HeyAbbott

I sense that the owners and the players have adopted a siege mentality. July 1 looks like it will be the 2022 opening day, assuming that there is a season.

The conversation here has raised many good points. I do think this will be a very long hiatus. July 1 looks like a good date for a settlement.

The suit by a conned gambler ploy is what originally got the Black Sox case to trial. The scenario is perhaps unlikely, but possible.

Given that MLB has gotten cozy with the big gambling corporations, If someone bet on those games and lost big, they might have an actionable suit that would promise a good financial reward.

I am sympathetic toward the players making league minimum when such a huge pot of money sloshes around. If any of the numbers that are out there are that I have seen are remotely true, there is a structural financial imbalance that has developed between the players and the owners. A larger share of the revenue should go toward the players. I'd feel a lot better about the whole thing if the league minimum were closer at least 800,000, if not 1 million. The reason that there are signing bonuses for high rated draft picks is that minor league players make nothing. The numbers I have seen are $15k for AAA, $9.4k for AA, and 6k for single A. The minor leagues are another matter, but at least get the lower tier of MLB players a substantially higher minimum. https://sport-net.org/who-qualifies-for-mlb-minimum-salary-2/

I think most fans are overly optimistic . The CBA will take a long time to hammer out. The players want their share of the revenue to be at a minimum 50 percent of total revenue. If their percentage of the revenue were in line with other leagues, it would be much higher if I recall the numbers correctly. Manfred is a self centered Jack Ass on his best days.

If you pay 20 million dollars for a racehorse to put to stud and the horse dies do you know what you have-- a dead horse. It my way of saying I agree with the above quote. And as for our SS need, it is real and it isn't going away. I still prefer to see it settled now.When July rolls around though, there will be someone out there that will be cutting payroll and may be unloading a very good SS, or maybe not. Maybe the risk isn't as great as it seems to miss out on the SS sweepstakes and wait. As far as future performance, it would not be surprising to see 1 to 3 of these SS deals tuen out to be a total bust.

Hold on to your hats, a big move is coming.

It is clear they need a shortstop. What is not clear is that Correa is the one. There is a more fleeting likelihood that Correa will be an elite everyday player half way through his 1o year contract, assuming there aren't back issues as some rumors suggest. We maybe looking at a 100 game SS by year 4 with Correa. Maybe one of the other suspects (Story, Siemen, Baez, etc) might be a better bet.

Is Correa absolutely essential to build a winning team that will be competitive for say, 3 years?

I like this Rodriguez deal, assuming it gets finalized. He should be a much better pitcher in Comerica than Fenway. Here is hoping that they finalize the SS position in a favorable manner. So who is going to be the reclamation project acquisition?

With respect to a third uniform, I like the 1907 or 19117 with the blue colloar and the blue cap with the white piping. Here is the picture of the uni's: https://blog.heritagesportsart.com/2010/08/detroit-tigers-uniform-and-team-history.html

I think that the cornerstone of this off-season should be nailing down the SS position. By the trade deadline, many of the other items might be fallible by the trade deadline. On the other hand, if there is a new quality C and a SP, I won't go cry in my beer.

I missed this on net. But even so, for such a meeting, unless you are trying to generate instant hype with the media covering an event, given modern telecommunications, a meeting can be held anywhere and anytime you want it to be.

It is very tempting to look at the bad start in '21 and presume it won't be repeated. Another out-of-the norm event from last year was the number of major arm surgeries required (Faedo in the minors, Turnball, Rogers at C, and Boyd). I'd probably anticipate one SP going down this year and Faedo and Turnball will not contribute much this year. I tend to think that the TJ surgeries that will meaningfully reduce the impact of key arms, and thus offset the gains expected to be realized by not starting so poorly this year. This is a 77 win team as things stand now. We have a problem at SP and SS. To make the most of the pitching we do have, I would rate the SS decision to be the most important decision, then the pitching need, and then finally the catcher position. I am most certainly not counting on any untested minor league guy to fill the bill at short.

Thanks. One thing that struck me in reading this thread is that there did seem to be consensus with what the team need to add or change. That is an indicator that this is a better team than years past when it was the case that everything needed to change and there was little agreement on what to do first. For me, I hope we sort out SS first. That will help to determine a number of other steps.

After reading this, I am trying to figure out what the consensus about this team is. We started 4- 29 and still finished with 77 wins. If we had broke even on the first 34 games we would have won 90 games. Getting to the playoffs is the minimal 2022 objective in my mind. Barring ridiculous notions about trading cheap and good cost controlled pitching here is what I see: 1) We need a quality short stop that can be both solid defensively and offensively. Correa fills the bill. 2) We need to obtain one solid veteran starting pitcher -- near ace quality. 3). We need a catcher. Any other adds should depend on the state of the club in July. There are also some folks in the minors that might be tradable, if the right offer is made. Is this a reasonable summary of what we need in the offseason?