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Interesting how the hot/warm dividing line diagonally cuts right through the center of Oakland County, which all of Wayne and practically all of Macomb are on the hot side.

So glad I had the presence of mind to go see him when he did a theater interview tour in support of the new Spinal Tap back in September. He was a good interview and told a great story about how the zit scene in the original came together. I was struck by how much he sounded like Seth Rogen when he laughed.

Swing by and say “hey”.

I heard that early on, too. Information for these stories is usually garbage for the first few hours. But if it’s a stabbing, it is more likely to be personal.

Now I’m hearing knife. Either way, Jesus, how awful.

Dear lord, Rob Reiner might have been murdered today. If so, assuming it was by gun.

So he punts high from the end zone to mid-field, and then through their end zone when deep in his own zone. A little thing but that’s how complete and far-reaching this collapse is.

I won’t say we are donezo, but man, it is hard to stop a runaway train like this.

That’s demonstrably not true. You yourself literally said if it weren’t for Avila, Harris would be on the hot seat. And that Harris doesn’t know how to build teams because if it were up to him, we’d have nothing but Phil Matons and Charlie Mortons playing for us. And that If it weren't for Al Avila, the Tigers wouldn't have made the playoffs the last two seasons.

But I do give Al Avila credit for bringing the players on board. Of course I do. He was here and in charge when we brought them here. I’m not giving him credit for the actual winning, though. That’s a completely different deal. Avila has been gone for 3-1/2 years now, and he did not assemble this particular roster, this particular mix; he did not work with Hinch on the deployment of it; he did not work with the coaches and scouting staff on subsequent drafts and trades and deadlines; and he did not oversee the development and infrastructure upgrades that polished this team for play on the field in 2024 and 2025. Avila had nothing to do with any of that. Harris did. He completed the final assembly of this roster that, yes, is still using some of the players that Avila brought in, because a new GM can’t just fire every player and start all over on a dime. He has to figure out who in the short term he can save and who he can’t, because he can’t not put a team on the field wile he’s fixing everything. I also don’t think Avila was any particular brand of genius when it came to bringing together this particular group of players that has survived with the team thus far. I think he could have picked a completely different set of similarly-talented players, completely different guys with practically the same spread of potentials, and Harris would still have come on board, sifted through them, kept a few and dumped the rest, handed them to Hinch and the coaches with the same developmental and infrastructural tool upgrades, and probably have done practically as well with those guys. Maybe a little better. Maybe a little worse. But probably right around the same. I believe that overseeing the drafting of amateur players is among the lowest level skills a GM can have, especially a guy who was a head scout like Avila. Anyone could sift through the reports he had available to him and make the same selections based on the numbers and words on them. You could do that, I could do that, we all could do that. But as you’ll surely admit, it takes a lot more than just picking a bunch of guys in a draft and throwing them onto the field to win playoff series. A GM also has to sign guys on the international market, and make good trades, and make good minor league free agent signings, and, when he team is down, make good waiver wire and Rule 5 pickups. And, crucially, he has to oversee the positive development of the raw talent they get into serviceably productive and even good major league players. Avila demonstrated over and over that couldn’t do any of that any better than a blind squirrel. Harris has shown he is pretty good at it. Sure, Harris still fails at it sometimes, we’ve all seen that. But every GM fails at it sometimes. Pobody’s nerfect. The proof in the pudding is the relative success rate. And as much as people want to credit Avila for the roster and even the winning, without Harris pickups like Vierling and Torres and McKinstry and Ibanez and Kelly and Flaherty and Holton and Finnegan, and without the positive development of all of them by the development staff, coaches, and infrastructural upgrades, the Tigers would not be where we are today, a repeat playoff team within three years. And none of this has even contemplated the promising farm system about to belch up a cornucopia of top prospects, some of whom will also become very good big league players, even stars. Not all of them, sure. But not none of them, either. And not next year, probably. But not never, either. It’s gonna happen. And maybe I’m setting myself up for being a sucker and a fool, but I believe it. So I’m continuing to give Harris the benefit of the doubt until I can see that what he is doing is simply and persistently not working. If all of this falls apart, if we start losing 90+ games a season year in and year out, if Harris demonstrates that he’s unable to fix it? Then I will call for his head. Not before.

I finally let mine lapse earlier this year. It wasn’t even worth the $29 a year I had been getting it for.

They have a fantastic daily newsletter chock full of use reads, and a terrific weekly roundup on Sunday.

Words of wisdom

You keep suggesting that Harris must either be skittish about signing free agents or ilitch must be clamping him down, ignoring the idea that the top free agents may simply have wanted to go to higher profile teams instead, which is a real possibility. Just ask Alex Bregman, who turned down more money from us to go to a Big Six team with a short LF porch. You make it sound as though Harris is a child whose daddy won’t let him buy an expensive toy at Target. Toys at Target don’t have the agency of choosing not to be bought. And people keep bringing up the Cobb thing as though it was a fatal error that sunk the franchise. Really, it wasn’t that big a deal. We still won a playoff series without him. You seem unclear on the winky-wink concept. 😁

I like Jansen for a year. He’s not in his prime, but he’s earned a shot at the back of this bullpen. Keeps runners off the bases, walk rate is lowest it’s been in several years, even if he didn’t strike out the world last season. And going from the Angels to the Tigers is a definite upgrade for him.

Right, McGonigle would be only a short term fix at short, which is why they’re working him at short this winter. And he may even demonstrate in camp that he’s not up to it.

I would be shocked if the Cubs traded Nico. He’s been on a Hall of Fame-level run the last four years and he’s one of their most popular players. But man, what a pickup that guy would be. Not sure what we would end up doing with Torres, though.

You mean me, don’t you? Go on, admit it. 😉😝 You and others will roll your eyes at this, but I don’t think I qualify as a Harris slappy. A slappy is not just someone who offers much more praise than criticism of a person, but one who actively ignores or disregards the failures by the person, casting such as being untrue or even non-existent. That’s not me, with anyone. That’s what uncritical people do, and anyone who’s paid even a little attention over the years would never characterize me as uncritical. You may be thinking of Harris’s not signing huge free agents, not making trades for established All-Stars, and not winning trade deadlines, as being abject failures. Free agents have agency, and many of the best free agents simply don’t want to come to Detroit if they have better options. Established All-Stars require top prospects or even established big leaguers in trade, and even you have said you would not to want to lose our best prospects in trade. And lack of high-impact deadline trades might mean he was offered jack**** in exchange for numbered prospects. With a nod to Edman, trying to prove incompetence because of lack of activity is akin to trying to disprove a null hypothesis. There are a lot of variables at play that we’re not privy to, and I don’t think it makes anyone a slappy to say that Harris deserves the benefit of the doubt that he knows what he’s doing until it’s clear that he doesn’t, versus the out-of-the-box assumption that every move that doesn’t go his way merely highlights his incompetence. And that’s doubly true since he’s led the team from the dregs of baseball to two playoff series wins in just his first three years. When Harris starts making **** trades and free agent signings that blow up in his face and losing 95+ games a season with no end in sight—yes, like Avila did—then I’ll jump on your bandwagon. Not before.

Yes, I misread as much on his card. I also was misled by another web page that Randy Smith and Al Avila were GM and assistant, with Dave Dombrowski not yet in the picture, and my own memory failed to evaluate and dismiss that. A couple big swings and misses on my part. Time to go back to the cages. 😁

But now we know who he is, so, mission accomplished. 🤡

What won’t be fake is when Trump and the MAGA elite blame Biden, Obama, and the Democrats in Congress for it. 😁

This is Breaking Bad Fly episode writ sci-fi. I found it interesting that both Carol and Manuoso gave in to the force (or whatever it’s called) at the end, the former through crushing ennui and the latter through mortal desperation. Is this a precursor to their warming up to the idea of subsuming themselves to it? I could possibly see this for Carol who lost a loved one to it. Not so much for Manuoso, who thought the mother lost to it was “a bitch”. Of course, if Carol gIves in, that would seem to shorten the series a bit, wouldn’t it? Although maybe the focus shifts completely to Manuoso at that point. It would be a neat bait and switch that I don’t believe could happen until after a season finale cliffhanger. If the force (or whatever it’s called) is an analogy for modern-day fascism, as some have speculated, then I would guess at some point it’s going to have to stop granting wishes, like some interstellar genie, to Carol et al and start demanding some things in return for letting them live their lives to the degree the force will allow and the people will accept.

If you have the money, our healthcare system is the best in the world. If you have the money.

They’re working McGonigle at shortstop right now. We still have Baez, too. It’s true they aren’t long-term solutions, guys we can plug in there for the next eight years, but then, Walmart isn’t exactly overflowing with long-term solutions at shortstop. I’d be surprised—shocked, actually—to see Bichette come here.