IdahoBert

I loved his lineups, as we all did. There was something comforting knowing that a slender infielder would always bat second. I felt affirmed by his lineups. I felt “seen” because I could’ve put that lineup together.

Umpires suck and so does Baez.

Malloy is serious about this…

OK, let’s get serious and win this game.

Now 6-1. My optimism is fading for this game.

Malloy’s parents are there? Awesome!

Malloy likes this life. Happy for him.

Sweet. We jinxed it.

Flaherty and Maeda pulled out of games back-to-back? This is totally weird.

Wow, it’s a perfect game. And I don’t mean the weather.

Those teams have a collective 142–101 record.

After this next final game with Texas, the Tigers play 12 of their next 20 games against NL teams, nine of them at home.

Remember when Brad Ausmus used to leave a guy in past the point of no return to “give him confidence?”

Flaherty was traded for this guy.

I hope they trade Flaherty for someone who knows how to hit the baseball really hard really far really often.

Lynn’s take.

Jake! Missed this game because for the last 8 Mondays I’ve gone to the local Regal Theater and seen in succession all of the Spider-Man movies: the 3 Toby Maguire’s and the 2 Andrew Garfield‘s and ending tonight with Spider-Man: No Way Home that unites all 3 Spider-Man’s. What a treat to go “oh yeah“ and open my phone and see this win. And in my humble opinion Toby Maguire is still the king. GO TIGERS!

We know that he is capable of hitting the baseball on occasion so even though he doesn’t have an overall athleticism, he does possess this one aspect of athleticism so maybe he’s just a head case and needs the help of a baseball version of a “horse whisperer” but we don’t have one.

Hitting a projectile thrown at high velocity with a stick over and over again, or throwing a projectile and making it do funny stuff to confuse or throw the guy with the stick off balance are two of the most sparsely distributed talents in the world. There are small number of people functioning on the planet at one time that can do that at the highest levels. It’s no surprise that guys wash out.

Tork hit something like 63 homers in 159 college and summer league games. Which is an awful lot. He even had a high BA and could walk. But a guy who’s playing first base in college isn’t much of an athlete overall. I don’t know if there were other more “complete players” available in the first round or not. But my non-expert take on it was that he had a good chance of being a one-dimensional guy, and that without an overall athleticism expressed in the ability to play a more demanding position he might not be up to the challenges he’d face. He may simply not have either the reflexes or the mentality to adjust when he’s being figured out. It’s a drag.