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In a similar sense, assessing automatic balls and strikes on pitches not thrown is not baseball, either.

Bad: Tigers are 2-8 in their last 10. Less bad: Tigers are not in last place.

The more teams invest in players and skills to get a single run around the bases before three runs is up, the less they have to invest in players and skills to get multiple runs around the bases in an inning.

Since I was wondering whether our offense is maddeningly inconsistent, which I think every fan believes about their own team, I plugged the game by game hitting stats of every team through yesterday into an AI assistant and asked it to rank the 30 teams by most consistent to least consistent offense. Here's what it spit back out. For what's it's worth, of course. ***** Here's the full ranking, most to least consistent through May 15 (weeks 1-7, complete games only). The consistency score is the average coefficient of variation of runs per game and OPS — lower means more day-to-day predictability. Most Consistent (1–10) 1. Tampa Bay Rays — The most consistent offense in baseball despite being a middling team (4.54 R/G). Low run variance (std 2.49), low OPS volatility. They don't explode often (22% of games 7+ runs) but they also almost never completely die (12% at 0-1 runs). Quiet, steady, reliable. 2. St. Louis Cardinals — Nearly identical profile to Tampa Bay. 4.68 R/G, low variance, 9.8% goose egg rate — lowest in the majors. They're not flashy but they show up every night. 3. Texas Rangers — Consistently mediocre is still consistent. Third-best CV on runs despite a weak 3.71 R/G average. They don't beat you but they also don't completely embarrass themselves. Low floor, low ceiling. 4–5. Atlanta Braves / Chicago Cubs — Both are good offensive teams (5.55 and 5.28 R/G) that also happen to be consistent. The Cubs have an impressive 42.5% rate of scoring 7+ runs — they're consistent and dangerous. 6. Baltimore Orioles — Interesting case: 7.3% goose egg rate (2nd lowest in baseball) despite only a 4.17 R/G average. They almost never go completely quiet. The Middle (11–20) Washington, San Diego, New York Yankees, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Houston, Oakland, Cincinnati, Seattle, Kansas City cluster in the 0.506–0.535 range — solidly average consistency. The Yankees stand out here: 5.19 R/G is elite production, but a 35.9% OPS CV means they swing between dominant and dormant. High-variance good team. Detroit sits at 8th — a consistency score of 0.480, roughly top quarter of the league. Their 4.21 R/G average is pedestrian, but they hold their floor reasonably well (14.3% goose eggs) without many blowout games (16.7% at 7+). They grind. Least Consistent (21–30) 27. Boston Red Sox — 26.8% of games scoring 0-1 runs, worst run CV (0.876) of any team not in the bottom five. Genuinely Jekyll-and-Hyde offense. Their 3.83 R/G masks huge swings. 28. Colorado Rockies — 25% goose egg rate, 0.808 run CV. Playing at altitude masks how unpredictable they are. 29. New York Mets — 25.6% goose eggs, 3.79 R/G, 0.840 run CV. Consistent only in their inconsistency, and consistently bad on top of it. 30. San Francisco Giants — The least consistent offense in baseball. 32.5% goose egg rate — nearly one in three games they score one run or fewer. A 0.403 OPS CV means they also have some big games, but the floor is the lowest in the league. 3.45 R/G is the worst in baseball through this stretch.

Well, that's disappointing. We are now 20-26 with a pythag of 22-24, and not an over-.500 pythag mainly as a result of handing our asses to the Mets.

They are oddly fixated on everybody else's genitals and sex lives. It keeps them from having to think about how badly their guy is crashing the country.

Here's hoping this matters when it counts.

Yes, that's fair.

T-Mobile has to get their money's worth.

Could be worse ... you could be seeing those execrable Cure insurance ads with Tarik and Tork.

Man, we could use a revived Matt Vierling at the plate these days.

I thought it was another "I Love The Military" weekend? Man, so hard to keep up ...

At the risk of jinxing—as if that were a real thing—five innings in, I would say, yeah.

During the Year of the Pitcher, it was good to have the King Pitcher.

I just used GPT to help me get my arms around the process of replacing my house’s electrical panel, not only helping me estimate costs, which it did, but setting expectations as to what kind of equipment I should be getting, understanding specific Chicago code issues, sifting through proposals from three different vendors, developing the follow-up questions to ask, and ultimately deciding on which vendor to choose. I should be clear that at no time did I just “set it and forget it” and then just did what AI told me to do. I used AI as a tool to help me make my decision, not a crutch to relieve me of the responsibly of thinking about it.

You can’t?

This sure gets us talking about the asinine things he says such as “Xi thinks I’m so smart” at which we can laugh and roll our eyes dismissively, instead of the horrifying things he says such as praising Xi for being a “a brilliant guy” because he rules the Chinese people with an “iron fist” which should give us all pause about his ultimate intentions.

You might be right. He’s not too terribly accurate although I think a lot of where he gets dinged on fielding runs is due both to poor positioning (a lot hits to left field that are normally singles become doubles because he’s loping after the ball to get it), or he gives up on the runner taking the extra base.

Especially since Tork was a 104 sOPS+ against righties versus 94 against lefties coming into the game, so it wasn’t a platoon advantage thing. And Tork had never faced Jeff Hoffman before, so it wasn’t a matchup thing. It must have been a Tork was 4-for-41 with 21 strikeouts in his last 12 games thing.

Why no 3-6-3? Tork’s turned some 3-6-3s, and Riley throws 11 ticks faster than Tork does.

Darn, for a second I was hoping maybe we’d traded Flaherty and hopefully Tork for Vlad Jr.

And then there’s Riley Greene still ripping the cover off the ball and batting something like .330. So we talk about what a defensive liability Riley is in left field, and how Tork is basically playing his way out of town this year. We wonder about moving Colt Keith to first, or having Josue Briceño come up and play first—but what about training Riley Greene to play there? He certainly has the bat to overcome a slightly below average glove, if that’s what he could’ve there. He certainly is trending toward the mobility of a first baseman anyway.

I see where Colt Keith is hitting .306, and with all the strikeouts in the game today, it feels weird to see anybody hitting .300 anymore

Only with a three run or less lead.

So what’s with the khaki green hats? Is today some military celebration holiday I don’t know about?