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So he punts high from the end zone to mid-field, and then through their end zone when deep in his own zone. A little thing but that’s how complete and far-reaching this collapse is.

I won’t say we are donezo, but man, it is hard to stop a runaway train like this.

That’s demonstrably not true. You yourself literally said if it weren’t for Avila, Harris would be on the hot seat. And that Harris doesn’t know how to build teams because if it were up to him, we’d have nothing but Phil Matons and Charlie Mortons playing for us. And that If it weren't for Al Avila, the Tigers wouldn't have made the playoffs the last two seasons.

But I do give Al Avila credit for bringing the players on board. Of course I do. He was here and in charge when we brought them here. I’m not giving him credit for the actual winning, though. That’s a completely different deal. Avila has been gone for 3-1/2 years now, and he did not assemble this particular roster, this particular mix; he did not work with Hinch on the deployment of it; he did not work with the coaches and scouting staff on subsequent drafts and trades and deadlines; and he did not oversee the development and infrastructure upgrades that polished this team for play on the field in 2024 and 2025. Avila had nothing to do with any of that. Harris did. He completed the final assembly of this roster that, yes, is still using some of the players that Avila brought in, because a new GM can’t just fire every player and start all over on a dime. He has to figure out who in the short term he can save and who he can’t, because he can’t not put a team on the field wile he’s fixing everything. I also don’t think Avila was any particular brand of genius when it came to bringing together this particular group of players that has survived with the team thus far. I think he could have picked a completely different set of similarly-talented players, completely different guys with practically the same spread of potentials, and Harris would still have come on board, sifted through them, kept a few and dumped the rest, handed them to Hinch and the coaches with the same developmental and infrastructural tool upgrades, and probably have done practically as well with those guys. Maybe a little better. Maybe a little worse. But probably right around the same. I believe that overseeing the drafting of amateur players is among the lowest level skills a GM can have, especially a guy who was a head scout like Avila. Anyone could sift through the reports he had available to him and make the same selections based on the numbers and words on them. You could do that, I could do that, we all could do that. But as you’ll surely admit, it takes a lot more than just picking a bunch of guys in a draft and throwing them onto the field to win playoff series. A GM also has to sign guys on the international market, and make good trades, and make good minor league free agent signings, and, when he team is down, make good waiver wire and Rule 5 pickups. And, crucially, he has to oversee the positive development of the raw talent they get into serviceably productive and even good major league players. Avila demonstrated over and over that couldn’t do any of that any better than a blind squirrel. Harris has shown he is pretty good at it. Sure, Harris still fails at it sometimes, we’ve all seen that. But every GM fails at it sometimes. Pobody’s nerfect. The proof in the pudding is the relative success rate. And as much as people want to credit Avila for the roster and even the winning, without Harris pickups like Vierling and Torres and McKinstry and Ibanez and Kelly and Flaherty and Holton and Finnegan, and without the positive development of all of them by the development staff, coaches, and infrastructural upgrades, the Tigers would not be where we are today, a repeat playoff team within three years. And none of this has even contemplated the promising farm system about to belch up a cornucopia of top prospects, some of whom will also become very good big league players, even stars. Not all of them, sure. But not none of them, either. And not next year, probably. But not never, either. It’s gonna happen. And maybe I’m setting myself up for being a sucker and a fool, but I believe it. So I’m continuing to give Harris the benefit of the doubt until I can see that what he is doing is simply and persistently not working. If all of this falls apart, if we start losing 90+ games a season year in and year out, if Harris demonstrates that he’s unable to fix it? Then I will call for his head. Not before.

I finally let mine lapse earlier this year. It wasn’t even worth the $29 a year I had been getting it for.

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You keep suggesting that Harris must either be skittish about signing free agents or ilitch must be clamping him down, ignoring the idea that the top free agents may simply have wanted to go to higher profile teams instead, which is a real possibility. Just ask Alex Bregman, who turned down more money from us to go to a Big Six team with a short LF porch. You make it sound as though Harris is a child whose daddy won’t let him buy an expensive toy at Target. Toys at Target don’t have the agency of choosing not to be bought. And people keep bringing up the Cobb thing as though it was a fatal error that sunk the franchise. Really, it wasn’t that big a deal. We still won a playoff series without him. You seem unclear on the winky-wink concept. 😁

I like Jansen for a year. He’s not in his prime, but he’s earned a shot at the back of this bullpen. Keeps runners off the bases, walk rate is lowest it’s been in several years, even if he didn’t strike out the world last season. And going from the Angels to the Tigers is a definite upgrade for him.

Right, McGonigle would be only a short term fix at short, which is why they’re working him at short this winter. And he may even demonstrate in camp that he’s not up to it.

I would be shocked if the Cubs traded Nico. He’s been on a Hall of Fame-level run the last four years and he’s one of their most popular players. But man, what a pickup that guy would be. Not sure what we would end up doing with Torres, though.

You mean me, don’t you? Go on, admit it. 😉😝 You and others will roll your eyes at this, but I don’t think I qualify as a Harris slappy. A slappy is not just someone who offers much more praise than criticism of a person, but one who actively ignores or disregards the failures by the person, casting such as being untrue or even non-existent. That’s not me, with anyone. That’s what uncritical people do, and anyone who’s paid even a little attention over the years would never characterize me as uncritical. You may be thinking of Harris’s not signing huge free agents, not making trades for established All-Stars, and not winning trade deadlines, as being abject failures. Free agents have agency, and many of the best free agents simply don’t want to come to Detroit if they have better options. Established All-Stars require top prospects or even established big leaguers in trade, and even you have said you would not to want to lose our best prospects in trade. And lack of high-impact deadline trades might mean he was offered jack**** in exchange for numbered prospects. With a nod to Edman, trying to prove incompetence because of lack of activity is akin to trying to disprove a null hypothesis. There are a lot of variables at play that we’re not privy to, and I don’t think it makes anyone a slappy to say that Harris deserves the benefit of the doubt that he knows what he’s doing until it’s clear that he doesn’t, versus the out-of-the-box assumption that every move that doesn’t go his way merely highlights his incompetence. And that’s doubly true since he’s led the team from the dregs of baseball to two playoff series wins in just his first three years. When Harris starts making **** trades and free agent signings that blow up in his face and losing 95+ games a season with no end in sight—yes, like Avila did—then I’ll jump on your bandwagon. Not before.

Yes, I misread as much on his card. I also was misled by another web page that Randy Smith and Al Avila were GM and assistant, with Dave Dombrowski not yet in the picture, and my own memory failed to evaluate and dismiss that. A couple big swings and misses on my part. Time to go back to the cages. 😁

But now we know who he is, so, mission accomplished. 🤡

What won’t be fake is when Trump and the MAGA elite blame Biden, Obama, and the Democrats in Congress for it. 😁

This is Breaking Bad Fly episode writ sci-fi. I found it interesting that both Carol and Manuoso gave in to the force (or whatever it’s called) at the end, the former through crushing ennui and the latter through mortal desperation. Is this a precursor to their warming up to the idea of subsuming themselves to it? I could possibly see this for Carol who lost a loved one to it. Not so much for Manuoso, who thought the mother lost to it was “a bitch”. Of course, if Carol gIves in, that would seem to shorten the series a bit, wouldn’t it? Although maybe the focus shifts completely to Manuoso at that point. It would be a neat bait and switch that I don’t believe could happen until after a season finale cliffhanger. If the force (or whatever it’s called) is an analogy for modern-day fascism, as some have speculated, then I would guess at some point it’s going to have to stop granting wishes, like some interstellar genie, to Carol et al and start demanding some things in return for letting them live their lives to the degree the force will allow and the people will accept.

If you have the money, our healthcare system is the best in the world. If you have the money.

They’re working McGonigle at shortstop right now. We still have Baez, too. It’s true they aren’t long-term solutions, guys we can plug in there for the next eight years, but then, Walmart isn’t exactly overflowing with long-term solutions at shortstop. I’d be surprised—shocked, actually—to see Bichette come here.

I agree with trying to sign a starting pitcher long term, and I think we have a puncher's chance of doing that this winter if we find the right candidate. Is King the guy? I don’t know, his card showed a lot of blue this year. Ranger Suarez might be a better bet, although prying him away from the Phillies or some Big Six team might be a challenge. Everyone else, including Framber, looks a bit soft and/or old. The pickings for long-term guys are a bit slim. I wouldn’t want us to throw a bunch of cash and years at a guy just to scratch an itch. As for position players, we have a lot of guys in the system who might be able to step in and produce starting this year. I think I’d be surprised to see us go 5+ years on anyone (and equally surprised to see a position guy go 5+ years on us). Ha-Seong Kim has been mentioned here, and I like him for three years tops, preferably two plus a team option. He’s got a good eye, good contact skills, a good glove, and enough pop to play in this park. In this market I don’t know whether that will get it done, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s as far as we’ll go on any position guy.

Leave it to me to accidentally resurrect Al Avila’s reputation and elevate him to an esteemed pedestal! 😂 OK, Avila fans, have it your way. You think your thing, I’ll think mine. Maybe you’ll get your wish, Scott Harris will crash the organization back into the rocks and get fired just like another guy did, and then Daddy will come back from his trip to Philadelphia for a pack of cigarettes and fix everything back the way you like it. 😉

I don't know if these breathless details are all accurate, but the basic story appears to be true. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/12/09/federal-agents-arrest-citizen-observer-watching-ice-north-minneapolis

I'll jump on the Fire Scott Harris bandwagon when we start losing because of his dicking around and ****ing up the prospect pool. Until that happens, I'm in wait and see mode.

Randy Smith hired Al Avila. He provided Avila to the Tigers, who in turn provided the manager, players, and pitching coach to Scott Harris. So, by the transitive property, Randy Smith deserves credit for the 2024-25 Tigers. Amirite? 😁 I find it ironic that Scott Harris is being penalized here because he managed to salvage something of the rot that Avila left him so quickly. Maybe if the Tigers hadn't gone to the playoffs under him starting with Year Two of his tenure, people would be giving him more credit for the work he's doing, instead of giving credit for Harris's winning to the guy who was dismissed for persistent incompetence and so is no longer here (or, not for nothing, anywhere else) anymore. I also find it strange that you make it sound as though player development is intangible, like prayer. I would have laughed out loud if anyone had told me you'd ever believe that. I guess it's not so funny after all. And my argument is not "all based" on that, in any event. Look, give Al Avila as much credit for today's team you see fit. That's strictly up to you and anyone else here. I can reply only that's simply ridiculous, because he had this team for seven years, and the best he could do was guide the team to a 101-loss pace across his last six, including 96 in the final season he was here. The team didn't win until Scott Harris came here, tore the insides out, threw them away, replaced them with the state of the art, and gave the people he saw fit to keep the tools to finally do the job in a way that the former guy was capable only of giving lip service to. This is Scott Harris's team, and he gets the lion's share of the credit for our winning. Full stop.

I don't exactly remember what that was you're referring to, sorry.

I want to be clear here: I don't really believe Randy Smith deserves credit for 2006 Tigers the way it's been laid out above. That was Dave Dombrowski's team, an entirely different philosophy had been implemented, and the Tigers turned from being a loser to being a winner as a result—just like this is Scott Harris's team with an entirely different philosophy implemented, and the Tigers turning from being a loser to being a winner as a result. Just as Dombrowski surveyed the landscape when he came in and kept the personnel Randy Smith acquired who he believed could still contribute to a winning Tigers team, Harris did the exact same thing, keeping the personnel he believes can contribute to a winning Tigers team during this particular window of time (although I'm pretty sure a few of those guys are going to be booted within a couple years as better options come online). That's why I say that to the degree Al Avila gets credit for the winning Tigers of 2024-25, Randy Smith gets credit for the winning Tigers of 2006 which, in my view, is nearly none. Continuing to insist that Al Avila deserves the lion's share of credit for the current team, apparently because I've been insisting he doesn't, is simply contrarian nonsense.