chasfh

Sure, and I believe it's more likely that there will be a hit in an eight-man three-team trade than in a straight two-man trade.

I agree not all no-brainers pan out, although I would say that Avila gets the smallest credit possible for doing the thing practically everybody else would do and not screwing it up, which to date he absolutely did with Jobe over Mayer. If the argument in your post was that Al Avila is still helping this team, then even if only Riley Greene becomes a Tigers lifer, it could be argued that Al Avila will be helping this team well into the 2030s. It's hard to argue against the idea that a good number of Avila players will still be on the team when they start winning in a couple or three years, since that's a wait-and-see proposition. I would say it's possible that will come true, and equally possible that it doesn't.

These are all players with a shot at our future who came on board with Avila at the helm. Mize, TORK!, Greene and Manning were all no-brainers. The main thing Avila had to do was not get too cute by reaching down the list to surprise us, such as Jobe instead of Mayer. Skubal, Keith, and Carpenter were solid pickups that we've been able to do things with. Rogers was a decent second guy to get in a trade for a slam-dunk Hall-of-Famer—who had years and years of Cy Young-level performance left in the tank—along with $40 million. Even adding in the long shots that 1984Echoes mentioned, there's still an inordinate amount of garbage in the system that Avila left behind, which I think is indicative of his terrible hit rate on player acquisition overall. Were he even average at player acquisition, we wouldn't be nearly in this bad shape—although, flip side, he'd still be here. So, yes, these are guys Avila picked up who might help us, as long as the new administration develops them in a way the Avila administration probably could not have. In this sense, I can see why you say that by having acquired these eight players, Avila is still helping the team.

I also think we are much-better respected in the pitching department, which may have helped here, and also, we may have been the only team that would commit to guaranteeing Lorenzen a shot at the rotation.

Also unusual because he was part of an eight-man three-team deal, versus a straight-up we give up a back-of-the-rotation starter for a mature minor-leaguer who can start right now.

I think it really comes down to, what kinds of teams buy, what do they want to accomplish by buying, and in where are they on the contention spectrum? Teams buy if they are certain playoff teams and need that one player who closes the obvious hole, such as SP depth, or back of the bullpen, or that one big hitter who fixes an obvious hole, in order to go deeper once they get to October. We are not a certain playoff team, so this doesn't apply to us. Teams also buy if they re on the cusp of a playoff spot and they are one impact position player or impact pitcher short of making it happen. We are way more than one position player short of making the playoffs, and if we count Eduardo and Lorenzen as reliable starters, at least two starters short of a playoff-level rotation. We do have a halfway-decent bullpen we could go into the playoffs with, but it's not a shutdown 'pen, and even if it were, that's not enough to overcome our other deficiencies. And teams buy when their contention window is wide open and they're ripe to make a run, if they can get the one piece that would solidify that. Our contention window is, at best, cracked open possibly enough for a fly to get through it, as long as it's not a big fat fly coming directly from dining on your garbage. That is simply not enough to throw away the plan and sell prospects in an effort to try to secure a division that's not high-majority-percent winnable—that is, we wouldn't want to bet the house on green here. I'm as certain as an outsider can be that Harris sees all this, too, and even if we were to go 10-0 for the rest of the month, we are not only not buying, we are definitely not not selling.

He has recently said that he has had trouble with pitch recognition, so I wonder whether he has either an eyesight issue (i.e., maybe only 20-20 or 20-25) and can't read spin, which could be helped; or whether he has naturally slow reflexes, which probably can't be helped. If these are true, that would make Javy the platonic ideal of a mistake hitter.

Yes, please, Angels! And block the Rays' number. 😉

Even if the Cardinals were to magically—by which I mean, while on magic mushrooms—accept a gimpy Skubal plus a wild and inconsistent Lange in exchange for their ten-time Gold Glove-winning and this-year starting All-Star third baseman, I would definitely never want to extend Eduardo for another six or more years, nor give more than 2/20 to the other guy, which I doubt he would accept.

Who are you thinking of here?

It's always a complicated calculus to figure out when to bench a guy, but other things being equal, a rookie hitting .224/.261/.333 is going to get benched a lot quicker than a 30 year-old Gold-Glove All-Star Top-2-MVP veteran hitting the same, if for no other reason than the 30 year-old Gold-Glove All-Star Top-2-MVP veteran is always a bet to turn it around, even after a whole half-year of soft hitting, versus the unknown quantity that is the rookie.

By ... ?

The ironic thing about keeping Javy for four years is that people think we'll end up moving him to second base or third base, but shortstop is exactly the position where a weak bat plays best, and he is still arguably the leading defensive shortstop in the league.

Not just piss off that veteran player, but also all the players around him. Because if it can happen to one, especially a leading veteran, it can happen to all, and practically nobody would choose to be in an environment like that.

He's really been bad since 2017, not just 2021, but if he still gave you joy throughout the contract all the way up to today, then at least we got something positive out of the deal.

People listen to CMo?

You misspelled Mr. I.

Sure he can. Al Avila is hurting us right now, and he'll be hurting us next year, too.

I wonder whether that deal has ever been made?

What would the first scenario look like? I can’t imagine what big-league-ready rotation arms plus bats a contender would give us that would help us contend now, in return a rental of Eduardo and Lorenzen. The second scenario might return something, but I would guess it would have to involve absorbing bad money off some fringe contender’s books. I can’t conjure off the top of my head any names that would qualify. Any ideas? In any event, I don’t think either idea is even on Harris’s radar.

I'm not sure I would want even four years of Eduardo, let alone six, which I assume somebody will give him. But if not, offer him three.

How about Colt Keith? If you’re gonna liquidate hitting prospects, sh*t, man, go all the way! 😅

How do we add hitters without trading prospects? I don’t see it. And how do we justify giving six more years to Eduardo through age 36 and letting Lorenzen walk after the year for nothing, when we still have an entire hitting structure to rebuild? I don’t see that either. I know everyone wants to win NOW, and I’d like to win this year, too, but I would rather take that run with the guys we have after trading Eduardo and Lorenzen and Cisnero and, if we can get something great for them, Lange and/or Foley. I don’t want to start trading guys like Colt Keith and Jace Jung and Wilmer Flores and Ty Madden and Parker Meadows to try and pick up some second division veteran hitter Paul Goldschmidt or Eugenio Suarez or Ryan McMahon. And I’d bet money Scott Harris is selling regardless of how we do in the next week and a half.

Dan Dickerson keeps talking about things like putting together a little win streak to “change the narrative” at the trade deadline. He cannot possibly be talking about trading prospects for middling big leaguers just to likely still fall short of winning the division, can he?

Back to real football … 😁