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Probably for the best that Europe arms up so there is a democratic bulwark against MAGA and Putin fascism.

Honestly the signing wasn’t that bad when you take into consideration our bullpen last year. The bigger problem is almost across the board everyone is worse than where they were. I think they felt one more back end arm would be enough to keep wear and tear down and they don’t need a top tier arm anyway so why not take the experience. Then injuries and regression happened. I think there is plenty to blame this year including Hinch and Harris but I just can’t hold them completely accountable for a year where there’s lots of injuries and then people playing more then normal or out of position. Certainly not to the point where I would even entertain a changing of the guard. Now a sit down evaluation around why this happened and how do you make sure it doesn’t again certainly is in the cards. Frankly something is in the water for Detroit because the Lions have had the same story the last 2 years.

No, I can't write him off yet, but I thought it was a lazy Avila-esque signing when it happened. They have been burned by old man relievers so many times this century.

you can call it hindsight or you can say that the right choices are the difference between winners and losers. If there is no way to ever inform your choices better, then you might as well have kept Al Avila. It's Harris' job to figure out how to put resources where they produce the most return. No-one expects perfection - but you don't like seeing patterns in failure either.

You might be right about Jansen eventually, although I don't think we can write him off yet.

It didn't take hindsight to figure out that Morton, Paddack and Jansen a number of other players would probably be a waste of money. None of them were fatal because they've been short-term, but many were predictable.

Playing behind all of those NHL ready defensive prospects like Wallinder and Tuomisto and Lagesson? 😊

Nerf in a professional office initializes the workforce.

What’s annoying is that a bunch of these guys are easily identifiable as bad signings/acquisitions before we they even play. Maeda was coming off a year and a half of being hurt. I know you all love Verlander, but there was no scenario where we should be bringing him back and paying him substantial money. Paddack has a career ERA+ of 86. Morton is in his 40s. Rafael Montero had a career ERA+ in the 80s and a 1.5 WHIP. Kahnle was a guy I actually wanted us to sign and it worked well for the first few months and then he imploded. The hit rate, K rate, era+ and other stats suggested he would be above average as a reliever and it just didn’t happen. Urshela and Canha were just field filler signings. Urshela was just a replacement level player even before we got him and the Canha signing I thought was decent but you’re bringing in a 35 year old. He’s not going to suddenly get better without PEDs. I’ll defend the Valdez signing to this point because I think it’s about as good of a fallback plan as we were Going to have if Skubal leaves. If you look across the board for the last 4 years though, it’s Harris largely just plugging holes with bench-level players with minimal upside. Even when they’re younger like a Trey Sweeney. There isn’t really a collection of swing-for-the-fences moves to judge him on.

ummm...we just extended jb bickerstaff. do you need any more evidence that were just a "regular season" team? they are betting on ausar improving his jumper and duren improving his rim protection/defense. theyre both still very young. but you know that's what theyre going to do. given that i am resigned to them re-signing duren, i hope they dont let him go get an offer sheet from brooklyn or the bulls. neither of those team strike me as very smart, and the bulls entire reason for being is to make the play-in tourney. they can do that with duren making $40m. my point being if he goes to market, some dumb team is going to offer him a stupid contract and the pistons will match it.

Nothing wrong with your eyes! 😉

if eveey goalie has the same gaudy stats as cossa, maybe its the grand rapids team defense that's great?

Large corporate entity doing stupid things - no - never. We got a new director of our division of a fortune 100. One of his things was to bring Nerf balls to staff meetings. If someone said something stupid or wrong, we were suppose to throw the Nerf balls at them. I wanted to bring a ball made out of something hard, real hard. Most needed a ball banged up side their head, especially the idiot who thought up this stupid idea.

Misiorowski is must see tv. Watching him now. He's struck out 7 of the first 9. Along with him Schlittler, Skenes, Skubal and others. Great day and age to see truly electric stuff until they need the knife Edit: no-no through 5. 10k. 1bb. 64 pitches

for me the most valid criticism of Harris is the money spent on non-productive signings that would have been better spent on productive ones. I'm not sure where the disconnect lies between evaluation of draft and minor league prospects and current major league players, but there seems to be one. And it has mostly been on the pitching side (Paddock, Meada, Morton, Verlander is a sad list which I hope that Jansen doesn't add to). Torres earned his money last season. It's one thing to have misses, but a miss like Verlander is an expensive one - those dollars could have been spent on someone who is helping.

First 1/3 of the season is now complete. Tigers are one game above the Angels and Rockies for the worst record in MLB Baseball is a hard, cruel game.

It is nothing like it used to be when a hundred cars were trying to get in. 33 most years now. I don't know half the drivers or where they came from. But the race was great, and the finish was spectacular. Talk about some nads... There is a race the night before at Anderson Speedway in Indiana. The Little 500 it's called. 33 sprint cars on a 1/4 mile track for 500 laps. Wild race. Normally I can watch it be couldn't this year unless you paid. A guy named Cody Swanson won. This guy flat out dominates sprint car asphalt. Never been in the Indy - that is a travesty. I think it was Johnny Rutherford who said something like: there are more car salesman at Indy than there are race car drivers. He might be right, and that's why the field is the way it is - minus guys like Swanson.

I think a lot of Harris's major league decisions are more or less made for him by the circumstances he finds himself it. He can't sign Hall of Fame- or All-Star-level free agents if there's someplace else they'd rather go, and at this point there always is; he can't trade for controllable All-Star-level players without giving up at minimum Max Clark, the only player who could conceivably unlock such great players in trade; he can't trade for blue-chip prospects without giving up Hall of Fame- or All-Star-level players we have, of which there is one and perhaps (or perhaps not) two; and he can't simply pick up everyday regulars and above average pitchers off the waiver wire or the minor league free agent pile, or else trade our dregs for guys like that other teams will make freely available in trade, unless he gets good and lucky. All that really leaves Harris is to develop the talent we have in house already and hope it works; as well as draft good players and sign good international amateur free agents in the future, develop them, and hope that works. And if/when we get enough of those players developed and we have enough of them helping us win at the big league level, then we'll be in a better position to make trades for actual really good players as well as make Detroit a more desirable destination for actual really good free agents. Because in this game, there's no escaping it: you have to get good first before you can get a lot better. I acknowledge this mightily frustrates most of the posters here who will tell us it's not their job to know what moves Harris should make because they themselves don't work in front offices, but damn it, Harris does, so he should just make awesome moves happen. And for a fan, that's a defensible feeling, and actually, they don't even have to defend that feeling. That's part of what being a fan is all about. But just because a fan demands Harris should wave his magic wand or else find another job, that doesn't make it a reasonable benchmark by which Tigers ownership should judge Harris's performance, and thankfully, this ownership does not use that benchmark. So vent away and call for his head (and A.J.'s head) all you want, because it's not going to happen anytime soon, and I'm fine with that.

If you only pay your players for what they do in the regular season and ignore how they perform in the playoffs, don't be surprised when all you ever have is a regular season team.

The problem with getting rid of Harris is….who then replaces him? Either a retread former GM that didn’t perform well which is why they’d be available, or a new-to-role guy like Harris was to start. That would bring all different philosophies on use of analytics, drafting and scouting, etc. Do we really need a third complete overhaul in the last 20 years? Harris currently is frustrating me with the major league roster decisions, but he’s been great at focusing on building up the organization and he has done a fantastic job with the draft to this point. I’d rather give that stuff more time to bear fruit than start over on something else.

Unfortunately, the larger sample size shows pretty much 20 points 10 rebounds a game and some defensive improvements during the larger regular season sample size including an All Star and 3rd All NBA selection. I've said all along that regular season especially in the NBA doesn't really mean much because the competition is mostly tanking teams, good teams that are cruising or injured teams/load management but I'm pretty sure a lot of negotiations are based on a larger sample size of numbers which is what the regular season encompasses most of. His All Star and All NBA selections only strengthen his case. Personally, I think it's a mistake to give him the projected numbers that are being put out there but I believe if the Pistons don't somebody would. I'd rather somebody else take on that contract but I think that's highly unlikely so I'm resigned to the Pistons overpaying him.

That is the beauty of restricted free agency. I set my price, and he has the ability to go out and set the market price. If he can't, guess who set the price right. If he gets a bigger offer, we deal with it then. If we're being honest, $25 million per for a guy that played bad defense and just averaged 10 and 8 in two playoff series is pretty generous and probably overpaying him. A center who doesn't shoot from more than 3 feet from the rim had a 51% FG% for the playoffs.

Hopefully Glyber gets healthy so we can get a bag of balls for him at the deadline too. Opens up the position for someone.

If you want to trade him wouldn't seeing him perform successfully in the NHL be the biggest boost to his value you could achieve? Especially if your internal eval was that he didn't have the stamina, bring him up early in the season when had the energy, send him back for whatever reason later.

But do they have little confidence in him, and if so, are they being reasonable? Remember, as late as the all star break, Cossa was being touted as the number one prospect to watch in the AHL all star game. From the article I posted earlier in the thread: “The 2021 first-round pick is enjoying his best season as a pro and proving the patience can pay off. The Detroit Red Wings have taken the slow-and-steady approach with their 6-foot-6 goalie prospect and he’s posted a sparkling .928 save percentage while backstopping Grand Rapids to the best record in the league.” In the meantime, by the all star break Cam Talbott had accumulated a save percentage of about .885. If you are Cossa, don’t you assume you have done all you need to do in order to get a call up? Don’t you assume you could provide the NHL franchise a better option as the #2? Or at least a chance to prove it in a single start? But the call doesn’t come. I can see how it would weigh on a kid. “Don’t they believe in me? Am I doing something wrong?” Suddenly, because of the way you’ve been handled by the front office, you start to doubt yourself. I have defended Stevie in other ways but I think he has mishandled Cossa and set his development back.