Time For Ty Blach To Come Of Age

I believe the Giants had a season-changing win last night.

A young (almost) rookie Ty Blach will pitch against Mr. Universe Clayton Kershaw tonight.  This will tell us if its season changing or not.

For those that follow this blog, I thought Giants Skipper Bruce Bochy really mismanaged (blew!) the last two months of the 2016 season, including the last playoff game that could have sent the Giants to the World Series…

… and there’s no way the Cleveland Indians were going to beat the Giants in the World Series… the “even year” mojo would have been ON… ’10, ’12, ’14, AND ’16.

One of the many solutions open to Bochy last year was to put Ty Blach in the bullpen.  He didn’t.  And the Giants lost.

Tonight’s game is a reasonable proxy to see how this strategy would have worked.

Please stay tuned.

UPDATE:  The strategy would have worked GREAT!  Ty gave up 1 hit in 3 innings!  THAT would have taken us to the World Series… and beyond.

That also shows something else:  That Bochy’s “platooning” strategy of mathematically matching pitcher to hitter has big flaws.  The axiom in sports has ALWAYS been:  If someone has a hot hand, don’t take them out… let them play.

It’s just flat out weird that someone as experienced as Bochy doesn’t get that.

For the game, the Giants lost 2-1 but Blach pitched admirably well.  He gave up 4 hits and 2 runs in 5 innings… biggest issue was he’s been training as a reliever, not a starter, so apparently Bochy was concerned about arm strength/stamina/injury.

Welcome to the starting rotation, Ty!

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Sorry But It Wasn’t United’s Fault, It Was The Passenger’s Fault

By now everyone knows about the poor old man — a doctor! — was forcibly dragged off a United Airlines flight.

Ironically, even though United Airlines is getting the blame, it wasn’t even a true United crew, rather, it was a “rented” crew from Republic Airlines… and, further, it wasn’t even a United employee that did the dragging… it was an employee of the Chicago Department of Aviation — a deputized police officer.

Doesn’t matter who did the “re-accommodating,” though, the passenger — who was holding up about 80 other people from getting to their destination — who was acting completely uncooperative and disruptive  — was at fault.

Maybe the rules sucked… but that doesn’t give you permission to irresponsibly flaunt the rules… unless you want to suffer the consequences… and in this situation, the consequences were — as best as they could given the unreasonable resistance the passenger was putting up — forcibly removing the passenger from the plane.

I know if I was on the plane… and some idiot was holding up all of the other 80 passengers… I’d feel like “escorting” that jerk off the plane, too.

Before everyone blindly designates the process of “overbooking” simply as a device for evil corporate greed, be careful what you wish for… one of the reasons the airlines overbook is because people have some flexibility in changing reservations at the last minute… which is a PRIVILEGE we’ve all been thankful to use now and then.

So while maybe the airlines should be authorized to pay a bit more to folks volunteering to give up their seat, bottomline is that I much prefer the current system than to not having the flexibility to change a reservation at the last minute.

Think before you randomly jump on a social-media frenzied bandwagon, people.

United Airlines, you acted according to the situation you were presented… DON’T BACK DOWN!

P.S.  Details are emerging about the quality of the passenger in question, Dr. David Dao:

          “In 2003, he was arrested and eventually convicted of prescription drug-related charges, according to the Courier-Journal. He was also convicted of several felony charges of obtaining prescription painkillers by fraud or deceit in November 2004 and was placed on five years of supervised probation in January 2005, surrendering his medical license the next month. He was, however, permitted to resume practicing in 2015 under certain conditions.”

P.P.S.  I found this… I can’t attest to its authenticity, but it certainly fits this guy’s dubious character… as this person says, here’s the rest of the story: