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I think it probably would, but hey, he won the battle, didn’t he? Isn’t that the most important thing? Seems like he believes it is. Maybe Ed can tell us what the practical implications along the lines you suggest are?

Also, FWIW, nothing we say here, no matter what side of the coin any of us are on, matters to the Tigers, or Correa, or MLB, even if what we say agrees with them. We are all here talking to each other, in a nonprofessional capacity, sharing thoughts, having fun, and sometimes we have strong debates with strong opinions. As long as the debates stick to the subject at hand and things don't get personal, I think that's great!

I'm sorry that sticking to my opinion and not changing my mind is upsetting you. I just feel very strongly about it, is all. If it makes you feel any better, the guys on the other side of the debate also feel very strongly about it, are also sticking to their opinion. and are not changing their minds, either!

Dan, I am not sure how you got the idea that I am making assumptions about what conclusion you or anyone else should or should not arrive at, but I have said nothing along those lines. All I am doing is sticking to my position in the face of unanimous opposition, and I believe I am presenting my case persistently without prejudice or malice toward anyone, unless you show me otherwise?

Correa didn't demand a billion dollars. He set his floor as 330 million, and the Tigers as the first team to make an offer lowballed him by 55 million. Either they made the offer knowing upfront Correa was going to reject it—which makes sense because everyone knew he would—or they made the offer dreaming that he would accept it without fielding another offer, which would happen only in a fantasy. Either way, theirs was an unserious approach.

"Jackass" and "asshat" seem to me such wildly insufficient epithets to use in reference to a genocidal dictator.

He's giving them permission to be their worst selves in public.

Sure, let him have his service time. He's somebody else's problem now.

If there's no chance the other side is going to accept the offer—and you must know that Correa was never going to accept an offer from the very first team making one that lowballed his publicized target by $55 million—then it can't be a serious offer. I don't know how much simpler it can be.

I've listened to it all the way through three times now and I like it about as much as I like John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy".

I felt that way about them in 1981. I "hated" a lot of bands at that time for their overexposure on a rapidly-calcifying Detroit rock radio scene. It's not for nothing that WLLZ seemed to be an acronym for "We Love Led Zeppelin". Funnily enough, I softened up toward AC/DC in the 2010s thanks to, of all entities, the Chicago White Sox. For years the team would enter the field for a game to the strains of "Thunderstruck", which seemed like a really perfect super-energetic entrance theme. I really dug that, and that led me to start going through more of AC/DC's catalog, re-listening to the songs I "hated" for their overexposure way back then, and started enjoying even songs like "Back in Black" more. Funny how great gobs of time can change your mind about things you felt so immutably sure of (which Jeff Tweedy can certainly attest to).

That happened to me once at an exit that did not have an immediate on-ramp back to the freeway. Argh!

Yes, I now. 😉

Sure it is, but the AAV was the yardstick being used in the post you pointed to. If that's the measure of competitiveness or seriousness we're going to use, then the Astros' offer was more competitive and serious than the four offers originally listed.

Yeah, it was ridiculous all right, but they made the offer in all seriousness, and Correa accepted it, so it looks like the Giants dodged a bullet on that one.

What did the Astros offer Correa? 5 years $160 mill = $32.0MM AAV. By your yardstick, that was the most serious offer by a mile and a half.

The Tigers offer was 55 million lower than Correa's stated goal of 330, and 75 million lower than Giants offer of 350 he accepted. So, not so competitive.

They might have well have offered one year for eight million, because that had as much chance of being accepted as 10/275 was, which was zero. And an offer that everyone knows will not be accepted by the other side is not a serious offer.

It’s true Correa didn’t get a $330 million offer. What he got instead was a $350 million offer, from the Giants. When that fell apart because of health, he then got a $315 million offer from the Mets, which fell apart for the same reasons. Point being, $275 million (which, as I just looked it up now, was the actual number) was never, ever going to cut it with Correa on the day it was offered him, and everybody paying attention at the time knew it wouldn’t. Why would Avila make an intentional lowball offer? It could be one of two reasons that I can imagine: The Tigers just came off a 77-win season and it looked like we’d turned a corner, and we definitely needed a shortstop. There was a lot of buzz that we should be in on Correa but Ilitch probably did not want to spend anything like $330MM on him, but we couldn’t be seen not going after the biggest free agents because optics. So we made the lowball offer we knew was going to be rejected so we could say see? We made a serious offer and he turned us down. Not our fault, we were serious. In fact it’s his fault that he didn’t take the life-changing money, so what the hell is wrong with that guy? Who wants a guy like that, anyway? And hey, that worked, because people were and are satisfied that it was a serious offer and Correa was an idiot for not taking it. Of course, for this reason to make sense would require Avila to be devious enough to come up with such a scheme, which you yourself imply is not at all likely, or else he was taking a marching order from Ilitch on it. But either way, this might not be what the case was, anyway, which leads to the second reason I can imagine: Al Avila is an ignorant negotiator who honestly didn’t understand that lowballing his target by more than $50 million on the very first offer made by any team was never going to fly. I would grant that under these circumstances, Avila made the offer with the serious intention of signing Correa for that amount, but that would also mean Avila is too ignorant to realize that Correa was never, ever, ever going to take a lowball offer like that as long as ten-plus-year deals were still on the table, as they still were in November of 2021. (Correa did end up taking 3/105 from the Twins not because he grossly overestimated his own worth, but because the health issues that were revealed after the Giants and Mets fiascos screwed up his market, and at that point, no way were the Tigers going to make 10/275 available to him again.) I would still conclude that despite the possibility the Tigers honestly miscalculated the sufficiency of the offer, it still can’t be regarded as a serious offer, because both sides, not just one, need to regard it as a serious offer for it to actually be so. Otherwise, the Tigers could have offered Correa one year at $8 million and said it was a serious offer, and by your defintion, you would have to agree that it was.

Correa publicly established a minimum of $330. The Tigers were to first to the table with an offer of $290, before any other team had made an offer. The chances of Correa taking that offer was zero, and everyone, including the Tigers, knew that. That’s not a serious offer.

When people, meaning professional writers, use “rip off” in the wrong way. A football writer for the Chicago Tribune this morning wrote, “Justin Herbert and his offense were waiting for one more opportunity [to get the football back and score again] after ripping off five consecutive touchdown drives”. Someone doesn’t “rip off” five consecutive touchdown drives. Someone reels off five consecutive touchdown drives. What someone rips off is a palate of footballs from the back room of a Sports Authority.

No, it wasn’t. He had a stated number well into the threes and there was no way he was going to accept an offer that lowballed it.

I don’t think that was a serious offer.

Indeed, but how long has it been since we have been mentioned like this, as a potential suitor for a top talent? Its a really nice step forward for us.

Paging @1984Echoes