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What really happened?

I don't think Harris will dump Hinch as a leftover vestige of the failed system. After all, Hinch helped bring Harris aboard! And if Hinch were considered part of the Avila problem, he'd've gone out the door with Scott Coolbaugh and the others. If this is Hinch's last year, it will be because he leaves of his own accord. At that point I might start panicking, because if the guy who helped bring the new PBO onboard, and who's agreed to punt on winning now to help remake the infrastructure down to the studs so we can win in the future, suddenly bails on the team because he decides it's going nowhere after all, then I'm gonna take his word for it, and I'll despair of my Tiger fandom for probably the rest of my life.

I may not push it even then. We have the roughest 40-game stretch to start the season of any team, and it's not going to let up until mid-May. We absolutely have to keep that in mind before, or at least while, we bury this team. If they don't pick it up in the last two weeks of May, when they are playing weaker teams—if they are still struggling along at the same pace they (presumably will) start out the first six weeks at—then I might move toward the button.

DFA is a way to get a guy off your 40 but still keep him in the system by sending him to the minors. To DFA a guy, I believe the team must post him to waivers, and I believe it’s irrevocable in that if another organization claims him, we can’t pull him back. He’s gone. I think claims go worst-to-first record in your own league, then worst-to-first in the other league. If he clears waivers, the team can assign him to wherever in the system they want, and the player can either accept the assignment, or pull out of the contract and declare himself a free agent. (Not 100% sure of that last one? But that would be the fair thing to do.)

Agree, free agent deals we signed twenty years ago were pretty good.

And Harris couldn’t sign a decent big league bat because this entire organization is SFA at this moment. Haniger had a choice of where to go, and he went to a team that has at least a prayer of contending. Also, not for nothing, the Giants is Haniger’s hometown team, and he said that it was always his dream to play for them. So, there’s that.

Everything that goes around comes back around again, doesn’t it?

And the time will come for that, when good players see what is happening with the Tigers and decide yeah, I want to be part of that. I think we both know that’s not us now, and that it’s going to take some time—years, not months—to effect that change. In the meantime, the best we’ll be able to do is Robbie Grossman-level players—guys who don’t have much choice where to go. Last offseason, it looked like we might be going places, so we were able to get Javier Baez and Eduardo Rodriguez and Andrew Chafin to come on board. They thought we were getting into a position to compete as early as 2022. Sure, we had to overpay them to get them on board, because we were still an unknown quantity, but they would never have signed on with us if they knew were were going to lose 90-plus games for a number of years to come. As it was, Chafin ended up leaving the Tigers because he could, and he signed on with the Diamondbacks for less. The Diamondbacks, FFS! For less! This year, those guys we could sign were Matthew Boyd and Michael Lorenzen, guys literally no one else was going after, and had to overpay them to come here. So we did add a player here and there, where we could. And this is what we could get. Grid willing, it will be better next winter.

Was it we who were getting favors from Boras? Or was it he who was getting favors from us? I think it was a symbiotic relationship, and clearly, it ended up hurting us in the end, while things are still going just peachy for Scott Boras

All I was saying is that this is the time for Hinch to move all his players in and out of roles to see who is capable of what under which circumstances. It’s about what I believe Hinch is trying to accomplish, not about what I personally want Hinch to do, or about whether I think any of this matters.

They could not have gotten better players because Al Avila was behind the wheel. So we should be glad he wasn’t the guy to trade Soto. I grant what you say about Vierling and Maton. I was responding to the assertion that they are subreplacement hitters. So far, they are not.

Sure, pay a guy tens of millions of dollars more than he is worth and you can get him to play for anybody. But if you’re a team like the Tigers and you’re the top bidder by only a few million, you’re probably not getting the guy, because he is going to want to go someplace where he can win. I know that idea gets pooh-poohed around here a lot, but it’s true. By the way, how does it feel the root for a team that can’t get anybody decent come play for them unless they dramatically overpay them? Maybe for you … but I don’t like it.

Was placing Foley in that situation this game evidence that we weren't playing to win? Is Foley an established quantity when it comes to leverage situations such that A.J. was guilty of managerial malfeasance?

I think you know Soto and Jimenez were never going to return a major league regular. And Vierling and Maton are both better than replacement hitters, as evidenced by their positive oWARs. I don't think we need to rehash the idea that good free agent hitters were never going to sign up to play here in 2023.

As the manager of a big league team fated to be under .500, I don't think a manager is stressing about avoiding leverage for just about any of his pitchers. To be sure, now is the time to test everyone in every situation to see who's got something and who doesn't.

I think being a free spender this offseason was a non-starter in any case. I don't think they could have spent a lot of money this year on good players because I don't think any good player who has a choice of where to go would have chosen to come to this team this year.

Yeah, I wouldn't blame Baez if he felt like he was sold a bill of goods to come here and bolted at the firstt opportunity. What will be interesting to see is, if Javy does have a down year this year, does he stick around for (from his perspective) the money and the losing, or does he test the market and bet on himself and sign a one-year deal with a contender, hoping to parlay that into a rich multiyear deal starting 2025? A little early to speculate, of course, but the possibility is on the table.

Jakey!!

If it make y'all feel better, Candelario is currently hitting .100 in Washington.

I think that was a good decision to go to the plate by Baez even without the force there. Worst case scenario is we're down 6-0 with 12- and one out, versus 5-0 with 12- and two out. If you're going to maintain any pretense of competing, might as well try to keep the game closer for the bats in the ninth.

You're right, it's going to be hard to dig out of it, although to be fair, no one was expecting us to contend, anyway. This is more of a character-building year for everyone involved.

Hey, check out the Gameday 3D motion-capture replay they have now: https://www.mlb.com/gameday/718742/play/45

Also remember the first 40 games is probably the toughest stretch any team in baseball has this year.

Riley Greene proves that: Give me 87.6 miles per hour going a distance of five feet all day, amirite?