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You may have heard that some dramatic changes were recently made in the organization, so come on back and try them again for another year.

I don't know for sure—none of us can know at this point—but I'm going to take it on faith going in that Scott Harris won't be telegraphing his player acquisition strategy to the rest of baseball before stepping into it.

After going 88-74 following up a World Series, and then getting Miggy for 2008 to basically close the deal, no wonder 74-88 was so disappointing. Going 81-81 in 2010 wasn’t a whole lot better considering how wide open the window was after falling just a blown HBP short of the playoffs the year before.

I said here before that we should sign Candelario if he’s not much more than $7 million, so I’ll stick with that. Soto is a trickier decision. For a two-time All-Star coming into his first arb year, you’d think he’d be closer to $7 million himself, which would be an easy hard no. (See what I did there?). But at $3.1, it’s almost worth the risk to give him a shot and then eat the money if he does crappy. The $64 question is, would we actually eat the money in that case, or keep running him out there? So I don’t know what they might do here Other than Jeimer and perhaps Greggy, I think they go to arb with Joe, Austin, Willi, Rony, and Funky and cut the rest loose, maybe bringing some of them back on as minor league free agents.

Miggy definitely does not want the money for nothing, and he will be given the chance to fairly earn the money he will make. I'm just saying, if it turns out he is not capable of that, there are other roles he can fulfill in which he is contributing to the team e.g., building morale, camaraderie and bonhomie among the guys. For a team looking to turn the corner, those kinds of boosts are very valuable.

I think one thing Miggy cannot do is come into Lakeland as a prima Donna and expect the team to revolve around him. I believe there has been a dramatic shift away from that thinking in the past few weeks. I have no insight here, and this may be a less than 50-50 proposition, but I can envision a situation wherein, if Miggy does something like engage in passive-aggressive horseshit in camp next spring as a way of expressing his displeasure at not having the key role on the team, A.J. and the coaches just start working completely around him and let him do his thing, while they effectively reiterate to the other players what direction the team is going in and, perhaps more importantly, what direction the team is not going in. Maybe this doesn’t happen at all—maybe Miggy would be entirely on board with essentially not playing and with contributing as strictly a clubhouse presence and leader at the most. But one thing that can’t happen, I think we can all agree, is Miggy being written into the lineup in the #4 or #5 slot every game he is not literally limping while walking.

FWIW, I don’t think Harris has confirmed that Miggy is a lock to make next year’s team. What he said was it “is not time to move on from Miguel Cabrera … he's committed to doing the work to make sure that he stays a productive player … he has earned that.” I read that as, at least as of September 30 of this year, we are not committed to either releasing Miggy nor guaranteeing him a spot next year, and it is up to him to show us that he both is willing and ready to make positive contributions to this team in 2023. I think there’s at least half a chance Harris and A.J. spend the winter massaging the idea into Miggy’s head that it really is time to go, and even though he may show up in Lakeland next February, by the time March 30 rolls around, I think there’s a good chance he will not be on the active roster, and a decent chance he may not even be on the 40-man. Miggy may spend practically the entire year on the 60-day IL, traveling around with the team on his league-wide retirement tour and being our Hall-of-Fame cheerleader in the dugout and clubhouse, and perhaps coming off the list only to have his final ABs in front of the home crowd.

How much fun is Valenti going to have with this?

Turns out Boebert was doing a riff on Joe Biden when he started his speech at the Volvo factory with “Let me start with two words: ‘Made in America’.”

They might have had delivery guys quit on them.

Another scouting director was fired today? I know we fired one yesterday …

London Lions always had a ring to it.

Are you sure? Really?

Ask Matt Millen that.

That’s a completely different scenario that doesn’t even address my jokey retort.

Maybe they are sharing a training staff with the Tigers?

Sounds like eight points. Where does the ninth point come from?

Exactly how are the Lions going to manage to get nine points?

The way we bought what they were selling about Dan Campbell, I’d say we’re the ones who got Lionized.

You can blame me for the Lions losing today since I started Goff at QB.

No score going into the 14th inning. Unbelievable. Almost even more unbelievable is that the teams have gotten only seven hits between them.

Or else Long Island.

None. On to the 12th. This is only the second postseason game in history to go into the 12th scoreless. The only other game: Braves-Reds Game 1 WC in 2020. That one went 13.