How the hell are the Detroit Tigers five games under .500 at a plus 82 run differential? I mean, that's five back of the Yankees who are 15 games above .500.

Yeah, I think they, they had one really awful month.

I think June they went 6 and 22, and, and their run differential obviously was horrible.

Other than that, they've had a winning month basically every other month.

August right now they're kind of hovering around .500.

But you go 16 games under .500 in a month, one of the worst months in franchise history, that's enough to kind of dig yourself a hole that is hard to come back from.

And you know, they, they lost some games late, some close games in those situations, and they've had a lot of blowout wins this year, and there's a ton of talent on that team.

Is it a coincidence that these innings aren't going to die on Vlad's bats right now and they're actually scoring a few more runs?

One, how much does this boost the Red Sox? And two, is this sort of the end of an era for this Baltimore team that was never able to really sort of push through?

Yeah, I think no question.

It's a real turning point in a bad way for the Orioles.

They won zero playoff games with this group of prospects that developed some of them into really good players for a time.

And then injuries, et cetera, kind of stunted their progress.

And it just hasn't worked out.

And I don't know what the future holds for them.

What do you think the process was like for Atkins to do that?

What made you keep coming back, and what did each one of those items teach you that we wouldn't have learned any other way.

Really bad judgment.

I guess maybe just sort of like the quickly the arc of the three companies.

So one of my good friends growing up, Vadim Polakov, we went to Hebrew school together, went to high school together, wrestling team across all this other stuff.

He had sold a prior business and in 2007 said, hey, Josh, I think residential solar.

I was a corporate lawyer at a law firm doing M&A work.

Didn't know a kilowatt hour from a solar panel.

the

I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to that anymore.

And the only thing I'd say on that, because I agree that it's not worth much of a mention, is I feel bad for anybody who believes that because it means that if something really awful happens in their life, then they're screwed.

And I think that that, you know, I know that we, and you've written about this idea that, you know, people know that bad things happen to good people.

They just don't, they don't believe that it will happen to them.

Otherwise we wouldn't function.

But at the same time, you have to have some faith and belief that like, you know, and whatever you believe more broadly is that there's something to be taken from these things.

And And certainly I know way too many people who've lost their children to suicide.

know, and they're unfortunate in themselves, but they have that effect of allowing us to be more tender people.

Maybe talk about the yin and the yang of, uh, the two sluggers in the middle of the lineup.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's unfortunate that both can't be going, um, at the same time.

Like, like Okamoto struggled, obviously.

He was really good the first, I don't know, maybe five games or so of the season, and then obviously some adjustments were made by opposing pitchers, and they took advantage of some areas of, of weakness, I guess, in terms of, um, his swing and, and where he was standing in the batter's box.

And then credit to him and the coaching staff, he adjusted and, uh, adjusted the, the way he stands in the box, moved a little bit further back, and it's certainly led to, like, a pretty sustained stretch of really good production over the last, I don't know, 20-plus games or so, and he's been by far, um, their best hitter on the whole and their most, um, kind of imposing power bat.

Like, he leads the team in homers, he leads the team in runs batted in.

Uh, you know, I wouldn't have expected that to be the case before the season as we sit here, you know, approaching the middle of May, but it's a credit to him.

How much is a slow start from Springer holding the team back?