The Baltimore Orioles really struggled in the season’s second half, going 17-26 in the International League. Fortunately for Baltimore, they still managed to hold off the Charlotte Knights and Gwinnett Stripers by a comfortable margin in the South Division. Advancing to the postseason, the Orioles rallied to capture the league title with series wins over the Rochester Red Wings and Toledo Mud He — wait, what? That scenario is a hypothetical minor league season simulated by Out of the Park Developments at the request of FiveThirtyEight. In reality, the Orioles are actually a major league team that resides in the American League East, where they were a staggering 60 games behind the division-leading Boston Red Sox entering play Tuesday. The record for most games back of a division (or, before divisions, league) leader was set in 1909 by the Cleveland Spiders, who finished 65 1/2 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates. And yes, you can place bets on whether the Orioles will break that mark. Our forecast calls for Baltimore to lose 115 games, which would be tied for the fourth-most losses in a season since 1901. The AL record for games lost in a season is 119 by the infamously bad 2003 Detroit Tigers, while the 1962 New York Mets — an expansion club — hold the modern major league record for losses in a season (120). Both of those numbers are achievable for Baltimore this season. And the Orioles aren’t alone: The Kansas City Royals are also remarkably terrible, projected to lose 105 games. If the Royals and Orioles each lose at least 105 games, they would be the first teams to do so in the same season since 2002. After unloading many of their assets at the trade deadline, Baltimore and Kansas City are struggling so mightily against real MLB teams that we were curious to see how they would stack up if they were relegated to Triple-A. At what point does the designation between a major and minor league team start to blur? And what are the implications of that blurring for the broader world of Major League Baseball? To help answer the first question, we started with a minor league equivalency (MLE) calculator, which converts MLB statistics to their corresponding Triple-A numbers. The MLEs were not bullish on Baltimore’s chances in Triple-A: Assuming there is an 18 percent bump in wins above replacement12 when moving down from the majors to the minors,13 the Orioles were still projected to have just a .446 winning percentage in Triple-A. And the Royals? Their 2018 performance translates to a .489 winning percentage in Triple-A. For comparison’s sake, the Philadelphia Phillies are the most average team in baseball this season according to WAR. Their major league performance translates to a .585 winning percentage in Triple-A. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeWe9_uBpsk

Welcome to Finest News. Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T Welcome to Finest News. Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T One of the many things about former President Barack Obama that caused great consternation among many Americans was his apparent inability to utter the words “radical,” “Islamist” and “terrorist” all in the same sentence, much less strung together as an apt descriptive term for violent jihadists waging war against the West. Whether Obama’s refusal to say that particular phrase — and Lord knows he had ample opportunities to do so throughout his tenure in office — was due to an affinity for the Muslim faith or because he was beholden to the orthodoxy of liberal political correctness may never truly be known. But while that accurate description of Islamic jihadists rarely, if ever, crossed Obama’s lips, President Donald Trump has no such qualms about using the term, especially when speaking about the atrocities committed by “radical Islamist terrorists.” According to Breitbart, Trump used the phrase to describe the 19 hijackers who commandeered commercial airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and an open field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlCLvoYIg3w

Welcome to Finest News. Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T On Friday, the liberal women who make up ABC’s “The View” seemed to mock First Lady Melania Trump’s accent, which prompted the first lady’s spokeswoman to fire back in a statement. The mockery arose when “The View” panelists were discussing the anonymous commentary piece published last week by The New York Times that purported to be written by a senior member of the Trump administration. The discussion focused on “The View’s” typical liberal talking points until co-host Sunny Hostin mentioned she was “struck” by the first lady’s statement. Hostin looked prepared to read the statement in an accent before saying, “Oh, I can’t do an accent” as Whoopi Goldberg warned her off. Hostin proceeded to read Trump’s statement in a sarcastic tone that was certainly not her own, normal voice. It wasn’t an impersonation of Melania Trump’s accent, but given the context, her meaning — and mockery — was clear. The first lady’s press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, fired back at “The View” in a tweet responding to an article published by Raw Story. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zv8SYR-L4E

Welcome to Finest News. Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T Senate Republicans have gone from confidently predicting the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to a new message: It all comes down to Thursday. The GOP is staking Kavanaugh’s prospects to his hearing later this week, when he and Christine Blasey Ford will testify publicly about her allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school more than 30 years ago. It’s a shift that puts some of the onus on Kavanaugh to convince a growing number of wary senators whether his word is more credible than hers in the battle over the high court seat. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is warning his colleagues publicly and privately that his plan is to hold a floor vote on Kavanaugh no matter what happens in the Judiciary Committee, possibly as soon as early next week. Though Kavanaugh currently lacks the votes to be confirmed, the GOP leader is signaling that he will hold the vote anyway to force all 100 senators to go on record and put maximum pressure on red state Democrats that the GOP is hoping to defeat this fall, Republican senators said. Whether that vote will be successful remains in doubt, the senators said. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wulMVEuuTYw