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We've all been seeing the hair-on-fire responses by Democrats, fearing that the pardon will undercut faith in the U.S. justice system and give Trump the excuse he's been looking for to criticize and remake the Justice Department. But didn't Ttump and the red hats already have zero faith in the U.S. justice system anyway? And wasn't he already going to tear down the justice system and use it as his personal judge, jury, and execution force against political, media, and Hollywood enemies? So, Democrats, tell me: how does this pardon make that possibility worse? Exactly what's going to happen now under Ttump directly because of this pardon that wouldn't have happened anyway?

You know I'm not a slappy. Or maybe you don't know that. I don't know. But my choice to make the assumption is indeed a choice, an intellectual decision, not an instinctual emotional response. Maybe you don't believe that, either. Hell, I have no idea what you believe. 😝

Yes, the Tigers were in the playoffs. Some believe we overachieved on record based on our underlying elements. There's a good debate that could be had for that. Setting aside what I might like them to do, I would bet the front office believes that we have too many roster holes to fill to allow us to make the one big splash on the big-time free agent and push all the chips in to the middle and leave it all on the field in 2025 or bust. But, if that's where the front office thinks we are, I'll support it until it blows up in our faces.

It's not going to happen, unless they do that trick where they maintain harmful policy despite 80%+ opposition to it.

I could fear us going the Pirates/Rays/A's route, selling off good young players before they get expensive and replacing them with good cheap alternatives that keeps us in a 75-85-win loop indefinitely. But I have not seen any indication yet that this is what Harris-Ilitch are fixing to do, so I am going to assume they intend to build us into a perennial winner, until they prove otherwise. Yes, I recognize that assuming this, and expectations in general, are just a recipe for disappointment. Well, I'm ready to take that chance on this group. Speaking only for myself, I'm at the end of my life, so I feel as though I need to hope for something good for this franchise before the curtain falls, versus maintaining perpetual cynicism to the bitter end.

They'll just create new charges post-pardon and haul them in for those.

Exactly. The game on the field is merely the conduit for maximizing revenue, and can be radically modified to that end. And if a particular radical modification doesn’t work, they can employ additional radical modifications until they are satisfied they’ve achieved optimal profitability trajectory.

I can see us passing on Bregman this time because we have other holes to fill and/or the front office is calculating that we have enough to cover third base well enough going forward. They may also try to cover it with a trade for Arenado, which is getting a lot more Twitter buzz the past day or so. I’m not sure how I feel about a grizzled veteran parachuting into a group of underpaid kids in the same circumstance who are all getting along—after all, Arenado was getting mouthy in the media about how the kids were overrunning the Cardinals clubhouse—but he is a plus defender with pop in the stick who would put us on the hook for only 3/69, rather than 6+/pushing 200. It might depend as much on how any new player gels within the clubhouse and its culture for the next several seasons, as it does on how much the new guy can help us play into November in 2025 and we’ll figure out what happens after that.

It’s not about the game on the field. It’s about the stars in the promotional spots. That’s how they want to grow the game.

If Harris signs Alex Bregman, I am all in on that. If Harris does not sign Alex Bregman, I’m all in on that, too. That’s because my assumption is that the decision will be based strictly on whether Bregman is the best fit for us both right now and going forward, and that we won’t be signing him because we have to sign whatever big free agent we can so we can signal our arrival, or that we will forego signing him because Bregman’s perfect for us but Baby Doc simply doesn’t want to spend the money.

I remember going to HR early-ish in my career because my boss, who was known to be skating on thin ice in other aspects of her job, was using the force of her authority to employ bullying tactics against me. I had been chafing against it, but it was only getting worse. HR’s suggestion? Just show acceptance of it by “rolling over and showing my belly”—that way I’d be showing my submission in a proper way, she’d be satisfied that I recognize her as the dominant force, and then she would stop bullying me and start treating me with respect. That was the last time I ever went to HR for anything.

Well, that blows that entire position out of the water.

Well, they do oppose Ukraine, so that’s what passes as anti-war cred.

But he can start dropping bombs on Iran. After all, Iraq didn’t have anything to do with 9/11, either.

Did you say you wanted to see Mickey Mantle’s first career at-bat? Well, here you go, then:

Trump dropped bombs on seven countries when he was president the first time around.

Похоже вам ребята пора начинать подтягивать свой русский.

You mean the Republican Senate that's utterly beholden to the leader of their party? That Senate?

I already tried this argument here. No takers.

Hey, the top tier basketball league in the world fields teams in Oklahoma City, Memphis, and New Orleans, and they are all smaller markets than Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek.

That's a sad field of study to excel in.

Yes, but there's more. It's not just that aging hitters have slower reflexes. It's also that the pitcher class they face as an old hitter is better than they did as a young hitter. Especially nowadays—pitchers are much harder to hit now, if nothing else than due to velocity, than they were fifteen, or ten, or even five years ago. I like to call it the Wooderson Effect: the batter gets older, the pitchers stay the same age.

More evidence supporting the hypothesis that Ricketts is all about going to the bank and not at all about winning an eminently winnable division.

I'd be surprised if those deferred obligations did not factor into the sales price.

Oh, yeah, they got a straight line to the White House on crypto, and they have the criminal history Ttump loves so much in his cohorts, so hells yeah they're coming back.