of batters reaching out and putting pitches intended to be balls into play. I didn’t and still don’t like the infield shift rule. I think that undermines the integrity of managerial fiat during the game, since the solution to it could have been teams figuring out how to staff their rosters to hit around shifts and keep defenses honest by hitting more the other way. I think that could have and should have been the solution. Instead, Baseball chose to continue to encourage hitters to pull every single at bat because Chicks Dig The Long Ball, and The Long Ball generates beaucoup revenue. The business trumped the integrity in that instance. (Business usually Trumps integrity, doesn’t it?) Which brings us to this proposed rule. I definitely believe Jayson Stark’s (who else?) hair is on fire about the whole doubles things. Doubles are +15% more prevalent than they were in the 40s through 70s, and about the same rate as in the 80s and into the 90s. So they had already been at an historic high in the past 30 years. If reduced doubles is a problem at all, the problem is not that hitters suck now and need special help. The problem is that fair territory in the newer ballparks is way smaller than it used to be. That’s also why there are way fewer triples, and why there will never be another .400 hitter. The alters configuration of the parks have led to these changes in outcomes. But, also, Jayson Stark (again, who else?) is engaging in not a little intellectual dishonesty by pointing out how a 2016 line drive over a 35-year-old Granderson’s head was a double while a similar 2025 line drive was caught by a 23-year-old Angel Martinez, and oh my god, isn’t that awful? As if that should be the object lesson we need to accept to make this change. Basically, in historic terms, there is no doubles problem, and triples have been shrinking ever since they decided to bring outfield fences closer than 500 feet, so that part is definitely never going to change back to what it was during the dead ball. If Baseball were to put an actual line in the outfield that restricts where outfielders can play, I think I would be offended to see it. I believe the bigger problem they have to solve is not where outfielders should and should not position themselves, but how batters can put more balls in play in the first place, instead of striking out so damn much. Fix that, and the doubles “problem” will fix itself.

I'm sure there are plenty of those on the shelf at Walmart. All he's got to do is go there and pick one up ... easy pease ... 😉

Touché, turtle.

I agree although having two such pitchers is kind of a rare luxury. I think if we had one, they would get the majority of high-leverage closing situations. The only time they would not is if they are not available for some reason. But as long as we have a bullpen the level of what it was in 2025, there would probably be more mixing and matching.

There's nothing to trust. Crypto is not actual real money. You can't pay a mortgage with it or buy groceries with it or use it to pay your taxes to the government. You can only use crypto for criminal transactions like buying narcotics in traffickable quantiies or artwork stolen from the Louvre. For all the claims about its potential to revolutionize commerce and spending, crypto is worthless until you convert back to real money.

Paper bag test.

The Dowager Kirk is available now. I hear Olivia Nuzzi is also on the market.

Drug lords have lots of money to give him.

This is too facile a reply.

Roswell is a Trumpy enclave.

Sorry about that, I thought you were saying they used the wrong word.

Easy: all they have to do is specify excluding the counting of non-citizens only for certain states and count non-citizens for certain other states. They can also specify excluding non-citizens of certain countries (Americas ex-Canada; Middle East; most of Africa) while counting non-citizens from other countries (Canada, Europe, Russia/satellites, South Africa). What, you don't think they can do that? Who's going to stop them? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? When it comes to breaking the Constitution, might as well be in for a penny, in for the whole pound.

I think there might be a couple things going on here: (1) With the way MAGAfied owners of the mainstream media have been caving in by giving eight-figure settlements to Trump's bogus library, it's hard to stand up for the journalistic integrity of an institution that's now fearfully pulling their punches; and (2) it's also difficult to keep the outrage over attacks on the media by this particular regime amped up for nine years running. There are so, so many other horrible things happening simultaneously on so many fronts and there's only so much attention people can pay to any one thing. That's why the Firehose Strategy works so well.

It might be as simple as Fairbanks made only 3.5 Ms last year and was due for 11 this year, and the Rays don't play that. From a performance standpoint, Fairbanks does get hit pretty hard, so he's only some bad BABIP from getting crushed, an especial problem for someone who has also lost his strikeout mojo over the last couple of years.

I would bet if we had an actual closer-level shutdown reliever, they would care about "real" closers then.

If retrograde MAGA tech oligarchs can line the pockets of the president with billions of dollars like this, and hidden in plain sight just like this, why can't liberal billionaires donate half a billion dollars to save public media by making up the shortfall caused by the unplugging of funding to the CPB?

Yes, I do. Although if it is 1/10, even 1/12, I'll be fine with that. Just don't promise him a second year upfront, is all.

The difference being Biden did not use the machinery of the state to beat mainstream media companies out of tens of millions of dollars disguised as donations to his phony baloney library.

Easy: Hernandez was framed by Crooked Joe to cover up his own drug-running operation that intended to kill off rural white Americans who love Trump, so the Criminal Democrat Party could create a one-party fascist state and come after all the guns. Ooh, that was fun. Give me another one.

The ramblings can be fairly repackaged as the uncommon wisdom of a genius that the rest of us don't understand now but will in time, and I think we're seeing some of that pretzel logic now. The freezing, though, they would never be able to explain away.

This was such Alarmist Non-sense in 2016.

I want to believe this, because it passes the smell test with flying colors, but I do want to see a more credible source than a tweet of a tweet of a TikTok.

Pretty amazing he hasn't glitched more in public. I don't mean saying nonsense like this, I mean glitching like Mitch did and Joe did. Although I do kind of wonder how much glitching we never see as mainstream media ****cans that footage due to fear of regime lawsuits. Maybe that's why he's almost never on live lately.