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So I read something today that I missed the first time around, I guess, and makes more sense than anything else: perhaps one reason why we didn’t buy ourselves a fire-breathing strikeout reliever at the deadline is because Scott Harris thinks Troy Melton might be that guy. And that does make sense, since he did strike out something like 13 batters per nine in Toledo. So sure, why not give him a try there?

Flip side: I saw an astonishing number of unhoused people in Anchorage and Fairbanks, and, of course, Portland. It's something about western cities.

Plus they came out during the 70s, a decade which sexualized underage girls to a frightening and unprecedented degree. It was actually the Brooke Shields documentary from a few years ago from which I learned why that actually happened.

Trump will issue a decree demanding some blue state install LT as a principal at a girls-only middle school or risk losing federal education funds.

That's right!

Yes, they have.

That's what I thought! 😂

So, zombie runner outrage >>> Tiger extra-inning win? Do I have that straight? 😉

I can't think of anyone Harris has screwed over.

Al Avila was not hard to deal with.

To Oblong's point, it works.

If it was really only about losing money, wouldn’t they have axed him immediately, instead of continuing to lose money for another nine months?

Yes, I did forget to mention the Diamondbacks. Well, if “crap happens”, you know whom to blame.

I’m sure Harris growing into someone who’s easy to deal with would please the several other GMs. My question is, is that something we really need?

And with Isaac Paredes, Willi Castro, Daz Cameron, Christin Stewart, and Parker Meadows anchoring our lineup, Al Avila has positioned us for a slew of pennants!

If they make it that far and productively, in ten years, those four might cost something close to $200 million a season just by themselves.

It occurs to me that when a team acquires talent because it is “proven”, they are by definition looking backward and not forward. They are paying for past performance and not future results, and as we know from investing caveats, the former is not indicative of the latter. I’m glad the GM/PBO of the team I follow most does not invest based mainly on past performance.

Do you think Harris is likely to keep Kahnle to save face even if we have better options in-house?

Both Fangraphs and Reference say we are middle of the pack at third base. What are you seeing that says different?

As much as I agree with all of this, I would like to have gotten a swing-and-miss strikeout guy at the back of the pen, which we don’t have now. Brock Stewart for Akil Baddoo might have worked, since Akil has more upside than James Outman (I would think?). Maybe Paul Seward will come back next month and be that guy, I don’t know. But it looks like Harris identified a bunch of guys in volume, all of whom do something really well and we think we can patch up the other things they lack in enough to get two-plus months of good to great performance from them. And we kept all of our top prospects, which I think is a very good thing considering, as you say, we are way way ahead in the division and practically assured of a tournament run. If the division were close, especially with the Guards, we might have seen some more aggressive moves. It could be argued that we are prospect hoarding the way the Orioles did last year, and they came into the season as a favorite for the pennant (on par with the Tigers), and look how that’s gone. So it remains to be seen how that will transpire over the next year or two. In the end, I think this is about building a sustainable winner, our lack of progress toward this being something a lot of us (especially me) had been whining about during the last several years of the Avila Reign of Error. There will always be All-In Guys among us and we’re going to hear from them, and you know what? That’s great. That’s entertaining. Philosophical conformity is boring. So let’s argue about this some more. 😁

Some insight from Harris.

Wow, I didn’t realize the Twins were eating so much money on the Correa deal. Well … not as much as Avila ate on the Verlander deal …

But I want to be concerned about that. Very concerned. Very, very, very concerned.

I think if there’s anything a player will admit, it’s that they don’t like to sit!