mtutiger

It's also a reminder of how few Americans actually watch any of these cable shows

All Hail St. Fetter. Imagine what he would do with a better offense

All hail St. Fetter... he's the McGuyver of Pitching Coaches

There's always Dan and Bobby/Cam

I dont get why they have to get draw the casual, non-baseball fan gambler to come to the ballpark to be a success. Between people in town to gamble as well as being the largest convention destination in the United States, they will likely do better on the margins than most teams lol

Honestly it's a good question, but is the response to COVID (which Fauci is a proxy for) actually as unpopular among the general population as these people make it sound? The polls don't show it, my interactions in a 50/50 county in a red state don't show it all that much. It just seems like bait for the base

I look forward to all those concerned about China from the right coming out and expressing their anger toward Elon. Although I will not be holding my breath

Eighth overall pick, never once played above Single A... Doesn't get much worse tbh

My thing about the guy, and why the comparisons to Trump are sort of valid, is that no matter how often he messes it up with Twitter or his other ventures or how often he lets his ego show in how he deals with things that don't go right in his world, he is fully backed up by his creepy cult that runs to his defense and tells the rest of how "ackshully, Elon's a genius and you just aren't smart enough to see his brilliance". He has his wealth, and with that wealth comes influence.... but wealth is no substitute for common sense or humility. Of which he appears to have neither.

I can't speak for others, but while I think the assembled talent is far better today than it was when DD ****canned Smith, I wouldn't characterize my views as thinking that Avila was way, way better than Randy Smith.

That is true.

I was addressing my initial post and more just the general discussion that surrounds where the franchise currently sits, not you. There are other fans of this team who, due to age or recency bias or whatever, kinda overlook just how bad the franchise was when Randy Smith was ****canned when complaining about where the franchise currently sits. And honestly, having lived through both eras, I'll have to disagree with with you in that I do think this current iteration is in better shape than the 2002 one was. And I'm not sure that it is that close.

I'm not trying to whitewash Avila, FWIW, he was an awful GM.... but a lot of the dialog surrounding his tenure (and how he was the worst) really whitewashes Randy Smith and just how aimless and hopeless the franchise was at that time. And yeah, I think it was worse then than now. And certainly, IDK if Tork, Greene, the pitchers and some of the other hangers on (such as Meadows or Lipcius or Wenceel Perez) ever reach their true potential, but the odds are a higher for these guys than some of the garbage that Smith and company brought in. Some of that might be differences in scouting over time, obviously the industry uses more data than it did in the late 90s/early 2000s, but that's just what I see looking at it.

Randy didn't obtain Carlos Pena, nor did he draft him.

A couple of points: I do think some fans will center trips to Las Vegas around the ability to see their team play, and Las Vegas is in many ways an ideal place to do that.... generally flights are cheap, hotel accommodations are actually fairly reasonable from a cost perspective (because the city's industry is separating you from your cash at Casinos), so I can see that being a draw. And locals in Vegas have generally shown themselves supportive of the Golden Knights, so I don't know that it is a given that ratings will bad or that people from Las Vegas will not take to the team.... like any other city, it will depend on ownership putting out a competitive product by the time the new stadium is built.

He will sell once the stadium is built I'll bet

They will move to a temporary home at their AAA ballpark I'll bet

Yeah, not sure I can recall that either

Old friend alert

This comment kinda gets to it.... the organization was completely aimless and hopeless before DD showed up. "Strategy" wasn't really in their vocabulary, it was more like throwing **** at the wall and hoping it stuck (such as the Juan Gonzalez trade). And the accumulation of talent that he inherited in 2002 wasn't really anything that could be built off of. The famous "you try and trade 'em" tirade wasn't an act, they literally had little to no means to upgrade their roster coming out of 2002. Even after DD showed up, they still were flawed in a lot of ways... DD was always good at building a team through trades and free agency, but homegrown development never bore much fruit. We complain a lot, justifiably so, about how Avila ran this organization into the ditch, and he did, but there's a recency bias when people put this current situation on the level of where the team was when Smith was fired / DD took over. Like, the Tigers aren't where we want them to be, there hasn't been enough talent that has accumulated since 2017, it'll probably take a least 2-3 more years to be competitive, but this still is a far more talented roster than the 2003 team ever was in just about every phase of the game.

On the economy, there are a variety of opinions out there on what will happen in the next 18 months and what impacts that it may have. But I do note that, when you look at various polls, a lot of Americans actually have believed that we are already in recession and have priced in negative numbers for the President on the economy dating back into last year on account of inflation. And as far as I can tell, especially based on the massive letdown for the GOP that was the 2022 Midterm Election, it hasn't really helped the GOP all that much. So anybody confidently predicting what a recession will or won't do in today's politics should probably humble themselves a lil' bit.

Sooner Than That

A little national hype for Malloy from the (no longer verified) MLB Pipeline Twitter acct

And I get that. Predictions are often wrong and I've been wrong before. But in order for DeSantis (or any of the challengers) to have a path in this field, there will have to be some sort of black swan event that changes the political landscape IMO. Obviously events will happen between then and now, but I'm really unclear what event, outside of Trump's death, would actually alter the state of the race... his grip on the base of the GOP primary electorate is strong, he continues to command 40-50+% of the base, and there really hasn't been much to-date that has shaken that grip over the last 5-6 yeats. So again, even setting aside DeSantis' weaknesses as a candidate, fundamentally it's not easy to see the case for his status in the race or his path to the nomination at this point. Other than the fact that GOP insiders who wish to capitalize on Trump's strengths without having to run Trump in a general election seem to think DeSantis is a good avatar for that.