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Lots of disappointment. The last 3 weekends I have gone to Huron Valley's Human Society (because almost all the others are only open while I am working). I saw a dog the last two weekends that I liked but she had an Adoption Pending on her cage. Then I went today and none of the dogs seemed to be a fit. When I was leaving I went to ask them at the counter about a dog and that same girl was hanging out with them. The Adoption fell through, so I put a hold on her. She is waiting for medical clearance and her name is Lucy. She was found as a stray but obviously belonged to someone because she is house trained and very VERY good with people. She is a "Florida Cur". This is not her, but she looks a lot like this. Wish me luck, she might be the one.

Yes, very nice. And I am in the Hilton in the background. Here is the view from my room.

Just looked at the bottom of the Tigers lineup today... And see we have: Jeimer Mendoza Kody Mendoza Tucker Mendoza Akil Mendoza That's impressive!

Best case scenario for next year to me is if Riley / Spencer make significant strides (feel decent about Riley doing that, concerned about Spencer), Meadows comes back healthy and performs and somehow adding 2-3 2-WAR position players (would likely have to be through free agency, but trade market with young starters may be possible). But even with that plus better luck on the starting pitching side? Probably enough to get them back into the high 70s in wins, but hard to see much beyond that. But may put them in a position to compete on 2024. They really can't do another rebuild, but it's not clear to me that they should or even want to. Between Chris and AJs comments, it seems like they want more to try to build off what they have as opposed to tearing down.

it honestly blows my mind when CEOs do this kind of shit. Home Depot CEO is another example. I mean in either direction - they're supposed to maximize profit and if you go political you're going to alienate significant portions of your potential consumer base. My company which is a very very very very huge company, one of the biggest in the world.... doesn't do this at all and I'm glad. I'd be mad if I worked my arse off soo much only to have someone shit away our margins b/c of their political beliefs.

so is this Whole Foods jabroni thinking he's the only one not allowed to do politics at work? My company has explicit rules against it as well

(not like I ever expect a CEO to be, well, any other way)

I was born in 1952 and started following the Tigers in 1961 and was huge huge into it through 1968 — baseball cards, glossy photographs of the players on my wall, pennants, all the paraphernalia symbolizing magical amulets that sort of it made me feel good made me feel a part of something bigger and better than myself. After the World Series victory in ‘68 I had got what I needed in life and was generally disinterested because I was a young man living a young man’s life and that was more nourishing than being a boy and liking a baseball team. It was like in the Bible where you put away childish things. In 1973 I moved to Arizona couldn’t pick up Ernie on the radio and the team sucked so often even a box score disinterested me. I pretty much missed The Bird and only saw him on national TV broadcasts. I was in my 20s and livin’ the life in the mountains and desert and it was better than the baseball team I worshiped as a child In 1984 in Tucson where half of my best friends were from Detroit we followed that magical season with shared passion. After games my friends who had lived in Detroit would tell me about going to bar in Corktown and seeing the players there. Gibby once crashed at friend’s house after a night of partying in Ann Arbor. I felt like I was sort of in the mix with my pals that year. I moved to Idaho in my mid-30s and ‘87 was a good year then hugely disappointing and I totally forgot about the team. Then in 2004 a fast and surprising start and my discovery of MTS through the Internet brought me back into the fold. The responsibility of life in my 30s was exhilarating and oppressive and going back to something from my childhood made me feel better. Now I’m back to generally not giving a shit. I’m 70 years old I could die in the blink of an instant because people I know are doing that all the time and my time could be better spent on something other than a profoundly unsatisfying team. The only thing that keeps me interested is you morons because I love you more than this stupid blanking team.

Yeah, this is spot on. They cannot go back to scratch, what would be the point of trying to promise everybody another 5 year rainbow? You might as well rename them the New Royals and dare people to see an eternally poor product. And yes, it starts with REASONABLE assumptions as you laid out above. - Tork, Greene, and Meadows have to each be 2-3 WAR guys, as they were projected to be in 2022, and anybody that says that any of these 3 guys CAN'T do 2-3 WAR each in 2023 doesn't know what they are talking about. This is not a prediction, this is a screaming need and a reasonable expectation. - Baez's last two months (115 OPS+, 4+ WAR if he plays his normal D for year) is what we are going to see from him for at least 2023 and no dramatic dropoff through 2024. - the Bullpen continues to do as well as they have from the beginning of 2021. 2B, 3B, and LF: - Schoop continues to provide plus D and somehow is able to stop being a black hole as a hitter and do something more like 80-90 OPS+, which is still bad, but would be a 2+ WAR player with plus D. Sadly, there really isn't another option in the FA market or in the minors ready-to-go in 2023, and they are paying Schoop $7M. - They are able to cobble together a non-black-hole situation at 3B, maybe through a combination of Harold and a middling acquisition like Joey Wendle, and maybe they get lucky and Lipcius comes up at some point in 2023 and doesn't suck at 3B, and/or maybe they give Candy a bare-bones one-year contract for the league minimum and see if he can figure out how to hit a baseball again. - They are able to sign one of the few decent FA OFers or trade for someone decent. The OF is generally where you hope that D. Cabrera and/or Carpenter also fill a gap decently for 150 PAs or so. - The Starting Rotation is going to be a plug-and-pray situation. Hopefully among Skubal, Manning, Turnbull and Brieske, there's enough healthy starts to cover at least 60 starts with decent pitching. Hopefully they can fill one other slot decently with available healthier options. That would leave a need for at least one other guy more likely two. I hate hate hate to depend on Eduardo again, but he may be a necessary option. That still would leave probably one other guy, a FA or trade acquisition. Given what little there is to trade, probably a modest FA acquisition. That's a 3Bman, LFer, and at least one SP....probably two FAs (LF and SP) and a trade acquisition at 3B. If Meadows, Tork and Greene get it done then they are in the mid-70's...if they hit lighting in a bottle with the other positions maybe they luck their way into a winning season. It aint much but it's probably all they have to go on at this point.

It’s the Haase in LF of game threads.

But I definitely want to kick them off the security council... and there's an easy "in" since they never filed any proper paperwork. they just assumed the position of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has the official security council seat... Russia does NOT! How about we kick Russia off the council and replace them with Ukraine... just for laughs?!?!

You have to give China credit for their embarrassment free ability to pivot. China: PELOSI CAN'T GO TO TAIPEI. WE ARE GOING TO HOLD OUR BREATH TILL WE TURN BLUE AND THE WORLD ENDS. ... the world goes on, till somewhat later: China: Another Congressional visit? Oh well.

yes - you are correct on the Amazon buy. But why would he shut up because Obama was elected? Looking at the history - Mackey got into a bunch of hot water in 2008 blogging about the Whole Foods/WIld Oats merger and at one point was under investigation by the SEC. Maybe that's when his board told him to shut up in public. When you think about it, if he had been ticking off Bezos, more likely he would have just fired him.

Meanwhile…the fallout of NATO expansion is China can’t fafo in Europe anymore.

If you don't know anything about how a utility Co integrates their power system, and you know the Sun doesn't shine at night, there you are. A person in her position should have a responsibility to know more, but I'm sure a lot of people who know nothing about electricity beyond how to put a plug in the wall would make the same assumption that solar power will leave them in the dark at night, and so whether it's ignorance or demagoguery on her part it's going to play to that audience. TBF, the question of where base load power is going to come from in areas with a high % of solar power generation is not a trivial engineering question, but it's not a any kind of show stopper either. There are plenty of candidate solutions, obviously including battery storage. In many areas wind power is more available during the night than during the day depending on local conditions. The market hasn't even begun to shake out what combination of solutions will be practical and they will vary in different areas of the country depending on things like whether there is local nuke, hydro, or clever storage facilities like the Luddington pumped hydro station.

Deaf ears

I see some of Whole Foods guy's lament as being about the change in the culture - this is, after all, a country that, less than 20 years ago had corporate CEOs falling all over themselves to support the Iraq War and was harsh on those that didn't properly endorse or revere the decision to go (ie. Natalie Maines). And even at one time, Chick Fil A's messaging on various social issues was more accepted in the culture at large (its no accident that they have largely muted or backed away from some of this activism as time has evolved). That isn't the case anymore... the culture has evolved, and these guys are having a fit because the public does not endorse or go along with the public airing of their views as easily as they did in the past.

He was a regular on the AOL board. I once made a nonsensical all caps text wall post about Gregg Jefferies mocking a huge Jefferies fan on the site. Nitkowski e-mailed me about it pointing out all the inaccuracies. I explained it to him though and he got it.

I know this is a F1 thread, but I must go off topic a bit. Still about racing. This week is the annual Knoxville Nationals (Iowa, not far from the actual field of dreams in the movie), a 4 day extravaganza that is that sports biggest event of the year. A little town in the middle of nowhere Iowa triples their population for one weekend a year. Last years NASCAR champ Kyle Larson just won the pole for tomorrows NASCAR race in Richmond, and is flying to Iowa to start 6th in the main event - on a 1/2 mile dirt track in a sprint car. He is also the defending champ. There are a bunch of badass wheelmen in this type of sport. Too bad they can't fix Indy.

Nice to see Manning touch 97mph there.

None available. Supply chain issues.

Is Rozema still pitching at the fantasy camps? The Tigers might need him before the season is up.

says the guy who has watched this team all season. why are you watching this team at all? you've just described their entire lineup!

He may have earned it from a player perspective, but that doesn't mean fans have to like seeing it. As someone who cares about baseball history as much as watching the contemporary era, I will always remember Cabrera as one of the elite hitters in team history. Seeing him play beyond his usefulness doesn't help his legacy.

"Hit" might be a bit subjectively vexxing given what we are seeing out of the team as a whole, but you are spot on. As many times as people want to cry and complain about CastroW out in the OF, its certainly due in some part to Cabrera being unavailable to do anything defensively. CastroH shouldn't be playing as much, but guess what, they need to put someone at 1B. Candelario needs a day off, or Schoop needs a day off, or this, or that, or another.... Well, they're dealing with a 12 position player roster plus Cabrera. 2 Cs, so a bench IF and a bench OF. The Castros are necessary because they can play multiple positions. And for as much as Shep likes to speak of how the Tigers have that roster flexibility, they really don't. The Castros can move around, and that's about it. Oh, Schoop can play 1B? Yippee. There's only so many moves this dumpster fire can make on a day-to-day basis or in game moves. Cabrera will do nothing in the field. If he could, he'd have played a few games at 1B by now. But it clearly isn't going to happen. And even with a healthy start for 2023, he probably won't be of any defensive value again. But they have to carry his worn out carcass because people like memories of what used to be rather than acknowledge the actual situation at hand. This team sucks so much right now. But, hey, they've got Cabrera to goof around from the dugout for the camera. And I guess the main point to some is that Cabrera has earned this for some reason or another.

You’ve been warned posting about Bernard.

This occurred to me as well -- it seems to me that any new GM not named Epstein would need time to get his people and systems in place, and even a superstar GM like Theo would likely have a much harder time in today's big/deep organizational structure then the more simplified structures of say, 20 years ago. This is why the ability to trade and acquire FAs is so important. The new GM has to be able to do this to re-establish this team's ability to at least play 500 ball within the next couple of years. This cannot be a 5 year project or people like me will simply never watch again. I can't take the 3rd 5+ year losing-fest in the last 25 years, it would be like being a Royals fan at some point.

I was born in the very early 1950's. I clearly remember the '61 and '67 seasons. My health is shaky and I know that I too could be gone any moment. I have resigned myself to the fact I most likely will not live to see the Tigers return to greatness, but I am hoping I live to see them have a mediocre (80 to 83 wins) season. Even living that long would be a major miracle. A realistic read of internal talent pushes the expected date of a mediocre season to 2026, with maybe a playoff run to 2027. For this team to begin to get better, it will take moves long past due, such as releasing Miggy. He is done. It is embarrassing to everyone to see him play now. He has been a below replacement player for some time.To get better, one cannot be sentimental. One must make an honest assessment of who stays and who goes, and the GM must remove those who are not part of the future as soon as possible. As things stand right now, I think Greene will become a solid everyday player, and Baez might be put in that class. What I see a lot of cannon fodder everywhere else, and most sadly, I put Tork in that group. He has been completely mind fucked by Tigers management and coaching staff. To be competitive, we need 4-6 positional players that will produce an ops of at least .730. Coolbaugh needs to be fired right this very minute. There is a lot to be done.

Only the smaht ones do.

Lol yep that's another problem. For awhile I would answer Don Kelly anytime somebody ask anything, like Stark would regularly ask these questions with the answer usually being a top player yet I would respond with Kelly and there was always the one guy who would respond with a response like you were serious.

I came to the old board during the WXYT "word of the day" or whatever it was 20 plus years ago. Part of my wife's job at the time was the supervision of the radio broadcast and the network. She's also supervised the Wings and Pistons as well as U of M. Previously she had the Bears and BlackHawks games. She doesn't like sports. That part of her career ended around 2005. I grew up a Pirate fan, was 8 when Mazoroski hit the home run. My wife once embarrassed Phil Gardner by telling him that our son was born 9 months after the 1979 championship. He's on only child. I'm primarily a baseball fan and would follow the home team of parent club where we've lived. Detroit was home for about 20 years. I watched the bad in the early 2000's, cheered Maglio's home run in 2006 and felt the pain of losing 2 World Series. I still follow from a distance. Tigers much more than the Pirates. I know very little about the 2 minor league teams within driving distance. Like Bert at 70 I have no idea what the next several months or years bring.

Ive only been here since 2010, lurked for about a year prior though but with me seeing my friends less and less these days, my brothers living in across the country and the vast majority of my co workers not being sports fans I find myself discussing sports with everybody on here far more than I do anybody else and when the board was down last year I felt lost not being able to "talk" to people about the things in the sports world. Sure there is Twitter and I do interact with people there but it's not the same as interacting with posters that you have interacted with for in my case 12 or so years.

Born in 1956, never lived in Michigan. As a kid in upstate NY we would visit aunts and uncles by driving across Canada every year. My favorite relatives lived in Dearborn and they made me a Tigers fan (no Yankee love - who needs an overdog). Fast forward to 68 and I am in junior high in central Illinois - pretty solid Cardinal country. One of my teachers had the radio on during class for a game, I don’t recall there being another Tigers fan in the group. That was a sweet victory in so many ways and cemented my fandom. Lots of lean years followed but 84 was magical. And the final week of the 87 season- by then I was in the PNW and it was hard to keep up with games. I would buy The Sporting News and get excited about players (Marshall had great SO numbers!) that seldom made it in the bigs. I still have Bill James abstracts and books from back then. Watched Cecil drive a massive HR against the W Sux with my Dad when we drove up for a game during a visit to Illinois. 2006 was redemption for all the bad years, although, like others I was in to the firepower from the nineties teams. Loved Tony P and others. And the run after 2006 was a lot of fun for the most part. As a final Tigers note, my first born is named Lew (never liked the Lou spelling), partially for Lou. Took him to see the Tigers beat the Yankees when he was getting started at UM. Lots of great memories, although I am getting fuzzier on many of them. And having this forum (old one included) has been wonderful. When I joined in 2002 or 2003 I had no idea it would be such a regular part of my life. The people on it and the hugely beneficial connection and information for a fan so Far away. Thank you all. Well, almost all. 😎

At 67 years young, I do find it pretty cool that there is so much diversity age-wise here. Somewhat to Bert’s point, this board is a therapy of sorts for those of us who suffer at the hands of the Tigers prolonged reign of futility. It’s a refuge in times of angst and woe. This place is like the local bar in some ways. You’re free to vent frustrations among other exercises that gives one the impression they’ve actually accomplished something just by showing up.

A little tired of Mario bitching and moaning about not getting an F1 team. I see his attitude in small business owners so often. They sit there with their arms folded, waiting around for Someone else to fix their problem. The good ones put their heads down and make something happen. They make their own luck. Go out and snag Ford or Chevy as your engine supplier. You need to bring/provide value. Landing one of the two most iconic names in American motor sports is bringing value. F1 would bend over backwards to accept him if he did that. Nah, just give an interview every week or two telling us how unfair it is.

Could've put this in the things that make you smile thread but since it involves a dog I'll post it here. My neighbor's dog who I've known since she was a puppy recently had to have her leg amputated due to cancer and naturally she hasn't been herself the last couple weeks. But today when I got home from work she was out in front with my neighbor and she came running(well as close to running as she can do now) over to me wagging her tail like her old self, she and my dog were playing like they used to. My neighbor said she has been doing alot better the last couple days. Just seeing her like that made me smile cause in a way I think of her as my second dog since I take care of her anytime they are out of town.

Swept. Pathetic.

In hindsight I believe the appropriate term is, reshuffle. This team did, does, and for the foreseeable future, will suck.

The current winning percentage will result in a 60-102 season. Worst-Case Scenario. The rebuild starts over.

I was born in 1945, I think. When this most recent rebuild started, I feared I wouldn't make it to a playoff team. Now, seven years later, I think it's even more unlikely this re-rebuild will preceed my death. This team is very, very hard to watch. I continue to watch though.