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I wonder whether one strategy the administration has will be to indict Democratic congressional reps from red states on … ahem … trumped-up charges that will lead to their removal and open the door to governors in those red states to appoint Republican successors to those seats, thus widening the R majority by—what I am sure they will claim with a straight face—democratic means. I don’t worry about giving them any ideas with this post—the Miller-Bannon strategy coalition has already at least spitballed this idea, I’m sure.

The first few months will be the key. They will definitely overreach and try to cause as much damage to hurt as many people as they can manage to get away with. If the pushback is too great and they fold quickly, then I might agree with you. If they ignore any pushback and plow forward to go against even the wishes of the red hat base, then it will be Katie bar the door.

It’s all grins and giggles until someone gets executed by firing squad for killing a baby.

Totally agree you didn’t imply he was cheap. Speaking only for myself, I don’t want another owner who spends with his heart and would throw his money (and bunches of years!) at the likes of Pete Alonso and Nick Pivetta—decent players, but overrated for what someone else will eventually pay them.

You are replying to the wrong guy. I was not commenting on the divorce statement, or even speculating whether Ilitch will sell. I was simply responding to the idea that a sale and a new owner will de facto be a much better situation, and even that it will be a specific guy. It’s within the realm of possibility that both those condition would come to pass, but I don’t take on faith either of those ideas being certain.

I’d been assured repeatedly that the problem was that today’s pitchers are pussies. Seriously, we have talked about all this here. I had thought years ago the problem was pitcher torquing their elbows in unnatural ways to get maximum spin, as well as expending maximum effort on every pitch. The smarty-pants at the analytical websites were putting the entire blame on increased velocity for a while. Turns out it was all of it, doesn’t it? What I hadn’t considered enough was how kids throw a bazillion pitches at their own version of max effort throughout their preteens and teens in a bid to advance as far as possible, increasing the possibility of injuring their still immature arms; and what I hadn’t considered at all was how the way pitchers train during the offseason to work on stuff, and then come in ill-prepared for spring training, contribute to injuries in March. That was a new idea for me. I found this graphic to be really interesting: I had never considered injury by time of year. It is super high in spring training, when pitchers are still cold vis a vis game-condition throwing, leading to way more injuries, probably especially to guys who want to impress and are fighting for big-league jobs in the first place, so this makes sense. A lot of attrition in spring, and then it dissipates once they get to April, probably because all the vulnerable guys got exposed right away, and plus now that the remaining pitchers made the team for sure, they can lay up a little. Plus it’s April, it’s cold, the games might even be perceived as mattering a little less, so maybe pitchers take it a little easier in April than in spring, or in later months. But take a look at the August bump, and then September drop. My initial take is how pitchers move from bad teams to contenders, so in an attempt to prove themselves and win games that are more important practically single-handedly, they amp the effort up, which lead to more injuries; and then, in September, pitchers start laying up on effort as either their team already makes the playoffs and they consciously save themselves for October, or else their team falls out of contention early and so what’s the point of going max effort anymore? I would love to see this data broken out by pitchers on teams whose fates are decided early, versus those teams who have to fight all the way to October 1 for a playoff spot. But by far the most interesting revelation to me is how restricting workloads could be leading to more injuries, as even starting pitchers have switched their training regimen from endurance-based in a bid to get 24 or 27 outs, to short-burst strength training to max out effort because you know you’re only getting either 15 outs or 18 batters anyway. Even the idea of pitchers getting injured less after the implementation of the pitch timer is interesting, the suggestion being that pre-pitch timer, pitchers could take as much time as they wanted to gather strength to pitch another max-effort pitch, whereas now they are forced to pitch less than max effort because they have fewer seconds to recover before they are compelled to throw. What a fascinating concept. So really, a lion’s share of the reason pitchers get injured appears to have to do with the incentives they’re chasing, and their approach to pitching given the particular set of circumstances they’re experiencing at the given moment. This must be by far the best research study on the subject that’s ever been released. The $64 question, then, is: what now?

Yes, and the way Baseball has turned toward marketing individual stars over teams, or over the game writ large. Exhibit A for years was how Baseball tried to strip as many vestiges of which team a player played for as they could during the All-Star Game. Fortunately, focus groups or something threw water on that idea. Even with this walking back, the more I look at Savant, the harder it is for me to tell which teams the players I see listed in tables play for.

Fortunately, small market teams that sneak into the back door of the playoffs have a chance to win rings because of the way players and pitchers can slump, or the way the ball bounces, at inopportune times for everyone, including big spenders.

He’s referring to Szymborski’s ZIPs, not the Steamer.

I would have been all over this idea maybe four years ago, but not so much now. Baby Doc has been a great owner since Scott Harris came on board, at least when it comes to the baseball product*. He has shown he will spend when he has been convinced the time is right, and he has spent millions to fix the infrastructure and personnel issues of player scouting and development. Plus, we don’t get to choose who the next owner would be. For all we know, if Ilitch Enterprises does divest, we will end up with the next John Fisher or Bruce Sherman or Bob Nutting, and then we’d be stuck with that terribleness for the rest of my life at least, and probably yours. I want Baby Doc to prove for sure that he won’t invest in the team even when the Max Clark class of prospects matures and makes the majors, and we’re a big player or pitcher away from becoming perennial pennant contenders; or else he proves he will dump top players like Skubal or Riley early to avoid their walk years just to save money and churn prospects; or else he liquidates top prospects for rentals of middling or over-the-hill free agents in misguided attempts to win. Then I will root for a sale. * - They do maintain a relatively ****ty fan experience at the stadium—I mean, no outside bags? No food? No water? What is this, a Red Wings game?

Speaking as a fan, I don’t care about the money. That’s someone else’s problem. I care only about the years. I don’t want to commit too many years to someone on the precipice of a decline phase. I understand that albatross contracts can hamper a team’s ability to make moves in the future, but in a case like this, where a guy is on the final contract of his career anyway, I’d be more concerned if the AAV difference is $15MM versus $35MM than I would if the difference is #15MM vs $20MM. In any event, Walker is gone now, so, so much for this case.

I saw Lorenzen pitch and play center when he visited with the Reds a few years ago. I was totally in the moment on it and thought it was really cool.

I think we could get him for three years, so I would be comfortable with that.

Personally, I wish we could sign Christian Walker, but I understand not wanting to pay draft capital to do so.

Aaaaaand they killed the segment. They say there's a breaking development in the Mangione story, as if it hasn't been breaking constantly for weeks now! And this after they drove me all the way downtown and everything! Ahhh well ... serves me right for letting you know before it happens than after. They say they will try to get it on tomorrow, but who knows what the chances of that will be.

I acknowledge people tend to take words at 100% face value and believe that nothing more could be underneath them, but speaking only from my perspective, I do believe if Tork were hitting his benchmarks, Harris would have struck a note that was more positive, if for no other reason than to encourage Tork to keeping at it (and/or to frame his trade value more advantageously).

Since Trump looks up to those who are wealthier than he, it’s a good bet Musk will get free rein to set whatever policy he likes.

This is what I was alluding to in the other thread yesterday. A lot of people who call themselves “Christian” lately are doing so as a virtue signal of their cultural beliefs, rather than as a reflection of their spiritual beliefs.

We can’t account for what’s going on in your head, but that’s not what’s going on out here in the world.

Hypocrite or not, I can hardly blame Biden for not unilaterally disarming while people who explicitly refer to him as the enemy trample over all the norms they criticize him for ignoring.

I wasn’t telling anyone how to do anything. I was just commenting on what can be obviously seen.

I’m coming round to wondering whether that the only thing that could stop the abject dismantling and destruction of the government would be court cases that tie up everything they want to accomplish. I’m not sure how that would work out because Trump’s appointees can probably just throw out cases without comment, or else the administration would just refuse to follow rulings and then dare anyone to do anything to stop them. I guess we’ll see …

Don’t much know either way, but it did strike me when Harris was quoted at the Winter Meetings as basically laying down the gauntlet when he said, basically, the performance has to get better and it’s not just offensive performance, it’s defensive performance, too. That reads to me as though they checked in with Tork before the winter meetings and were not satisfied by what they saw. I think if he were hitting all their check boxes along the way, they would have said something more like, Tork is making some improvements, there’s a long way to go, but we like what we see. Something more like that. Unless he did say that and I missed it, but I don’t believe so. But what was reported comes off as a public calling out. To me, this is the most interesting storyline of the winter. I’l be interested to see whether any more is said and, just as importantly, how it’s said.

Now that I’m looking at her face for what might be the first time ever, she looks not unlike Victoria Jackson.

You tell me …