chasfh

And as we all know from investing, past results are a perfect guarantee of future performance. 😉

Well, I don’t think Trump would believe they’re so innocent, since they are fascist Communist Marxist Democrats bent on murdering all Republicans and therefore keeping America from being great. After all, Democrats run a corporate medical fascist tyranny, so red-blooded Americans have a duty to kill Democrats before they steal all the elections.

There will be less of that when we are actually in full contention mode.

Although had that happened, they would still be here! 😱

Right, it doesn’t matter what he says. He will do what he will do when he gets elected: destroy the government bureaucracy, fill the jobs with loyalists, deputize the military to act as police, gut the judiciary, suspend the Constitution, and eventually cheer while MAGA militias murder people who look like they might be Democrats, perhaps starting with college campuses in small Midwestern cities.

Agreed. It strikes me as more like a business-like effort to try to exploit an opening in the Republican market.

I was just talking about this with my buddy yesterday. He gets the newspaper delivered every day (New York Times, go ahead and judge him if you want), and that where he gets the majority of his news, by choice. I told him I miss getting the Free Press and the News and watching the network evening news and the 11 o’clock news and getting updates on NewsRadio 95. I felt so much better informed in general now, because nowadays, I keep trying to drink from the firehose on the Internet, and to your point, I find myself skimming a boatload of things and reading deeply less than I would like, and that when I try, I get antsy and I want to get back to skimming. I know my brain’s been rewired by the Internet, I don’t like it, and I have seriously considered trying to figure out a way to go back.

That's one of those movies where I totally skip over all the non-baseball parts.

You know that I meant the client approved of the agent asking for the year, not that the team didn't approve of the ask.

That’s a pretty good level. I could also see them trading for a good starting pitcher, maybe someone like Corbin Burnes. Brewers are having a fire sale and he’s a reliable top of the rotation piece with a year left until free agency. We might get him for relatively cheap and maybe sign him to a decent extension roughly what everyone wanted to give Eduardo. The potential downside is that he’s already losing ticks, but then, so has Eduardo, and Burnes is younger.

The Law of Absolutes may suggest that anything can happen and maybe the agent acted independently of and even against the wishes of the client, but Occam’s Razor says that the agent acted with the client’s approval.

Makes sense. Anyone paying half attention could have guessed this would be the case.

And this is why:

I've had my internet gateway box from AT&T going on four years, and I have an Asus router on top of that. (Network SSID? Asus and Eights. Natch.) I started noticing late last week that my internet connection broke, and when I looked at the gateway, all the lights on it were blinking red. I rebooted it and it was fine, for about 15 minutes. Then it rebooted itself. Then after ten minutes it did it again. I called AT&T and talked to AI which asked me a couple questions, did a diagnostic, said everything looked fine, and remotely rebooted my gateway yet again. It worked fine again the following morning, when it started rebooting itself fairly frequently. After a third day of this, I thought, sht, man, the box is failing. I called AT&T, zeroed through to a human being, and told him my box is failing, please send me another one, and no need to send a technician with it, I can connect it myself. The guy said, well, your box is only four years old so there shouldn't be a problem, so before we send you another box, let me run some diagnostics from here. I said, OK, I'll wait. About five minutes later he comes back on the line and says, our tests show that the CAT-5 cable you're connecting the box to the wall unit with is what's failing and causing your problem. You need to go to a Best Buy or Target and pick one up, and you might as well get a CAT-6 or CAT-7 cable since that's the new standard. I said, wait, I think I have CAT cables in the basement. And I did: a CAT-6, as it turns out. Plugged it in and bingo! Everything has been great ever since. Until today, when my connection through the router (separate from the gateway) started failing. First I noticed problems on my laptop; then I could not log into the Asus app through my phone. I think, damn it, man, the router is fai ... Waaaait a-a-a MINUTE! Ran downstairs, got another CAT-6 cable from downstairs, and came up to replace the cable connecting the router to the gateway. Went to take the cable out of the back of the gateway, and saw it actually has four separate CAT outlets, with the router plugged into one. And I thought, say, what if I just plug the existing cable into a different outlet? That's what I did, and that problem is fixed too! Very weird that I would have a cabling connection issue on the gateway and then the router in back-to-back weeks, after years of no issues with them at all. And the moral of the story is: check the goddamn cables and outlets first.

What a complete fcking waste of fcking time.

Didn't see this one coming. I was kind of hoping for Len Casper, but Benetti will certainly do. I've heard a good deal of Jason Benetti over the past eight years and people here will like him, and not just because Shep (may I call him Shep?) set such a low bar. Besides his great voice, Benetti does have a love of the game he conveys in his local broadcasts, although to be clear, he did grow up a White Sox fan, so that may have contributed some to that. You have already learned that Benetti will not be around for every game, since he has national commitments. It was always my expectation he would leave the Sox and go 100% national, and he may still end up 100% national, but at least he'll be in Detroit for a couple of years along the way. I know his contract calls for “at least” 127 games, but if they were taking money on it, I would put my bet on exactly 127 games. Benetti has a sly, arch sense of humor that's not too grating, although on occasion it overstays its welcome. Some here may remember the game he did with Bill Walton a few years ago. That was nationally-reported, and it was exactly the joke you would expect it to be. (I'm not sure whether I should be surprised that Walton knows as little about baseball as he showed.) But the next game Benetti had Michael Schur, aka Ken Tremendous, in the booth with him, and that was an absolute joy to experience. Try to find some of it online if you can. Benetti is not a stats guy, but he's not unfamiliar with stats, either. He's not a stories guy, either, probably because he doesn't have that depth of experience in the game for so many stories. What he does have is a pretty quick wit and the ability to play off a more experienced or inside guy, like Steve Stone, in the booth with him. That's why I'm interested in seeing whom they pair with Benetti. I would be shocked if Kirk Gibson were to come back, as that would be like oil and water even if Kirk were at the top of his broadcast game. But I would not be surprised to see Craig Monroe get a lot of time on the air with Benetti, since Monroe is relatively young (and black, which counts for something in Detroit). If I had my way, I'd have Cameron Maybin as the main analyst, but he's probably too national for a regular local gig as well. Although, who knows, maybe they'll surprise me there, too. I've never liked the idea of a team’s broadcaster regarding his gig as a second priority (Boog Sciambi does, too, although I actually like it when he's gone from the Cubs booth). I guess I’m OK with Dan doing the replacement games when Benetti is out, and it makes sense, I guess, although I like Dan far more on radio. I’m guessing we’ll be hearing a lot more of Greg Gania in the booth this coming season.

Reply of the morning.

God, please, no

I think we could have both, but I believe Juan Soto-level signings would come only after the rebuild is mostly complete and the roster and system have been fortified. I just don't see this ownership and regime as currently-constructed liquidating top prospects in trade for big stars, or shooting five offseasons' worth of free agent budget on one guy, hamstringing ourselves from making any other signings or extensions for the rest of the decade while we cross our fingers and hope the new big guy Michael-Jordans us to a couple of threepeats.

I'm glad Harris told Eduardo take the $49 million or hit the bricks. I don't want to see another five years of his flaky nonsense wrapped in declining performance into his mid 30s while on the Tigers. Let him go be somebody else's problem. I have confidence we can build a solid rotation of made up of standup guys without him.

It's funny 'cause it's true.

He also ghosted the team because of family matters, and botched the LA trade because of family matters, and ignored his catcher's signals in that one spring training game because of family matters.

I had to laugh when the majority of MLB.com “experts” predicted in an article yesterday that Eduardo would re-sign with the Tigers. They are clearly paying zero attention to all the nonsense that surrounded him the past two years.