chasfh

Well, at least I'm in good company here. It's no shame to be accused of lying by you. Fine, as you wish. I will give my closing argument and we can be done with it. A rebuilding team moves aggressively into the Latin American market to find prospects. Under Avila, the Tigers signed fewer Latin AFAs than even the average MLB team. A rebuilding team scours the non-Latin markets for players. The Avila Tigers acquired exactly zero players outside of three countries, and that includes none from actual baseball countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Panama. A rebuilding team also scours the waiver wire for freely-available talent. The Avila Tigers fielded fewer players off the waiver wire than even the average team, an average which includes playoff teams, which have little need for the waiver wire. The Angels, Orioles, and Mariners fielded double the waiver-claimed players the Tigers did. A rebuilding team trades current assets for actual prospects. The Tigers dumped so many All-Stars, future award winners, and future Hall of Famers for flotsam and jetsam that I don't really have to list them out here. Of the players you named as your shining examples of Avila's competent trading skills, only one is on the 40-man roster, and practically everyone here except me wants that guy gone. The rest are either out of the organization, still TBD, and Austin Meadows (acquired by trading Paredes AND a draft pick), which, who knows what's going on there. A rebuilding team takes the draft beyond the first round seriously. Everyone pretty much knew who Avila was going to take with their high first picks, since every other team would have taken those guys as well. But beyond that it's been reported that the Tigers were "historically disorganized when it came to preparing for the draft", and they "would leave all the research and planning until 10 days before the draft and then do marathon sessions of discussion about who they would select. One Front Office executive said they were all so tired near the end that there was always a rush just to get it over with." Add this all up and we do not have the organized activities of a team in serious rebuild mode. We have the disparate, even desperate, acts of a team hardly trying at all and basically phoning it in. No matter how many random examples get trotted out, the evidence is clear: Avila and the Tigers did not embark on a serious rebuild. They treaded water. They didn't plan for a carefully-considered rebuild—they basically winged it and hoped to get by and get lucky. Now, finally, we have a PBO who will undertake the actual hard work, research, and preparation that the Avila regime either didn't know how to do, couldn't be bothered to do, or some combination of both. Finally—a light at the end of the long, dark tunnel. 🤞

Speaking of semantics—just because they call it a "rebuild" does not mean it's an actual rebuild. The Avila regime paid no attention to the lower rounds of the draft; were underrepresented in the Latin American AFA market; were completely absent from the Asian market, did not make trades to build the team for the future, did not scour the waiver wire looking for opportunities; and did not sign undervalued free agents for the future. All they did was tank—giving up all-stars and future Hall-of-Famers for organizational flotsam so they could maximize their losses to collect top first-round picks, while occasionally dabbling in the Rule 5 draft. They endeavored to do the very least they could possibly get away with to be considered rebuilding, and they didn't accomplish even that. Come on, give up and finally admit it: the Tigers weren't rebuilding to build a solid foundation for the future—they were treading water and cashing revenue-sharing checks. What you call rebuilding is actually what Scott Harris and his team are embarking upon right now. Anything positive they get coming from the prior regime is not the residue of good planning—it's the result of no-plan-having luck.

Ummm … 😅?

It’s not a rebuild if it goes on for seven seasons and there are no playoff appearances and the team is no better than it was when it started. It was a dismantling. The actual rebuild started September 19.

Becuase they've been lied to that government is the problem.

Voter fraud. Arrest them en masse and ship them off to concentr ... err, detention centers to protect democracy.

Someone's gonna die, and soon. Then the floodgates might open.

As it turns out, it never was a rebuild.

If the Lions are capable of beating any team on their schedule except the Bills and they're 1-7, then Dan Campbell's not the guy. "But they're injured". It's the NFL. Everyone's injured.

Betcha a sawbuck on that one?

The housecleaning continues apace.

I ran down Chris Ilitch as hard as anyone else here. I accused him of being a dilettante at best and as uncaring at worse. I feared he was going subsume the Tigers under all his other businesses because of the cash cow nature of owning a baseball team. I basically accused him of being a hockey guy only. I believed all this based on the relentless losing under the apparently protected Avila regime, exacerbated by the hiring of Ron Gardenhire even after touting this computer program called Caesar that he claimed would basically bring the Tigers into this century. Like you, the moves Ilitch made to first hire A.J., and then to dump Avila and hire an exec from a forward-thinking organization, has turned my thinking some. I now have confidence that he does care about this team after all and is willing to put the team in a position to win, versus just letting whatever happen and cashing the checks. I’m not going to project onto Ilitch what I would like him to in terms of signing this or that free agent this winter, or spending X hundred million on payroll. I don’t know what Ilitch is going to do when we get certain pieces into place and we are just a move or two away from being favorites to play into November, in a few years I presume. But I do feel better about the idea that he’s not going to just go cheap as possible on the team and just accept whatever result happens and simply bank the loot. I guess that’s still somewhere in the range of outcomes, but I feel better that it occupies a small sliver and not a healthy chunk of that pie. I want the organization to do what it takes to win, whatever that may be, and I don’t care how much Ilitch ultimately spends on payroll, just so long as it doesn’t make the difference between winning pennants and losing out on wild cards.

Fair and proven out by fairly recent experience.

The amount the Tigers offered was well below Correa's publicly-stated floor. He was never going to accept it, and I believe the Tigers knew he wouldn't accept it.

Because people here want to argue this point now. That's what we do in this discussion forum.

I didn't "suggest" he may want to be like the Rays, as in that's what I believe. I said it's a distinct possibility, as in that's within the range of outcomes. Can you see the difference?

Me, where I'm hoping it makes a difference is in the state houses, despite the gerrymandering.

Seriously, red hat skepticism about early voting and mail voting might be one of the underrated ways in which Democrats have a real chance to both hold onto and gain majorities where they need to.

When my wife and I took our civil rights trail/blues trail driving trip through the south a few years ago, I tried to find the Viola Liuzzo memorial marker along Alabama highway 8. Unsurprisingly, it's poorly marked and very difficult to find.

You will call me crazy, but I took a small chunk of savings and dipped it into a five-year CD paying 4.01%, which is that number I long felt would be the tipping point I'd need to go into them again. Also, the way I figure it, with with deflationary forces looming on the horizon, it's not a super risky move, and if by some chance CD rates shoot up to 6% or 8% or 10% or something like that, I can put another chunk of savings into that. I mean, where else am I gonna keep it? The bank paying 2-and-change?

Glad I got my nine-sixes when I did.

I with you on this. I wouldn't say it's impossible that he would ever spend big like leading teams do, but I also don't understand the position stipulating that since there's no evidence that he won't or wouldn't spend, that must mean he will spend, or probably will spend. Until he shows and proves, I'm not assuming that at all.

I would bet the payroll will be right around what it was last year, maybe a touch more to cover Jeimer's seven Ms. I don't see them doing much more than one-year placeholder deals, perhaps even a two-year for a starter like Andrew Heaney, someone who can control the strike zone even though we'd be taking a chance on his health.