Jim Cowan

Just for fun I pulled them both up on b-r and picked out the best year for each, and picked a prime year between the ages of 25 and 30 because they both had a lot of success well into their 30's. I think that Whitaker really broke out in 1983, age 26, the first of 5 straight All-Star appearances and during those 5 years he had 4 Silver Sluggers and 3 Gold Gloves. His slash was .320/.380/.457 and his OPS+ was 133. Great defender, great hitter, star player. Now McGriff, he had some nice years too obviously but I am going to choose 1989, he was 25 and led the league in home runs, drew 119 walks, slashed .269/.399/.525, led the league in OPS and, of course, OPS+ at 165. Naturally he was the Silver Slugger winner. So now ignore the time-space continuum for a moment. Pat Gillick phones Jim Campbell after the 1983 season and says "Let's swap one for one. You give me Whitaker, and I give you 1989 Fred McGriff but you can have him and his production right now for 1984." Does Campbell take that deal? Never in a million years.

I like Fred McGriff a lot. Lou Whitaker is vastly superior.

That's a clever bit of speechwriting there.

Harris has a budget, maybe somewhere around $170 million, and he doesn't think Candelario is a $7 million player and neither does the rest of the league. Maybe he uses "wins", maybe he doesn't, who cares? I am not in the camp that says "I am going to be ticked off if he doesn't replace Candelario's production at third base" because it isn't that simple. We will not easily identify what he did with the money he didn't give Candelario, it's not just about third base it's about the whole roster. Maybe it means a 25th man who is worth 2 million instead of 700 thousand. Maybe it means an extra reliever with a decent track record. I believe in what others have said here. If Candelario is a $4 million player, let's offer him $4 million. Let's not put a $7 million hole in our budget just because the alternative is not immediately obvious. I like this guy, he's smart.

The Mets are now on the Verlander list. I still think Mrs V is going to choose LA.

I still have a 45 gallon drum of that pink popcorn, and 12 cases of PBR. If you are driving, park your car at the church around the corner. They don't like it but what can they do? They can't do nothing.

Now we have something to trade for Gleyber Torres.

Correct. The mistake was made almost 9 years ago by a guy who is now dead. Cabrera was guaranteed to be on the team through 2023 and there was never a chance of any other outcome except career-ending injury.

I remember being frustrated with Kaline, who needed 3 years to get his last 300 hits, and was obviously just hanging on to get to 3,000. But with him the issue wasn't performance it was injuries. In his last year he did get 630 PA's, thank goodness, or else he would have come back for another year.

Yes, it's been a long 15 months already.

Please keep sharing the ludicrous pronouncements from Carlson and Greene here. I've never bothered to establish a Twitter account, so I would miss out on that comedic value if people did not copy those tweets here. Copying a tweet to Motownforums.com does not "give it oxygen".

It all seems so hopeless. By the way, Ontario has prescription drug coverage for those over 64, and those under 25 who aren't in an employer's plan, but everybody else is on their own. We also don't have dental, or eye tests, or chiropractic, or a whole bunch of other nonsense that Bernie was also raving about. Here's what we do have: a visit to a doctor is free, including referral to a specialist, and hospitalization (and the cost of any surgery and medications in the hospital) is free. That's it. But that's gold as far as I'm concerned. If have that, I can handle the rest. Bernie knows it too, he deliberately raves about ridiculously expensive proposals that he knows will not succeed, which keeps him on brand as the crusader for the masses. He's a clown.

Universal health care is the most centrist policy that you could adopt, but Bernie screams that it is "democratic socialism" which virtually assures that you will never have it. He isn't the only reason of course, there are billions being creamed off in profits under the current arrangements and Republicans will fight hard on behalf of those donors. But Bernie is not helping, he is a hindrance.

Everybody hit that button and ignore JackPine!

I don't see anyone in here with a rah rah attitude. I see a lot of people who are incensed at the deliberate murder of civilians in apartment buildings, and who are pleased when Russia's military fuckups are not able to overrun the country the way they expected to. Is that what is meant by rah rah?

He sold some tickets for those milestones but those are long gone. Nobody goes to the park to see him. To be fair though I can't think of anybody here who believes he has a positive effect on attendance.

Yes "waffer thin" gets used around here from time to time.

And I would add Bugs Bunny and all of the Pythons to your list.

I am too and no he isn't sitting up in some executive office letting a bunch of people that he doesn't know very well just go about their business. He's a new CEO in an organization that has been a catastrophic failure and he only has about 3 months to put his stamp on the organization, or else it will become resistant to any changes. That's just a known fact in any business in any industry. It's his team now, but it isn't just going to happen, he has to proactively drive change. Baseball is just like any other industry that way. Those guys that are gone, the Castros and Reyes and Candelario - they are gone because Harris got rid of them, not because some old retainer in player evaluation suddenly came to his senses. Same with Chadd and Rand - they are gone because Harris got rid of them. For the next 3 months, more like 6, he is going to be involved in every aspect of baseball operations, 2 levels down from him on the org chart, and with specific regard to player personnel he is running it with both hands on.

They are just a bunch of poor kids, truly. They are exhausted, starving, and freezing. It is so very sad that their lives are being thrown away on one man's ego trip. And yet if they were to get a hot meal, a hot shower and a good night's sleep in a warm, dry, comfortable bed, and then were told to occupy a village tomorrow, they would do so with gusto, steal everything that might have any value at all without being instructed to do so, torture the men who might be intelligence-gatherers, and rape the women who are over 12 and under 70. It would all just come naturally to them. The Russian psyche, it's hard to get an understanding of.

Buy time from whom? You? Why would he care what you think, or any of us? Buy time to accomplish what exactly?

There is a lot of fantasizing going on here about Chris Ilitch being some sort of villain. He doesn't care enough to be a villain. Villains have passion, they have long term objectives. Chris Ilitch is the opposite of that, he might be the most irrelevant owner in professional sports. So if Harris doesn't put a winning team on the field don't blame Ilitch, he will have had nothing to do with it.

Chris Ilitch wants to be left out of the baseball decision making. He's already approved a payroll budget for 2023 that Harris approves of, or Harris wouldn't be here.

Orban would happily incorporate them into his Hungarian empire.

Absolutely 100% correct.