Lewie Pollis
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lewispoll.is
Lewie Pollis
@lewispoll.is
1.8K followers 580 following 4.6K posts
Dog dad. Cheesesteak enthusiast. Data scientist (not the evil kind). He/him

Words on sports, food, and politics here: https://www.thelewsletter.lewispoll.is/subscribe
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lewispoll.is
Tonight's batch

lasagnalove.org/volunteer
Two trays of lasagna cooling on the counter
November 20, 2025 at 2:14 AM
lewispoll.is
Among other things, I explored this through the lens of Matt Yglesias, whose reaction to finding out his online pal was a white supremacist was to first attempt to obfuscate their relationship, then to keep tweeting with Hanania as though nothing had happened
Yet the most damning aspect of a bigot successfully charming his way into mainstream political discourse was what happened after Hanania’s alter ego was revealed. (Though don’t miss the not-very-subtle parable about the bedfellows you make when you take contrarian left-punching as a first principle.) Yglesias was strangely unbothered to learn that someone in his online orbit was a white supremacist, let alone contrite or apologetic. “Not sure ‘Hanania is racist’ was a particularly well-kept secret,” he smarmed in a real-life “we’re all trying to find the guy who did this” moment. Instead he was annoyed that readers pointed out the connection between them. “I didn’t publish any Hanania articles!” Yglesias wrote incredulously, which elides that he had approvingly linked to Hanania’s work multiple times. “Ask yourself if it’s true that I ‘regularly’ interact with Hanania or if that’s something people who don’t like me just started saying,” he bristled, an odd retort from a man who tweeted at Hanania an average of roughly once a week for over a year. “Where is the error in judgment?” Yglesias asked his critics after the Hanania story broke. The mere framing of the situation as one where such plausible deniability matters reveals the shallowness of Yglesias’ moral outlook. Someone who thinks Hanania’s views are beyond the pale should be aghast at the realization of whose audience they had boosted or with whom they had enjoyed chummy rapport. Even if you didn’t know better at the time, wouldn’t you be upset to learn you had associated with such a person? Whether Yglesias’ obtuseness is deliberate deflection or sincere cognitive dissonance, that his reflex was not to be horrified but to conjure an abstract logic game for his critics speaks volumes about his tolerance for intolerance.
November 18, 2025 at 5:20 PM
lewispoll.is
My first batch for the week
Two trays of lasagna cooling on a counter
November 18, 2025 at 3:08 AM
lewispoll.is
I avoided digging back through others' arguments for Utley as I was writing this, as I didn't want to bias my own approach. But of course it turns out @jayjaffe.bsky.social has also made a similar observation far more concisely

blogs.fangraphs.com/jaws-and-the...
Utley is one of 21 players to accumulate at least 100 DRS in his career at any position(s). He’s 11th in both DRS and UZR at 90.1 runs, 2.6 ahead of Dustin Pedroia for the lead among second basemen. Multi-time Gold Glove winners abound in both sets of rankings, but Utley is the highest ranking among those who never won once. From 2005–11 — his peak years as a defender, all predating the introduction of the SABR Defensive Index into the voting — Brandon Phillips and Orlando Hudson won six of the seven Gold Gloves among NL second basemen, with Castillo the other one. In terms of both DRS and UZR, Utley generally outperformed them in their winning years: Utley vs. NL Gold Glove 2B, 2006–13 Player GG DRS in GG Utley DRS UZR in GG Utley UZR Brandon Phillips 3 (2008, ’10, ’11) 30 55 31.5 37.5 Orlando Hudson 3 (2006, ’07, ’09) 29 48 -10.3 31.0 Luis Castillo 1 (2005) 7 20 10.4 15.5
November 17, 2025 at 4:33 PM
lewispoll.is
This is a key distinction that I touch on in my analysis. Contemporary defensive metrics probably overrated Utley's range, because the measurements also encompassed his positioning. He wouldn't get such glowing numbers today. But the point is that he did at the time!
And these models rated Utley very favorably. His +90.1 UZR leads all second basemen since tracking began in 2002. He ranks second in DRS (+125), but is much closer to first place (Mark Ellis, +130) than third (Orlando Hudson, +101), and would take the top spot if not for a specific relative weakness at turning double plays. His good range and sure hands were augmented by keen positioning. In an age before coaching staffs micromanaged fielders’ placements in accordance with batted-ball data, and when defensive metrics struggled to discern positioning from range — longtime sabermetricians may recall how Brett Lawrie and the Blue Jays’ shifts broke DRS — his baseball-rat penchant for shading towards where balls were more likely to be hit made him an analytics darling at the keystone.
November 17, 2025 at 3:56 PM
lewispoll.is
Dan Campbell
Two-panel meme of Yoda looking out of it, first lying down and then standing up "after getting stopped on 37 fourth downs while standing on the sidelines at 9:34pm 10:12pm... going back for more fourth-down stop"
November 17, 2025 at 3:45 AM
lewispoll.is
Wasn’t drinking on the actual day but here’s to remembering the gales
A glass of dark beer next to a bottle with a ship navigating a storm
November 17, 2025 at 3:03 AM
lewispoll.is
Is this…Glen Powell on this box of knockoff store-brand Shredded Wheat cereal?
A red cereal box of off-brand shredded wheat cereal. There is a picture of two happy people eating cereal at the top of the box and one of them looks an awful lot like Glen Powell
November 15, 2025 at 4:27 PM
lewispoll.is
...and two more tonight
Two trays of lasagna cooling on the counter
November 12, 2025 at 2:04 AM
lewispoll.is
I love this shot I just found from a gig with @extraordinaryrenditionband.com a couple months ago
A group of musicians in colorful attire surrounding a man playing soprano saxophone at a greater-than-90-degree angle
November 12, 2025 at 12:23 AM
lewispoll.is
My grandfather, Robert Lewis (aka "Rompie"), was a decorated World War II veteran who fought at all of the pre-Normandy D-Days.

He did not like reminiscing about his service. The only time I know of that he did so regularly was to instill in his students a contempt for craven opportunism.
Among many, many other things, Rompie was a professor of nonprofit trusteeship. On the first day of class, he once said, he would set the tone with a rare story from his time in the time in the army. He showed his students an article arguing that businessmen should get involved with nonprofits, not because it was the right thing to do, but because doing so “will give you an opportunity to expand your clientele and improve your business.” After that, Rompie would talk about his experiences among D-Day forces: “We’d get to the few miles off the landing beaches and we’d be on the troop ship and we’d clamor over the sides into these bouncing little landing crafts. And everybody would be overladen. It would be dark. We would be terribly frightened. Most people would be seasick. And it would usually take five or ten minutes to chug along to the landing beach, usually under fire. There would be moments of absolute silence among the guys on board. And there would be moments of prayer, and there’d be moments of swearing, and the most magnificent swearing you’ve ever heard. And pretty soon you’d scrape bottom and the ramp would go down and fate was five seconds away. The thing that I want you to know is, in all of those experiences, I never heard any single one of those guys ever say ‘What’s in it for me and who is going to make it up to me?’”
November 11, 2025 at 2:45 PM
lewispoll.is
Just out of the oven
Two trays of lasagna cooling on the counter
November 11, 2025 at 2:01 AM
lewispoll.is
Same energy
Screenshot of a tweet by David Roth I'm the person in the Mets front office who calls the beat writers after another team trades for a guy and says "we were also talking about trading for that guy."
November 11, 2025 at 12:09 AM
lewispoll.is
I just called my senators to thank them for voting NO last night and ask them to support replacing Chuck Schumer. If your senators also opposed the budget, I encourage you to do the same.

In the past people have appreciated my sharing the voicemail scripts I use. Here's the template I wrote today:
My name is ____ and I am a constituent of Senator ____. I am calling to express my gratitude to Senator ____ for holding firm and voting NO on advancing the budget bill last night. Like the vast majority of Democrats, I am outraged by Chuck Schumer’s lack of leadership within the caucus: whether he helped coordinate Senator ____’s colleagues breaking ranks to advance the bill or whether he simply failed to stop it, clearly he is unfit to lead the Democratic caucus in defending the American people from this lawless administration. There are already calls from other Democratic elected officials to oust Schumer from his role as Minority Leader. I hope to see Senator ____ speak out in support of replacing Schumer with someone who will both fight more strongly for the American people and demonstrate superior strategic thinking about how to wield his influence.
November 10, 2025 at 6:45 PM
lewispoll.is
I've heard this criticism may times over the last few years. This specific excerpt is from Inauguration Day but it's still relevant to the dynamics of advocacy today

www.thelewsletter.lewispoll.is/p/dissenting...
Frustrated Democrats often bemoan leftists putting (what they perceive as) more energy into critiquing them than more ideologically distant Republicans. To the extent that that’s true, it is a question of pragmatism. The American left is a crucial piece of the Democratic coalition. However much they prefer to pander to the center, it is crucial to the party’s viability that progressives’ interests are represented, so sometimes they have to listen. The Republicans have no such incentives. That the left disagrees with them is the point. Take the issue of abortion. I do not believe the Democrats have a coherent strategy to protect reproductive rights. I see the pattern of politicians breaking their campaign promises to codify Roe v. Wade, then turning the responsibility back onto the voters as betraying a strange disbelief in their own agency. I have argued that Joe Biden’s disinterest in packing the Supreme Court is, in practice, no different than endorsing Roe being overturned. If Biden were a sleeper agent whose goal were to neuter the pro-choice movement while remaining performatively supportive of it, I do not think anything about his administration’s approach to abortion rights would have been meaningfully different. I have put energy into expressing this because most of my readers hew towards the Democrats, and I had hoped that increased pressure from the party’s base would nudge our leaders to take a stronger stand. Now the problem is not that the ruling party is too feckless to counter the minoritarian movement to ban abortion. Stripping away reproductive freedoms is their stated goal. Nothing I can write will change that.
November 10, 2025 at 3:09 AM
lewispoll.is
Zohran font meme generator template: ANYTHING FOR MY PRINCESS! HA HA HA
November 10, 2025 at 3:01 AM
lewispoll.is
The group chat didn’t appreciate this joke so I’m seeking validation here
Screenshot from iMessage My fantasy team still has no one underway…pretty weird If Polyphemus followed the NFL ^^
November 9, 2025 at 6:47 PM
lewispoll.is
Having a senile president is bad regardless of which party they're in
Freedom of Speech by Norman Rockwell (the meme of the painting of the guy standing up at a town meeting)
November 9, 2025 at 3:24 PM
lewispoll.is
Okay now that I’m hydrated,
A goblet of dark beer next to a bottle labeled World Wide Stout
November 9, 2025 at 2:21 AM
lewispoll.is
Even this skip is charming. How many times does it take before you realize it’s the record and not part of the elongated arrangement?
November 8, 2025 at 2:44 AM
lewispoll.is
Absolute gem of an album. One of my most-treasured vinyls
Album cover of BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREETERS Winterland, 1978
November 8, 2025 at 2:31 AM
lewispoll.is
Paired with my all-time favorite beer
A goblet of dark beer next to a bottle labeled BARREL-AGED OLD RASPUTIN
November 8, 2025 at 2:06 AM
lewispoll.is
Bucatini with sausage, zucchini, and pepato, served with chicken with long hot pesto
A black bowl of pasta and green chicken
November 8, 2025 at 1:44 AM
lewispoll.is
3. Lucky's Last Chance, Philadelphia: the brunch burger, sub bacon for sausage (more contrast with the patty)

with Gilda as a close honorable mention
A breakfast burger with French toast as the bun
November 8, 2025 at 12:41 AM
lewispoll.is
2. Brauð & co., Reykjavík: I'm not a sweet breakfast guy but these cinnamon rolls were absolutely sublime
A cinnamon roll
November 8, 2025 at 12:40 AM