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Miguel Cabrera has been even worse than Schoop. He is definitely falling off the planet at the end here. I think we might start seeing the one-game-per-series thing plus the occasional garbage time pinch-hitting appearance from here on out.

As bad as Maton has been at the plate the past couple of weeks, Vierling has been even worse. We don't have a whole lot of options beyond those guys, at least not quite yet, so grit your teeth and hope for the best.

The story is from 2020 while he was “sitting president of the United States.” Fat lot of good this did.

I’m not worried about this rotation because this isn’t the rotation they are planning to contend with. It’s a stopgap rotation. If/when everybody we’ve pinned our future on is healthy, then I’ll be worried if they’re performing like this.

Remember, too, that we are still in that tough stretch of 40 games to start the season. We still haven’t gotten to the Pirates, Nationals, Royals, and White Sox, and they’re up next. Those are teams more at our level or even lower, and I think that stretch of twelve games might be as illuminating as this stretch of forty is.

I don’t think they know what a good OPS vs a bad OPS is. I would be willing to bet that over half of all baseball fans have never heard of OPS. I am amazed to this day when I find a baseball fan who still hasn’t heard of Baseball Reference, but I think there are more of those folks out there than we deep baseball fans who’ve used it for two decades can imagine.

Good thing it’s only 3:30pm. Go on outside and enjoy the rest of the day.

Well, that sucked.

Lemme guess, false flag, right?

Booooo Hinch chess moves relievers no runs he sucks fire him go tigers

He will almost certainly throw his next pitch in the minors, but in the meantime he will accumulate major league service time while he is on the major leagues IL, which would not have been the case had he reported to Toledo first, then went on the minors IL. Apparently Turnbull’s service time is close enough where it might make a difference in how soon he can become a free agent. As for Boras, I don’t know where he fits into the equation. Trumbull met with Harris, Hinch, and Fetter after his terrible start on Saturday and they identified some things they want Turnbull to work on in the minors. Then, according to Harris, shortly after Turnbull left the room he called back to say he was hurt. The Tigers optioned Turnbull the next day. Nothing happened for a couple days, then Turnbull hired Boras on Wednesday. Boras says he expedited the medical review and then the Tigers put Turnbull on the IL on Thursday. Meanwhile he accrues major league pay and service time. I’m getting a feeling Turnbull was kind of dicking around with the Tigers for a few days, they went back and forth discussing who knows exactly what, Turnbull then officially hired Boras, whom Turnbull may or may not have consulted with beforehand, and then Boras put pressure on the Tigers to rescind the option and put Turnbull on the big league IL. From Turnbull’s standpoint, it’s the more lucrative, advantageous move. From the Tigers standpoint, I gotta wonder how appreciative they are of Spencer Turnbull as an integral part of the team. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Tigers try to get him as healthy as possible and then offer him in a trade package, although I don’t see how he can headline any trade himself.

Players play hurt all the time, especially players without long-term security whose career prospects might be affected by a single bad performance. In addition to having warrior mentalities, they also don’t want to be seen as malingerers not to be trusted to go to battle on the field, and who could moved off the roster in exchange for someone who will be more reliable. That’s a big part of what keeps guys playing hurt. I’m not sure how effectively Turnbull could fake an injury enough to fool Tigers medical staff, but it is a pretty canny tactic to come clean with the owie before having to shuffle off to Toledo. I think Turnbull is a man with agency and knows what he’s doing, so good for him. He has to act in the best interest of his and his family’s future.

Totally his jam.

Good for Turnbull. Smart.

First two runs come from the bottom third. Check.

JAAAAKE!

Are we sure Matthew Boyd is the guy we want to mentor the young pitchers that we have in the big leagues and that are coming through our system?

I know very little about the vagaries of DNA but I do find this pretty interesting from a social and anthropological standpoint.

lol if Trump was going to blame someone Who would he ever not blame? Is even Ivanka untouchable now?

Or 73-0. One or the other.

Long as we're talking about MLB media and how much it can suck, here's something else new this year that I hate. Let's start with the setup: One of the things I have liked about watching MLB feeds from other cities is when they run local (actually RSN) commercials. A lot of them might be for national or even regional brands, but sometimes they will be for a local car dealer or law firm or some advertiser you can't see anywhere else. I find that somewhat charming. I see that on Extra Innings on D*TV. Even better when it's a Blue Jays and you get Canadian commercials. Yeah, I know, you Detroiters are like, big whoop, because you can see that on channel 9 every day. But for we folks who are removed geographically from that possibility, it's pretty neat. You don't get that on MLB.tv games, since the League sells out all that commercial time to national advertisers—or, more exactly, they bonus their top sponsors spots during all the breaks on MLB.tv games. That's why you see the same commercials over and over, like the Scotts lawn spot with the stupid bagpipes, or the Range Rover spots with the ridiculously over-the-top orchestral music. No advertiser would ever pay for that kind of relentless, non-stop, punch-you-in-the-face-repeatedly frequency because it actually hurts brand perception, and pretty quickly at that. I'm a little surprised Scotts and the other sponsors don't request frequency caps on a per game basis or something. Maybe it's such a tiny deal to them that they don't even know, or else don't give a sh*t. On the radio side, on MLB At Bat, you would hear the commercials that run on the flagship station, and it was great, because radio spots during baseball games are far more local, much less slick, and thus more charming than even local TV spots. Sometimes you might even hear spots for a single restaurant or one lone insurance agency. That's pretty cool. You might hear local spots during some breaks on the radio broadcasts on the Sirius app, although you're just as likely to hear Sirius pound you with promo spots for their other channels, especially channels devoted to sports you might hate. (Or, to be honest, sports I might hate.) OK, now for the peeve: As of this season, MLB At Bat no longer allows local radio spots to run during game breaks. They bonus that time out as well, and to sponsors of your local team. So no matter what feed I'm listening to, whether it's Tigers', Cubs', White Sox', Guardians', Dodgers', doesn't matter, they play local Chicago spots. And for me, it's always Cubs-oriented spots for Sloan toilets or Binny's Beverage Depot or North Shore Hospital or whatever. (Never a White Sox-oriented spot, though. I'm not sure quite yet why that is.) Now here's the worst part, in my estimation: no matter where I am—whether I'm in Chicago, or I go to Milwaukee, or Green Bay, or Detroit, or anyplace else in the country, maybe even the world—I hear the exact same Chicago Cubs-oriented spots run on At Bat. I don't even get the spots that are local to the cities I am physically in. MLB has determined, for whatever reason, that since I am a Chicagoan—and, in their estimation, a Cubs fan—they are going to present to me the same spots for Sloan, or Binny's, or North Shore Hospital over ... and over ... and over ... and over ... and over ... you get the idea. And of course, 40% of all the spots I hear feature the putatively dulcet tones of accidental Hall of Famer Pat Hughes, the sound, tone, and smarmy delivery of whose voice I absolutely despise. My only recourse is listen to the Sirius feed for the sometimes local spots, although the down side of that is that they are literally several minutes behind live action. But that's a trade-off I don't mind making to avoid the crushing sameness of the commercial during breaks.

Not only this, and I don't know whether this is happening to anyone else, but once or twice every week, I can't open a game in an MLB.tv app on any platform unless I reauthenticate my Extra Innings credentials yet again. That's new starting this year. Didn't have that problem in prior years. As for the Carplay app, I don't bother. If it's a home game, I listen to the Tigers feed on my Sirius in the car; if it's an away game, I will either run the Tigers feed through the At Bat app if it's working, and if it's not, open it in the Sirius app.

Thanks. I put a tick in my calendar for next late May to review this and consider letting this go.

Saved it to my "Active Pop" YT playlist. Thanks for the tip.

I think the hope with Cisnero is that he would have good topline numbers and then they can flip him in July. If they can't, I won't be surprised to see him released sometime after the deadline.