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If the benchmark for Scott Harris is to get players along the lines of Suarez and Bednar and Clase and Keller and Cade Smith and do so without giving up any of our top five players, I think we’re going to have a lot of disappointed posters here on August 1. Although I do think we could get Taylor Ward at a cost of guys in the 6-20 range, if Taylor Ward were a guy Harris wanted. Not sure what would we do with Riley in that case, though.

This strikes me as a low-key brilliant move since they obviously don’t want to release anything and now they can blame the courts which they knew would block them from doing so.

All this makes a lot of sense. That doesn’t mean they won’t try it, especially after Trump primes the pump by claiming Obama and Biden administrations themselves changed official documents to cover their own crimes.

Nothing wrong with wanting what you want. I don’t think Harris sees it that way.

Speaking of Mannarino, what on god’s green earth is this guy even talking about??

Do you believe a 136 wRC+ with 200+ strikeouts is substantially worse than a 135 wRC+ with 156 strikeouts?

Do you believe in go for broke every time, everyone's available, this year or bust?

I suspect that due to our current skid, a lot of fans are going to be clamoring for Scott Harris to deal from the top of the system for players with great baseball card stats right now, in a bid to go for broke this year. (I am setting aside the idea of dealing mid-tier prospects like Jace Jung and Hao Yu-Lee for current All-Stars like Eugenio Suarez or Ryan O'Hearn or Emmanuel Clase or Brent Rooker, deals literally no GM on the other side would ever agree to.) Regardless of whether we could structure the kind of deal that could pry an All-Star off another team's roster, I don't think Scott Harris would do that kind of deal, and not because I think he's too scared or green to do a deal like that, but because I think he might believe the team is not at the organizational peak he or Ilitch envisions. Although people may not agree with this and think we should go for broke every time we have a chance to go to the playoffs, I believe Harris thinks he is still in the stages of building up to a vision of a peak team that will include key components from the current team, like Tork and Riley and Colt and Parker and Casey and Reese and Jobe and possibly Dingler, with certain guys still in the minors, like Max and McGonigle and Rainer and Liranzo. I think he is envisioning a time when most or all those guys are here and contributing, probably in the 2027-29 range, and that has no interest in either trading any of those guys, nor picking up anyone who would spend even a minute blocking them starting next year. Harris has a long-term plan and I believe he fully intends to see it to fruition, regardless of what facts on the ground are telling him now. Contrast our situation with that of the Cubs. Their roster is at peak right now, with Amaya, Busch, Hoerner, Swanson, Shaw, Happ, Crow-Armstrong, Tucker, and Suzuki all either fully mature or recently matriculated to the big club, with a potential rotation, if healthy, of Steele, Imagana, Boyd, Horton, Taillon, and Assad. They had already traded an All-Star 3B and two top 100 prospects for potentially only one year of Tucker, and they have a lot of prospect capital to deal for the pitchers they need to step in for those on the List now, particularly Steele, or will be by end of season. The Cubs are fully peaked and built to go for it all right now, especially since Jed Hoyer is at the end of his GM contract, so you can bet your sweep bippy he's gonna spend whatever has to to guide the team to win a ring this year, because at Wrigley Field, the current situation is, tomorrow never knows. Now is the time. They are on record with that. The Tigers, by contrast, have played with house money this entire season with a more or less patchwork roster as we've worked our way up to best record in the American League which, amazingly, was still the case this morning even after losing eight of our last nine. Our peak team is not now, as it is with the Cubs. Our peak team still in the future. That's why I don't see Scott Harris going for broke and liquidating top prospects for any guy with great baseball card stats this year. I see him going more for tactical fill-ins where we need them most, specifically (1) strike-em-out bullpen help, maybe a Ronny Henriquez, or a fireballing groundballer like Jose A Ferrer, and (2) probably a rotation piece, an under-the-radar guy like Eury Perez or Ryan Feltner or Michael Soroka. He might not get any of these guys if all these potential partners are insisting on unrealistic returns like, I don't know, Max and McGonigle for Henriquez and Perez. But I do think that is the pond he will be fishing in next week.

I knew I felt something was amiss last Friday. With Cleveland going ten in their last twelve, it’s a good thing we put so many games in the bank. During the radio broadcast, Dan and Dan were talking about a 6-11 swoon the ‘84 team had in August, during which the team was booed at home. I don’t know how the current swoon relates to the one from 41 years ago, but considering where each team was/is in its development curve, this seems more likely to be a massive correction. I’m not saying I believe it is for sure, but that is certainly within the range of outcomes.

What do you use to recognize that? I tried that with Shazam and it doesn’t work on my iPhone. Or at least it didnt when i tried it a couple times in the couple years ago range.

Non-game-related-post alert: I have recently noticed that the music coming out of the breaks on radio are now these generic rock riffs from studio musicians (or, perhaps more likely, created in Garage Band). It used to be actual songs that went fairly deep into the classic album rock catalog, like “Eighteen” from Alice Cooper, or “Highway Star” from Deep Purple. I understand why they would make the change, but it’s just one more small change for the worse that characterizes our current match through time.

Not quite ready for prime time, is he?

We don't need a first baseman, so I would think trading for Ryan O'Hearn is a non-starter. I also don't think Arizona will be so quick to sell, given how they just shoveled a bunch of money into Corbin Burnes's and Ketel Marte's pocket, as well as Corbin Carroll and Eduardo signed for big money just last year. Also, they're only 5-1/2 games out of the wild card with a third of the season to play, and while I would agree that they have much chance at all to make the playoffs, I'm hearing they themselves might not see it that way.

Technically true as this is, the cap players go into the Hall with means something to most ardent fans, probably because we tend to be fans more of teams than individual players. I would like to see Verlander go in as a Tiger. I'm a slappy that way. To the degree it's important at all in the big scheme of things, which is not really, it's important to me. Until just recently there would be a good chance he would go in as an Astro, especially after he won his second ring and his second Cy Young with them. They supercharged his late career and made him the winner practically all players long to be. When he went back to the Astros last year I thought he might retire with them and cement his legacy with their franchise. But he was terrible for them last year, so the Astros let him go, and now he's flailing with the Giants at the moment, so I think there's significantly less chance now that he goes in as an Astro. Part of it depends on how he finishes up. If he retires as a Giant, I think it's much better than 50/50 he goes in as a Tiger than as an Astro. BUT: if he were sign a one-day contract with one or the other team and he retires with that team, I think that's the cap he's going to wear to Cooperstown. And he has a reason to sign that ceremonial contract with either team.

Isn't that because the NBA has a salary floor?

The bigger problem is how they did so in November.

maybe the rubes will gnaw on this bone and forget the whole epstein hoax now

Aggrieved wanna-be dictators are becoming so boring

It's thinking along the lines of that which underpins fan support for team salary caps. The belief is that it will level the playing field among teams. Assuming whatever new salary cap is going to be roughly the same as next year's CBT amount, which is $244 million, at least 25 teams are already under that. And even if they set the first team salary cap at something drastically low—say, $150 million per team—the active payrolls of 20 teams are still under that. Most organizations are already hamstringing themselves when it comes to signing top talent. What makes us think these teams are all of a sudden going to spend a lot more once a cap is in place? Besides, even if by some unrealistic assumption the bottom feeders were to start spending under such a cap system, once the money is capped by team—once the top offers coming from places like Los Angeles and New York and Chicago versus Kansas City and Milwaukee and Pittsburgh are essentially the same—then the difference in money offered becomes less important, and other factors both hard (Which teams are going to win this year?) and soft (Which cities would my wife want to live? Where can I get the most national visibility and build my personal brand?) becomes more important. And this doesn't even contemplate whether it's fair and equitable that a team that generates way way more revenue, like the Yankees and Dodgers, should be held to the same hard spend caps that the Rays or Marlins are.

They still do, although to your point, the numbers the league leaders in this category put up have been dropping in the past few decades.

To be clear, I don't care whether Skubal makes 20 million, or 40 million, or 100 million a year. It's not the money I'm concerned about committing, because it's not my money. It's the years, because they are my years. I don't believe the hypothesis that teams reinvest money they save from friendly signings on additional star players has ever been borne out by any examples. Or, at least I can't think of any examples. Maybe someone else can?

Oops ... I meant this to say, now we know what Joe Biden himself sounds like in private.