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Everyone knows Skubal will say no to this—same way everyone knew Correa would say no to Avila's 10/275 offer—so, don't even bother.

Insight of the day. Well, insight of Wednesday, anyway. But yeah, good one.

The known unknown here is whether Alex Verdugo would have put up closer to Mookie numbers had he stayed in LA. When it comes to production, what organization you're in, and their developmental and deployment philosophies, matter a lot.

You'd think the team that would go 9/214 on Prince Fielder and 8/248 on the rotting corpse of Miggy Cabrera could go 10/475 for 30-year-old already-Tommy-Johned Tarik Skubal, wouldn't you?

There are some pretty good guys on the market this winter. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us take a competitive run at Dylan Cease.

Kind of like the first three months of this season? I don’t think that’s the last time we’ll feel that about the Harris Tigers.

I’m excited by this team because we are building it from within rather than from without. I like that aspect of it.

Nice performative dive by Barger on a ball he could have pretty easily caught standing up. Can’t blame him—it gets him lots of love from media and fans who don’t quite notice it.

I don’t necessarily buy #3, especially if we win a pennant with him in the driver’s seat.

I can’t see that.

Max A crushed it when it came to assists and putouts per game, with only two errors in 185 innings, or about MLB average.

True, they had two World Series and four consecutive playoff appearances. We’d never had that before. I will also say I was never as excited for the future at any point with that team as I am with this one.

Maybe, but Bill Gates did not intentionally starve his business for her. Come on.

People don’t remember this, but Tucker got off to an all-world start this year, which really helped his final numbers. He also missed almost all of September with a calf strain, which would make me a little nervous if we signed him.

I’ll be on board with your cynicism once I see Harris sell off Skubal and ends up making it significantly harder to compete in 2026.

Good luck selling him on Detroit over Los Angeles or San Francisco or Seattle.

I think so, too. Wenceel is either a fourth guy for a playoff team or a starter for a second-division team. Heck, if he were to settle into a career with the Angels or the Pirates of the game, I bet he could be a multiple-time All-Star.

I really don’t think Flaherty is going to pick up his option. He can do better elsewhere, especially in years. Unless we give him years, which, that would make me nervous.

Nice work if you can get it.

Do you know what their salaries are? Is it the big league minimum as long as they’re on the 40, or is there another tier of minor league salary they make that’s better than non-40 players make?

I’m guessing this is a cume number and not average quarter hour. It’s easier to accumulate nine million viewers across five hours than across two-and-a-half.

At least one guy is.

I could see us taking a run at Dylan Cease. Good strikeout guy, albeit with a slightly elevated walk rate, and his soft topline numbers are bolstered by some solid numbers under the hood. That might even save us a year. Given that he's coming out at age 30, I could see going for 4/100, although he'll probably want six years. His being a flyball pitcher might scare off teams with short parks, so that might help. As for the position players listed here, I don't know that we seriously go for any of them, even Bregman. I wouldn't mind seeing Bregman suit up for us for a couple years, but with Max Anderson taking reps at third (and looking good there!) and due to arrive next year, he might be the guy we're looking to step in there. We also have Hao Yu-Lee banging on the door. But if we throw 8/300 at Bregman instead, I'll gulp and support it.

Harris hoped to strike gold by picking up volume. It look like it might work for the first one or two starts, then it stopped working, so that approach did not bear fruit this year. But given that no one was eager to deal frontline starters, what should Harris have done instead? Merrill Kelly? It took the Rangers three top 15 pitching prospects to get him, it didn't work for them, and now Kelly is gone as a free agent. Shane Bieber? What do you suppose it would have taken the Tigers for get the Guardians to trade him to us? Dustin May? Lol. Zack Littell? He couldn't strike out a fly and his FIP was a run and a half higher than his ERA, and the buyers had to pull a third team into the trade to make it happen. Those are the top starters that moved in the market.

And his way is working. Building up to his team takes time, effort, and development. There simply aren't any All-Star hitters available for the picking on the shelf at Walmart.