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It's a deliberate action to avoid going there. They are literally right next to each other. If the shoe fits... in other words there is no middle ground when it comes to fascism. It's not my problem to reconcile. TDS is a myth used to deflect accountability for principals, logic, and decency. Its easier throwing that term around than thinking.

If Trump doesn't make you deranged, that says something more about the person not deranged.

stl and detroit recycle the others' roster dregs every year.

From JVL today, it relates to TDS

MLB is not unlike the Premier League. They have their own "Big Six" there—Man City, Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Tottenham—which draw in the elite soccer players of the world. Certain clubs pop up the table and generate consideration occasionally, like Leicester City or Newcastle United or Aston Villa or West Ham. But year in, year out, it's that Big Six, and those teams ended up at the top of the table five years ago, ten years ago, 15 and 20 and 25 years ago—just as they will this May. All the other teams bob in and out of the League, and essentially serve as chum for the Big Six, which use the others to sharpen themselves up for Champions League play. If an elite soccer player wants to both get super paid and help their personal brand, those are the six teams they will focus on. Superstars are not going to end up signing with Brentford or Burnley or Wolverhampton Wanderers, because that would be career death. I mean, yeah, those clubs are in the Premier League, but let's be real: they are not premier teams. This is allowed to happen in England, and really, most soccer countries, because those systems are truly capitalist, with teams being promoted and relegated based on where they land in the table, and if a team is financially struggling, I mean really struggling, they'll be allowed to simply "wind up", meaning go out of business. C'est la vie. There is no meaningful revenue share, or any other aid teams receive to maintain competitive balance. The lords of the Premier League couldn't give less of a **** about competitive balance, because six teams make the lion's share of the money for them, so that's where they focus all the eggs, and they lean into that and hard. And so Baseball has also evolved to become similar. The difference between Baseball's Big Six situation and that of the Premier League is not as stark, but it is there. We won't see the Texas Rangers suddenly get their act together and become dominant year after year like the San Antonio Spurs were for a quarter of a century; or the Kansas City Royals become an elite team like the Kansas City Chiefs did for a decade running; and flip side, the New York Yankees and New York Mets could never become league ciphers like the New York Jets or Brooklyn Nets have, because those leagues operate their businesses to spread out the competitive balance in a way Baseball has practically refused to consider, at least thus far. As long as Baseball runs its business like so, things are not going to magically change. The Tigers will never become an elite team year in and year out because we don't simply have the market size or national media cachet that the Big Six do, but also, we do not have the geographical/divisional proximity of a Philadelphia or Baltimore or Toronto or San Diego, who serve as a sort of Next Six level, that can help us get the occasional Pete Alonso or Kyle Schwarber or Fernando Tatis or Shohei Ohtani. We are a second tier market toiling away in flyover country. Elite players simply won't consider coming here as long as there is even a hint of interest from those other teams. We don't have the resources or cachet to out-zig those teams, so we have to focus on out-zagging them. It's our only chance. That's what the Ilitch/Harris front office is working on at the moment, and I am comfortable rooting for that instead of pining away for something that will never happen, like a Soto or Ohtani or Snell or Japanese superstar signing here. I think we have basically one chance to crack the Next Six level that could last for half a decade or more, and that's re-signing Tarik Skubal. If we miss out on him, though, I think we are going to have to remain basically The Little Engine That Could, zagging our way to occasional relevance now and then.

How many mulligans did they give him?

In depth BA discussion of the Tigers farm. Much optimism and in-depth tool discussion.

Peacock announcer said Pritchard plays like a little angry hamster, lol

I thought McIsaac was a steal. Maybe I was biased because of Team Canada world juniors hype and having a nice chat with his family on the streets of Vancouver.

If I had equated my wearing my lucky Tigers hat every game with their going to the playoffs, I would agree I'd mistaken correlation for causation. Since Harris came in, made a bunch of changes to the roster, training, development, and infrastructure, and the Tigers started winning after six straight losing seasons under the former guy, I think it is reasonable to conclude that Harris's efforts were at least a substantial, if not the complete, cause of that winning. Can I prove as much with a mathematical formula? No, I cannot. If that's the minimum standard being established, then I have to admit to falling short on that standard.

Future landing spot for Ras?

Mistaking correlation for causation.

Intense game that had me screaming at the tv more than a few times. Another game against Boston and another look at what teams will do against us in the playoffs. They hunted Robinson on every play and probably scored 40 points in matchups against him alone. Speaking of playoff gameplans, this is another one where Duren goes against a weak front line and doesn't produce because Boston wasn't going to just let him rim run and lob all day (6pt, 3 reb). This is why you don't pay him over 30M/yr. It's not like you can put him out there when Cade's on the bench and run the offense through him and he certainly isn't a DPoY candidate. Don't be fooled by Cade having the Chris Paul effect on his Center and making him look like an All Star.. Holland does a lot of dumb stuff out there, but he was also one of the few guys who ran through the gaps and attacked the zone defense as you should. Javonte was great in his minutes. I thought he'd be an end of bench guy, but I actually don't mind his minutes this year. He really defends and plays his role on offense as well. 34% from three isn't outstanding, but on this team he's one of the few guys you might be able to call "3 and D" - something we sorely need more of. I liked the defensive effort from Ivey in this one. On offense he settled for threes way too often when he should have been using that speed to penetrate. He looks slower...maybe he's just getting back into game shape. JB almost blew this one with his lineups in the last few minutes. Javonte shouldn't have been taken out for Robinson who was getting hunted all night. You're basically giving them points. And Stew should've been on the court instead of Duren - this is probably true on most nights, but especially in this game. Luckily Cade did his thing and closed it out regardless.

My model for the Trump cult is what would the anti-Christ i learned about in Sunday school be doing that he's isnt?

..and a way to isolate cult members from those outside of the cult.

TDS is a tool of control. Screw anyone who uses it. They should be shunned as shills for the regime.

I don't know that I see TDS as a slur, but it's close to it. It reminds me of times when a woman is angry about something and is automatically dismissed with variations of 'it's probably her time of the month.'

I agree. Yet they also want more babies to be born-although I suspect there are those they'd sterilize without a second thought if they could. And people wonder why I choose to work with animals. 😉

LOL - Scalise arguing to make medical insurance more like one of the worst and most complained about insurance systems out there - ie car insurance. Surely just what we need are animated reptiles and Mr Mayhem working in the health field.

I’ll be cheering for the Bears to have beaten Green Bay the day before. The Lions aren’t trying to break a making the playoffs drought, they’re trying to break a making the Super Bowl drought. Easier to do that as a #3 seed with at least home game than as a #7 seed needing to face 3 top opponents on the road. A Packers loss keeps Lions’ division title hopes alive. If that means the Lions could go 11-6 and still miss the playoffs all together,so be it.

Interesting. I get a lot of email for medicare related health care scams er insurance. These are add-ons to Medicare, you just have to wade thru it, pay and pay attention to what's included. I'm all in favor of a nationwide Medicare for all system. The insurance companies aren't

- Institute a hard salary cap for competitiveness. No defferred payments. Owners and Players association get a vote and the Commissioner acts as an arbiter. Cap goes up 5% each year. (Owners win - Their biggest ask by far) - Free agency though, comes to players after 6 years of being drafted or originally signed. No more Qualifying offer allowed. (Drastically speeds up process of reaching Free Agency) (Players win) - Salary floor being 40% of the Salary Cap. So example: if Cap is $400 million, the floor is $160 million. (Players win) - Allow Private Equity groups to buy into MLB Franchises (Helps if owners can't afford the minimum salary floor. They should probably sell their team then anyway.) (Owners win) - Eliminate draft pool amounts, but put a floor of draft pool. Something like $8 million. (Players Win) - Greatly increase league minimum to let's say $250,000. (Players win) - 15% of all MLB revenue profit, is put into a pension fund for players. Tiered system based off players time (Players win) - Owners get 20% of all marketing money made by players under their team's logo (Owners win [NIL anyone]) - Create an International Free Agent draft (Owners win) - Allow contracts to be performance based instead of guaranteed in addition to guaranteed contracts (either or); Example: A player has OBP over .350 they get 5 million salary, over .360 is 6 million salary and for each home run is $500,000. (Both Owner and Player win as Owners pay for production and players can bet on themselves if they choose to do so). _______________________________________________________ Just a couple of thoughts there to get started.

I don’t think they can go into the offseason counting on Decker. It’s a toss up whether he plays or retires. Need to prepare for life without him so as to be not caught off guard

Tigers Territory today talked about Jansen. Kind of meh, his secondary metrics were down. They compared statcast to Vest. They basically said it's good to have him in case Vest or Finnegan get hurt. I know he's 24 saves from 500 but I doubt the Tigers guaranteed him the full time closer role. I think Hinch will give him a lot of that load but also mix it up as he does. They mentioned something that is probably true - Detroit has likely made other pursuits and are getting declined. King recently reportedly turned his attention to 3 teams - Yankees, Red Sox and Orioles. Maybe/likely Harris did make pitches to the other top relievers and they just said no. And Harris doesn't seem one to ever overpay.

Yeah... it's not an easy quick fix... maybe we should have a thread where we throw around some major ideas to restructure things in MLB. There's an idea... 😉

re: Susie Wiles, you can really see the Pat Summerall dna.

Is Joe McCarthy an acceptable comparison for you, or does that make one afflicted with 'TDS'? Just making sure I have the rules correct

Another symptom of TDS is deflecting and going straight to a Hitler comparison.

He is currently on another team.

Shorter contracts, but JV and Max had contracts with 43 aav. That's why I think 8/350 seems more in line with what he will get.

I think it would be incredibly frustrating if my team shot three pointers like Boston does. So many possessions where the ball doesn't even go inside the three point line.

Basketball reference needs to add a new stat for Holland. Dumb things done per game.

There are definitely folks here with trump dependency syndrome

velocity makes everything play better but some guys can get away without it better than others. Depends on how much life they can muster on a fastball at 95 as compared to 99. JV could throw his FB across a range of different speeds short of full out and it played well enough to set up his off-speed, but JV was JV. And even he has said he doesn't think he could pitch in today's game the way he did in 2006.

Nobody on this forum has TDS.

Isn't that what this whole born-again nonsense is all about? The idea that all the good works of your entire life matters not a whit when it comes to your salvation, but you merely have only to say you "accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior" to earn eternal salvation? Doesn't this idea explicitly let them off the hook for being actual good people? After all, under a regime like this, they don't have to do anything like helping people or other good works—in fact, as it relates to going to heaven, doing that would be a complete waste of time and energy. Instead, they have only to make a claim of being "saved", something which exists in only their minds and can't be checked or verified. Just tell other people they're saved, that's it, and everyone is supposed to believe them and regards them as holy. On its face, that seems like the absolute laziest way anyone has ever come up with sell the idea of earning one's way into heaven. It seems to me that if someone like Satan were to ever design a false theology to lead an entire nation of people down the road to perdition, it would look exactly like that brand of Christianity.

I think earlier in the thread I said no I would not sign anyone to these contracts. I would make an exception in Skubal's case. His change up is an insane pitch. His work ethic and competitiveness are excellent. I think he's up there with Verlander and Scherzer. I always hated they let them go and I don't want to lose Skubal.

mcdaniel is the coah of the dolphins. youre thinking if mike macdonald.

The most dangerous thing are the sanctimonious people who believe what they are doing is divinely inspired and holy. Because of that they don’t have to defend anything themselves. They can just point to a book written by men over hundreds of years who argued over the meaning of engravings found rocks and scrolls and came up with something they called the Bible and even among themselves still can’t sort out which books belong or not and which text is literal or not. They just make it up as they go song to justify their hate of the era, whether it’s against minorities or women or gays or the Muslims or the Protestants (or Catholics depending on who is doing the talking)

4th quarter cade is real.

He left Avila.

But I do give Al Avila credit for bringing the players on board. Of course I do. He was here and in charge when we brought them here. I’m not giving him credit for the actual winning, though. That’s a completely different deal. Avila has been gone for 3-1/2 years now, and he did not assemble this particular roster, this particular mix; he did not work with Hinch on the deployment of it; he did not work with the coaches and scouting staff on subsequent drafts and trades and deadlines; and he did not oversee the development and infrastructure upgrades that polished this team for play on the field in 2024 and 2025. Avila had nothing to do with any of that. Harris did. He completed the final assembly of this roster that, yes, is still using some of the players that Avila brought in, because a new GM can’t just fire every player and start all over on a dime. He has to figure out who in the short term he can save and who he can’t, because he can’t not put a team on the field wile he’s fixing everything. I also don’t think Avila was any particular brand of genius when it came to bringing together this particular group of players that has survived with the team thus far. I think he could have picked a completely different set of similarly-talented players, completely different guys with practically the same spread of potentials, and Harris would still have come on board, sifted through them, kept a few and dumped the rest, handed them to Hinch and the coaches with the same developmental and infrastructural tool upgrades, and probably have done practically as well with those guys. Maybe a little better. Maybe a little worse. But probably right around the same. I believe that overseeing the drafting of amateur players is among the lowest level skills a GM can have, especially a guy who was a head scout like Avila. Anyone could sift through the reports he had available to him and make the same selections based on the numbers and words on them. You could do that, I could do that, we all could do that. But as you’ll surely admit, it takes a lot more than just picking a bunch of guys in a draft and throwing them onto the field to win playoff series. A GM also has to sign guys on the international market, and make good trades, and make good minor league free agent signings, and, when he team is down, make good waiver wire and Rule 5 pickups. And, crucially, he has to oversee the positive development of the raw talent they get into serviceably productive and even good major league players. Avila demonstrated over and over that couldn’t do any of that any better than a blind squirrel. Harris has shown he is pretty good at it. Sure, Harris still fails at it sometimes, we’ve all seen that. But every GM fails at it sometimes. Pobody’s nerfect. The proof in the pudding is the relative success rate. And as much as people want to credit Avila for the roster and even the winning, without Harris pickups like Vierling and Torres and McKinstry and Ibanez and Kelly and Flaherty and Holton and Finnegan, and without the positive development of all of them by the development staff, coaches, and infrastructural upgrades, the Tigers would not be where we are today, a repeat playoff team within three years. And none of this has even contemplated the promising farm system about to belch up a cornucopia of top prospects, some of whom will also become very good big league players, even stars. Not all of them, sure. But not none of them, either. And not next year, probably. But not never, either. It’s gonna happen. And maybe I’m setting myself up for being a sucker and a fool, but I believe it. So I’m continuing to give Harris the benefit of the doubt until I can see that what he is doing is simply and persistently not working. If all of this falls apart, if we start losing 90+ games a season year in and year out, if Harris demonstrates that he’s unable to fix it? Then I will call for his head. Not before.

At this point, I'd be surprised if there was any serious mutual interest in any of the big free agents. I think the only way they might get one is if one of them is still out there in Februray and decides to sign a creative shorter term deal with opt outs.

I never slice