Shelton

Or, they had a highly improbably series of results occur, and Harris’s moves actually helped them avoid the missing the playoffs entirely. See, there are facts, and then there hypotheticals that cannot be proven. The facts are that Harris made certain moves, the tigers finished with a certain number wins, and they finished behind Cleveland and ahead of Houston. The effect of moves made and not made is impossible to say, by you, me, or anyone else. It’s also a fact that the front office has more information than fans. That’s not really up for debate. That doesn’t mean that the front office can predict the future. I recall quite a few folks not being happy with the acquisition of Paddack, but I can’t say I remember anyone saying it was going to cost them their division lead.

It’s a fine line between defending a move and supporting a move. But regardless, I think it’s important to be careful with hindsight, and it’s also important to avoid complaining about hypothetical deals that were not made. Anyway, I doubt there were May people that necessarily supported the move for Cobb, Paddack, or Morton. However, none of these moves cost them much of anything. In that regard, I think you can defend them. It’s easy to point to Cobb and the 15 million, but more than anything this illustrates to me that there isn’t a hard budget or cost cap imposed by ownership. The deadline trades further illustrate this, in view of all of the dead money taken on in these deals. With specific reference to Cobb now, this was an early signing that was clearly made to bring in a guy to compete for a 5th SP spot and provide some bulk inning beyond that. Jack Flaherty was not yet signed and was unlikely to be signed. Had Jack been under contract, I doubt Cobb or another guy like him would have been signed. This was a minor deal and they didn’t allow it to stop them from adding Flaherty. This is the defense of this move, while not necessarily supporting it. Paddack and Morton are different. I think they were mostly interested in just making it to the end of the season and they needed innings. Neither were going to pitch in the playoffs. The cost was nothing. The alternatives would not have been better. There were better pitchers available of course, but without knowing what the demand was, it’s very difficult to say with any certainty whether another deal would have been preferable. That said, I do think they expected more from paddack. I don’t think they expected more than a #5 starter, but they probably hoped he would be able to stick in the rotation. Morton was simply added to eat up some innings. So, it’s fair to say the Paddack deal was a mistake. But I also think it is defensible.

Yes, lunatics.

Seems like most folks feel the team could do even just a little bit better if only the manager or GM used this one neat trick. I wish it were possible to truly get a feel for how tigers fans feel relative to fans of other teams. Because to me, it sure seems like the vast majority of tigers fans are ****ing lunatics. And I don’t feel like it’s just a matter of proximity bias, because I don’t get the same sense from Lions fans, M fans, or Wings fans. The Pistons only have 13 fans, but for the most part seem pretty chill.

I wonder what else Benetti would do under this potential NBC deal. Would he end up in a Tirico-light gig, working the Sunday night games and occasional other NBC-related broadcasts? They have NBA now. I assume this would mean the end of his NFL and college football duties that he did for Fox. Seems like the NBC stuff might fit better and have less overlap than what he currently has via FOX.

Super weird biff poggi appreciation. I find it kind of gross for folks to claim they knew all along how rotten everything was. It’s fine that he is being forthright during his mandated news conferences I guess. But he also doesn’t need to go on garbage podcasts and talk ****. Anyway, good riddance, biff. And good riddance to everyone else.

Our beat writers and bloggers might be the worst in the majors. I can’t think of a single one that is even remotely good. For the record, Stavenhagen sucks as much as the rest. He’s just so damn vanilla it’s hard to muster up sufficient vitriol for it to register. Petzold may have exceeded McCosky in my hack index. Probably because he continued to associate with sportz for as long as he did, and now he’s a callow facsimile of his mentor.

The teams are below it because they do the necessary accounting and restructuring to make the numbers add up to a number that is below the cap. Then the next year the cap goes up againand everyone restructures again to the extent necessary and uses other creative accounting and, surprise, they all end up under the cap. The NFL cap is not a hard cap. There are numerous ways to get around it. It’s not stopping dynastic teams from staying together and getting their players paid. All that said, I firmly believe that MLB teams are not forced to allow guys to walk or to trade them due to an inability to pay them. I think owners like to make as much money as possible, and they don’t want to take money from their bottom line to pay for 30 year old free agents that might provide a couple marginal wins.

Nah, the difference is that from a competitive standpoint it typically doesn’t pay to sign baseball stars on the downside of their career, which is not the same as keeping your franchise QB. This conversation arose out of the cap discussion. The NFL cap is fake. The baseball luxury tax cap is also fake. The teams operating below the tax threshold are also more than flush with cash and could spend if it made sense. NFL teams let guys walk, too. We can agree to disagree here, but I think in all but a few self-inflicted cases the decisions to let players leave in baseball is not due to an inability to pay them and still make loads of money. And the next time an NFL team has to let a player walk due to cap concerns will be a first.

I don’t believe this is objectively true. Who are the most importantly players that were not able to be signed by their team? The Angels could have signed Shohei. They did sign Trout. The tigers can sign Skubal. They did sign Cabrera and Verlander. The padres/nationals/yankees could have signed Soto. They did sign tatis, and even cronineworth (lol). The brewers could have signed Burnes. The cubs could sign Tucker. The Astros could have, too. Even the rays and A’s could do so if they weren’t content to continue sucking off the teat of public money and revenue sharing. Even the pirates will be able to sign skenes if they choose to. Whether a team chooses to or not is a different question. Similarly, whether a player himself chooses to stay or decides to move to the coast is a different question. Baseball does seem weirdly unique in that their executives seem hell bent on winning some sort of efficiency challenge or playing the game on hard mode. Scott Harris could flip the switch to easy mode and just sign Alex Bergman and be done with the offseason and starting printing the mobile-only digital playoff tickets. But that might cut into wenceel’s playing time. At any rate, its extremely hard to compare because the two leagues share very little in common.

Not sure where the discussion is currently but just want to go on the record that Al Avila deserves basically zero credit for anything good that has happened to the tigers over the past few years. He’s terrible and no amount of 3 WAR seasons from Riley Greene is going to change that.

I’m not sure the NFL cap actually does anything

Yeah, I know. We all know. And I’m saying trading Skubal would be the most cowardly move a Detroit GM has ever made and nothing will matter after doing so. Eat Arby’s.

I’m saying that trading Skubal this year or losing Skubal next year doesn’t substantially affect whether or not free agent X will sign with us. And also it won’t really matter, because if we are the type of team to trade Skubal, we won’t be in on the free agents that have the luxury of saying no to us.

Pretty much co-sign all of this, except for your ongoing (and well-established at this point!) concern over how trading Skubal will affect the ability to attract FAs. Not that it isn’t true to some extent, but mostly because if this team’s analysis is in line with a decision to trade Skubal, that almost surely means that their intent is to run the franchise like a rich man’s Rays, and they are unlikely to ever be in the position to attract a FA anyway.

Everyone is smarter than Avila.

I think an easy adjustment that would tilt the balance slightly toward hitters is to actually require three batters for RP, and not let them out of that requirement by ending an inning. For SP you could have a nine batter minimum.

These rule changes can be evaluated under the Potter Stewart test for pornography. restricting the shift - seems fine to me three batter minimum - seems fine to me pitcher that bats can stay in the game as DH after he stops pitching - ehh, fine line in the outfield to regulate depth - no ****ing way placed runner on 2b in extras - yep pitch clock - oh hell yes larger bases - uh huh

I somewhat agree with this premise. But whoever replaces carpenter is also going to have reduced value assigned when playing DH or below average RF. Carpenter’s low-ish WAR was also due to missing a substantial chunk of time due to injury (and maybe that’s something to consider if it seems likely to recur). Carpenter or not, I think you are still keeping Jones because of how good his bat against lefties was. My main point of this was that I think there is a decent chance that we move on from McKinstry.

As far as I’m concerned, McGonigle is a lock for this team and will be the starting SS. Maybe Keith is your 3B and Vierling is the RF. Just operating from there and going with the standard 4 bench players, what is your bench? Rogers and Baez feel like locks. And for that matter Jones feels like a lock to pair with Kerry. So who is the last bench player? As of now we have McKinstry, Sweeney, Malloy, and Wenceel on the 40. There are also the kids that just got added but leave them out of it. Wenceel would seem to provide the most value given the rest of the roster. Of course, things will change from this point. If Bregman were added then Wenceel or Vierling probably get the boot, but you could also argue that Baez is the one to go. Our first half all stars were fun, but these guys stink.

Just like pitching, you can never have enough offense and defense

What do we think happened here? Did they **** up with their papaya rules by not allowing Lando to follow max into the pit because Oscar supposedly gets the right to pit first as the leader? What a ****show. I love it. Not even Ferrari would have ****ed that up.

I also don’t believe in the concept of a hard yearly budget, such that money given to a particular player means less available for other players. To me, it’s far more relevant to simply look at available roster spots and the ability to be flexible. This relates the Bregman thing, because adding him would result in a bit less flexibility, but lineup spot is there. That said, the reduced flexibility it is really only there for a year while we take advantage of a tidy contract for Torres. But the dollars ebb and flow. If Skubal comes back in 2027, it’s a yearly raise of about 15-20 million from what he’s going to get in 2026. But we also say goodbye to financial commitments to Jack, Torres, and Mize, which will probably end up totaling over 50 million. Some of those roster spots will need to be replaced by spending, but not all of them. Just relative to last year, we have cut Cobb, Maeda, all the guys we added at the deadline whose money we took on. I don’t see the sense in worrying about a hard budget number for a given year. I think it’s rare that the dollars spent become a zero sum exercise.

If you view McGonigle as incapable of handling SS even for a year, such that his only reasonable path to playing time is 3B, then I agree with your conclusion (from your perspective). I disagree on that fundamental issue, so to me mcgonigle and Bregman have nothing to do with each other. Last spring we went in wondering if Tork would even make the team, and Keith had been moved to 1B (without a solution at 3B yet), so I don’t think signing Torres is a huge factor either.

It’s also why I don’t think things like “Torres back” and “McGonigle close” and “7 years of Bregman made sense last year with Trey Sweeney penciled into SS but a year later with McGonigle penciled in there it no longer makes sense” carries a lot of weight. I think Bregman makes as much sense now as he did a year ago, which is quite a bit of sense. If there was any year to be happy with a bit of depth and stuffing the roster, at the cost of mere dollars, it’s this one. It’s not like we have a great answer in RF either if Kerry is your DH. Spending a year having colt split time between 2B, 1B, and DH is just fine. If you insist on defining a healthy game 7 lineup against a RHP in a world where Tork is good, Colt/Torres at DH/2B and Kerry in RF works for me.