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Jobe is coming up

Good idea posting this day before. We’ll probably have at least five full pages in the books before game time. I wouldn’t say I’m nervous, exactly, but I do have a bit of trepidation going into this week because now, all of a sudden, I feel the twinge of expectations. With playoffs odds around 70%, it would be at least somewhat disappointing for me to see them fall short. Even if we finish 0-6, I will still be very, very happy with this season and our prospects going into 2025. But just a little twinge, y’know? But that’s OK. That just means we have a good team to root for now. With the Twins playing the Marlins, it wouldn’t surprise me to see them win 2/3 while we win only 1/3 from the Rays and we go into the weekend down one. That would make sweeping the White Sox imperative. It would be a sweet tension I haven’t felt with this franchise probably since 2013.

sure hope the rain holds off. Doesn't look like a soaker but could be some thunder around. I will be there and also going Friday/Saturday/Sunday.

I remember how unexpected and gratifying it was and then came that last 1/3 of the season where we only won about 1/3 of the games and made the playoffs as wildcard. Then it was like Sherman‘s March to the Sea in the playoffs until we played the Cardinals, a team that was barely above .500. That season was like the work of a great author who ran out of paper in the end and stopped in mid sentence.

A few days ago, I stridently agreed with the statement “I don’t need the playoffs to validate the season for me.“ I was happy with this season and with the promise of what this club could bring next season. That’s still the case, although I do find myself caught up in this tremendous and unexpected stampede to get to the playoffs. Our team’s forward momentum, and the falling dominoes of the fortunes of other clubs right now, is astonishing to witness. We all know, given the strange alchemy of this recent run, that this team is indeed capable of beating anyone even though it’s a team with a lot of rookies who seem mysteriously able to do the right thing at the right time and exceed whatever could rightly be seen as possible. So I would be a little disappointed if they didn’t at least make the playoffs this year, although it wouldn’t be an excoriating disappointment like our last two appearances at the World Series. Overall this season, regardless of its previous downsides, is an extraordinary gift and something memorable and easy to treasure, regardless of what the ultimate payout is in the end.

if the lions won the super bowl you'd find a way to say they sucked.

Yeah but TP is in midseason form so I find myself in this thread.

This has turned out to be a great off day thread by default.

Harris is done playing around...he's going for it!! How many teams sell at the deadline...get significantly younger AND better atvthe same time? This is a baseball Black Swan event

I love it! I threw it out there last week, yeah he technically isn't "ready" but with his kinda stuff he could dominate MLB hitters who have never seen him, especially if used for only 1 trip through the order at a time or late in games when we need a big K. I think back to how the Rays used David Price in the 08 playoffs. Yeah Price was probably more polished than Jobe is now but wasn't close to a finished product as evidence of his mid 4 ERA the following year as a rookie starter. But in short doses he dominated for the Rays that playoffs due to his crazy stuff.

Yet another amazing development for the Tigers. You absolutely cannot predict what this Harris administration will or will not do. Just can't. This is beyond amazing. I swear I'm gonna OD on this ****.

Holy. ****ing. ****.

In the Have a Seat podcast, Meadows compared his approach catching the ball at the fence to an alleyoop pass in basketball. He also said his fielding before the big leagues was "lackadaisical" but Lombard said he looked terrible and encouraged him to get better jumps. He used the first step of tennis players as an example to help him improve.

I'll be really disappointed if Baez ever plays another game for the Tigers.

Are there teams besides the Lions whose fanbase has to be put on suicide watch after a road win? Just asking for some friends.......

I also don’t think this front office is going to push hard to lock up Skubal for a bunch of years anytime soon. He’s going to be 30 for his first free agent season in 2027, and his two-time-loser elbow is still a red flag when it comes to longevity. Paying mid-eight-figure annually for several of his age 30+ seasons, especially at the back end, would not seem to be a good investment. Are we already forgetting the albatross contract we shed just this season, or even the one we have for an aging collapsing player right now?

Man, I take a look at that 2011 roster and so many of those guys just feel like hired guns. Nothing like the team of kids capturing our hearts now.

The nice thing about making the playoffs this year would be the complete lack of expectations attached to it. If we make it in and lose in the wildcard round, I think we would all still be very satisfied with the season and hyped for next year. Unlike the 2006-2014 years where playoffs were expected and then mostly a foregone conclusion by August most seasons and then not converting any year into a title actually was a disappointment and hurts.

I’m with Lee. I don’t need the playoffs to validate the season for me. They did that most of the year. The last month or so has been the best regular season action in a long long time. Maybe since 2011.

I agree with you about the expanded playoffs. In the past, they went into November. Baseball is a warm summer game, not a wind-chill game. The season should be over in mid-October, at the latest. And these exciting divisional and wild card races are artifical excitment. But still fun when it's OUR team...lol

That kiss looks like something elementary school kids would do in a school play.

I feel the start of this season was very similar to 2006. Unlike 2006, once the season started, this has been completely opposite of 2006.....until these last few weeks. Just unbelievable. If I told you Baez would be as worse as you thought was possible, that not only Meadows and Keith were sent down, ALSO Tork! Maeda didn't work out, but Flaherty did, so you traded him.... I would have thought we'd be in the White Sox position this year.

Erie won game one of the championship series.

I’ve gotten better kisses from women at church.

Updated

I personally would rather play at Houston just because we've played Baltimore 6 times now in the past couple weeks. I feel like that type of familiarity with our pitching staff could hurt us since our staff outside of Skubal and maybe a couple others don't rely on raw stuff to get you out but location and keeping you off balanced. I think the more times you see guys like that the better your chances are to get to them. Have no data to back that up though.

Maeda, Baez, and Torkelson better show up to Lakeland in the BSOTLs next February.

team just got a whole lot younger and a whole lot better

This is like you've been smoking this garbage Mexican dirt weed from the 70's on a makeshift beer can pipe for the last ten years, and all of a sudden someone packs some hydroponic Godfather OG into a Dopezilla Hydra bong and makes you take the biggest huff of your life. That's what this all feels like. h/t @Hongbit

I agree. I hated him at first, but as I was forced to hear him more I grew to like him a lot. All local guys are massive homer's, so I don't get why Hawk took so much grief for being a ChiSox slappy. It's literally part of the job.

Good guys 36, Bad Guys 120

He Gone!

This is the purview of the big 3 network nightly news shows (although to be fair I'm thinking NBC and ABC specifically). They always seem to be trying to bothsides things to the extent that you'd think corporate was monitoring the broadcast with pain buzzers hooked to the on-air talent's nethers.

The most disingenuous poll question that the credulous media asks is the right track wrong track question. Of course the country is on the wrong track because large swaths of it are in the thrall of anti-constitutional and anti-democratic forces. I wish the sitting president could do something about that but he's not responsible for the other side being idiotic.

It’s not the fanbase. It’s just a few insufferables that love to complain.

The way the defense and special teams are playing the offense needs to just be not terrible. Fortunately, they are not terrible and quite effective running the ball. Passing game will be fine. Points will come. Red zone was much better. More concerned that Minn seems to be pretty good and GB getting it done with Willis.

I think the expanded playoffs are mostly for revenue purposes, but also so that smaller market teams can have a chance to win a championship w/o a salary cap being in place (since the playoffs are so random). At least, in theory anyway. The Tigers as a franchise have a much better chance of winning the WS one day than finishing with the best regular season record in MLB and being legitimately the "best" team in MLB.

Tigers up to 69.7% on ESPN playoff odds(same as the Royals), Twins at 54.5%.

Yeah, amazing. I don't think many saw this last 6 weeks or so coming. These kids...can't say enough about them. Just...amazing.

I don't think Pence is a nut job. He has conservative beliefs and I will almost always disagree with him, but I think he is sane. I also think his beliefs are shared by a very large portion of the electorate. He is not radical, just somebody who I am almost never going to agree with.

living with Kelly …

That tweet thread brought out something I wanted to bring up in today’s game thread but it’s more fitting here. How perception of when a team wins and loses colors the view of many fans on how good that team is. A team that goes on a big run in May-July is seen as legit. That’s their bar. A deviation from that is seen as choking. A team like the Tigers are surging and get questioned on whether they can sustain it. It’s baseball. After 162 games you measure. A win in Sept is as legit as one in May. A 3-9 slump in September is not choking or collapsing. Maybe they just aren’t as good, the thing you’d say about a team that starts 16-12 but then goes 3-9. Tigers deserve all the credit for this. It’s not KC or MN giving it away. No more than them winning the WC was given to them by the Tigers because of their few weeks of bad baseball earlier this year.

This is in reference to recent polling (particularly the national polling), but these guys are having a hard time understanding that the biggest theme of this race before the Biden-Trump debate was that Americans hated both choices. Like, setting aside my personal feelings about Biden, this is what I frequently heard from people in my own life whenever this discussion came up in the months preceding that debate. But that's not the choice anymore.... one of the parties went through an existential crisis and ended up with a different candidate. And changed the contours of the election. It's really easy to understand, just think it's hard for some to grapple with this reality.... even post debate, Trump isn't a beloved figure to a majority of Americans, and this is his third run at the Presidency; opinion on the guy is basically calcified.

33 homeruns in one game? That must be a record.

Big day tomorrow. When the numbers are crunched, the Tigers playoff odds should exceed Trump's presidential chances in all the models.

I love watching these guys root for each other. It makes it so easy to root for them.

Ty Madden just punched a cow in the face.