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I thought you were going somewhere with this about pointlessness that I was going to totally agree with before you took a sharp 90 degree turn to someplace else. To me, it's pointless to speculate on the beginnings of the universe at all because it doesn't ... ahem ... matter as it relates to where we are now, or where we're going. I'm no saying speculating on it is not fun, or that we shouldn't do it. In fact, speculating on it is fun, and we should do it. But even so, there's no point to it, because in the end, who cares? Whether some big bang happened billions of years ago or some hairy thunderer waved his hand thousands of years ago, either way, here we are. To whatever degree gods exist and in whatever form, do they really care which creation story you buy? is the comfort of our eternity really going to turn on that? Is it OK if I don't have a real opinion about it either way? Because I have roughly as much an opinion about this as I do about which managers should go to the Hall of Fame. Seems to me the only practical outcome to the debate about it is that people can go to war with each other over it.

Now that Threads is becoming much bigger and fast, is it possible to arrange to post the link here and have the Thread thread show up, in the way we can do that with Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook? So that: https://www.threads.net/@jomboymedia/post/C0mMdIcOPvq becomes:

Pistons were threatening for a minute to become a playoff team, but Gores fixed that.

Bailey seems like more the type to do that to a fella. Just ask Johnny.

I don't generally care about players after they leave the Tigers, up to and including Verlander and Scherzer, but I am actually glad for Jeimer here.

I find this ever-so-slightly plausible than #1, although for this to be the case he would have to believe he would do better this winter than what the Dodgers were offering, which wouldn't surprise me.

I'd read somewhere, maybe Cody, that the return was less than what a pitcher of his talent-other-things-being-equal would bring back.

Late modification

I find #3 the most plausible, and not because of any personal feelings I might or might not have about Eduardo, but because I find #1 basically impossible, #2 fairly unlikely, and #4 the most likely of the others but still less likely than #3.

That one was easy, although TBF, that’s because there’s a well-known active pipeline between Latin America and Asia.

I’ve never bought that theory for even a second.

We’ve been assured repeatedly that it was all Scott Harris’s fault he didn’t complete the Dodgers trade, and double his fault he didn’t have a backup plan in place.

Yes, but now I don’t think Montgomery gets a Nola-lite offer, like a 5/110 or even 6/120. I think he’s gonna get something closer to 4/80 because the guy closest to him came off the board for that. Montgomery was in a netherland between the two and as long as only Nola signed, then Montgomery could peg his demand to him, but now that Eduardo is signed Montgomery is going to get pegged to that one instead. The bold prediction would be Montgomery holding out until March waiting to get the higher deal that doesn’t come.

Jordan Montgomery’s market just went to ****. Can’t peg himself to Nola anymore.

If they take anyone, I also believe it will be a bullpen arm. I don't think they're going to relegate Parker to a platoon role, especially since as a LHH he has hit LHPs better all the way through pro ball, expect 2022. I also don't think they take a utility guy to play 3B because they won't want to block Jung or Keith with a guy they have to keep on the roster all year.

I don't think we can know that he never spoke up at all, unless someone says something about it. We do know he never spoke up publicly before it got exposed. He might have spoken up internally about it and gotten ignored or shut down, but we don't know either way.

Maybe they knew upfront they would not get cooperation from Hinch, so they went directly to Beltran and the others. I doubt they would have tried that with either Leyland or Anderson. But then, the tech-oriented Astros front office would never have hired a Leyland or Anderson in the first place.

It's true, Hinch could have sacrificed his baseball career on the altar of spotless integrity and quit.

I was just responding to your point that Hinch is not a strong manager who can control front offices. I think Hinch did show some real strength by objecting the best way he could. He knew he couldn’t stop it, because the front office was undercutting his authority by working directly with the players on it, but he could and did make his displeasure with it crystal clear. I think that’s probably the most we could have expected from a guy in his unique situation.

I think you might be ascribing too much organizational power to the field manager, especially in this era of analytical front offices hiring warm-body managers for cheap who agreeably serve as a game strategy tool just so they can keep one of only 30 such jobs in the world. To your point, as the manager, it’s reasonable to expect Hinch to take responsibility for the cheating scandal, and he did, losing his job and serving a one-year suspension from baseball for it. Hinch was punished harder than any of the players who actually participated in the scheme on the field! I’m not sure what else people want.

For reasons they feel are important, the Tigers didn’t want Hinch to feel as though living he’s on the edge of a cliff. They wanted him to feel secure for the number of years they believe it will take to turn this completely around, so he will feel fully committed to its success, instead of being potentially a Rick Renteria-type doing the grunt work of managing the transition and then handing the team over to someone else perhaps more famous. And besides, if Hinch were to inexplicably fall apart in the next two years and go rouge with cheating or something and screw the whole thing up, the Tigers could simply fire him with years left on his contract, the way they did with Avila, although the chances of that happening are too small to see with the naked eye. I approve of the move.

I don’t blame Hinch for the thing in Houston, since the cheating was crooked up by his bosses in the front office who went around him to the players. What was he gonna do, call a cop? The front office wanted to win by any means possible and they weren’t going to let A.J. Hinch **** that up. That’s pretty much where the Frontline doc ended up on it and it makes sense.

If A.J. has the horses, then he should be winning the race, amirite?

Most will be happy for this. Some will not.