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How long before pickleball goes the way of racquetball?

People wonder, in the face of all the surprising election losses of late, how the Republicans could continue to lean into more and more fascism. There are a couple possible reasons I can think of: (1) Their leaders surround themselves with sycophants whose continued employment depends on making the boss happy, and the #1 way to do that is to tell them what they want to hear. They also shun media defined by journalism and instead limit themselves exclusively to hot take opinion media. So the leaders are highly bubbled, and almost certainly believe that the majority of people in the world are on their side, because that's what they're hearing. (2) They believe that election results are not the result of the democratic voice of the people being heard, but of election fraud on a substantial scale instead. They believe if they can change the way elections are run, the true voice of the people will be heard and their faith that the majority of people are on their side will be rewarded. I think they have an actual shot on that second reason.

Or prefer women ...

I don't believe they are tanking now, in the way it can be argued the Avila regime tanked for a few years. The team we have today is the by-product of the talent level available to us, both as left to us by the prior regime, and as put together by the current regime under the limitations inadvertently set by the prior regime. Given the change of the draft to a lottery system, there is far less certainty to obtain the 1-1 pick in the way that it could previously be "earned", so there's much less incentive to tank. There has been spirited discussion here about whether "tanking' even took place, i.e., whether the Tigers actively tried to lose under Al Avila to secure 1-1 picks in the draft. Absent any statements in the affirmative from Al and his front office team we can't know for sure, but there can be no debate that the Tigers fielded arguably the least-talented team in the majors for years, and which led to the losing that got us the high draft picks. I happen to believe it was by design, and that obtaining high draft picks was part of the calculation leading them to do it. But I do not believe the same thing is happening now as happened under Avila. I believe that they simply do not have the leverage to field a playoff-level team at this moment. They don't have the assets in the system because of botched drafting and development by the prior regime; they can't trade their way to a winner because they do not have the assets to make such trades; and impact All-Star-level free agents don't choose to go to teams that have no prayer of winning, despite money, which they also can get from contending teams. Most of all, I believe that the new regime is savvy enough to understand that given the state of our franchise and the assets within, now is not the time to make a full-court press toward winning now, that building the infrastructure to put us in a position to win more effectively is the main goal, and that ownership is on board with this plan. It sucks to realize that the losing is going to go on for a while longer, but I think we are finally pulling in a logical and right direction.

Just to clarify, when I state that I believe Spencer Turnbull has no role on the Detroit Tigers of the future, I am not saying dump him now. And I am definitely not implying that we should dump every player in our system who has no role on the next Tigers playoff team however many years from now. The Tigers are not going to be any good for the rest of this year nor probably next year, at minimum, but they still have to put a team on the field tonight. Not just because they are contractually obligated to, but because the Tigers major league team is still in the business of trying to win ballgames now, which is crucial to maintaining interest among their primary target market of people in the Detroit area who like sports for however long it takes for them to be good again. So they have to put guys on the field obtained for a reasonable price who have the best chance of giving them a chance to win today, irrespective of their potential for providing future contributions to our ball club. That means guys like Matthew Boyd, Michael Lorenzen, Chasen Shreve, Jose Cisnero, Tyler Alexander, Garret Hill, Eric Haase, Andy Ibanez, Jake Marisnick, even Jonathan Schoop—and yes, Spencer Turnbull—all have a place on the 2023 Tigers, even though not one of them will be on the 2026 Tigers, that team which at this point stands the best chance of making the playoffs. None of these guys are first-division regulars, and none of them have a real future in the game. And that's OK, because that's not what we need from them. We just need them to be on the field right now, trying to help us win this game, and keep the business of Tiger baseball going while the front office builds the organization behind the scenes, hopefully putting us in a position of never needing players like these ever again.

I remember posting on the old board maybe a decade or so ago this nascent idea I had that just about any player in the major leaguers could be an All-Star, if they lucked into being in the right organization. I had not formulated much thinking around player development or even the Tigers' lagging behind on that, but I knew just from reading around that enough players were succeeding with some teams after failing with others that there had to be something in that.

And so, therefore, we're going to take two of three from them, because baseball.

Hey, if 1-800-CALL-SAM doesn't pony up for naming rights, maybe Joumana would? How about The Law Offices of Joumana Kayrouz Field? Trips right off the tongue, right?

It still puts a smile on my face to remember that Bea Arthur was, inexplicably, the spokewoman on Shoppers Drug Mart commercials way back when.

If the guy can produce the receipts, so to speak, then sure, this should be looked into. If it's just words, though, I don't see how the allegation would hold up.

Specific to media, I've been wondering here and there over the past year or so whether lower-level hired hands like subeditors and whatnot could be injecting their own personal views through their subtle selection of things like headlines or copy editing and the like. Only by way of example, and not necessarily in this case, but in cases like this, and only maybe, and just hypothesizing here—someone at the subeditor level who has a pro-Russia bias could select headline language that or props up Russian, or disparages or belittles Ukraine. This kind of thing would not be limited to right-wingers and could happen along any political persuasion. My point being, I just wonder how much of that happens, if at all.

The world had been basically without him in it for 25 years already. It has definitely been better without him around.

Not that it mattered this year since a team in our current position is not on the radar of top guys on the market. It’ll be a couple or three offseaons before we found out how that goes.

Yeah, we’re in very, very bad shape now. The wounds are very deep and they are also very wide. The patient is practically terminal and the surgeon is going to be on their feet trying to save them for a very, very long time. The secret, in my view, is in understanding that the turnaround is not going to happen this year, and most probably not next year, and perhaps not the year after. If they’re still flopping around with no tunnel light in sight by Year Four, though, I think that’ll be the time I’m going to start inquiring into getting my money back.

So, fewer free agents costing more money? Cool.

The team was never going to do a 180 and compete for a ring in Year One.

Maybe consider that just because you hate Javy doesn't mean everyone in baseball hates Javy. I know a lot of people who love Javy, especially here in Big Shoulders, and I've read enough to know he does have a lot of friends in the game. So just because he's struggling in Detroit, that doesn't make him a pariah. Also, just because free agents aren't coming to Detroit this year doesn't mean that free agents will never come to Detroit ever again. The organization has to remake itself into one that players actively want to come play for, and that's going to take a lot of work and a bit of time to achieve a reputational overhaul, and not simply one more dollar than the other team is paying.

Careful what you wish for—players who leave because they hate it here tell other players how much they hate it here, which will make it that much harder to attract free agency talent when it comes time to really compete.

I don’t think Harris could be brutally honest, of course, but I have no doubt that he had to be completely upfront and honest about the Tigers near- and mid-term prospects. Because if he weren’t honest about that, then when it comes out that he basically fluffed Baby Doc just to get the job and he falls short of his ill-advised promise to WIN NOW—and in a small, incestuous industry, that would definitely come out—then that would be curtains for his high-level front office career.

That, and they share the same siege/victim mentality. That’s why Trump can get away with that nonsense about if they’re doing this to me, they’re planning on doing it to you. So all you MAGAs had better get all your confidential, secret, and top secret documents out of your own showers and flood them with water from the pool, because Hillary and the Deep State are coming to getcha.

I think this is only as much as half true. I think it’s possible a candidate can succeed without empathy, but I don’t think it’s possible a candidate can succeed by looking like they have no empathy.

I would bet you dollars to dimes that Harris was upfront and candid with Chris Ilitch about our not being able to contend this year with the players we both have and could reasonably obtain, and my clue is that Chris Ilitch spent in 2022 when Al Avila told him and everybody else that we would contend, and Ilitch didn’t spend in 2023 after Harris took over with essentially the same players on board. To your implied point, this does not mean Ilitch could never, ever possibly end up firing both Harris and Hinch after setting them up to fail by starving them of resources. This could happen, because anything could happen. But for as much as I’ve railed on Baby Doc through the years, I am going to believe that he and Harris have settled on a long-term plan they intend to see through to either its success or its resulting failure, and that Ilitch will not be pulling the plug early because I believe Harris has completely prepared him for the investment in resources and time it is going to take. I am setting aside the deep cynicism about the Tigers organization that the Avila regime has inculcated in me and am choosing to believe Ilitch/Harris are going to make an actual, honest, concerted effort to build a winner over the long haul. And if that makes me the Tigers’ huckleberry, well, then, oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine.

This is a hot take and you’re certainly welcome to it, but I couldn’t disagree more with this wishful thinking. My impression from the reading I’ve done is that A.J. Hinch is THE North Star for the coaches and players throughout this organization, including—maybe even especially—the minor leaguers. That’s not new—that started under Avila. He’s the face of the franchise for the guys, and he’s working in lockstep with Scott Harris, who almost certainly does not have regular face time with players, to remake the franchise from top to bottom. They are not working at cross-purposes, and A.J. Is not simply a bystander letting things roll over him—he is active and in on much of the decision-making. No one is guaranteeing this will all result in rings. They could completely fail and be fired for their efforts, but that’s going to take years, not months. Maybe they won’t work together for the rest of their respective careers, but the implication I’ve read from others here that Harris is looking for the first opportunity to dump Hinch because he wasn’t Harris’s hire is a fantasy.

Yes, I agree with this, which is consistent with how I feel about it. It’s the appearance of throwing in the towel on this regime literally one-third of the way through the first season that I have so much trouble fathoming. Was there a serious expectation of a major transformation into contender status by now? I guess I don’t understand that serious a level of impatience, again, 2-1/2 months into a regime, particularly considering how devastated the prior regime left the entire organization top to bottom. It’s getting razed and rebuilt, and that’s going to take years, with an “s”. So I’m just going to settle in for the ride and not take the losses too hard, because almost no one on the roster today will be on the next Tigers playoff team, and very few players on the next Tigers playoff team are even in the system today, mainly because this is still Al’s system.