gehringer_2

the schools may have signed into who knows what kind of binding covenants when they joined their conferences or NCAA so I imagine there will be some kind of legal arguments, but in the end that all goes away once the leaving teams pay a suitable ransom for their freedom.

More likely bird flu. The recent reporting is mostly about it jumping into the cows (and then people) but if cows are getting it its because it's still going around in chicken flocks.

Bregman's glove is obviously good, Sweeney seemed OK as far as it went. If Keith can be a solid 1B then maybe living with Torres at 2B will be tolerable -- IF they land Bregman.

we really haven't had normal looking yield curves since mid '22. Things are beginning to look a little more normal now - at least from 1 to 20 years rates now increase continuously (monotonic) - you should get a larger premium on a longer term investment. Curve is still goofy from zero to 1 yr though. I'd guess a lot of investors believe the new admin will drive up inflation, which belief usually puts upward pressure on long term rates. I would also guess the Fed isn't too unhappy with the way it's trending though because if long term rates are holding or even floating up, they can cut short term rates more, which will make their political overlords happy, but wont have much inflationary effect if longer term rates stay up.

so only ....4 yrs to fill?

they best hope McGonigle can stay at SS because if not the pickings are pretty slim.

Each side in the Torres deal is using the other as a partner of convenience. He has no intention of being here in '26, the Tigers no intention of paying him what he is going to want if he does have a successful '25. Keith's tenure at 1st could be a short one.

Not to mention if you want to talk to Miguel you have a much better chance of getting through in Spanish. Petzold hable espanol?

of course that's fine but a lot of fans would also like to know what's in the system that has real potential for them to be seeing in a couple of years. Of course if you really want to know you can make the effort to follow the MiLB teams.

there might not be a reason to not to, but there is also absolutely no positive reason from them to ever talk publicly about any prospect player's downside, if for no other reason than to keep everyone happy on the farm. It never servers any purpose to bad mouth your own people even once you understand some of them aren't likely going anywhere.

I don't remember which school it was, not a big one, but they had a rule that the Student government elections required 65% participation for validation. Not a bad idea. I doubt 50% of UM students even know that the MSA exists. The faculty Senate at UM is the same way, about 20% of the faculty participate, so it takes 11% of the total to win the vote on some some crazy resolution - then the Freep or DetNews rushes out a story about schism between the faculty and admin or how radical the UM faculty is. Same as it ever was. Was it Ben Franklin who said the young US had a democracy "if it could keep it." Apathy has always been the biggest enemy of all.

As long as every player is a potential trade chip, you will never get an honest evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses from the org; and I don't expect that. But I do expect less credulity from Henning.

I'm willing assume the new regime might be different, but the old regime's reporting on their own prospects was pretty useless.

I wouldn't argue that in any number of fields, there are faculty with an ideological ax to grind, but in that respect US colleges are no worse "indoctrination" than what I've seen at a Boy Scout camp. I think the reality is that most students are pretty skeptical of that that kind of thing and the net effect may be to produce as many reactionaries to their views as adherents. The bigger problem is the control of faculty hiring by people with narrow views creating a school without intellectual breadth.

Like a lot things, the reality is it's a spectrum everywhere. A quick analysis of the US Senate and electoral college show the US is somewhat flawed democracy. Manipulated elections are a favorite sham of Russian imperialism, so I suppose better that there be a mechanism to reject one than not . Dangerous, yes. If you are in a place where there is no good answer you best take the least bad one. But in Bergler's quote, I think the flaw is in his semantics. Democracy is more than just elections. Russia proves nothing if not that. If a society's rejection of an election is a better reflection of the will of the majority of the people, that is still democracy. The question as always is where is the actual truth.

When Tork got here I think it was pretty clear the Tigers org didn't have any solid system for hitting development. In the last couple of years we have started seeing guys take steps here and there - Bigbie, Workman, Meadows are cases of guys that looked stuck earlier and then made some progress (at least relatively) more recently.

I don't think he has enough trade value that it's likely he's going anywhere so he's going to get his chance to hit his way back into relevance. There's a lot of potential there but he has to find an approach where the production matches the potential. It's sports - it's supposed to be do or die. Carlos was a late bloomer - we didn't move him until his age 28 season, Tork is going to be 25 this season so he's probably worth more to the Tiger's as a watch and see than in a trade, but you never know, if someone makes an offer.....

the need to bring in a strong D player has definitely gone up. It seems free agency may be devolving into a two tier system along with everything else. If the big 5 happen to be interested the sky is the limit, If they all pass the price tags drop precipitously.

no argument with this take but I don't profess any idea of whether Torres is a player more likely to upset or solidify team spirit.

functionally

last year the Tigers were pretty good at run prevention once they got things figured out. I'd hate to lose that for the sake of 112 OPS+ career hitter. We don't know if Keith is going to master 1st, Torres is not good defensively, SS and 3B are still question marks. It may all work out fine, or it may turn out to be a GM over-shuffling the cards.

I really hope I'm wrong but this is beginning to sound like a team that isn't going to fit together very well.

Talk is cheap in the off season - I have a hard time imagining Hinch is going to live with Gleyber’s D on the middle of the IF unless he somehow gets better than he has been.

I will wager this is probably the least likely of his accomplishments. I can see a few happening with a great deal of hoopla, but it will bog down and Trump will just declare victory and the vast majority will get a path to citizenship.

I’m still waiting for the Tigers to move a LH bat.