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I’ll put two bits on Stephen Miller. he’s been curiously absent from this whole deal so far …

So the whole dissembling about single mothers/fatherless homes at the same time he himself personally created four such homes … not enough for you?

And between all this and talk of being required to be armed in the classroom, there’s a good chance all this is going to cost those states a lot of good teachers, and then who’s left to take those jobs?

It was lowballing because it was way lower than his publicly stated number, and he did not take it because he was being lowballed. Also, there’s a difference between apples and oranges.

And they both got hired by other teams after winning that ring. Because owners and GMs respect rings. That’s what I meant to say.

My question would be, why was Avila bidding at all, when it was well understood that Correa was never going to take an offer 65 million below his asking price, and in November to boot? What was he trying to accomplish? If Avila was trying to accomplish a signing of Correa, then you’re right, he completely misunderstands the free agent market. Because who among those who know what they’re doing would honestly believe that lowballing the top guy on the market by 20% months before a soft signing deadline would get that job done?

Or maybe it’s a gamble that will end up being a genius move. Correa and Boras are gambling on the idea that instead of taking a guarantee of far less than he wanted, simply because it was the best offered at that particular time, he can reset the market for himself this season so that next winter they can meet or or exceed the Lindor contract, which is still the 10-year benchmark they pinned themselves to. Correa was never going to sign a long-term deal for 275 because he was on record saying Linder money or else, which was 340. So the Tigers must have known he was not going to accept it when they offered it, right? Especially since this was back in November when the market was still wide open. What would have been the compelling reason for him to cave then? I don’t think there was any. So I gotta believe the Tigers knew what they were doing and what would happen. And you’re right that at the end, no one offered him three-anything this winter, let alone Linder money, and that 275 was the highest guaranteed money he was offered. But that doesn’t mean that would have been the best contract situation he could have signed for. Correa has that goal—Lindor money for the next ten years—and he wasn’t going to go down defeated just yet. So he signs with the Twins for the 3/105, which sets the AAV for his next contract if he does well. If Correa is a 6 win player this year, I think he will get his 10/360 this winter (which would make it all end up as a de facto 11/395, BTW). If Correa falls short this year but is a 6-win player in 2023, he’ll probably get something like 9/330 the following winter. If he’s hurt or falters the next two years but puts up 6 wins in 2024, he’ll may well get 8/300 after all. The gamble here is that Correa is so good that as long as he can stay healthy at least one of the next three years and performs to his capability, he’ll get the money he’s been coveting, instead of having to settle early for a lowball 10/275. This could all totally backfire on Correa. That’s why it’s a gamble. But the reasonable worst case I can envision is that he’s gimpy for three years with Minnesota, signs with someone taking a flyer on him for a few years after that, he never gets back fully on the horse, he retires in his early 30s because he’s hurt all the time, and he ends up making something like 150, maybe 200 million for six or seven years. Or maybe he hangs around to play out the string for ten more gimpy, underwhelming (in Correa terms) years and nets 200 to 250 million for that. That’s not a total of 275 million, but would be a hell of a consolation prize for a failed gamble. And instead of kicking himself for taking the lowball money early and then killing it for cheap, he can blame the stars for preventing him from reaching his full playing and earning potential.

Which is perfect for a marketplace.

I have come to believe that having to deal with the market for things like trades is the job Al likes the least. The guy is a scout, not a businessman. The trades have all the earmarks of someone procrastinating this unpleasant thing they have to do until the last minute, and then accepting the failure so they can just block out the experience and get past it.

I agree with you, Correa would have done the same deal with the Tigers if we'd come to him with it first. Correa didn't want the guaranteed money if it was going to be only 275, or whatever it was, for basically the rest of his career. It was well-known months in advance he was expecting way into the threes, at least, and he would never have gotten that with the Tigers. The Tigers not only lowballed him—I bet the Tigers knew they were lowballing him and were hoping to either luck into a yes, or hoping he'd say no so they could be seen as making an effort without spending a penny. I honestly don't know which. The Twins deal is great for Correa because he has now established a baseline of $35 million a year. That means, if he has a good year—and he is having a good year, on his way to 6+ WAR—a team is going to have to come at him with $36MM AAV, minimum. Since he's going into his age 28 season, I think his fair minimum asking will be 10/360. And if he has an uncharacteristically healthy year, he could exceed that pretty handily.

On the other hand, Moreno hired Brad Ausmus, who led the Tigers from the playoffs to a 98-loss season. Hinch has a ring. Owners and GMs respect that.

Good call. The need to stockpile pitching practically at the expense of everything else, as thought everything else would basically take care of themselves, strikes me as pathological.

Well, no, I didn't "just make it up". I replied to the pushback on it with a typical too-long post that was my characterization of what I meant to say, based on the last several weeks of reading posts about this topic. I'd be fine debating the accuracy of my recollection, but you seem to want something more personal out of it, so I'm just going to leave it with you now and move on.

Absolutely agree. Not sure the red states trying to pass all these laws stipulating what social precepts teachers must teach and cannot teach, which may well have the effect of driving the better-qualified teachers out of the profession to be replaced by lesser-qualified people only too happy to have the job, would agree with this completely.

You're the one charging me waving the billy club around, cheef. I'm not going to dance for you.

I've given my reply and that will have to do. I will not accede to repeated demands to "out" people. Sorry to disappoint you on that.

We spilled a lot of pixels on the other board litigating this one as well, but I'm pretty sure Ilitch fired Dombrowski for some reason other than that the team was going in the wrong direction. After all, if that were the case, why cut off the head and move the rest of the body up one slot each? Dave's entire front office team was handed the keys to the car while it was still in motion. If it were truly a wrong-direction situation, a lot more bodies would have been dropped that day. I think Dombrowski was whacked because he did something Ilitch thought was the last straw. Some writer this week suggested that straw was because he insisted on Ausmus being manager and Ilitch didn't want that. That doesn't pass the smell test, though, because Ausmus hung around here for two more seasons after that. So that wasn't it. I think Ilitch was mad because he let Dombrowski talk him into liquidating David Price, Joakim Soria and Yoenis Cespedes at the deadline in a show of waving the white flag (reminder: we were 50-53 and in third place 11½ games out on July 31), in prep for a rebuild, or at least a retooling. Ilitch desperately wanted a ring before he died, though, and didn't want to go through yet another re-anything. Four days later, Dombrowski was gone. It would not surprise me to learn that Al Avila whispered sweet nothings in Mike Ilitch's ear in those days following the deadline, promising to put the team back on the winning track if he were made GM. I have no knowledge of whether he did that, of course, but it does seem very plausible that some high-stakes office politics could have accelerated the timeline on the firing. That led directly to the signings of Jordan Zimmermann, Justin Upton, Mike Pelfrey, Mark Lowe, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, as well as the trades of prospects for Cameron Maybin and Justin Wilson. That was the Al Avila version of "Going For It". Once the old man died during the 2016-17 offseason, there was no need to pretend anymore that the organization was going to win anytime soon. ASfter that, it was all about moving money off the books for whatever they could get. And Al Avila handled that marching order flawlessly: he truly got whatever he could get.

I don't think there's any way Hinch will leave after this season because (1) I think there might be a succession plan in place in which Hinch eventually gets the GM chair, which is something he's been on record throughout his career as being a goal of his; and (2) if he leaves after managing the team to 100 losses and literally one of the worst offense in baseball history, who's going to be falling all over themselves to put him in the manager's chair somewhere else?

Lots of people assume that the best players must by default be the best leaders and mentors, but some great players just aren't wired that way, and others are too much of a clubhouse cancer for anyone to listen to them.

I don't know, slick, the idea that a high school graduate would already know everything that a first or second grader is taught in school already, and that they'd just need direction on approach doesn't seem too terribly controversial to me.

Wanting to win is the bare minimum requirement for owning or running a sports team. No one doesn't want to win. Winning is nice, and it beats the alternative. The issue at hand is, how motivated someone in their position is to move heaven and earth to make that winning happen, and damn the cost. I think there's a fair case to be made that Chris Ilitch, at least, does not score at the top of the chain on that attribute.

That wouldn't surprise me to hear that about Miggy. He was never a captain-rally-the-troops-type guy. He was always a just-show-up-and-rake guy.

Cas comin' in 🔥🔥🔥! He smells blood! 🤣🤣🤣 There are posts in this forum that have called for the head of A.J. Hinch without any mention that it is Al, not A.J., who is the architect of this roster and system as of today. You seen these posts around here. I trust that you're not going to insist that has never happened so I won't have to produce any for you. I was one of the guys replying to these folks to remind them that A.J. is doing the best he can with the crap talent and all the injuries, and I've taken a lot of fire for that. My read from those posts was that they thought the situation the Tigers are in now was mostly or all A.J.'s fault. Of course, it's now several weeks or so after all that started and now it looks like everyone is finally getting on board with the truth: this tire fire is entirely Al Avila's responsibility. A lot of people still want to fire A.J., which I get because we're all mad and that'll scratch our goddamned itch, but now some here want to fire everybody, including Ryan Garko, who has been here for nine months. I don't think it makes sense to fire one guy who's been here for nine months and another guy who's been here for a year and a half when this failure has been, to be generous, five-plus years in the making. Now please, put the billy club down and take a breath ... 😁

Folks getting chippy here! 😅