Tiger337

9 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

If it were up to Harris, we would have a team full of Nick Maton and Charlie Morton type players...lmao

I don't agree with that at all.  He'd like to have a great team and he may get one eventually. I'm just saying that his impact on the 2024-2025 is being overstated.  

28 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Do you know this? Or are you just saying?

I know this by seeing that the manager and almost all the key players on the 2006 roster were acquired by Dombrowski.   Dombrowski tore the team apart and built a winner in 4 years.  

20 hours ago, chasfh said:

Look, rebuilding for a couple years is one thing, but I could not possibly disagree more with the idea that tanking a team and losing 100-ish games each season for years on end in order to get a shot at a fifth overall pick is the way to become a winner eventually. There are numerous franchises that are winning right now that have never had to do that, and in fact, that is not how we ourselves have gone to the playoffs in the past couple of years.

We'll have to just leave it there and just disagree on it.

Chas, last time this argument came up, you provided a chart that showed that attendance or television viewership went up with more victories. Do you still have that? KL seems to be suggesting that you either have a championship caliber team or not and nothing below that will affect fan interest.  I don't believe that is true.  

34 minutes ago, chasfh said:

If this is true, then it is also true that if it weren't for Randy Smith, the Tigers would not have won the 2006 American League pennant.

Dombrowski had a lot more to do with winning in 2006 than Harris did in 2025.  At the same time, I think Harris has a very good chance to be a better GM long-term than Dombrowski.  

The Tigers are all set.  They just got their injured pitcher:

Quote

 

Tigers signed RHP Cole Waites to a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training.

Waites represents a low-risk dart throw for Detroit’s relief mix after spending most of the past two seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery at the conclusion of the 2023 campaign. The hard-throwing 27-year-old made a handful of rehab appearances last season in San Francisco’s system and should be ready to compete for a spot in the Tigers’ bullpen in spring training.

 

20 minutes ago, IdahoBert said:

Per Jason Beck: “…they were in a happy place for at least holding on to some key pieces.” The French felt good about the Maginot Line too…

I know not everything has to be done right now. I was, though, hoping for more than just socks for Christmas. 

We didn't even get socks.  They took away our tramsistor radio as a punishment and then gave it back as a gift for Christmas.  

2 hours ago, RatkoVarda said:

this offseason has literally gone just as many on this board predicted: Flaherty back (maybe in a surprising way), Torres and Finnegan back, and then a few million pissed away again on a rehab starting pitcher project.

 

Harris is just trolling us with his GM 101 box checking.

Still need to sign an injured pitcher.  

1 minute ago, KL2 said:

 

But again its just in theory no team or player is actively gonna go try to lose. For me its just an argument of in a lost year I'd rather have hte best odds to get better in the future than win an extra game or two and miss out on that superstar for just some instant gratification that isn't even that cause its still a bad team. 

Yes, in one lost year, it is good to get a high pick, but if it requires gutting your organization to do so, that's going to lead to several lost years.  It worked for the Astros, but it doesn't usually work that well.  

Chas and I are agreeing on something again.  Feels good.  😄

9 minutes ago, KL2 said:

Yes rebuilding is a necessary part. Nobody has been good for 100 years

Not the kind of re-building where your team is crap for 3 or more years.  That's not necessary.

2 minutes ago, KL2 said:

Cause the general overall ideas is bared out by stats. The higher you pick, the more likely you are to find a player that puts up a better career. 

"First round draftees had greater average career WAR compared to Rounds 2 to 20.Collectively, the first five picks had greater WAR versus picks grouped 16 through 30."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358010336_Major_League_Draft_WARs_An_Analysis_of_Wins_Above_Replacement_in_Player_Selection

Average is deceptive, because there is a small number of top players that inflate it.  The median player is much closer to zero.  It is good to get high picks, but the value gets overstated.  I don't believe the risk/reward is worth going through multiple years of crap teams to try to get good again.  

16 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I doubt we will have to worry about that with the new guy, but if Harris ever were to engage in tanking while with the Tigers, I will jump on the Dump Harris bandwagon along with some of the others. Also, I will jump back on the Sell the Team, Baby Doc bandwagon.

I've been told that tanking is a necessary part of baseball for small and mid market teams, but I've never believed it.  

11 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The offense with the Harris pickups is more promising than with the Avila pickups, particularly where strikeout and walk rates are concerned, something I showed in a comparison after the season. I do think other things being equal, the Tigers will get better on offense just by increasing the Harris/Avila player mix.

17 minutes ago, chasfh said:

To the degree we don't already have a team we can put together with players already in the organization who can compete for a ring, I agree with this.

They can make the playoffs and thus compete for a ring.  I'd just like a little push to make it more likely. 

3 minutes ago, chasfh said:

So if the median value of a fifth overall pick is zero career WAR, then why was Avila tanking the franchise to get a pick that high in the first place?

Good question.  Why do so many teams do that?  I think it's more owners wanting to save money on salaries during lean years than anything else.  I means it's good to get high draft picks because a moderate percentage do end up making good contributions, so if you collect enough of them, you'll get some hits.  However, I have never been a proponent of deliberate total re-builds.  

5 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Don’t most if not all LLM agents provide sources? I know ChatGPT has links.

Chatgtp did not used to to have links which is why I stopped using it.  It's good to hear that it now does.  

edit: I just compared chatgtp to perplexity on a couple of searches.  Perplexity gave sources and chatgtp did not.  So, maybe chatgtp sometimes gives sources but not consistently.  

7 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I continue to be knocked out by the idea that so many Tiger fans will be disappointed to see Tarik Skubal suit up in a Tigers uniform on March 26.

I will be happy (and I expect him to be Tiger), but I'd like it even better if more talent was added to support him.  

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Good lord, transforming us from a franchise that averaged 101 games a year for six straight years under the former guy into a franchise that wins playoffs series just two years later is not much evidence to you that Scott Harris is having an impact at the MLB level??

I have no words.

Correlation does not prove causation and saying phrases like "I have no words" is not not a persuasive argument either.  

I see Hinch and Fetter having an impact at the major league level.  I don't see Harris having as much of an impact at that level, at least not yet.    The Tigers would not be doing what they have done the last two years without the players, manager and pitching coach which Avila provided.   Avila was terrible, but when you collect prospects for long enough (way too long in his case) you can build up a good base of talent.  

On 12/5/2025 at 11:24 AM, Screwball said:

Since there is a thread about this now, I would be curious when talking about our own experience with AI, which AI app did you use?

There seems to be quite a few. I did a Google search and got this;

I've used Co-pilot (comes with Windows 11), Grok (Twitter's version) and Google's Gemini. Make one wonder how the results from the same query would vary across platforms.

I like Perplexity, because it provides sources.  

57 minutes ago, Tigermojo said:

No thread title rhyme for Rocco Maniscalco?

Adduci has already recruited him.  

Avila never should have traded Cody Ross

5 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

Petit first pick of Rule 5 Draft!

Harris getting fleeced again!

Lynn Henning finally called something correctly.  

2 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

And is more related to Hinch and Fetter than anything else.

IMO.

Oh... WAIT!!! WHO hired Hinch? Avila?

OK, that also doesn't count for Avila's credit.

Because... 

I have seen clear evidence of Hinch's influence.

And yeah, Avila hired him.  

4 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

Nothing counts until the actual ink is dry.

I have seen no credible evidence that there even any ink.  

29 minutes ago, chasfh said:

This makes sense if all development is a random crapshoot and past performance is zero indication of actual ability. But based on the track record available to us, it is safe to assume that when it comes to developing players, Al Avila did not know what he was doing, and Scott Harris does.

I really don't see much evidence that the team performance of the last two years is all because of Harris.  I expect to see more evidence at the MLB level of Harrises influence soon, but I have not seen it yet.