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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! 😅

It is.

Exactly:

They've already started the process of remaking scouting and development, which has accelerated over the past year. Garko came out of the Dodgers system, and several other people have been hired as well out of LA. I think that whole thing is going in the right direction, but since it's really only happened over the past year, none of those changes would be impacting the on-the-field product right now.

George Lombard.

Quick back-of-the-napkin comparison: It's not quite a yawning gap, but yeah, I'd say that Tampa is winning this one so far this year.

With the economy careening into recession, I gotta believe that attendance to expensive sports and entertainment events are going to cave.

The Tigers actually have seven first-rounders on the active roster right now. Five of them were selected by other teams. EDIT: Just compared us with other American League teams: only the Yankees have more first-rounders on their active roster, with eight. Three other teams also have seven: Angels, White Sox, Rangers.

Another tidbit related to this: Of the 23 RHPs they have used first-round picks on, only three have a career WAR greater than 5.0.

The Ilitches bought the team in 1992. They have owned the team for 34 first-round draft picks, and 23 of those picks have been right-handed pitchers. They selected six straight RHPs over a five-year stretch in 1994-98, five RHPs during the four-year stretch of 2007-2010, and four more RHPs in four straight years 2015-18. They used their two first-rounders in 2021 on RHPs as well, so they are in the middle of a RHP streak now. That’s downright pathological.

Anyone who might have wanted that probably doesn’t want that anymore. Today may have been the last straw.

This is what we get for putting all our eggs in the right-handed starters basket Is Jackson Jobe ready yet?.

Well, that didn’t take long—Cubs did it just last year. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL202104280.shtml