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Here’s how you know things are officially bad and in dire need of change: the beat media are aboard now:

This is fair as far as it goes, although the problem with making determinations about disqualifying “steroid guys” is that we don’t definitively know who was and who was not on steroids. We only know what the media try to convince us about that.

I would think a team would have to have a more than 50% chance of making the playoffs before they seriously consider selling off the top of the system to make the playoffs. I don’t think 12% or 7% is gonna cut it.

Don’t look now, but Tigers not the only AL Central team turning into a pumpkin lately …

I think Baby Doc has proven that he is willing to spend to win, and that he is hands off on the business side, which is almost the perfect combination for an owner. I am born again on him as an owner who will release the resources the front office needs to win, and a lot of that spending in the first year-plus of Harris's tenure is in fixing the rotted system of scouting, development, analytics and the like. We needed that. So if you don't believe that Harris is incompetent, and that Baby Doc has established himself as willing to spend to win, then really, then I believe there's no cause to hammer them on today's roster construction, roster deployment, positional flexibility, etc., because it's not putting us in a position to win a ring right now. They are still trying to figure out who they have and who they can take forward with them, and if so, where they are best utilized. We are working toward the future, so making the playoffs is a nice-to-have in that situation, not a do-or-die goal, which is why we are not liquidating the top of our farm system to trade for rentals to make the third playoff spot, and also why we didn't offer dramatic overpays just to what they could out of this past winter's poor free agent market. This organization is simply not ready to do that yet. I can't imagine how pissed off fans would be if we had committed to five years and $100+ million to aging Matt Chapman, which is what I think it would have taken at minimum to get him to agree to Detroit, only to surround him with the rest of the team as currently constructed and we're still under .500. As for Hinch: I think he was caught in the middle on the trashcan deal and became the fall guy for the players and the ownership, who were the engineers behind the thing and who Baseball had zero interest in punishing.

I don't see them keeping Kelly and Rogers and Dingler on the major league roster at the same time. Kelly is out of options; Rogers gets arb next year and I don't us signing and then optioning a $2-ish million catcher; and it would be unethical to basically scuttle Dingler's career by keeping him permanently in AAA just in case. One of them is going to go, and I'm wondering whether going to be Rogers instead of Kelly, because they are both 29, and Rogers is as good now as he's ever going to get. Absent reading anything about this, seems to me it could go either way.

Do you think the Tigers are at the endpoint of their roster construction, meaning, this is the roster they expect to compete with now and in the future? Do you believe if this roster doesn't succeed they will blow it all up and start over? Do you think the front office and ownership are incompetent, or even uncaring, and that there's no hope for a winning franchise as long as they're around? I'm just trying to get a feel for whether you think we're in a temporary growing-pains situation moving toward a more permanent competitive situation, or whether you think this is as good as it's gonna get and that there's no hope as long as this crew in charge?

I wonder how many other neighborhood names did they botch besides Lakeview?

“Disband” as in the Tigers go out of business and get replaced in the league by, I don’t know, the Savannah Bananas or something? Is that what you mean by disband?

I don’t know whether we can get anything for Carson Kelly, but if we end up keeping him and Dingler comes up and shows us something, I think it’s just as likely we keep Kelly as keep Rogers, Dingler plays caddy for a year and takes over in 2026. That’s a fingers-crossed plan if I ever heard one.

I saw Daniel Norris get that home run live at Wrigley Field! I don’t remember whether I contemplated that might be the only time I would ever see a Tigers pitcher hit a home run live.

“Cynical” is the right word to use here. The 1980s Tigers had the feeling of being a homegrown unit who hung around for a few years, and they felt like they were part of the community (and Kirk Gibson as the face of the team actually being from here). The 2010s Tigers just felt like hired guns, even Miggy, who was locked up for life here. I mean, just look around: Gibson and Dan Petry are still working for the team as a primary gig 40 years later, but only Andy Dirks is still hanging around the organization, and even that is on strictly a part-time basis. I bet you Miggy will never step foot in this town again unless he’s coming in for a sweet paycheck.

It’s been a well-reported story the last few years that teams are hanging onto the very top of their systems and trying to deal from the middle instead. Back in Dombrowski’s heyday nobody cared about prospects, which were considered little more than just unproven players. That’s why we cheerfully dealt guys like Eugenio Suarez for basically nothing and Willy Adames for what turned out to be a true rental (flipped for “prospects” the following season during a Cy-level season).

I see them more as a team with a combination of inexperienced guys with good hitting potential plus major league veterans who can hit a little bit, both types of which are more uneven than just flat out poor. They’re not simply a terrible offense up and down the lineup like the White Sox or Marlins.

It is a really good-looking building. Rancic did a good job on it. I miss having the Sun-Times in that spot, though. It was, like, seven stories and looked like it had been transplanted there lock stock and barrel from a nearby suburb. It looked so out of place against the backdrop of super skyscrapers and iconic buildings. I loved it.

Maybe he already has. Not every impact move hits as fast as lightning. Sometimes it hits as fast as thunder.

Trump has a Tower in Chicago.

They were 107-55 in 2021. Scott Harris was the GM.

I don't understand the proactive concern that Harris is merely just another 1st level smart guy, which I guess means he's a below average intellect, except in the context of your being afraid of giving in to hope and so you maintain the high wall of skepticism because you don't want be thought of as a fool if he flops. If that's not the case, then I don't see the value in that thinking. Flip side, I'm sure some may wish to characterize me as an dimwitted slappy for Harris (and Hinch) so they can ridicule me for it, and I'm sure there's a lot of satisfaction to be gained in that. But all I'm saying for the umpteenth time is that I am assuming that Harris is capable of delivering on his vision to build a sustainable winner in Detroit until such time that it is proven he can't, won't, or is not allowed to. I'm just not in the camp that assumes Harris will fail until he proves otherwise, which I admit I thought of Avila from day one. This feels a lot different to me, and if I risk losing the respect of other fans for being reasonably optimistic about Harris and then he flops like Avila, that's a risk I'm willing to take. I don't have so much time left, so I might as well be optimistic instead of fatalistic—especially given that there's reason to be.

Tell me you didn't read my posts without actually saying you didn't read my posts.

It's totally defensible to be skeptical going in just on principle and take a wait-and-see approach. We Tigers fans have definitely been scarred and no one wants to just give their heart away after that. That's not so far afield from my own approach of expecting that Harris will do the right things regarding drafts, development, trades, free agents, etc., until he shows us that he can't or won't. I think that's defensible as well, and so far, he has not yet disappointed me. OMMV. What I'm borderline offended by is fans assuming Harris has put together this failing team as his final product and that he's just going to end up blowing it all up and send the organization into another several years of tanking on Baby Doc's orders. There's simply no reason to believe that outside of it's what Al Avila did and this is the Tigers after all and so this is our fate. If the Lions can break a six-decade-plus cycle of losing by being innovative and doing things differently, the Tigers certainly can break their own decade-long cycle as well.

Man, that call on Keith in the sixth—looks even worse on a graphic.

I think we are about where we should be expected to given our having to restart the cycle in the first place. Speaking only for myself, I am definitely not assuming that who we have in the organization today is everyone we plan to go to war with in a couple of years. I think our system is going to look dramatically different, probably at least as different in 2026 from today as today is from 2022. So I'm willing to give Scott Harris the chance to find help outside the organization. I haven't given up on him, and I will assume he will be able to do so until he shows me he can't or won't. I for one won't be projecting Al Avila's failures onto Scott Harris as though it were some sort of sad sack organizational inevitability. We are already substantially in better shape than when Harris took over.

I see the Tigers as a team that is young and growing and learning, not as a team that is mature and stuck and on a treadmill to oblivion. You may not agree, and that's fine. The way I see it, the Tigers are moving very deliberately—obviously too deliberately in the Win-Now! view of practically everyone here—toward a sustainable organization that can compete every year. They've established a plan, and there is no reason to deviate from that plan right now just because the players aren't mature right now, or because we have stopgaps to help us be at least somewhat competitive while we retool, which is what literally everyone here has been clamoring for. Although a few guys on our roster today will be here when we are truly ready to compete, most of them will not be. So I don't complain about having guys like Urshela or Canha just because they're not Chapman or Ohtani, and I won't hammer the coaching because they can't make Rogers and Kreidler good major league hitters. I'm looking more at the Greenes and the Vierlings and the Torks and the Keiths of the group. Those are the guys that I'm focusing on, because those are the guys we're hanging our future on, not Zach ****ing McKinstry. I mean, outside of his family, who even cares about that guy? He's just passing through only because we need someone on the field today. So I don't whine about him—he might well be gone well before the season is done. This state of affairs makes a lot of fans unhappy, and I get that. I'm not happy that Al Avila literally wasted seven years of our lives and then we had to start all over, either. I've been here since 2015, too. But I'm willing to stick it out to see whether this new approach can bear fruit, and I'm not willing to declare it as failing just because we're not favorites to win a ring less than a year and a half in. If that's too much for some people, that's OK. There are plenty of other teams to root for in the meantime—Lions, Red Wings, U-M, even other MLB teams, whoever they want—and there will be plenty of room on the bandwagon when they want to come back once we start competing regularly.

FWIW ... Tigers relievers on the surface: W L Sv ERA Mar/Apr 12 6 10 2.88 May 3 6 4 5.81 June 3 3 1 3.72 Tigers relievers under the hood: FIP xFIP BABIP Mar/Apr 4.04 4.13 .232 May 3.89 3.93 .325 June 3.69 4.23 .267