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Thank you for educating me on the concept of “working the phones.” If Harris “works the phones” with multiple teams regarding Skubal, I promise you that will become public in short order. I predict Harris will not “work the phones” to move Skubal this winter.

I wouldn’t call what is happening a collapse just yet, but this is how collapses typically start.

Oh my god, what just happened? What’s that pentagonal thing Riley just walked on?

I thought that story sounded familiar—it’s from two years ago.

While it is possible that Harris will trade Skubal before his time here is up, the only way we would put Skubal “up for auction” is if we have a complete collapse this season and next and we become sellers at next year’s deadline. The chances that Harris publicizes an auction for Skubal this winter is zero, +/- 0, and that goes double if we make the playoffs as currently projected. If we do end up trading him this winter—which would catch the media and public complete unaware—then in addition to multiple Pipeline-numbered prospects, the package would also have to include one major league starting pitcher, someone who projected to take a spot in next year’s rotation, as well as one hitter we can plug into the big league lineup on opening day next year. No way does Harris take five or six or however many lottery tickets alone for the guy who will be sporting back-to-back Cy Youngs.

I'm not pointing it out because I worry about it. I couldn't give less of a **** as long as we're winning. But I'm pretty sure Harris takes it into account when considering a player to sign or trade for.

I think it has been quite some time since teams have routinely given all of their DH at bats to overpaid superannuated sluggers. Here is a quick table I put together from Fangraphs data for 2024, showing how many total DH PAs each team had, how many they gave to their top DH, and at percent of the teams total that made up: Only 13 of the 30 teams gave more than half of their DH plate appearances to one guy, and 12 other teams gave fewer than a third to their top DH. Here's another way of looking at it: a total of 361 different hitters DH'ed for their team. Here is a list of all the players who "half-qualified" for a batting title (i.e., minimum 251 plate appearances) and got more than 50% of their team's DH plate trips: You don't have to count, I'll just tell you: only sixteen of the half-qualified hitters who DH'ed at any point of the season received as many as half the DH at bats their team logged last season. We can conclude that while there were some old, slow-footed, overpaid sluggers on these lists (hello, J.D., my old friend!), most of these guys were still under 30.

Looks like his changeup ain't changing.

Sonic’s Rendezvous played a dance at my high school in, I wanna say, 1977. Pretty unforgettable, in that I still remember it.

I think they might be getting to the point where they have to release something, because it’s simply gotten way too loud. The three main issues to navigate that I can see when they do get released will be (1) expurgations, meaning large chunks of the files not getting released with the rest; (2) selective redactions, meaning naming some names and redacting others; and (3) fraud; meaning authorship of additional text not in the originals and/or alterations of original text within.

Dark pajama bottoms with white jerseys is the main culprit.

Not close.

Well, technically, the product worked, since it deterred no chewing.