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What are these numbers? There are four different possibilities.

Even Dan said just now on the radio that it felt like the Astros had the lead even when it was 0-0. When even the guy being paid to put a diplomatic spin on bad play says something like that, thats a real indication of how rotten things are under the hood.

Oh, look, were the worst team in the league again. How about that.

Control Trump? Maybe not the man himself, but they are certainly in control of the political fallout from his passing through the scene.

That’s what you get when you google “mass abortions”. So Bunker is either pulling the term out of his ear, or this is a phrase developed by the Internet Research Agency that's in the early days of field testing.

Failed how? Looks like everything important to the Republican Party is coming to fruition. Even Trump’s loss in 2020 strengthened them on the state and local levels, while emboldening them on the national level. Starting in late 2022, we’re going to start seeing exactly how much.

Apparently, when George Carlin said that Republicans “believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state”, he was not engaging in Alarmist Non-sense.

If it takes nine months to knit a sweater and after four-and-a-half months it’s only half done, I wouldn’t call it a sweater yet.

“Mass abortions”? You mean, like, get 10,000 pregnant women onto the Ford Field football field and force abortions on them all at once? Is that what a “mass abortion” is?

Dr Oz may or may not like Dr Fauci, but Dr Oz definitely knows that the only people who would vote for him don’t like Dr Fauci.

While it’s true the bullpen are performing much better this year than they have in many years, it’s also worth reiterating that the idea of the Tigers bullpen being among the best in baseball was really always a mirage. Going into yesterday’s game, the HR/9 rate of 0.36 was so low because the HR/FB rate of 3.4% was also by far the lowest in baseball. HR/FB is widely considered a measure of luck rather than skill. This helped lower their BABIP to .235, second best in baseball, and also a luck measure. The bullpen was in the bottom four of thirty teams in K/9, while being merely middle of the road in BB/9. They were also seventh best in stranding runners on base, also largely a luck metric. But most concerning should have been how hard the ball was coming off the bat with Tiger relievers on the mound. The barrel and hard hit rates yielded by us were fifth highest in the majors, and average exit velocity was seventh highest. Swinging strike rates were also middle of the pack, and called strike rates were along the lowest in the game. All this means that Tiger relievers were missing more bats than most teams, allowing more balls in play, and opposing batters were seeing the ball better and hitting the ball harder than against most other teams, but the ball had been seeing its way into our gloves far more than normal, resulting in more outs and fewer runs given up, so, lucky us. All this helps explain why even though our bullpen ERA was second best, and our FIP fourth best, our xFIP, which takes quality of contact into account, came in at 27th, better than only the Rockies, the Diamondbacks, and the Reds. So, the luck was always going to run out at some point. Maybe this is that point. Or maybe we’ll get lucky for another several weeks and continue to overachieve, which would make sense, because baseball.

With all the revenue that comes from owning a major sports franchise?

I don't think so. I think he sees the big picture. What we are seeing now is not the culmination of the big picture, particularly with so many pieces out of commission. E-Rod may or may not necessarily understand that.

E-Rod hanging his head in the dugout asking himself, "why the fuck did I come to this team?"

Welp—the pitching is finally catching up to the hitting in responsibility for losing ballgames.

I really like when Dan Dickerson does innings with the writer, like McCosky and Woodbery. They bring a different analyst dynamic to the broadcast that I really appreciate versus that of an ex-player.

Failure of roster management.

I've suggested here before that after a couple years maybe Avila peter-principles his way into the President's job, Hinch gets the GM job, and George Lombard gets the manager's job.

It might be too early to pull the trigger on a trade involving Mize or Manning, since you generally don’t want to sell low on a struggling green asset, but it’s probably not too early to hypothesize that Tairik Skubal might have established himself as the best and most dominating of the three young pitchers.

I totally agree that Mays had much better baseball skills than Obama had presidential skills. I would also say that Mays was more than just a big ball of instincts, and characterizing him as such, which was very common while he was playing, is insulting to his skills.

I think it's about providing praise that is appropriately commensurate with the skill level and expectations at hand. It is of course true that Obama is both well-spoken and articulate, but to just say so and leave it at that suggests that it is all that is expected from him. But someone at his level is supposed to be well-spoken and articulate already—it's basically a minimum requirement, so praising him for meeting that minimum comes off as patronizing and condescending. IOW, it reflects a soft bigotry of low expectations. (This phrase actually does apply here!) As G2 suggested, upping the praise to something like "finest orator to have held the office since JFK" addresses the idea at the appropriate and expected level. Going back to the Willie Mays example: it's not enough to say that Willie was an "instinctual ballplayer" and leave it at that, which makes it sound like he some child-like creature who could just step onto the field, do nothing more than instincts told him to, and magically insert himself into the conversation of greatest players of all time. That's why such praise of Willie was recognized decades ago as being insufficient, because he was so much more than instinctual, and he worked really hard to get great and obtain a deep understanding of the game.

Except it won’t be considered dirt by his supporters.

This is not some rule I’m coming up with at this moment. To my understanding, black people are very sensitive to white people being patronizing of them, and are annoyed when white people give them compliments that can fairly be considered slight. It suggests a lack of equality between the two, in which the recognition by a “superior” party of a slight accomplishment is the best that can be expected of the “inferior” party. To say that Obama, who at the very least is one of the great orators of our time, is merely well-spoken or articulate, as though that represents the height of his potential, is to give short shrift to the tremendous accomplishments he has achieved in other areas and all the hard work he put in to get there. It’s not unlike when they used to say that Willie Mays is a great ballplayer because of his uncanny instincts and his great speed. Sure, he had those, but to imply that Willie’s instincts and speed were the sum total of his greatness sets both the floor (the expectation) and the ceiling (the ultimate compliment) too low. Again, this is my understanding of it, and ironically, I may not have articulated it exactly as it could have been, but I think I’m at least pretty close. I know some people here will harshly disagree. But it makes sense to me.

Couldn’t get a guy out. That’s really a shame. what a waste. Soto will never be ready for prime time.

Wow what terribly great strike call