mtutiger

Yours points are all well taken

Also, do these people just not read or think through the implications of these bills they sign onto?

Seeing a lot of these sorts of comments from GOP lawmakers... but they really should not have been shocked. In fact, it was predictable as hell that stuff taken for granted by the general public would eventually be impacted by the decision. What's next, contraception?

Yeah, the grocery market leaves a lot to be desired here.... my understanding with Marianos is that they used to be better until Kroger bought them, but idk, we're still feeling things out. We're pretty far out, so we're mostly doing Aldi/Jewel.... occasionally Meijer or Target, or Tony's if we're looking for more ethnic options.

Umm, literally nobody is saying that at all.

Single income household with two kids, mid 30s.... we are affected by inflation. But when I see a viral post on social media about someone complaining that a Giant Size box of Cheerios is $8.49 (when there are multiple other stores in the same area that carry the same item for $6.49), that's a sign of intellectual dishonesty and/or a lack of personal responsibility for poor financial choices.

I do most of our shopping so I noticed the price of eggs.... last year. Those prices have come down considerably and have been down for a while and, yet, people don't recalibrate at all when discussing this stuff. My only real hot take on the inflation discussion is that, while it clearly has had an effect on people's finances (I know it did and still does with ours), I do think, at least on social media, that people who post micro-examples of how expensive things are seem to use it as a crutch for their own poor decisions. Because in most of these social media examples, there are clearly ways that said people could have spent less. For example, not Doordashing all of their takeout meals, downloading the app and clipping coupons, or in Chicagoland, choosing to buy their large box of Cereal at Meijer or Target vs. buying at Jewel, who has insane markups on dry goods like cereal and chips. It's also a good example of just sticking with macro data when discussing this stuff as well.... the data for the past couple of years showed inflation was high, that should be enough to make the case without getting into people's own personal choices in how they shop.

You'd think it would hit the feels of any self-professed "small government" conservative given how decidedly "big government" the idea of not turning over the remains to the family and the government keeping possession of them is. But I've given up on ideological consistency at this point. lol

Has Peter Baker walked into a grocery store recently?

And I thought he was an incompetent ball coach... Good Lord

Fully agree here - I think they did what they could with the free agent class they had this offseason. Only possible gripe there is maybe you could have considered dedicating money and years to Matt Chapman, but even there, it's not without risk. I suspect the fact that he's still unsigned at this point reflects some risk that teams see in giving out a longer deal to a guy on the wrong side of 30. I'll never understand the idea that not matching Miggy's contract value dollar for dollar is automatically a failure. At the end of the day, the goal isn't to meet a quota of money spent, it's to spend money to improve the ballclub. Which, by any objective measure, they did this offseason. Full stop, particularly given the state of the hitting market. I would like to see them spend money money in the future, and I expect they will (particularly with younger talent that will eventually need to be resigned if they continue to grow). But the total amount matters less than just improving the ballclub in the areas it needs it.

Clearly he's in DGAF mode.... but what's telling there is that, between the lines, he thinks a shutdown is gonna happen.

Last year was more about evaluation than this year IMO.... 2023 was literally an open tryout at multiple spots. This year's roster (plus signing Urshela) shows a much more stable group coming into 2024. That's the takeaway I have, I don't know that Urshela means much about Vierling/McKinstry/Ibanez more than it does about the likelihood of breaking camp with a relatively stable group of guys and not having to rely so much on AAAA/unproven types to fill out the back end of the roster (assuming JHM is out of the picture due to his defensive limitations)

It does make the bench a little bit righty-heavy for infield, assuming Ibanez/Vierling stick around and Urshela makes the team (which he should). I wonder if Urshela's ability to play SS makes the idea of bringing Kreidler with the team to Chicago less likely as well....

Yikes

I was building off your post.

This was overlooked at the time (and remains overlooked), but this is a good example of changes under the hood that can make long term differences as well. As you said, a lot of owners don't do this. You don't have to be a Pizza Jr apologist to recognize that.

You aren't - but others are.

This much I agree with insofar that the changes being made seem more about bringing the Tigers up to modern standards versus doing anything particularly exceptional versus the elite organizations within the league. It's the right thing to do and is helpful in the long run, but with respect to reporting on these changes, it's easy to overstate the importance or impact as well.

This is a fair sentiment, but now living in Jerk Sox country, it's not a guarantee that you'll always get players who open up and lavish praise on an owner. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make... I understand that the fans are skeptical whenever these articles hit, but I think there's a bias in that fans' relationship with the owner is much different than a players relationship, especially when the owner is the one who signs their paycheck and is the one who makes capital investments in the place that they come to work every single day.

I think the comments by the players are 100% legitimate. Let's not overthink things here, it may simply come down to Chris being a good boss to work for. Like, they actually like showing up to the ballpark and playing in this organization under this ownership and management as it is currently constituted. Changes around the ballpark that impact the players, while subtle on the outside, maybe aren't huge gamechangers in terms of attracting free agents, but make the experience of playing for the organization better than it would be if said changes weren't being made. Fans, because their roles are different than the players (ie. it's not their job to play for the Detroit Tigers), evaluate the Detroit Tigers differently than the players do (ie. mostly on how much $$$ the team spends on free agents). And because of that, fans are dumbfounded by players making positive comments and just assume that players are making these comments to kiss ownership's ***. It's the same as it ever was.... Chris has plenty of flaws as a businessman, not the least of which the shadiness of his business practices with regard to public funding. And he's not a perfect owner either. But whenever I hear Tiger fans fire off things like "he's the worst owner in baseball!!!", it makes me think that they aren't taking a good look at the rest of the league when making those comments... hell, considering the division they play in, there's a decent case to be made that he's the *best* owner in the AL Central lol

Yep. And one would think that we could carve out some time between the wall to wall coverage of Biden's age to put them on the spot about it.