chasfh

Didn't Harris try to be bolder last season by offering the highest dollar contract to Alex Bregman, who turned it down? So it would not make sense for Harris, as we are closer to being a World Series contender now than we were last winter, for him to start pulling up short on effort this winter. The $64 question will be, as always: will players choose to come to Detroit over going east or west? There are several palpable reasons many wouldn't—too far from family; bad ballpark for RHHs; nobody speaks Spanish here; nobody speaks Japanese here; town's a dump; town's a dead end for their personal brand; iffy prospects when it comes to winning; probably a few more escaping me now. All these are real concerns we would have to overpay to overcome. The biggest one in our favor is the iffy prospects for winning part—meaning, not so iffy anymore. We should have proven we are going in the right direction—but there may still be some non-believers in the game out there which might cost us a shot at a number of guys. Trades might be more of the way we have to go over wooing free agents at the top of the market. Should be an interesting time once it really gets going next week.

Petriello at MLB thinks Flaherty’s situation is complicated, and he believes there’s a decent chance that Jack simply exercises the player option. I would be really surprised if Flaherty just exercises the option, and I would be only slightly less surprised if the Tigers offered a QO and he took it. I still think the most likely thing is Flaherty goes to the marketplace and picks up at least three years.

"President Donald Trump’s approval rating has slumped to just 37%" "Trump" rhymes with "slump". Coincidence? Fate? Irony? You be the judge.

They're sitting around waiting for the sweet moment when all the well-off white liberals who AI determines probably did not vote for Trump are dispossessed of their entire assets, first to pay for their own arrest, transport, incarceration and the disposal of their bodies once they're finished with, with the remainder to be disbursed among the MAGA elites afterwards. Don't think it could ever happen? History disagrees.

I think you have a lot of company on this. I simply disagree with this idea completely, even if the step back were to entail only 2026, which I don't think is necessarily a given. The Detroit Tigers are on a definite momentous path of contending for a World Series in 2026. Not just make the playoffs next year—the Kansas City Royals hope they will simply make to the playoffs next year. That's not us. We are clearly trajecting toward the World Series. With Skubal in the fold, a few of the right offseason and deadline moves, and progress from key young players, we are on a clear path to get the World Series next year. I don't know any general manager worth his s**t who, while on that trajectory, would put an immediate halt to it so he could position his team to get back to that same place no sooner than three years from now, which is 2028, at best, and probably more like 2029 or even 2030. For one thing, the fans would go absolutely ape**** after winning playoff series the last two years, and now being told that the payoffs are no longer the primary goal the following year. Okay? That would be bad enough. But what is arguably even worse is that Harris would lose the players in the organization with such a strategy. What does it tell a Riley Greene or Spencer Torkelson—or, fine, if you don't give a **** what those guys think, then a Dillon Dingler, or a Jackson Jobe, or Kevin McGonigle or Max Clark or a dozen other ranked young talents—that you as a general manager are willing to halt an organization's progress toward a World Series now for the expressed purpose of putting us back on that same track to make the World Series three or four years from now? And not only the players in this organization, but also, the free agents outside of this organization. What halfway decent free agent in his right mind is going to sign with a team operating with the expressed intent of going backward the year they come aboard? Who on god's green earth would want to sign up for that? And not only free agents this year, but free agents every single year Scott Harris is running this team. No top-tier free agent would ever want to devote the best earning years of his life to an organization who has proved that, at any given moment, they are willing to blow it all up and go backwards because it might pay out four or five years now. Trading Tarik Skubal this winter is practically guaranteed to limit our prospective free agent pool to guys who are willing to sign one-year prove-it deals, and nothing more, for the rest of Harris's tenure with us. And, bonus: Harris would be undertaking such a strategy when not only is there no immediate payroll pressure building on him, but the payroll pressure is actually easing on him. That just strikes me as absolutely bonkers. Now: I get that it strikes you as absolutely bonkers that I would want to hang onto Skubal and take a chance that the team collapses in 2026, misses the playoffs anyway, fails to sign Skubal long term, loses him to the market, and all we get is some ****ty draft pick for him, if that. I can see why someone would want to avoid that circumstance at all costs which, obviously, includes the cost of giving up a generationally-talented pitcher in his prime for the next year. So, it would be fair of you to ask me: am I, chasfh, willing to roll the dice, keep Skubal for possibly one and only one more year, and perhaps miss out on the playoffs, lose him afterwards, and start over with the guys we have left? And I would answer: yes! Yes! A thousand more times yes! And I say that because we are in a position of contending for a World Series now. That hasn't come around these parts very often and, not to put too fine a point on it, I ain't getting any younger. And I do not want to give that up just to play not to lose in some vague, indeterminate future. But, also, I would want Scott Harris to demonstrate to players both inside and outside the organization that when it's our time to compete, we put the pedal to the floor, instead of putting the car in the garage. To me, that's probably the most important consideration Scott Harris should have as he reviews the options he has before him this winter. I love ya, man, but we're gonna have to disagree on this and keep arguing about it for the next few months.

Wouldn't we have to actively plan to be up against the tax in five years in order to make this pay out for us? Otherwise it would look weird for us to give Dingler a substantial premium on the expected payout for his arb years—which is what it would take to get him to sign on the line that is dotted—and then not follow through on the overall spending to get up against the tax that would make that premium arb payout worth it. Are you aware of any successful real-world examples of this strategy that you can share?

I think Harris will at least kick the ties on Cease. The main problem with Cease is, even though he strikes out guys at a clip closer to Skubal than to literally the rest of the entire staff, he's also wild around the plate.

Yes, but there's more. It's also that when Trump appears dumb, and the non-supporters and non-supporter media point that out, the red hats take personal offense at it. Trump has successfully conflated all criticism of him with criticism of everyone who supports him. He has said to the red hats, in so many words, "they hate me because they hate you" (an idea his machine stole directly from John 15:18). This extends to their logical conclusion that the attempt by a wack job to shoot Trump is a manifestation of Biden voters wanting to murder Trump voters. It won't be long until red hats conclude, "we have to kill them before they kill us." We are not there yet. But we are not as far away from it as naive non-red hats think.

I'll give you credit for stepping up with trade possibilities. There are any number of guys here who would have said, it's not MY job to come up with the trade it's Harris's he should just DO IT unless he totally SUCKS which he DOES! So kudos to you on that. I will say that your return packages contain either pitchers who will be nearly as good as Skubal possibly as soon as next year, or players at positions we already have logjams at (infield, catcher). So I'm not sure what that means for our own top prospects, unless your idea also includes liquidating our own guys for Hunter Brown or Andrew Abbott or some other controllable Cy Young-level guy. So let me set that part aside and ask you this: if we were to trade Skubal for any of these packages, would you be happy for the Tigers to take a step back and miss the playoffs next year, and perhaps the year after, for the promise of a string of playoff appearances anchored by controllable players starting in 2028? Would missing the playoffs for the next two years after making it to the LDS the last two years be an acceptable tradeoff for you to make?

Dingler's already under control for the next five seasons, so, what kind of extension do you want to see?

I do pay for Spotrac, but the only reason is because I got a gift card for re-upping with my TV provider, and unlike most Internet services with subscription-based options, they accept it. I regard gift cards like that as free money, so I use the few gift cards I do get for the kinds of things I would never ever buy with my own earned money. Lately it’s been Internet subscriptions like Spotrac and MLB Trade Rumors, another website that accepts gift cards as payment. I am getting another gift card in the mail soon, so I will probably re-up with them, because why not, it’s free money.

I wouldn’t say I have different views of him now than I did during the criminal administration he was part of, but I will say I miss the days when it was he who was the apotheosis of evil.

He knew. He absolutely knew.

There is no actual thinking. There is only primal response.

When JD finally does leave his family and take up with Kirk, it will be hailed by MAGA as a match made in literal Heaven.

Please tell us the trade you want to see. Where are we trading Skubal to, and which of their guys are we getting back?

There is only one guy I can think of who would gladly empty out the top of the farm system for one year of a Cy Young winner who would likely leave the following year, and that guy doesn’t work here anymore.

If we trade Skubal, our trajectory will go backward, not forward. I can hardly imagine the ****storm that would rain down on Harris if he were to trade Skubal and we miss the playoffs next year.

I don't know why you even try.

Right, although. consider carefully what it is I am saying. I am not saying that communist states routinely practiced open democracy. They did not. What I am saying is that the concept of communism is not mutually exclusive from the concept of democracy. It is possible to practice both of them simultaneously, which means communism would have to work hard in the marketplace of ideas to win votes. This is something Trumpian corporate socialism cannot do, which is why they are working feverishly to strangle democracy in its bed.

That makes sense, since 68% of Illinois' population lives in the nine-county Illinois portion of the Chicago–Naperville–Elgin Metropolitan Statistical Area.

I believe they do promote themselves as "The #1 news team on Comedy Central".

It would have to be substantially more than one dollar more.

I don't even know that extending a catcher after his rookie season would be a good idea, unless he were at least Bill Freehan-level or higher, and we're talking maybe among top twenty in history. And even so, too many bad things can happen to catchers along the way, much more than any other position.