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I think he might be saying that imperfect knowledge and political agenda-driven pseudo-scientific wishcasting are not necessarily the same, and that the presence of the former is not necessarily indicative of the latter. This was a new disease that displayed characteristics of some known diseases, and so the approaches to it early on were similar to that taken to combat those known diseases while learning more about what made this disease tick, because what else were we to do as people started dying by the thousands? Unfortunately, COVID also showed characteristics unique unto it, and the failures attended to some of those approaches became known. Even more unfortunate is that certain people who wanted to do nothing but make political hay off it used those failures, including those borne of honest mistakes, as a way to cast political aspersions on even those health personnel who had no agenda but to defeat the disease, including, incredibly, nurses with feet on the ground. That, to me, was disgusting nearly beyond words.

Do we know Jeimer is really streaky, as compared to other players, or does he just feel streaky to us? Is there any way to figure that out, I wonder?

Oh, I can assure you, when I try this, there will be marijuana involved. 😎

Restaurants are pretty good businesses to launder money because you can throw out expired food and claim it's been served. Barbershops are even better because you can claim to have cut hair that was never cut, because there's no product to order and sell and thus account for. The best kind of business to launder money through must be parking lots.

If you believe projection systems like ZIPS, Steamer, PECOTA even Marcel, you could start there. A couple of those are on Candelario's FanGraphs page. I thought those were really conservative and that he could potentially bounce back to at least the 2-win level (where he is at right now, not even halfway into the season!), mainly because they take recent performance into account and I'm not sure where age fits into them, but again, he's only 29, not 34, so I just couldn't imagine that he was at the end of his career. I also spent the entire winter in the offseason thread talking about how I thought we should (have) re-sign(ed) Candelario, and irritating a few of the cool kids with my persistence along the way. All this said, two things: I get why we didn't re-sign him, although I didn't agree with that then and I definitely do not now. As right as I was about Candelario, I was wrong about an offensive rebounding for Schoop. Even though his defense is still aces, his bat can't support it, so even at 31, he might truly be done done.

Brandon Lowe was hurt for most of last year, and Paredes stepped in in a pinch.

I think Paredes is basically a third baseman who can back up at second in a pinch. He was a starting second baseman in theory only.

I think both less available labor and restaurants squeezing margins through downgrading their product are big reasons food quality has gone down, but since a high percentage of restaurant orders now go through Uber and Door Dash, I would bet the rise of ghost kitchens is also contributing to the perception of lower restaurant quality as well. Ghost kitchens is the specific reason I will never use Door Dash for a restaurant order. I don't care what the weather is like, I will go pick up my food at the actual place, thank you. I like knowing where my food was made. Who knows, maybe that's what the tweeters above were talking about, anyway: Door Dash orders from "restaurants", without making the distinction between that and on-site dining.

McKinstry had 364 plate trips before coming here and Vierling had 434. Neither were anything like established major leaguers, so we couldn't expect them to come and stabilize the team. Not many people thought Candelario would bounce back, although all the signs pointed right at it, and honestly, I'm not sure Harris thought he was done done at 29, either. It would not surprise me to learn that letting Jeimer go wasn't 100% his decision, and it would also not surprise me to learn that Jeimer did not want to come back to Detroit under any circumstances and/or there were personality issues involved. I would bet if Jeimer were a widget instead of a person, he'd still be here today. Who's the guy at second we let get away, by the way? You don't mean Willi, do you?

I don't know anybody young and controllable and All-Star-level we could get for any prospects we happen to have now, except maybe if we trade Colt Keith or possibly Jace Jung, and even then I don't think we could get anyone young/controllable/All-Star level for even both of them plus people here would be screaming bloody blue murder about giving up both our blue-chippers in the trade. And even if we could get past all that, do we really think that trade would get us from seventy-something wins to seventy-something-plus-two wins and a Central Division title? I think the odds such a trade would win us a title with sub-.500 record would be one in three digits, easy. I think the only way we get to a title is, the young pitchers come back hard for us, and the hitters we have in house all of a sudden flip a switch. I see that as giving us better odds to play baseball in October this year than making any win-now moves in July.

Oh, OK, I misunderstood, I thought you were talking about right now, this year. I hear ya and I'm game as long as they're not dealing the top of the system for mid-level big leaguers in the short term. To be clear, I highly doubt Harris would do that anyway, but speaking just strategically, I myself wouldn't want to see that under anybody. The rest of the team is still too fragile performance-wise, and one piece is not going to make the difference. But if they can find a magic free agent this winter who will give us three-plus wins on something between a 1/10 to 2/25 deal, I want that all day.

OK, I’m game. Any specific ideas on this?

Passing the smell test with someone who has long COVID seems like a tall order. 😉

How do you see that happening? Is it a matter of picking up the right free agent still on the market? Do we trade from system depth for current major leaguers and who? Or, as some here might suggest, does Hinch simply need to start managing better, whatever that looks like?

Agree—they did not pick up Camargo for system depth. They picked him up because they need experienced major leaguers to throw onto the field while the prospects, including Lipcius, are still marinating in the kitchen. That was the idea behind getting Marisnick et al as well.

If he doesn’t improves his instincts in the outfield, Langford might end up flipping bats with TORK! for who plays first and who DHs.

Would meticulously and painstakingly restructuring the system inside and out, top to bottom, however long it takes, to build a winner be fine with you? Honest question, because I don’t see another way.

Josh Harrison and J.D. Martinez are available. 😉

Or they want to avoid the TORK! mistake and let these kids sufficiently develop before exposing them to major league pitching on an everyday basis.

Cisnero’s topline numbers have been awesome since about late April. He’s doing the same thing he did for us last year: handily outpitch his peripherals (his walk rate is still a touch elevated at near 10% and his FIP- is 101, versus ERA- of 30, even since then). Fingers crossed he can do that for one more month and we get an actual useful asset in return.

Maybe?

I'm sure there's a scarecrow in Toledo we can scare up to play third for us. Johan Camargo qualifies as just such a scarecrow. And once that happens, we can rake A.J. when Camargo repeatedly trips over his own ****. Looking forward to that.

Or, alternatively, you throw the best guys out there you have available to you while you work behind the scenes to get better players on board, which, sad to say, isn't going to happen today, or tomorrow, or even Tuesday. How great would it be great if above-average major leaguers were available on the scrap heap.

A.J. just announced that Maton has been optioned, so, there we go.

Partly because teams wield their power by withholding access to punish beat people who turn out to be apostates. See Fenech, Anthony.