chasfh

Speaking of which, this article just dropped on MLBTR: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/01/mlb-mailbag-bregman-red-sox-kelenic-tigers-marlins.html It's a subscriber-only article, but if you don't subscribe, I can share a little of it with you. They write that despite owner Jim Crane saying he is unwilling to pay the luxury tax for a second consecutive season, the 6/156 offer is still open to Bregman, per GM Dana Brown, and if you take them at their word that it is still an open offer, it would most definitely put the Astros over the threshold again, and all Bregman has to do is say the word in the next sixty seconds and he's back: I don’t see why Scott Boras wouldn’t just accept the Astros’ offer. It’s true: if he finds Bregman a bigger offer elsewhere, he wins. I’m not sure Bregman would be happier; I don’t know what’s going on in his head. But accepting $156MM to stay in Houston would hardly be a disappointment, and it’d still be more money than Matt Chapman received on his recent extension. Here's the Tigers' portion of the article: The only reason for the Tigers to sit this one out is not liking the value presented in signing Bregman at whatever price would get him there. The guy turns 31 in March and his walk rate fell off a cliff last year. As nice as the fit is in Detroit and as much as they can afford him, it’s still not necessarily a good signing if it’s in the $175MM range. I decided to subscribe for a month basically to get this article. I got a reward card from DirecTV and it's kind of free money, so why not.

I would bet a sawbuck you'll get your wish.

I wouldn't have minded signing Kim for a year or two. Plus defender, plus baserunner, controls the strike zone, little bit of pop. Plus, if the Rays like him, he can't be all bad. But I am somewhat optimistic about our shortstop prospects with Sweeney for the short term and Brice Rainer nipping at his heels.

I like the pick up of Tommy Kahnle. The only thing I don’t like is that he walks the world.

It has nothing to do with me and what I think of Detroit. This is not personal.

This is a double pet peeve, I guess: one of mine, and one about me, I suppose. Sometimes you might want to ask somebody who works at a retailer you’re visiting to help you go through an app on your phone, for example, how do I reach the digital coupons on your app? And so you will show them the screen while you’re prepared to do what they tell you to do, but then they reach for your phone, usually without even asking, as if to take it out of your hand so they can do it themselves. That’s a pet peeve of mine. I don’t want anybody grabbing my phone, particularly without asking, and swiping around on it. But then, their pet peeve must be old people who won’t give you their phone so you can do the thing for them that they’re asking you to do. I guess the idea of that peeve is they tell the old person what to do and they still screw it up. That happened to me just now. I tried to make a joke that it seems like the younger the person is with me, the more trouble I have with my phone in front of them, but they didn’t think it was funny, probably because I would not surrender my phone when they reached for it. Their face got sour, and they would not make any eye contact with me after that, because I just wouldn’t give them my goddamn phone so that they could do the thing for me I was asking them to do.

It hasn’t been like that for a long time now. The generation that would routinely engage in that kind of thing (Boomers, X) are pushing retirement age, if not already there, and today’s young generation (young millennials, Gen Z) were not socialized that way. Acting out like that is a lot a lot rarer than it used to be. Grid willing it will stay that way.

I love 6:40pm starts, and I’m glad the White Sox are going to them all year (and surprised, considering how suburban their fan base is). I wish the Cubs would do 6:40s all year instead of just April, May, and September.

You're one ahead of me. I didn't even bother cuing up the video.

I know there are some folks who are frustrated with how much faster games are going, but speaking as an old man, I approve this trend.

Decades of negative media coverage of a city will definitely hurt its image. It also doesn't help that the Tigers organization took a huge reputational hit after Dombrowski left. It was always going to take time to rebuild that, and it's very frustrating to be in the middle of it, but unfortunately, we're simply not there yet.

Looks like we might have blown right past the can't win don't try stage here ...

I was hoping this might happen with the Tigers, or better yet, MLB takes over the broadcast the way they did with the Pirates, Brewers, etc. Instead, we may have to see shifting odds with every pitch on the FanDuel network. Hoping not.

They're shooting the pets of the people who live there!

I might say here "so undocumented people are dirtbags, huh?", but then I remember she's probably including Puerto Ricans who are American citizens, too.

The obvious lie that Trump’s first inauguration was the most highly-attended in history, and their repeated insistence that it was true despite visual evidence, really was instructive to that cabal.

Because, of course, this is first and foremost a Tigers-oriented forum. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-baseball-hall-of-fame-elects-first-members On January 29, 1936, the U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame elects its first members in Cooperstown, New York: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Matthewson and Walter Johnson. The Hall of Fame actually had its beginnings in 1935, when plans were made to build a museum devoted to baseball and its 100-year history. A private organization based in Cooperstown called the Clark Foundation thought that establishing the Baseball Hall of Fame in their city would help to reinvigorate the area’s Depression-ravaged economy by attracting tourists. To help sell the idea, the foundation advanced the idea that U.S. Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown. The story proved to be phony, but baseball officials, eager to capitalize on the marketing and publicity potential of a museum to honor the game’s greats, gave their support to the project anyway. In preparation for the dedication of the Hall of Fame in 1939—thought by many to be the centennial of baseball—the Baseball Writers’ Association of America chose the five greatest superstars of the game as the first class to be inducted: Ty Cobb was the most productive hitter in history; Babe Ruth was both an ace pitcher and the greatest home-run hitter to play the game; Honus Wagner was a versatile star shortstop and batting champion; Christy Matthewson had more wins than any pitcher in National League history; and Walter Johnson was considered one of the most powerful pitchers to ever have taken the mound.

The colonists not only had the home field advantage of knowing the terrain and being 3,000-4,000 miles away from the aggressor, they also lacked the distinct disadvantage of not having European weapons available to them.

As long as the elections are free and fair we should be seeing a lot more of this.

Wow, they got ICE to say “sorry”? No wonder the media was alerted.

u seem mad

It is now occurring to me that the buyout of federal workers is not about completely shrinking the size of the federal government to practically nothing, but rather about replacing all the woke motherhubbards who are there right now.

I know it looks like that from a distance, but I wonder whether it feels different in person? Is that why people get snowed? Maybe they want to believe he’s being genuine in the moment, and he delivers just enough by of the charm to pull that off?

Agree. If a hypothetical player got offers of 5/120 from the Dodgers, 5/125 from the Yankees, and 9/250 from the Tigers, I'd bet they'd take the Tigers' offer (with early player opt-outs, of course). Sure, they could live in Detroit six months a year for that. The old man is dead, though, and ain't no one getting that kind of offer from this team. Not this offseason, anyway.

Everything I have read about Trump is that he is very charming in private. I think the psychology at work here is that he comes off as a firebreather in public but as a big pussycat in private, which people like Dolan find reassuring when they meet and talk with him, and then they BS themselves into being reassured that everything is going to be OK for them, that he is truly on their side and no harm will befall them. And then when they discover the truth, it's too late.