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I just have no idea how people can’t just see right through the ridiculousness of that stuff the second they see it. I blame schools and parents.

Not enough.

LOLOLOL ... stop, Marco, you're killing me!

Duuuude ... it-quay saying the iet-quay art-pay out oud-lay ...

Just what we need: up to three more tossers who can't strike hitters out. I thought it was important to control the strike zone? Or maybe what we mean by that is pitchers who won't walk guys, which, these guys didn't last year. We'll see, if we end up signing any of these guys. Profar definitely takes walks and puts the ball in play—just not very hard when he does, and thus he's up and down from year to year. Plus, if we're going to hire more guys who can't strike hitters out, we should probably get someone out there who can defend. He's basically Curaçao Robbie Grossman.

I understand. The Baseball marketing machine thrives on home runs and strikeouts, and the increase of both is a direct result of the live ball. I'm just saying, if Baseball cared—I mean really cared—about protecting pitchers from injuries, instead of just letting it happen since it happily maintains the fungibility and thus cost control of the pitcher pool, I'm certain deadening the ball would accomplish that.

Deaden the ball, remove the fear of all nine guys in the order being able take you out of the park, and pitchers won't have to throw so hard with so much torque to get swing-and-miss. They can just heave it up there and say here you go, hit it and get yourself out. I don't understand why no one ever contemplates that idea except me.

It's been only a couple weeks since the moves on the training staff. It's only mid-November! I believe this is another hangover from the Avila era: the implicit assumption that any move the Tigers front office makes to address anything either won't make any difference, or is at best 50/50 due only to luck. I would agree that was true under the Avila regime, who simply didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Fans can believe going in that this will also be true under Harris because plus ça change and all that, and be as skeptical of him as they were of the former guy. And maybe that's totally fair to expect until he documents some success, I don't know. Perhaps I'm blindly checking my skepticism at the door and huffing some hopium, but as for me, I'm going to give Harris the benefit of the doubt that it will be fixed until we see that it isn't, because I trust his process based on his background and interviews. As for injuries throughout Baseball: I'm starting to wonder whether the Drivelining of the game in general—wherein the quest to add even a single tick and a little late movement to fastballs, in order to induce more swing-and-miss, leads to maxing out the stress on shoulders and elbows while training for it—isn't a factor leading to the injuries.

They've taken steps to address that.

This is how traumatized over the years we Tiger fans have become—we regard sub-replacement players we've seen losing games for us for years as acceptable pieces for the team going forward. I am so glad a new day has dawned when this kind of thinking will soon be relegated to the garbage can of low expectations.

If you're happy to have Bryan Garcia, then the season is way beyond a lost cause.

Bryan Garcia will never be anything more than he is right now: a seven-strikeout, five-walk thrower with a declining fastball who yields elevated contact and relies on low BABIP to get outs. The best we can hope for out of him is to be a sweetener in a deal that obtains us actual useful players in return, which is why I think he (plus Victor et al) are being optioned out to Toledo.

There’s probably gonna be an automatic recount in the Boebert race, right?

Maybe an entire political units’s population vacillates back and forth along the liberal-conservative spectrum, due to messaging unique to them at various times, and Wisconsin is simply on a different cycle from Michigan and the others …

I think Willi stays and Harold goes.

Because with it she'd look like this?

Not to me it wasn't! I had him going on Page 1.

Liberal tears keep turning to cheers … I wonder how Bunker is doing these days?

I don’t mean just the drafts. We were talking about trades, so I also mean the trades, as well as AFA signings and Rule 5 drafts. Anything in which acquiring prospects is concerned. I just said “draft” as a catch-all for player acquisition. And Avila is on record as valuing athleticism at the top of the Verlander trade statement.

I hope he signs with the Yankees so I don’t feel like I’m supposed to root for him anymore. 😏

Do you believe this? Not sure I do but maybe …

Gambling on pitchers—and position players—is what we are used to seeing. Basically every trade Al Avila made was a gamble, mainly on athleticism. Draft an athlete and make him into a ballplayer. That's fine in 1997. In 2017, that's asinine. I will expect a lot a lot less gambling out of Scott Harris.

I think we are moving past the era in which pitching is a gamble. I'm pretty sure what the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers are doing with their pitching is not gambling.