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The feeling is that Skubal is going to free agency after this season no matter what, so any offer the Tigers make would be just setting the floor for Skubal next winter.

Didn’t we hear about this same offer, or something really similar, last week? Was that also this Pinafore guy?

Try? Like the Pirates “tried” to sign Schwarber for 4/120 knowing he would never take it? That kind of try? 😉 I don’t see any way he takes 8/350 as a first offer from anyone, not even the Dodgers. Everyone believes at this time he can do better. Maybe he does land on 8/350 with someone, but I think that would happen only after a soft season and/or an emergent injury concern.

It would hurt our negotiating position for him to be so open at this point.

I thought it was the opposite: Harris articulated the organization’s approach really well, which of course he would because he thinks and talks about it endlessly, but I also think expectations of him by the trad baseball media are low basically perhaps because he is not a baseball lifer, and maybe because he looks like the high school class president for the Class of 2026. I actually thought Amsinger was being rather patronizing when he said that, as though he doesn’t really respect Harris. I also think Harris likes being underestimated.

I think it’s that a new class of executives, who came in from the classroom or conference room instead of up through the ranks, rankles some fans who respect the latter far more. Scott Harris is practically representative of the new breed.

Red Sox

If Dylan Cease can get seven years, eight for Skubal probably isn’t enough. Probably 350 isn’t, either.

I'm not so sure we can attribute that to airport viewers of CNN.

I'm looking for a receipt, Michael Palin, not an argument. 😉

I'm not so sure those viewers really count since they tend to pay far less attention in common space; and also, many of those viewers find themselves exposed to CNN by circumstance rather than by choice.

I wonder to what degree CNN viewers qualify as “low info voters”? I mean, relative to the others.

Care to produce the receipt in which I literally said the entire Org WILL fall apart if we DO trade Skubal?

Gotta love the idea that I don’t believe the franchise will fall apart if we don’t trade Skubal this winter and that makes me the fatalist.

Harris did say on the Network yesterday that he has some holes to fill on the roster.

If you expect it to be bad, you can’t be disappointed.

We have literally nothing on the payroll after 2027 except Colt Keith.

My recent thought has been that signing Skubal to a long-term deal would go a long way toward signaling to the market that we are serious about contending, which would make us a more attractive destination. If we let Skubal walk next year, that may not hurt our position with free agents all that much, depending in large part how this season goes and what our roster looks like next winter. If we trade Skubal for minor leaguers this winter, however, I believe that would be an unmitigated disaster in terms of our ability to attract top talent to the team, because that would likely be seen as an active move toward pulling back on competing this season after making the playoffs the past two seasons. IOW, it would look like we're going into another rebuild. Fair or not, I do believe that would be the perception.

Nope. Couldn't do it.

Surely you have heard about the paramount hostile takeover bid to keep Netflix from purchasing Warner Brothers Discovery, and that Trump himself is ready to put his tiny ugly thumb on the scale for paramount. I subscribing to a TV business newsletter, and I saw this post within it, which I thought was fascinating. I wouldn't say I am cynical, but I do think of myself as fairly savvy. But I did not have a clear idea of just how much social media traffic is bought, frequently by nefarious forces seeking to, frankly, destroy America as we know it. Here is an object lesson in that, right here. ***** THE DETAILS OF A SECRET CONSERVATIVE MEDIA EFFORT TO SINK THE NETFLIX BID FOR WARNER BROS. STUDIOS AND STREAMING One advantage of having a substantial readership is that I have readers from every industry and political belief. And I hear from them on a regular basis. My reader emails can top 250-300 a day. More if I am writing something that resonates strongly with some people. However, those emails also include a lot of tips and that has led to me breaking a number of stories over the past couple of years. And today’s exclusive started with a reader email I received on Friday. It came from someone who is a moderately popular conservative influencer, but also someone who has a strong sense of what he will and won’t for the cause. He had just received a unsolicited pitch from someone he didn’t know. A bland Gmail address and a name he had never heard before. But the subject of the email got his attention: I initially wasn’t sure if the pitch was legitimate, but he was able to connect me with two other conservative influencers who didn’t want to talk to me at length. But they did confirm they received the pitch and forwarded me their emails, which were identical to the one above. None of these influencers wanted to be publicly identified - for obvious reasons. But they are all relatively well-known influencers and it seems unlikely they would concoct some story to cause trouble. One of the three had responded to the pitch and had received an offer letter and contract back for approval. I’m not going to share that here, because it is filled with personably identifiable information. But this offer could make someone thousands of dollars pretty quickly, which makes me suspect that whomever is doing it is willing to pour resources into the efforts. I reached out to email address on the pitches and didn’t receive a response. I’m not going to speculate on who might be behind this or which influencers might have made a deal. Because honestly, it can be hard to determine sometimes if influencers are being bought or just jumping in to ride the engagement train of other accounts. But I will note that I saw a lot of thought-provoking tweets over the weekend on X. And I can’t help suspecting that not all of the opinions being shared by the various conservative influencers and media types were entirely sincere:

Of all the maps I have posted thus far, this has to be the saddest. Ukraine Between Two Octobers (2012-2025)

Here's an interesting campaign poster with a pretty cool map. Here's where the "black belt" is regarded to exist today:

I like where I am at, so, green. I hear Des Moines is an up and coming, which I like, and NoVA could work as well. Heck, I could even be talked into going back to Columbus.

The Supreme Court sure is acting as though they don't expect anyone else to be president throughout 2029 and beyond.

Well, at least he would at least have a third of the country, including probably two-thirds of all white people of modest education and means, rejecting what their lyin' eyes are telling them, and then people can gainsay each other about what the truth actually is, which is Trump's sweet spot for dividing the people against each other.