We haven't really had the cicadas buzzing away around our house, and we've got a decent amount of trees in the neighborhood (six large ones in our yard alone). However I was driving with the windows open next a forest preserve not too far from the house and you could almost feel the noise coming from the woods. Guess that's where the party is.
"Minor Details" will take a break for a few days, as I will be attending United Methodist Annual Conference (my last one--hooray!), an event in which we cram one day's worth of work into four days. If nothing unexpected happens, the feature will return Monday.
We have not had much in the way of cicada activity here, but southern 'burbs of StL have been hit. Also heard plenty while stopping in Hannibal, MO on our return trip from MN.
Teams above .600 win percentage are 14-1 against the Twins, with 5 series wins (4 sweeps).
PHI (no games vs. Twins)
NYY (4-0 vs. Twins)
CLE (5-0 vs. Twins)
BAL (3-0 vs. Twins)
LAD (2-1 vs. Twins)
Teams below .600 win percentage are 13-32 vs. Twins, with 1 series win (and two splits) out of 14 series
I vote the Twins only have to play teams below .600 for the rest of the season.
Guardians are 40-20 this year! Can anyone point to an article or analysis on why they are so good? I'm just intrigued. Espcially since people that Terry Francona was one of the reasons the Guards always over performed.
Good bullpen and clutch hitting?
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-guardians-have-been-red-hot-in-steven-kwans-absence/
they're way outperforming their Base Runs record, so I am hoping that temporary clutchiness is the big factor
hmm....
Open concourses, FTW!
Royce Lewis has yet to make an out this season. 4.000 OPS!
I'm going out on a limb and saying he makes at least one out before the season ends, probably when late season fatigue is setting in
I believe I saw something yesterday that said Arraez has never had less than a .300 batting average in the MLB. If that's correct, that's crazy.
2021 want you to hold it's beer, but I believe he was fighting injury (knee?) that season.
As Rhu_Ru notes, he finished 2021 with a .294 average so it must be career average.
He made an out in his first career plate appearance, that's the only time he's had a career BA below .300
He got a double in his next at-bat, so he's never finished a game with a career BA below .307
I was listening to the broadcast of the Pierre Legion team from last night. The first batter singled and the second batter doubled. The announcer joked that it would be really something if the next batter tripled and then the next one hit a home run.
It reminded me that the Twins did that once, years ago. I was pretty sure it was 1978, that it was Rod Carew who hit the triple and Glenn Adams who hit the home run. Since Adams only hit seven homers in 1978, I decided to start looking for the game, and sure enough, I found it. It was August 16, 1978 against Kansas City at Met Stadium. In the bottom of the first, Hosken Powell singled, Roy Smalley doubled, Carew tripled, and Adams hit a home run, all off Doug Bird. The Twins went on to win the game 5-1, with Geoff Zahn throwing a complete game.
That's awesome recall, Padre
It's the sort of odd thing I remember. Ask me to remember something useful, on the other hand...
So, are you a fellow member of the Brotherhood of Trivial Minutia?
Make that The Ministry of Information Retrieval
We're all in this together.
Mmm, Geoff Zahn.
Those were lean years. He was a (relative) bright spot.
I unexpectedly ran across a cicada spot on my bike ride this morning. I didn't stop to soak it in at all, but the sound was fairly surreal.
Yeah, I wish I could of stopped, but at least I got to drive along side it for a number of miles (and through the middle for a mile or two). It was, like, pulsating with sound. Very weird.
What a cluster. Trying to apply for an ebike rebate on the MN Revenue Dept. website. Can't load the page. When it does load, the form isn't there. Back and forth and back and forth and I'm not likely to get a damn rebate because government websites always suck.
I got all the way to the submit page and then it timed out
They are using Salesforce for the back-end application processing (I got a Salesforce connection error after submitting the Tennessen thing). They were obviously not prepared for the volume, which is stupid but entirely predictable.
They finally started putting people into a waiting queue. I should have been done with this 44 minutes ago.
I don't think you need to worry, incompetence is totally bipartisan.
Looks like y'all missed out on buying my parents' lake property in Itasca County. It went on the market early Monday and had an offer slightly above asking by Monday afternoon.
I was really counting on the WGOM discount.
We should have collectively bought it and then used it as a WGOM retreat center.
That would have been kewl.
8+ acres, 300 shore-feet of lake frontage. Poured-floor, walkout basement. 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, potential for at least 2 more bedrooms. Main floor is largely finished with wood paneling milled from trees my dad dropped on the property, had sawn into boards, then planed and finished himself.
Good deer hunting space, quiet lake with acceptable fishing, at least one nesting pair of bald eagles and a population of loons. Close to excellent walleye and bass fishing lakes. Big garden with established blueberry bushes, raspberries, and asparagus.
But a good 4-hour drive north of Bloomington (or N. St. Paul, where my brother lives). Needs septic brought to current code. The half bath needs to be gutted. Plumbing needs updating throughout (IMO), and possibly some electrical as well. But North Itasca Coop brought in high-speed fiber last summer (needs hooking up) when they buried new electrical supply on our shared road.