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Well, they're all the same, aren't they? Just another bunch of hacks who would pledge unquestioning loyalty.

What is your take on the FBI vs the intelligence community?

Yup. Total phony baloney.

Funny you would say this—for years I would avoid watching movies because I figured I just didn't have the time to devote two hours straight to it. Then I recently really noticed how my wife can start and stop and restart a TV show effortlessly. So I tried it—and it's great. I thought I would somehow lose the thread of what I'm watching, but I found that I repick it up just fine. I'm now starting to catch up on a bunch of movies I'd been avoiding for time reasons.

AP is all over it, @Biff Mayhem:

I'm with you on that. Although that makes it just one more thing to have to monitor. We may even forget about it after a while. It might become like that rule where if a fielder throws their glove at a ball and hits it, runners are awarded three bases. When was the last time you saw that?

I thought the rule was stupid when I first heard about it, and I’m still not sure I don’t think that, but as with the three-pitch minimum rule for relievers, I’m sure I’ll come around to being fine with it. Re the strategy part, I don’t know that it will result in any change because (I assume) a runner is already leading off the maximum amount he can get away with on every pitch anyway. Not necessarily to set up a steal, but to shorten the distance to run so if a ball is hit, they increase their chances of being safe, if ever so slightly. (And baseball is nothing if not a game of ever-so-slightly.) I can’t think of a situation where a runner is not leading off to his maximum, except in situations where he must protect his hold on first base in a game situation where losing that base would be much worse than gaining an extra base would benefit (e.g., down a run and two outs in the ninth). And in a case like that I can’t see him leading off an extra six or twelve or whatever inches after the second throw over because, again, the cost of getting picked off would be too great. There might be guys early on doing what you say, but once a few of them get picked off for their foolishness, I would bet that would stop. So I see this as less an incentive to steal bases than it is to limit endless throws to first which, I agree with you, happens hardly ever anyway.

Yes, I umpired little league games around the time I was 19 or 20. (Not actually “Little League”, since Warren didn’t, and apparently still doesn’t, belong to that organization.) I clearly remember the first inning I ever worked. I had a strike zone that was armpits to knees I was going to call. The pitcher was missing close up and down and I was calling it by that book. After the kid walked the first three batters on 12 pitches, I saw the folly of my ways and called an audible: strike zone was now nose to toes. It worked. They griped, but it got the bats off their shoulders.

You’re right. He agrees with the numbers, which undermines his core argument, and that’s good enough.

People here may not believe me, but I have never been in either Facebook or Twitter jail. I use FB pretty much for what you say here: keeping in touch with friends, keeping up with SABR people, or sharing and consuming baseball posts. (I’m in a bunch of baseball groups.) Every once in a while a right winger baseball friend will post some stupid red hat meme and I’ll reply with a snarky one-liner, but that’s as far as it goes. Or I might like someone else’s snarky one-liner reply to a red hat meme. But that’s it—I don’t want to use FB for pointless back-and-forths. (That’s what MTF is for!) Ninety-five percent of my FB posts are replies; I really only post when I’m traveling with my wife. And I use Twitter basically only to keep up with news. Facebook has actually been a huge net gain for me. I have rekindled so many friendships with people 20 and 30 and 40 years in my past, which obviously could never have happened in the 20th Century.

I was working nights at a machine shop on the 530pm to 6am shift. We had a hot job that required 24/7 and they didn’t want to create a third shift just for that. I woke up at about 1130am to all three networks pre-emptying programming for it. Also, I remember the date because it’s my brother’s birthday.

Why are you upset?

I think Avila was behind the hiring of Scott Coolbaugh (and Jose Cruz Jr.), and Hinch led the hiring of George Lombard.

Man, I’d forgotten how good that guy was once he played for a team that knew what to do with him.

What do you think of Tiger337’s data post? Seems to undercut one of your core arguments.

FWIW, Fangraphs did an article a few years ago about at which point various stats attain enough stablization to basically call it a skill and not just luck. Here’s where they came out on that back then: “Stabilization” Points for Offense Statistics: 60 PA: Strikeout rate 120 PA: Walk rate 240 PA: HBP rate 290 PA: Single rate 1610 PA: XBH rate 170 PA: HR rate 910 AB: AVG 460 PA: OBP 320 AB: SLG 160 AB: ISO 80 BIP: GB rate 80 BIP: FB rate 600 BIP: LD rate 50 FBs: HR per FB 820 BIP: BABIP “Stabilization” Points for Pitching Statistics: 70 BF: Strikeout rate 170 BF: Walk rate 640 BF: HBP rate 670 BF: Single rate 1450 BF: XBH rate 1320 BF: HR rate 630 BF: AVG 540 BF: OBP 550 AB: SLG 630 AB: ISO 70 BIP: GB rate 70 BIP: FB rate 650 BIP: LD rate 400 FB: HR per FB 2000 BIP: BABIP This is from 2015 but I would guess the numbers are pretty similar now. I would also think that barrels would be similar to fly ball rate on stabilization.

Sure, if he’s in control of the coaching situation. But since it’s likely that it as Avila was hired Coolbaugh and imposed him on Hinch, it’s hard to control the direct report who has the ear of your boss.

This may or may not mean anything, but Cameron Maybin had Riley Greene among his top ten center fielders on MLB Network’s top ten right now show.

They work for a white-dominated system in a red hat state. They got to where they were because they play ball. They’re not going to break ranks. I would be interested in seeing you reply to Tiger337’s stats post.

As if. What is almost certain to happen is that Congress will completely ignore such calls, since Hunter Biden’s laptop will be considered far too important to divert resources from. But it will be addressed by their state media, and it could take the form of any number of: killings of police by immigrants is a far larger problem; more white people are killed by police than black people so there is no racism problem; these thugs, particularly this Tyree character, are bringing it on themselves by being thugs; there are thousands of police departments where this doesn’t happen, so the whole thing is overblown, and commie Democrats and their lackey commie media hate police which is why they talk about stuff like this instead of open borders and Brandon’s failing economy. In other words: fire up the gaslight, there’s work to do!

This is like saying American slavery wasn’t built and sustained on white racism because African men handed over people from enemy tribes to ships run exclusively by white slavers, and yeah, there were white slaves in 1630, so there.

They can’t tell me it can’t be racist because it’s black cops on black civilian. If it were black cops on white civilian, this would not have happened. If it were white cops on white civilian, this almost certainly would not have happened. If it were white cops on black civilian, this definitely would have happened. If it were white cops on anyone, they would be put on paid suspension, not fired and put into jail. They can’t tell me there was no racism involved here.

What, you don’t remember Democrats snarking that Scalise was shot because he was having a hissy fit spat with his gay lover baseball teammate? 😏

This is very much in the same vein as, when Republicans doing something awful is at the top of the news cycle, their media apologists complain about "both sides", but when it's not in the news cycle, it's 100% all about Democrats.

At the time I posted, which was before reading microline’s replies, it seemed within the realm of possibility that had we called Thompson up, he could have done up to and including as well for us as he did for the Dodgers, and that might have been worth a decent enough return to make a deal with someone. A flyer pitcher and a flyer hitter, maybe. Concluding that he was terrible before this year so there was no possibility he could have been any good to us this year seemed to me a baffling position to dig your heels in on. In the case of Trayce Thompson as explained by microline, all of this is now moot.