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Cannon’s just doing what she was hired to do.

I don’t know about that—I think there are people who would sit out on voting for Trump but would come out to vote for Vance, assuming the exact same positions, because of the way Trump acts out and makes the whole party look like a clown show. I’m talking about people who want their fascism wrapped up in a nicely presentable package. Vance can do that.

Going nutjob is Trump playing to his base. But if it's his odious policies you're talking about—militarizing the border, abortion restrictions, trading taxes for tariffs, all that—that's not just for red hats. The center-right might hate it when Trump opens his mouth, but they definitely like what he wants to do on policy. I'm thinking double-digit percent of voters would vote for Trump's policies in more of a J.D. Vance package. As a man who has a base of celebrity and who can breathe fire when it's convenient, Vance is actually the guy I worry about most post-Trump.

If she don't hawk tuah, don't wanna talk tuhuh

Kids: stay in school.

I had thought Trump would find a way to pull out, but now that it appears the debate is going to happen after all, the thing I’m most concerned about is that Trump comes off looking reasonable and Biden’s game plan is all about Trump being a madman. People in the middle want desperately to vote for a reasonable Republican, so if Trump has a quiet debate with little or no acting out, he might make serious in-roads into the middle without losing a single red hat. Of course, then he has four-plus month to maintain that veneer of reasonableness with the middle, so …

I didn’t see it, but the way I heard it described was, Perez was in the box and ready at ten seconds, Turnbull was diddling around, Perez than took a step back and looked down at eight seconds, then the call was made. The way the batter portion of the time rule is written is, “Batters must be in the box and alert to the pitcher by the 8-second mark or else be charged with an automatic strike.” Perez was ready at ten seconds, so he was ready BY eight seconds, which is the letter of the rule. But he had stepped back and was apparently not ready AT eight seconds, so he got popped for it. So it seems that even by the letter of the rule, Perez was in the clear. But even by the spirit of the rule, Perez was fine, and the umpire called it wrong. I think they should either change the wording to “at”, or else re-evaluate how that part of the rule is applied in the real world. The latter would be technically better, although the former would probably be easier.

Singing? Generous assessment …

If we were to trade Skubal this deadline, the Tigers might as well run ads telling people to stay home for the next couple of years, because there will be nothing to see and dream on. And make that double if we were to make the choice to trade Skubal and sign Flaherty for a single year, as someone suggested, instead of trading Flaherty and keeping Skubal for 2-1/2 years. Skubal is the one great player on the team and we have him locked up until at least mid-2026. Barring injury, there’s no way he’s not breaking camp with us next March.

We already tried the one championship team strategy. Didn’t work. Might as well try something different.

Choosing a first baseman at the top of the draft would have everything to do with Tork. Do that and we might as well put him in the bargain bin right afterwards.

Like I say, Wenceel is Mr. Right Now, so he’s in no danger of the GM yanking the rope away. But I am not penciling him in on the 2027 division winners, not even as a fourth outfielder.

Translation: The Supreme Court is open for business!

1) I think Harris has already made a few good trades. Unless you mean scrubs-for-All Stars trades? 2) Controlling the zone is all about getting yourself in a position to get good pitches by not swinging at bad pitches. I think every hitter can benefit from that. 3) I think Harris wants “his” guys because the other guy’s guys mostly suck. I don’t think it’s because Harris “has an ego”. I think it’s because he wants to build a winner.

I might be the only one here who thinks Wenceel is just passing through, versus being a cog on the next playoff team. His offensive numbers have a little BABIP helium in them, and he has no position to play here with a glove like his. Beyond this, his Savant card is awash in blue. I just don’t think he has much of a chance to be more than Mr. Right Now.

I absolutely did, and I’m thrilled the TV broadcast is no longer an echo chamber of conventional baseball thinking.

It is.

Not only that, but for teams serious about winning in October, having four guys in your rotation who can shut down any other team is the holy grail.

Sure, we could construct a bunch of lopsided trades with a bunch of teams that we’d be hard-pressed to pass up but which will never be offered. It’s not realistic but it’s fun, and Skubal will still be here on August 1, and to start 2025. BTW, Coby Mayo is minutes away from being called up to the Orioles to take third base from Ramon Urias, and he’s probably going to end up at first anyway, and we already have a bunch of those players in our system right now.

You may or may not have phrased it this way to make my evaluation of Avila’s tenure and legacy seem unreasonable, but I will cop to it as being a reasonable position to take. Avila was fired not only because he’d been failing for years on end, but because it was obvious even to the guy who didn’t want to see it that Avila had no idea how to stop failing. And even if any of Avila’s players do stay here and succeed, I will definitely give the Harris team credit for saving them and making them useful to the team, versus giving the blind squirrel equal credit for leaving Harris the nut in the first place. In any event, there won’t be more than a handful of those guys here in a couple years anyway. Randy Smith was indeed horrible, although I’m not so sure Juan turning him down saved him, because he was gone barely a year later. Remember this? Randy tried to trade Juan at the 2000 deadline to the Yankees for Ricky Ledee and Drew Henson.

With spotty success at best. There were a couple key hires he can take credit for—A.J., Chris Fetter, Ryan Garko—but the majority of people working in the system now were hired by these same guys or by the Harris front office. People also give Avila success for the team going into analytics, but I reasonably wonder whether it was all window dressing, as I more or less state in my BYB article here from over six years ago. If it was an actual investment, we got nothing out of it while he remained here, as we can see from the vast majority of trades and signings he made. And the data science we are taking advantage of now came in after he left.

This, I agree with, which is why I believe Harris won't—indeed, can't—do this. Do this and they might as well lock up the stadium to keep any remaining fans from getting in.

Lots of posters here were, and not just one or two guys. I was personally getting a lot of static for insisting that Avila was an abject failure by people who countered me with how many Avila guys were still on the team and in the system, and apparently because Harris didn't release them all when he came on board, Avila gets the credit for bringing them on board and helping to build the next Tigers winner. I even got hammered for saying Avila did not make a genius move by drafting Skubal in the ninth round and Carpenter 19th round. That was just a month ago! As for Avila being worse than Randy Smith, you've probably seen how people here roundly reject that assertion, although I'm probably the closest guy to you here on that point.

Javy's defense isn't great this year. It isn't even particularly good. That's what's going to make it easier to cut him before we carve the turkey after the Lions game.

Fair point. He’s likely to be here, too, provided he doesn’t spend two of the next three seasons on the List.