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I think one of the safest bets of the offseason is that everyone here is going to hate Scott Harris even more come March 25. I wonder whether FanKings or DraftDuel can come up with odds for that?? 😉

I think we owe it to ourselves to give Harris a chance to constitute the team next year around Skubal that can and will compete for the ring, keeping up our forward momentum, instead of giving up on the idea that he could ever succeed at it and advocating shipping off what is far and away our most valuable piece, and essentially quitting on the idea of winning 2026. At least that's the way it looks to me—unless Harris can pull off the magic trick of trading Skubal while more than making up for the wins he would have provided us next year, through the trade return, other trades, free agent signings, and propitious promotions of our top talent. If Harris could do that—boy, he'd be a lock for Executive of the Year, would he not?

But wait—there's more: If we trade Skubal to a team whose goal in picking him up is winning a ring in 2026, then wouldn't that get directly in our way, blocking our own goal of a ring in 2026? Especially if we were to trade him to an AL team like Seattle. Would Harris really load up a direct competitor with Tarik Skubal in order to wipe us out of the playoffs? So, if Harris does trade Skubal, then by default logic, he is giving up on winning a ring in 2026 for the promise of a vague and indeterminate future ring in who knows what season. And that would be kneecapping our momentum toward steadily improving this team in the hopes of winning a ring in, yes, 2026. And if Harris did that, he owuld be endlessly hammered for screwing up that momentum and our chances, regardless of how promising those future prospects are. This is why I have to conclude that there is no way on god's green earth Scott Harris trades Tarik Skubal unless the trade makes our team better in 2026, specifically—and I have trouble envisioning any way any other team would make a trade like that.

Pursuant to this point: I would find it really surprising if a team were willing to give up the impact MLB-level batter or pitcher we here covet in return for Skubal. After all, that team would be getting Skubal for a single year, 2026, so their goal, obviously, would be to win a ring in 2026. So it makes no sense—to me anyway—that they would hamper their chances of that by switching out multiple wins at one position in exchange for the wins Skubal brings them on the mound. That seems to me to be close to treading water on their part. Or am I missing something here? The only way I see it is they trade us a 2+ win guy who's blocking a top-100 prospect at the AAA level.

Would you like to see Harris budge on the ask?

I choose to not take suggestion this seriously. 😉

I would bet you'd agree that Manfred is not above substantially altering the sport in the pursuit of maximizing revenue.

It definitely was not a conservative rendering of the song, and given that the country was in the throes of the 1968 election, which was a referendum on Nixonian conservatism versus Great Society liberalism, that rendition simply became a flashpoint. Imagine the heads that exploded when Hendrix did his version at Woodstock. Feliciano’s version sounds relatively tame today, especially taken against the American Idol-style renditions that typify pre-game anthems today.

I’m not advocating for Golden At Bat—I’m just speculating on ways they might choose to refocus fan attention on players instead of teams, which they see the NFL and especially NBA wildly succeeding at, and MLB covets that.

To this point, I gotta believe that Dan Wilson mismanaged the Mariners out of the Series.

There are going to be a lot of boys named George graduating from Ontario high schools in 2044.

Riley has proved he can be. Tork is showing potential of possibly being. We don’t know what Dingler is quite yet. No one else is in that realm. So you’re right—we’re short on talent. But please remember: we are not at peak Harris Tigers. What we’re seeing right now is a bonus team. These guys weren’t supposed to get to two straight divisions series so soon. We weren’t supposed to start seriously contending until next year, and maybe even 2027, because that’s how long it takes to overhaul a major league system from scratch, which is what Harris has been charged with doing. But here we are now, way ahead of schedule. Through canny pickups by Harris and great managing by Hinch, we have gone to two straight division series. Just roll that around in your mind for a second. Now consider that we have a whole gaggle of pedigreed position players poised to descend on Detroit from our system: Kevin McGonigle. Max Clark. Josue Briceno. Thayron Liranzo. Hao-Yu Lee. Bryce Rainer. Max Anderson. They may not all make it here, and they may not all do really well once they get here, but it’s a halfway decent bet a couple of them will be All-Star level, and a couple more will be good enough to contribute to a first division team. But we’re also not limited to who comes out of the system. There are a couple other ways we could add an impact player to the team, and I think it’s fair to give Harris the chance to do so once the time is right, which is looking like perhaps this winter. We’ll see what he does, and I think we all would like to see him do something. It may not be the most obvious sexy thing, but then, we didn’t know Gleyber Torres was the sexy thing the moment we got him, either. And on top of all this, remember this as well: this team of non first-division regulars you regard us as being? This team has gone to two straight division series. Now just imagine the potential of a Tigers team that has actual first-division talent.

I agree that there are almost no scenarios in which a trade of Skubal does not make us worse next year, which is why I’m so against it. I absolutely don’t agree not trading Skubal sends us into loser limbo for the next ten years. This relates to a post I made maybe a week ago, that the Avila reign of error has really scarred the Tigers fan base. The idea that if we keep Skubal, then let him walk for nothing in free agency, that will make us terrible for ten years? That’s thinking borne of those Avlla years, because that’s exactly what would have happened under him. It’s that fatalistic thinking that we’ve gotten so used to, and perhaps a bit defensively to prevent us from giving our heart to anyone new only to see him stomp all over it with the boot of incompetence. I also don’t agree that if we do trade Skubal, we guarantee ourselves ten good years after that, because think about it: if we are willing to trade Skubal now before his walk year, why wouldn’t we be willing to trade Kevin McGonigle, or Max Clark or Troy Melton or Josue Briceno etc., before their walk years? What makes trading Skubal so unique now that we would never do so with those other players? That makes no sense to me. In the end, I promise you that if we were to trade Tarik Skubal this winter and the Tigers have a substantially worse season next year, Scott Harris would get absolutely crushed, and rightly so, for kneecapping the franchise's momentum toward perennial contention. We are no longer the 2019 Tigers. We are not in perpetual rebuilding mode. We have no interest in looking forward to any more draft lotteries. We are contenders now, and we have to act like it, and that means not trading away your Cy Young ace for a bag of magic beans. But that also means Scott Harris needs to make the moves that get us to the next step up the contention ladder next year. Pressure’s on him now, as it should be, but at least let’s give the guy a chance to deliver on that. And if he doesn’t—if he pussyfoots around, runs the same kind of team out there in 2026, and we stumble backwards because of him—then I will gladly join in the chorus of boos that rain down on him a year from today.

Honestly, it’s hard to feel bad for this maga clown https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1AF6V1ktKT/?mibextid=wwXIfr

I can’t even fathom what it must be like to get the worm in your brain and just go off the deep end. It must be something like getting hooked on meth. The wildest thing about it all is that by breathing fire at people and cheering for the worst for everybody not exactly like them, they honestly believe they are preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t even think they are being cynical about it all, which is the only thing that would make any logical sense, because they simply can’t see what that which they’re doing looks like from the outside. Textbook cult stuff.

It's all part of the strategy to justify the pogrom. The Nazis did the exact same thing to the Jews.

Hinch is an evil man, isn't he? 😁

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is that the best of Harris's acquisitions have yet to make the team, while the best of Avila's acquisitions are already here and close to their prime. Once the best of Harris's guys are here and close to their primes, let's revisit.

It's not news. It's candy.

I agree it's true that Tork and Riley and Dingler and Javy, all Avila acquisitions, were instrumental in getting us to the playoffs. It is also true that they are all flawed when it comes to walk rates and/or strikeout rates, and I believe they brought those flaws with them into the system—rather than being coached into those flaws—and that's what everyone seems to be complaining about, especially the strikeout rates. There might be room for one or more of these guys on the peak Harris Tigers. Or maybe not. It's not as though any of them have shown that they are slam-dunk perennial All-Stars, even Riley, who's probably the closest of them. It's possible none of them are on the team any longer by 2029. This remains to be seen. One of the key takeaways from my post was intended to be that firing the hitting coaches is probably not an action item this winter, nor should it be.

I'm conceding nothing of the sort. I would concede that players are not jelly that can be molded into anything coaches want. Coaches can help players get the best out of their talents, but they can't give players brand new talents.

I must hypothesize again that there is a talent issue here, specifically Avila players vs Harris players, vs it being a coaching issue. You may remember this post of mine: I which I showed that when it came to controlling the zone this season, the Harris players in aggregate were among the best in baseball, and the Avila players were among the worst. But you may be surprised to learn that the end-of-season collapse was not the same for each group, and if we isolate September, we see there was almost no change at all for the Harris players, while it was the Avila players that ended up tripping all over themselves: Full Season Team Avila Harris PAs 6093 3997 2096 BB% rate 8.4% 7.4% 10.3% K% rate 23.9% 25.5% 20.8% wOBA .317 .318 .315 wRC+ 103 103 101 Sept Only Team Avila Harris PAs 911 632 279 BB% rate 9.0% 7.8% 11.8% K% rate 26.2% 28.0% 22.2% wOBA .294 .286 .313 wRC+ 87 82 100 So I gotta continue to believe that the hitting coaching is not the issue, and that the more Harris turns over the roster to be more players he acquires, the better overall results at the plate we will see.

I'm guessing there's a generational thing at play here.

I don’t know who Christopher Kline is, but seeing from his bio that he specializes in the NBA Draft, pinch on salt applies here. That said, I don’t see how any of these deals do not make us worse next year.

What a powerful message it would send if they could get 12 million showing up for one of these during January.