Tiger337

I think "playing for a winner" is often something players will say to make them sound good when they really want the money (which winning teams are more likely to offer).

I don't think it's 100% money, but that is the biggest factor in every negotiation.

They have sucked for years, but Avila was still able to sign players. I think the "players don't want to sign here" angle gets over played.

No doubt 2023 looks like a lost year. I would have liked them to make more short-term improvements to their offense, but I understand Harris' caution. He hasn't been watching the train wreck for the last five years and is likely a lot more patient than us.

Maybe, but I am slightly more optimistic about the future of the franchise now than I was last year at this time. 2021 was good luck. 2022 was bad luck mostly due to injuries. I am cautiously optimistic that Harris will do better than Avila and I am encouraged by apparent steps forward by a number of prospects last year. Maybe players and agents see it differently, but I think they could sign players if they wanted to spend.

Why last year and not this year? Is there no budget? Or maybe Harris doesn't want to waste long-term money on a lost season?

They were able to pick up players with options the last couple of years.

6-month treasury up to 5%.

You are probabably right that they won't win any big lawsuit. More than likely, they'll just get screwed. I agree that Twitter is useful. It's the trending topics section of Twitter I don't like.

SB, The Ohio fire is trending on Twitter. Don't go there expecting to find anything useful though. It's a horrible situation. It sounds like many lives are going to be destroyed. I hope they sue for many millions and win.

I didn't know Gillies was a Hall of Famer. I just remembered he was good for a while (don't follow hockey closely).

Clark Gillies. Either him or Jim Crawford.

Harris already fixed it. You just aren't smart enough to figure it out yet.

I don't think there has ever been a thread in the Tigers forum where I understood less about what was going on. The only one I understood was Romad. 😃

One year 6.5 million for Chafin...with Arizona. Apparently, he likes money better than living near his farm. Pretty good deal for the Diamondbacks given the cost of pitching this winter.

I just looked up Encarnacion and Kapler. Interestingly, they had almost identical stat lines in back to back years in AA: 1997 Encarnacion .323/.394/.560 1998 Kapler .322/.393/.583 They also ended up having pretty similar careers: Encarnacion 97 OPS+ 8.6 WAR Kapler 92 OPS+ 8.7 WAR

I was not a big Encarnacion fan. Players that can't draw walks have a hard time sustaining long term success. I was more of a fan of Kapler who, of course, fared no better.

Avila also traded players for guys he hoped would become good. We can hope that Harris is better at it. The deals they made this winter were actually closer to Randy Smith deals in th acquired players are closer to being finished products. We can also hope that Harris is better than Smith!

A couple of them could. I'm thinking Maton or Malloy. I wouldn't say it's likely they'll replace Candelario's production from 2021 when he was a 4 WAR player. Of course, what's important is whether they are better than the 2023 version of Candelaro.

You can do some of both. It's hard to have good offense and defense at every position and very few teams have done that. However, I think it's hard to win if you just go for offense and have poor defense at every position.

It wasn't supposed to be a compliment or insult, just a reality of your former profession. I know you are very capable of logical and analytical thought and are very often on the same page as me as far as what you'd like to see in the game. I didn't know you were retired. Good for you! I have a long way to go due to family health problems and not so great financial planning by other family members. Fortunately, I like my job and the new working remotely thing makes everything easier.

The old six/seven team divisions were fine. I think there is a big difference between 4 and 6 as far as the chance of producing a weak team for the playoffs. I know you're a marketing person which involves a lot of psychology and sometimes consideration of irrational thought among consumers. I always have a hard time with that and assume that humans are capable of being logical.

Cespedes was a pretty good defender. He was no Kaline and didn't have Colavito's arm, but not many are in that class.

Everybody should always be worried about defense...as well as offense.

If a 3rd or 4th place team is headed for a 100-loss season, how are they going to sell that? Are fans really so stupid that they are going to go watch a terrible 3rd or 4th place team just because they are ranked 3 or 4?