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Some franchises have to overpay to get even adequate veterans to sign with them. Part of that might be the perception of the franchise, its city, and the direction things are going in; it could also be that the front office guy signing the veterans like Schoop don’t know how to effectively negotiate free agent contracts.

If we end up lazily picking up Travis Demerritte the same way we’ve been lazily picking up Devils We Know for the past few years, then I think that basically disqualifies Sam Menzin from consideration for the permanent gig.

Because he wasn't retired. He couldn't lip off while being required to kowtow to the tyranny of his customer base. Now that he is retiring, he can mouth off all he wants.

We have hope!

Not even two pages? This must be the most pathetic game thread I’ve seen in MT*.

Yes, very nice. And I am in the Hilton in the background. Here is the view from my room.

Also: Milliseconds before he flied out to left.

Greetings from Manchester, New Hampshire, where the Erie Seawolves are battling the Fisher Cats.

Lol, laptop repairman as political expert

Did Fox never report the Benghazi hearings? I’d’ve thought they’d’ve devoted their entire network to it. I gotta wonder whether Fox News viewers feel as though their intelligence is being insulted here, or whether they are “in on the joke”. Even they can’t honestly believe the hearings never happened.

Maybe not “clean”, per se, but funny!

He's including the $8 million buyout. If they're going to do it, they really should do a Bobby Bonilla payout deal.

You may be assuming that Chris Ilitch despises A.J. Hinch as much as you do, but that may not be the case. Heck, there’s still a chance Baby Doc makes A.J. his new GM!

Perhaps the average GM could have unlocked a couple of top prospects for Fulmer a couple years ago, but Al could not have, because as we have long suspected and now know for certain, that ability was always beyond his skill set.

He as the owner is supposed to accept final responsibility for the moves which he surely had to approve, rather than throw up his hands as say hey, it wasnt me, it’s a no my job.

Which means he was never suited for the job of major league GM.

If a businessman is always going to speak his mind and never put a filter on, that may feel good, but that’s also going to burn the occasional bridge. To some that’s an acceptable tradeoff. To others it’s a recurring surprise they can’t figure out.

I've been wondering about that. The Tigers are a family-run organization that values loyalty highly and promotes from within to maintain a tight circle of decision-makers across decades, so I wonder how effectively someone can come in from the outside and change everything from top to bottom, turning everything upside down even in the service to bringing the organization up to current snuff. Tightly-run organizations tend to resist big fast change. It will all depend on how much of a taste for breaking things Chris Ilitch has.

Maybe not. But maybe. Everything is a people business.

We've already gone the ex-scout route. I think I'd like to try someone with more broad-based executive decision-making on their resume.

They could probably get almost any GM candidate with little experience and modest qualifications and who's currently on the beach for just about any price they want. It may be harder and more expensive to pry a rising star who has a future in a functional top-tier organization, if they want, to come to a mess where the owner publicly throws his former employees under the bus.

I agree with you. I would not be surprised to learn that there was tension regarding player analysis between Avila/the old guard and Sartori-Menzin/the new wave.

It's a new day ... And dammit, I have hope now.

Even if you knew nothing else, just from the description above, you'd have to conclude as much.

What a complete abomination that was, from the word go.