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I have a mild ... mild ... concern that the coverage of the debate, if not the actual debate itself, will cast competency aspersions on Fetterman enough to either move independent votes to Oz or keep easily-embarrassed D voters home, tipping the scales to Oz. That in itself would be bad, but in that case the downhill effect might also be to tip the governor race to Mastriano, who gets to hire his Secretary of State beholden to him, which allows them to fix the 2024 election for Trump/R candidate, that is the difference in R winning the presidency. Very, very small possibility, although ...

I know we’re in the middle of the moment, but that is by and large a bad take. Almost 55 million students are enrolled in public and private schools. There have been 121 students killed in schools this year. That’s about a 1 in 450,000 chance that a student will be killed while at school. That’s a far lower chance than the average person has of being killed in America regardless of locale. But in an era when the news business model is “scare the hell out of everyone”, it’s the prevalence of this kind of reporting that leads to bad policy like arming teachers and on-duty cops on campus.

It was a very, very bad look for her to blame staff for putting it out unvetted. It was so transparent when she said that that it was a bare-faced lie.

Agree.

I did a whole FG fan post on this when Bryce Harper was on the market: https://community.fangraphs.com/the-income-tax-implications-of-bryce-harpers-choice-of-next-team/ You will certainly enjoy just how utterly off I was with my prediction in the middle of it. 😁

I just posted a big ol’ epistle on this, but I still can’t imagine any market conditions that would lead Correa to accept five years from a team that he believes will be sub-.500 for at least a couple more years. Perhaps if it’s the only offer he gets. That was my response to a suggestion of a 5/200 offer to him, which got this whole sidebar started.

Last year’s win-loss might not matter per se, and after all the management moves that we made, the Tigers are definitely going in the right direction. That might be attractive to some free agents. On the other hand, the organization is still scraping the bottom at this moment, new hires notwithstanding, and I believe the general perception is that it will take a few years before the Tigers can get into the position of perennial contender. Maybe as few as two, which would be great, but I’d guess three at minimum; perhaps more like four; hopefully not five or more, because that would be a problem. Is a top-tier player like Correa willing to wait that long? Depends on the player, right? We know of players who would go through a wall to win a ring, and nothing else will do. While those are the guys who might take the slightly less lucrative offer to win a ring right now, we’re probably not in contention for a player like that for 2023. There are other players who may not be super-driven to win a ring and nothing else. Players who instead enjoy their career, the lifestyle, and playing the game itself, and that winning would be a nice-to-have more than a have-to-have-or-else. We don’t know who many of those guys are because they don’t usually talk like that in public, but the absence of hyper-competitive talk from them might be a clue. I have suspected for some years now that Mike Trout might be like that. Is Carlos Correa like that? Not sure, and I can’t find any quotes from him from when he was signed with the Twins. So, maybe? Another factor, besides the single-minded focus to win, might be what a player knows of the organization, because as with any profession, people in it share stories amongst themselves. Is the clubhouse filled with good guys, good teammates, motivated players? Is it a good place to play and generally pursue your profession as a ballplayer? Before this season we might have agreed that the Tigers were not. We were a complete mess, and to attract top free agents we had to either overpay (Eduardo?) or be the last one standing (Baez?). Now, though, with the new PBO hire and especially the movements made in the last couple of days, the Tigers must look a lot more interesting to free agents, which might have been one of the objectives Harris was trying to accomplish with all the moves all at once now, followed by the press conference. I agree the city of Detroit is not as much of a factor in itself, although it could serve as a tiebreaker criterion in a situation like, similar money, Yankees vs Tigers. How this all adds up for Correa this winter, I’m not sure. I guess we have a shot, although I do think more teams will be in for Correa than those that have FA SS right now. I don’t think the Yankees would let Kiner-Falefa block their desire to bring Correa aboard, nor would the Phillies like Bryson Stott block him, or maybe even the Cubs with Nico Hoerner, if they really wanted him. As for those contenders you named, we would go through all the same questions for whatever FA SS Correa would displace as we would with Correa. The final two considerations are whether the Tigers will meet whatever Correa’s long-term demands are, which I assume will be roughly what they were last winter; and whether we are willing to commit to another super long-term deal after the very public failure of long-term deals this organization has recently done. The wild card is whether Correa would accept another Twins-like deal from the Tigers. That’s possible, but with another year having passed in his career, I gotta think pretty unlikely. My conclusion/prediction is that the Tigers won’t make a serious long-term offer for Correa, probably because we’re not close enough to winning in the next up-to-three years to justify it, and that we will roll with Baez-to-Schoop-to-TORK!? next year. I’d love to see a premier SS come here and push Baez to 2B, though.

Terrific. Good to know. 😉😅 So you agree that players take other considerations such as winning organization into account, and that they do not always take the offer that’s simply the most money, which was the original hypothesis. I’m on board with that idea as well. Now we’re just negotiating to what degree.

It’s even worse because all the Republican commercials are so god damned apocalyptic.

She's not a pawn so much as a prisoner of war.

21 Savage, Meek Mill, or BlocBoy JB should do the trick.

Following up with you on this because it's your thoughts I am interested in hearing about this. If it's only about the best contract and nothing else for ballplayers, do you think Aaron Judge would take a 10/410 contract to play with the Pittsburgh Pirates over a 10/400 to stay with the New York Yankees? Do you believe the extra $10 million would make up for all the losing and absence from playoffs?

@Tenacious D? Is he speaking for you?

I'm interested in @Tenacious D's answer to the question.

Do you think he would take a 10/410 contract to play with the Pirates over a 10/400 to stay with the Yankees?

This postseason thread sure has taken a turn ... 😏

What, 12/500 isn't an overpay?? 😉😅 I agree he could overpay, but I think the overpay would have to be dramatic to pry Judge from his organizational home of nine years. It's not going to come down to who gives him the extra penny.

I know nothing about Rob Metzler per se, but he does have fairly extensive scouting-for-the-draft experience with one of the most innovative acquirers of talent in the game, so based strictly on resume, I approve.

Well, heck, this is an upgrade to Chadd:

I can personally attest to the fact that he looks way too young to be a Chuck. 😏

He could, but I can't see the Yankees allowing that to happen, at least by lowballing Judge on the offer. It would have to be something on an order of magnitude like, I don't know, maybe Yankees offer 10/400, but Cohen offers 12/500. Something like that. He wouldn't abandon the Yankees for the Mets because they're giving him an extra ten bucks.

I can see the Yankees working some creative accounting with Judge/PSI such as deferred comp into the 2060s, to keep the money off the near-term books due to cap considerations.

Quite possible. Judge already rejected a long-term deal to bet on himself with a one-year deal once, just this year. The main two impediments I can see to that kind of waiting game are (1) Judge will be 31 next year, so the window rail is definitely not going up; and (2) he set the bar so high this year that even a season during which he slashes something like .270/.360/.580 with 45 homers will look like an off year and may drive down his 2024 market price as a 32-year-old. THIS is the year he wants his long-term deal off of. It's almost certainly never going to be better than this.

I don't know how the Yankees can rationalize to their fans and their media letting Judge walk after putting up an all-time-great season, including breaking the Yankees' presumed birthright that is the American League season record for home runs. Since it is the Yankees, I don't think "but we can't afford it" applies here. He's going back to New York. Book it.

He’ll go where he can get the best contract and where he believes he can win.