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I would guess that another big part of this is that they have to have all their ducks in a complete row to ensure a conviction, because you can't come at the king and miss.

As a fan, I could hardly care less about the culture in the clubhouse. I care about winning. Lots of teams have won with players that fought among themselves, The 70s A's hated each other and Charlie Finley and won three straight pennants. Then the Yankees won in the late 70s with their toxic team. So a harmonious clubhouse is not a prerequisite for championships. Also, as you note with Cobb and McLain, individuals both crotchety and flaky have had tremendous years and even helped their teams win pennants or rings. The guys around them may or may not have hated them, but they dealt with it and still played as a team and, in many cases, won. So if Eduardo Rodriguez waives his opt-in, pitches three full years to a 75 or 80 FIP-, and is a cog on the 2026 pennant winner, I would be all for that result. I bring up clubhouse culture not because I require that for the team, but because that is one of the main components that Scott Harris and A.J. Hinch has said is a focus for the Tigers organization. They have said they want to foster a "culture of development, where everything and everyone can improve", and create a system that will "acquire, develop and retain young players". Implicit in that is a culture of teamwork, in which players will be expected put the team above their own interests. Not to set aside personal goals entirely, I'm sure, but at least to not act publicly in a way that calls into question the grip that management has on the system and its players. There's one guy above all of it who I assume is watching all this very closely, and is likely more engaged in what's going on than he might have been before. His impressions of all this, whatever those might be, will be very important. If Eduardo Rodriguez flakes out again and creates the kind of chaos he has already done on at least two separate occasions in his short tenure here, it stands to reason that would create a danger of undermining that cultural strategy Harris and Hinch have put themselves in charge of implementing and overseeing. How they handle Eduardo now is crucial in how it affects not only their relationship with him, but also their relationships with the other players. In that way, I don't envy Harris right now, because he has to walk the very fine line between appearing to come down too hard on Eduardo and alienating veterans and potential free agents, versus appearing to let him totally get away with this all and possibly inviting other players to publicly act out in their own way. This is where he will really earn his salary.

😉

After what’s coming out about this year, I’m not so sure the market will be so robust for him next year either, even with cost certainty. I’m not so sure I want him to opt in, either. If Scott Harris is truly trying to remake the entire culture of the organization, having a weaselly malcontent among us for the next three years isn’t going to help that along much.

My main takeaway from all this is that Eduardo Rodriguez is completely full of sht. He and his agent at the very least tried to get an extra 1/20 so he could stay in LA for 4-1/2 years, and when the deal didn't land the exact way he wanted to, he threw his family under the bus to dodge criticism for the real reason he blocked the trade. Calling him a mere flake strikes me as generous. I think he's a weasel. Now I am questioning the reasons behind his whole ghosting incident, which he also claimed to be about his family. Not for nothing, the team had fallen to 13-25 in his final start before he bailed and was well in last place, which nobody expected to happen after the prior season and the free agent signings, so who knows what was going on in that clubhouse.

Old friend alert here in Chicago

Well, he's got three coming, right? I would think he'd want six, or at least no less than five. That would cover ages 31 through 36. My concerns about an extension are that (1) he does poorly right away, and keeps doing so while we keep running him out there turn after turn for X years; (2) he does OK but gets TJ and we have to replace him with a dreg from the system; (3) he flakes out on us again. I'm mostly concerned about (1).

I would hope they already have a clear idea of how they want to move forward re Eduardo Rodriguez. I wouldn't want the decision to either sign him for six years or let him totally walk to come down to two months of out-of-the-race pitching.

Well, that puts the exclamation point on why nobody was inquiring after Alex Lange.

I've decided that I am rooting for Eduardo to opt in for the final three years, so when we sell him at next year's deadline, there is cost certainty for the acquiring team. I would also be OK accepting less than blue chip prospects in return for him, assuming he's not having an All-Star season.

is there another pitcher with a situation analogous to Eduardo's that did get moved for decent return? I don't know, I'm asking. If there is, then yes, I am on board with assigning some blame to Harris here. If not—if Eduardo's situation is unique in terms of his contract details regarding opt-outs and team's skittishness to absorb it, even setting aside flaky behavior—then I'm loathe to hammer Harris for not being able to trade him for a solid return. I think Harris has showed that when he is dealing with a standard situation, such as a straight rental for a good player, he's able to convert it acceptably in a way the prior guy simply couldn't.

BTW, has anyway reserved motownbull****speculation.com yet?

That said, Eduardo's underlying metrics in his four July starts were pretty decent considering the 5.66 ERA (i.e., 10.5 K/9, 2.2 BB/9, 3.23 FIP, 77 FIP-). If he keeps that up for the rest of the year, especially if he turns around his bad luck (.321 BABIP, 58% LOB), there is a good chance he opts out, and honestly, if that happens, I'm rooting for him to go, because I don't want to see the Tigers give him another five or six years guaranteed mainly to justify not being able to move him. Then Jeff Seidel can filet Harris for that.

Her’s one media guy who’s making Harris wear it.

It would not surprise me at all to see Eduardo opt out and sign a 4/70 or even a 3/50 with the Marlins, which would make him as close to his family as possible.

Do you mean mid-level prospects like Dawel Lugo (ranked #4 in the Diamondbacks system) and Sergio Alcanatara (ranked #15)?

Yes, totally fair. It would have to be zeitgeist reaction on our part, though, since we are not unionized as media consumers and can’t bring it up at the next meeting. 😁

If Eduardo’s agent was leading everyone along that a deal could be completed with LA all the way up to the last minute, before his client pulled out the rug at the last minute—which we can already reasonably assume—and Harris was getting garbage offers from everyone else—which seems fairly likely—then I would find it hard to blame Harris for anything here. After all, he had to trust that Mato knew what he was doing, and that Mato was dealing with the full faith that Eduardo was on board to go to LA during the process.

Why should they wear anything? The media have no responsibility to help keep the avenues of trade discussion among teams smooth by being circumspect about how they report on it. They are doing exactly what they are being paid to do: drive engagement and ultimately revenue for their employers, the media vehicles, by writing things that interest people. This is one of those circumstances in which it is up to us, the target audience, to filter through the media noise, pick up on what seems reasonable, and ignore or discard the rest.

We are talking about it now, though, and isn’t this fun? We’re having a good time, aren’t we? Are we not entertained? I’m being serious here.

There’s the key word. Outside of the Dodgers, I can envision Harris getting nothing but lowball offers for Eduardo because of any combination of the uncertainty of what Eduardo’s situation will be after the season, the Tigers’ history of accepting garbage returns for good players, and the softness of Eduardo’s topline July performance (5.66 ERA in July). To your point, we will probably never know what the returns on those other (if any) offers were.

What we don’t know yet was whether Eduardo was on board with going while the deal was being done, until he wasn’t. Dodgers PBO Andrew Friedman had some interested comments on the incident in the Athletic: “We didn’t expect (what happened) at all,” Friedman said. “We hadn’t known one way or the other. We thought with having a lot of his ex-teammates and guys he’s played with, our place in the standings, I thought we would be very desirable. … We never got a chance to talk to Eduardo. But we talked to his agent numerous times. We respect that he had this right and he exercised it. Obviously would’ve loved for him to join what we have going here. But it’s hard for us to argue with family reasons.” There’s a lot to unpack in this paragraph, but my takeaway is that his agent was the lead on the deal—which implies that Eduardo was in on it, since an agent who works against his client’s wishes is malpracticing—and that last minute some family-related reason killed it.

Ironically, if Eduardo stays with the Tigers, his cost certainty might make him easier to deal at next year’s deadline.

Jeimer Candelario went 4-for-5 for the Cubs tonight. 🦆🦆🦆

I wonder whether the deal might have been predicated on the idea that Eduardo would waive his opt-out to stay with the Dodgers for three more years—which, coincidentally, would lead to the optimum haul for us, as well as cost certainty for the Dodgers—and something happened in Eduardo’s world that nixed that. Maybe his wife, like someone said. Or maybe he would have been OK with two months in LA but not three more years. Just another possibility to speculate on. Who knows.