The Great Hambino

The late scratch of Sale certainly thickens the plot

I've had a similarly great experience using the light rail. Even with a small child and a stroller, we've never had any sort of trouble. Tip for anyone coming in from the east side of town: there's a lot of parking around Huntington Bank Stadium that goes mostly unused during the baseball season. We can park less than a block away from the stadium stop, and the cost of parking plus round trip train tickets is less than a spot in one of the Target ramps. No need to cross the river in the car, and no interminable wait getting into the ramp or out of downtown either.

With all the talk of the Pohlads not wanting to pay two managers as a reason for running it back with Rocco, they'd have to get creative to move on. What if they gave the job to someone already on the payroll? Preferably someone with respected leadership credentials, baseball acumen, and likely to have a decent amount of free time (read: time on the IL) next summer. May I present to you Carlos Correa: Player-Manager Would this happen? Not in a million years. Would it be effective? Probably not. Would it be interesting? Definitely. And with the way next year looks to be shaping up, I'll take interesting. For real though, count me as mild-to-moderately disappointed that he's coming back. He had always struck me as better at the macro than the micro - his deficiencies in in-game strategy were (somewhat?) covered by big-picture strengths (team morale/vibes, balancing playing time for a roster that was handed to him with a giant PLATOON ME sign taped to its back, etc). But the nature of this year's collapse has me doubting if he has the handle on the big picture stuff that I'd thought he had. Did he lose the locker room? I don't know, I wasn't there. On the one hand, the comments from Ober/Correa were pretty emphatic that he didn't. I know they're not gonna explicitly throw him under the bus, but they could've avoided answering or offered up some non-answer word salad if they felt he'd lost them. On the other hand, if this wasn't losing the locker room ... Good lord, what would it have looked like if he had?