1984Echoes

Beautiful! Well said and I'm in 100% agreement.

WTF is WRONG with these ****ing deuchebags? Are you ****ing kidding me?!?!

Lots & lots of tears to me eyes...

Which is why I absolutely would prefer Sennecke or MBN ahead of him. Even if he falls to us and those two are gone... I think I'd look at Chernyshov as the next best option... and he's in Russia. If it's the top two gone and Eiserman staring at us... Actually, I hope Stevie can engineer a trade-down...

I don't trust Tork. If he has taken so little interest in his career as to regress this badly, in the field, at the plate... and REFUSES to even look at his swing mechanics... I don't trust him. Even if he makes some miraculous improvements in Toledo... Would I want to make a long term commitment to him? No. So as long as he's cheap... fine. But to me, before he becomes a FA or an expensive arbitration player... I'm fine with moving on... whenever that time comes. And maybe, hopefully, there's already an internal option at least like Briceno moving up the ladder and showing skill at 1B to be an option, or moving Jung or Keith or whomever to there. Tork is a huge disappointment to me... and that specifically includes his professionalism/ attitude towards being an MLB player.

He never had the power profile that Carpenter had so I never really thought of him as a true prospect. More like a backup OF'er if his bat played all the up to MLB but there's lots of guys ahead of him so it's not an easy path. And since his bat isn't playing well currently at AAA... that's one more hurdle.

And Holton would be the only lefty in the bullpen so both Harris & Hinch would want some other lefty (possibly two) as a replacement... Narrowing the possibilities.

I'm really encouraged by Campos and Dingler seemingly finding their way this year...

Yes... this. Also... Harris wants to populate the minors with "his type" of player. Even if a guy never makes it to MLB... having rosters filled with players that "control the strike zone" per Harris's description... influences every player coming up through the Org, IMO.

Lee is providing a little bit more than I thought he would... But I don't know what that means for his MLB chances... At this point I'm still looking at Erie players Workman, Lee, and Trei Cruz as backup or utility guys at best, unless told otherwise. Maybe there's some starting potential somewhere in there amongst the 3... But I wouldn't call it that... just yet.

PS: I almost started a 2024 NHL Draft and then found this thread down in the dungeon...

Eiserman is within range but I don't think he makes it all the way to 15. Does Stevie want to trade up in this draft...? On a WAG I'll say no. I like the 2-way forwards/ power forwards being mocked in our range. Beckett Sennecke seems just slightly out of our reach... But I really like the looks of Michael Brandsegg-Nygard who is often mocked to us. Other options that might be in our range: Sennecke or Eiserman (if one of them falls to us), Igor Chernyshov, maybe Liam Greentree or Cole Beaudoin as fallback options.

I don't think Baddoo can qualify as the new anything. More like Resurfaced Baddoo...

Jake Rogers - 2 HR's Rangers - 1 HR. Tigers win 2-1 behind Jake Rogers and excellent pitching from Skubal & Brieske...!

But we're going to trust Republicans to get to the truth? My biggest fall-off-the-chair laughter of the night. Brought by Donald "Drink Bleach" Trump and the rest of the lying **** Republicans currently making up the party. No thank you. I've had enough of their stream of bull****.

Not completely: A. ... If they do things right, they can have a good farm system without tanking. Thus, Tanking is not necessary. B. If a team doesn't draft well or develop well, then they'll end end up with a bad farm system whether they tank or not... If they have some way of propping up a competitive team other than relying on farm system (trades, FA's) then: Thus, Tanking is not necessary. C. If a team doesn't draft well or develop well, then they'll end end up with a bad farm system whether they tank or not... If a team has allowed its good players to age out (no longer productive/ they retire or are injured/ cannot trade them for anything), get little in trade for the few assets that are tradeable, have a barren farm system... then NO amount of FA additions will save that team. They will be at the bottom of the heap. You can't BUY a competitive team through FA without having some foundation to rebuild the team. Hence: a rebuild (NOT tanking). Draft and development have to be fixed. A foundation built. And then smart trades/ FA signings can bring back a competitive team. The Tigers were NOT A or B, they were C. Hence the multiple losing years whilst they tried to fix everything.

This makes it a little clearer: “We had a lot of reports on this guy,” Orr said. “We had reports from the area scouts, multiple crosscheckers. Tim Hallgren (national crosschecker who specializes in pitcher evaluations) had the best velo on him. He had him up to 95. “It was like, ‘Wow, here we are getting ready to go into the ninth round and we’ve got a left-handed pitcher who throws 95, that we have a lot of good information on from people that we trust.’ There’s some good numbers there. And yes, there are some concerning numbers, too.” Would the Tigers have taken Skubal without the nudge from the Boras Corporation? “Information is paramount,” Pleis said. “And relationships are extremely important. We scout them, we evaluate them. We evaluate their makeup, their ability, their tools — we evaluate everything there is to evaluate, the medicals, everything. “But when you get more information like we did, the best way to say it is, when David got the phone call from Scott Chiamparino — we’ve talked with these people over the years, not just with this player, we know where these guys are coming from — I think that did take us over the top. No question about it.”

PS: these comments were not directed at you Rob but at the BS narrative that Boras basically made the selection for the Tigers. Because no, that's not what happened.

He gave you a complete and total mischaracterization of what actually happened.

Duplicate...

That's exactly what I said.

A team STILL has to do "Due Diligence" and "Pull the Trigger". Just because a scout, or Boras, makes a suggestion, does NOT mean that the Org just rolls over and does as directed by... Boras? Boras ORDERED the Tigers to draft Skiubal? No... he didn't. He made a suggestion, the team looked at it and did their due diligence. In fact, they had ALREADY done their due diligence. So here are a couple interesting/ key quotes from the article you posted: It was Boras who encouraged the Tigers to take a hard look at a 19-year-old New Jersey high school pitcher named Rick Porcello. Oh wait, wrong pitcher! But Boras gets ALL the credit because he suggested the Tigers look at Porcello, right? Using someone's F'd up logic. Skubal was on the Tigers’ board, as Pleis said, but there were red flags... “Actually, where we had him was right around when we took him,” Orr said. Oh. Did that just F-up chas's narrative?

Right. Boras says "Draft him" and an Org just bends the knee and says "Yes Your Majesty". What an asinine take (not you Lee).

You just made my point. If a team has a good farm system they won't have losing seasons. If a team has a BAD farm system than they ****ed up. Whether it's bad drafting, bad development, or traded away ANY and ALL decent prospects, or a multiple of the above... Once a system is barren, AND all your good players age out... there is NO CHOICE except to lose lots of games. If it's a good Org maybe they can reload the minors quickly, and the MLB team quickly, and turn things around quickly to keep the losing to a minimum. If it's a BAD Org (Dombrowski did NOT create a strong developmental team, drafted college kids who would rise quickly for the most part, and traded most of them away, and did not do ANY analytics), then it will take LOTS of losing to fix the draft & development team, and refill the minors. It might not be "necessary" to have multiple 100 loss seasons in a row, but it will be REALITY until a bad draft and developmental team FIXES all of their problems. NOT just drafts better. Case in point: Detroit Tigers under Al Avila. He got us maybe halfway there, was slow in doing so, wasn't good enough in multiple aspects of being a GM, wasn't he right guy to bring the process to 100% (hopefully Harris is that guy) and it's taken a crapload of bad seasons to get where we are. But he did point us in the right direction. For all of his faults.

I think "tanking" is 99% NOT about the money... I think "tanking" is largely something that teams do when they have a barren farm system and an aged-out no-longer-competitive MLB team. In other words, they screwed up. So now they need to get rid of all their old no-longer-good players, trade the 1 or 2 guys that might have some trade value, and completely rebuild their farm system. In other words, there's no such thing as tanking in baseball or hockey. The developmental period is TOO LONG. In basketball, and possibly football (I don't think it exists in the NFL either), yes. Because in basketball, 1 player can completely change the future of a team, and make an almost immediate impact. The rest of the Org still needs to be run well in order for it to succeed... but that's another discussion. In baseball, with a barren farm system, eventually, the piper has to be paid, and that means losing seasons, most likely multiple. There's no such thing as tanking in baseball. Only rebuilding.