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How long are you going to give the Tigers until you quit the team?

It's still early and there's a lot of winter left, but the angst from some over not finding an impact bat in free agency puts me in mind of 2003-04. That's when we signed Ivan Rodriguez after he'd painted himself in a corner demanding 4/40. No one else, including the Marlins, was going to give him that, so once it became apparent we were the only team that was going to offer it, he basically had to take it. But once he got here, had a really good year, and was the face of a team that improved by almost 30 wins, I think that might have helped pave the way for more top free agents to sign with us, including Maggs and Troy Percival for the following season, and Kenny Rogers and Todd Jones for the season after that. They didn't all work out swimmingly, of course, but point is they were all toward the top of their free agent class, and I do wonder, had we not signed Pudge for 2004, would we have gotten those other free agents at that time?

Rios has never batted more than 92 times in a season in four years and he gets hurt a lot, so I don't know if he can be relied upon to provide hundreds of at bats effectively. Anderson has more pop but Frazier has way better bat-to-ball skills plus a better glove, and across the past three seasons their run-creation results were essentially the same. We need all of the main things either can provide. I could see the Tigers signing one of these two guys, but not both., so it may depend on whether they prefer someone to play primarily infield (LHH Frazier) or primarily outfield (RHH Anderson).

If we had to sign any one of these guys, Seth Lugo probably makes the most sense. We need starters this year and he wants to start. He’s been decent recently and will command at least two years. We could push him into the pen once the young guys still coming back. As for the other three guys, light-hitting infielders though they may be, Frazier and Anderson have evolved into guys who can play multiple positions both on the dirt and on the grass, so we could sign one and just move him around the diamond as we give the young guys around them an occasional breather. If that’s the goal, Frazier is the best of the named guys here, although he’ll also command at least two years.

Why? Because.

"You can't trust anyone. You can trust only me."

I don’t like being favored in today’s game. Bad juju.

God, I hope so.

Not maligning. Reminding. If they’re going to allege his status as a Marine hero as the basis for why he should have come home instead of her, which they do say, it’s fair to remind them that the Marines themselves did not want him around any longer and showed him the door.

It’s a fine choice to take the high road. I also think in a case like this it’s fair to return the shove.

True as all this may be in theory, to the same degree that conservatives seek to highlight Whelan’s status as an ex-Marine as a cudgel with which to clobber Brittney and the liberals who support her release, the fact that he was basically expelled from the Marines under a bad conduct discharge is relevant to the moral relativism part of the discussion—albeit, to your point, not to the issue of whether to release at all.

I think Joe is a pretty good bet for the Braves because he did make some adjustments last year, pounding the top part of the zone more with heat and finding an extra tick on the four-seamer after four years of steady decline. I think Chris Fetter may have unlocked something in him. It’s up to whoever the Leo Mazzone is now on the Braves to keep that going.

I don’t think secular Christmas reduces religious Christmas for people, because I think people can and already do compartmentalize the two. When I was a kid our family went to church and had religious Christmas; then we came home and had secular Christmas. They occur on the same day and they may even have had the same roots, but they were totally different experiences that didn’t cross over. I think that’s true of many if not most families who subscribe to one of the Christian religions. I think the advantage of compartmentalizing Christmas into separate types of holidays is that it allows non-Christians to join in the social celebration of Christmas, without feeling pressure of having to accept someone else’s religion into their personal lives to do so. It could be a way to unify a people of diverse faiths, or of no faith at all, in mutual celebration on what is already a government-mandated holiday. I acknowledge it won’t happen in my lifetime, and may never happen at all, but I think it’s a beautiful ideal.

I didn't say Joe Manchin was going to, either. 😛

Maybe that's what they were saying about Kristen Sinema yesterday, too.

What's the religious element to Santa Claus, the presents, the office parties, the decorations, etc.?

Not really, but at least we're having fun! Apropos of nothing: I've long wondered why non-Christians, i.e., Jews, Muslims, atheists, et al, don't consider celebrating Christmas as a secular holiday, which it is. Because if you think about it, you can see that Christmas is really two different holidays: a religious holiday for church and Jesus and creches and the like; and a secular holiday for parties and Santa and presents and trees and decorations and the like. As far as I can tell, neither has a thing to do with the other, although a lot of people do conflate them. (My personal favorite decoration is the nativity scene attended by Santa and his reindeer.) Logically speaking, "Merry Christmas" has way more to do with the secular than the religious, because being "merry" is much more akin to partying than praying. And even "A Charlie Brown Christmas" drew a very bright line between the vacuousness of secular Christmas and the spirituality of religious Christmas. (In Charles Schulz's opinion, anyway). Maybe non-Christians will come around to this idea sometime, and I hope they do, because secular Christmas could be a thing that unifies, if everyone can be cool with that idea. (I’m looking at you, evangelicals.) And if someone does try to dump a turd in the punch bowl by mentioning Jesus 300 times in a two-minute conversation during a secular Christmas celebration, well, we can simply relieve them of their drink and point them toward the nearest church.

Congressman.

Cody seemed to think along the same lines on his podcast this week, but even if Rodriguez waived any part of his no-trade to leave town, I don’t know how any team is going to take a chance on a guy who bugged out on his team and went incommunicado for six weeks in the middle of the season.

Maybe we can make something happen with Dave in Philly and send them proven closer Gregory Soto and cash in exchange for Simon Muzziotti and a pitching lottery ticket.

How do you know Chicago is a uniquely dangerous city to live in when you've never lived here?

I said exactly nothing about Trump or fascism in this sidebar, until this sentence. As for "projecting" ... I do not think it means what you think it means ...

As long as you've brought this one up, you'll enjoy this: https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2018/01/12/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/Cubs-Boeing.aspx

I agree that it really doesn't mean as much as it should, although for a different reason: rather than becoming rote, it's become something akin to an American Idol spectacle, in which performers try to out-do every performance of it they've ever seen before, injecting every vocal flourish they've ever learned into it. It's seemingly no longer about solemn reverence for your country, or even the flag—it's about how entertaining the singer can make it, and how amped up they can get the crowd over it. This guy is a good example of what I mean. Get a load of how he hits "free" toward the end:

It's a slap in the military's face to those people who believe it is the military that gives us our freedoms. I think it reflects in part an exercise in underdogging ("they hate us because we're patriots"), and in part fear and loathing of people they can't imagine even existing since the very idea of them is just so disgusting. The Anthem is a virtue signifier: express your love for it and you're a good patriot; express anything other than love for it and you obviously hate America. I don't see how your n-bomb analogy applies, but OK.