chasfh

I was there for that. I never felt so much like the team on the field didn’t even want to be there.

If Sunday’s game doesn’t matter, I wonder whether Skubal even pitches it?

I don’t think I’d like to see officials who are not on the field just suddenly stopping play because they think they see something. I think they should be brought into the play only if players, coaches, or officials on the field appeal to them. Until that occurs, I believe the game belongs strictly on the field.

Two soft hits and nail a guy bunting in the face? Now I know we’re done.

It takes, like, 15 seconds.

It will go just as fast as you saw them go in spring training.

By the time the deal goes through and they take control of the Tenga stations, the Kimmel thing will be a distant memory, supplanted by hundreds of subsequent horrors big and small, and all super important for one news cycle.

It's worth remembering that Sinclair and Nexstar cover only small fraction of ABC's potential nationwide audience, and that most of that audience reside in small markets. They have 56 of ABC affiliates in the 210 markets, but only 14 of them are in Top 50 markets, covering 8.6% of US TV households; while 14 more are in markets 51-100 covering 3.4% of US TV HH; and the remaining 28 are in markets 101-210 covering 1.2% of US TV HH. So, 56 of 210 markets sounds like a lot, and it's not nothing, but grand total, the "ban" covers only about 13.3% of US TV HHs, which is fewer than the number of TV households in the New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago DMAs combined. It's because Sinclair and Nexstar focus on affiliates in small markets, many of those in deep ruby red areas, populated by people who probably didn't watch much Kimmel—or other late night talk shows—in the first place. So in the final analysis, all this posturing by the companies is for the benefit of an audience of one, and by extension, for both the minions who work for him and the red hats who idolize him.

I forget—which FCC commissioner was it who publicly called for ABC to remove Roseanne from the show?

I think you get two wrong challenges before you don't have any more. So theoretically a team could challenge every pitch in an inning and continue to do so as long as the umpire is always wrong, or at least not wrong more than once.

There might well be something to the idea that the rest of the league is simply catching up to Tigers' pitching, particularly the bullpen. So many of last year's better performers were new to the league, so it might also be a matter of the league getting more looks at them the next go around.

Thank you for watching all this so we don't have to.

****, that means the bar me and my Red Sox buddy are going to might not show the game. I might have to bring an iPad with me.

Not every other team is blowing a double digit division lead in three weeks.

Could've been worse. He could've said "nine".

Apropos of nothing, can anyone tell me the logic behind writing out words as "sh**ting", "sh*t", "g*n violence", "k!lled", "rac!st", "s3x!st", "h*mophobic", and "fasc!st"? Is the idea to thwart TikTok's Chinese censors so the video can post in the first place? Or is it a more mundane reason, the idea being to eliminate any possible opportunity to give offense? Does anyone here know enough to inform us?

I assume this is an exaggeration, but it does contain a pretty solid argument for the position that government, not the marketplace, should manage the distribution of essential utilities. That's a big part of what tax money, especially on the state and local side, should be used for. Consider how long it took to get electrification to the Appalachians.

I'm sure it is, but when the choice is $85 for a balcony seat versus $275 for a floor seat for an event you don't care so much about, the money part usually wins.

Getting there in the first place has to be the highest priory. We need Skubal for both games -6 and -1 more than we do for game -5 and the first game of a wild card series we may never even reach.

True, but I did see some suggest we trade various down-system flotsam for Bednar or Suarez or Duran or Mason Miller. Some will even say we could have because look who they did get traded for after all. But none of us were in the room so we don't know what Harris turned down. I do agree that the deadline was a mixed bag for him. Finnegan and Montero were pretty good pickups, but nothing else seems to have worked out.

That's fair, and I mostly agree on the value of return statement, although we don't all agree on what constitutes fair return. Fans naturally value their own assets way more than the market does, and I don't think two months of Skubal shopped by a flailing team seemingly desperate to sell returns a major-league-ready top 100 guy. Perhaps a down-the-system top 100 lottery ticket plus a major-league ready depth guy. People might reply, well of course we don't trade him if we can't get the right return. And that's the right way to see it. But then those same fans will also start hammering Harris for hugging players too closely, because we don't see any of the offers that come across that he rejects, so we imagine Harris turning down single-digit MLB prospects, and then we get ourselves big mad. It's really a small margin of error for Harris as far as that's concerned.

I’m not really making a value judgement here as much as trying to reflect how I think the front office might be seeing things. That’s generally my approach in discussions like these. I’m always very interested in the business side of how players are valued. Maybe I do miss working after all. 😁 As for what I actually want, I want the Tigers to keep Skubal for 2026, and I think they will. I don’t know how bad it would have to be for me to want to trade Skubal at the deadline, but if we’re playing sub-.400 ball by the end of next July, I guess I’d want to trade him for a major-league ready top 100 guy in AAA who can start in April 2027. I don’t know that two months of Skubal would give us that kind of return, and I also don’t think any team would sweeten the pot just to take Mize (as currently constructed) in a package. That’s almost always not how deadline deals work. Also: I’m not against being aggressive to win, per se. I just don’t think it has been the right time for Harris/Ilitch to push all the chips in to “win now” yet, and not because I wouldn’t like to win now—I’m as much of a meathead as anyone when it comes to winning now—but again, I am trying to see it form the front office point of view. If we start trading all the top of our system for proven veterans, as so many fans want to see, that means we are trading the future for the present, and if it fails, we might be right back to 2015 all over again. I wouldn’t want to see that, so yes, I’m glad they did not go all in this year, and I don’t want them to go all in next year, if trading Max and McGongile and the others is part of that bargain.

He is going to be 30 next year, and 31 the year after, so he might want to try to cash in on years while he still can. Plus there’s no guarantee the ball bounces his way in 2026, so if he has another year with bad topline numbers like this, he might not be able to get years at 31, whereas he probably could now. Worst case, he could always go out onto the market and if it doesn’t shape up quite his way, he takes another single-year contract which he could probably get at least 20 for, and then try again for 2027. I think going out is the better option for him.

But he’s been really good under the hood, and that will probably be really attractive on the market. I think we offer him the QO and be happy if he takes it.

Damn, it's an historic live ball span for Cleveland.