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The part about future roster exercises I find most entertaining is that they never contemplate any trades, free agent signings, prospect surprises or player flameouts. They are always our organization today plus X years. Practically by definition, I guess.

I did guarantee you would love watching him. Are you not entertained?

“In the land of the blind …”

lol

Mize was the consensus 1/1 because he had a splitter that wiped out college hitters. There are multiple things to unpack in that sentence, but point is, while there were technically hundreds of other choices available in the draft, everyone, even Fangraphs, thought Casey was the guy that year. As for TORK!, if I recall correctly, he had never played 3B before the Tigers decided they were going to give him reps there. The way I remember it, he turned out to be not very good at this thing he'd never done before, and when Jeimer came back strong in 2021 after a decent but injury-shortened 2020, it was a reasonable assumption he'd locked up third base.

I'm not saying this is what I personally want. I'm just speculating that if the Tigers were married to the idea that $32 million next year would prevent them from going after the replacement talent they would need to acquire after sending Miggy packing, one way they could get that money off the 2023 books is to defer the salary in a Bobby Bonilla-type annuity move. I don't care about whatever the actual numbers end up being. The point is, to whatever degree his money wouldn't prevent them from spending what they must to effectively replace him—whether it's deferring the money to free up the books, or increasing next year's budget by $32 million to cover the dead money—that's what I want. But if I were to learn that they wrote Miggy a check for $40 million (including his 2024 buyout), gave him a gold watch and then the gate, and then they held back on spending to replace him because of the $32 million still on the 2023 books in an acceptance of the losing that would follow, that would make me unhappy.

As for Miggy, maybe the Tigers can structure a Bobby Bonilla-type payout: instead of paying him $32 million next year, maybe they start paying him, I don’t know, let’s say, $5 million a year from 2028-2050. Something like that. That frees up payroll from the next few years, then the Tigers can pay him out of the pile of money they’ll have from all the championships they win. 😏

Yeah, I don’t know how Javy would take a move to second base. He has played second before and done decently at it. He played second just last year in Queens, albeit mediocrely, but he also went there respectfully because of his buddy Lindor, who was already the incumbent at short, as opposed to bumping him over for a relatively-unheralded rookie. It could go either way with him, so it would be a testament to Hinch if he could get him move over quietly, which really, they may not even try to, since they signed him specifically to be our shortstop.

Mostly changes to reduce taxes in the bill on manufacturers and the super rich. We’ll get the law and it’s better than nothing, but that’s a devil of a detail.

And this is in place where they thought themselves a modern European country. There can be no escaping the inhumanity of man, when it wants to rear its ugly head.

Fire usually follows smoke, so I am starting to come around to the idea that this may truly be Miggy’s last whimper.

Since June 16 Javy is .267/.310/.491 in 174 PA with a 124 wRC+. Depends some on where you start your start point. He still hasn’t had his big third-of-a-season 1.000 OPS run yet, and when he flails he still looks bad, which he always will. But even with this modest run, he is arguably the best hitter on that team since that date, and bonus: his 21.3% strikeout rate is third-lowest on the team of anyone with at least 50 plate appearances, behind only Miggy and Harold. (Highest is Eric Haase at almost 30%.) He could either go big on the way out, or flail helplessly. He’s certainly capable of both. No predictions. But for the last seven or so weeks, he is the tallest dwarf in this circus.

Riley Greene is 21. I think it’ll be a few years before he ages out of center field.

"trumps" ... nice touch ... I continue to be flabbergasted by otherwise intelligent people truly believing that certain still-active Republicans (Meijer, or Rubio, or whoever) are different, like in the old days. If they are still working, or trying to work, within the party, they are not different. If they are different, they are Adam Kinzinger and they get out.

Wait until November. And December. And January. And February ...

I don't know. I always thought the value sliders are meant to fool hitters into thinking it's a fastball until the last moment. If it's about stealing a strike off the plate, that would seem to mean a four-seamer aimed there that the batter thinks will be a ball but the umpire rings him up on. If the goal is swing and miss, then the slider, the split, anything that darts at the end, really, are all valuable for making the batter think it's going to pass through the zone, but that puts high pressure on all the ligaments when thrown repeatedly. Deaden the ball and the pitcher can, at least to down-the-order hitters, serve it up saying, here you go, hit it and get yourself out. They can throw less taxing pitches like four-seamers, two-seamers, changeups and the like more often, and not worry so much if they give up even hard contact. They'll have to pitch Juan Soto and Aaron Judge the same way, of course. They just wouldn't have to pitch the Robbie Grossmans of the world (at least the 2021 version) as though they are Soto or Judge.

The phone call with Francesca took place on November 12, 2010, at 3pm Albuquerque time.

There were no expectations to trade off Grossman, but then, I don’t credit Avila with this anyway since he went on record that he was sitting back and waiting for calls, not going out to make anything happen. The Phillies needs right-handed platoon hitting—ironically because Castellanos has sucked so bad this year—and Grossman has delivered on that all season.

Same with Tork. He was the consensus 1/1 so it’s hard to fault any team in that position for taking him there. So if the problem is not that they took the wrong guys 1/1, then that kind of narrows down where the real problem lies, doesn’t it?

I think it’s because the nature of pitching has changed, basically how hard pitchers work to get swing and miss on every single pitch.

Has he engaged the services of Jeimer Candelario’s personal hitting coach?

I had long thought North Carolina could not support a team because the population is so scattered and it would be more difficult to fill 40,000 seats every night, but as times goes by, I think that’s less important than it was maybe even ten years ago. Nowadays they don’t depend so much on high game day attendance to ensure fiancical success, so they could build a stadium in the low 30s, even high 20s, that could look fuller for the optics. But a new franchise would probably be a financial boon for everyone involved almost regardless of where they put it or how many show up for games.

I think D is right overall, regardless of the megamillions ticket, not just because of the reliever trades he made, but because of the reliever trades he didn't make.

He's not wrong.