RedRamage

Even after giving every indication that he would NOT use his cellphone signal blocker, at the last minute Flaherty did use it to block Harris from being able to make and receive phone calls. It's Flaherty's fault.

Quoted for the truth... and also because I just love that name. Whenever I hear it I think that it was a character in the Hobbit.

Busy pressing 'F5' on various websites.

Yeah, it would be more accurate to say "ERod's camp" instead of ERod... and likewise the Tiger's front office instead of Harris. It's just easier to type just the names I guess.

I'm saying that yes. I'm also saying if he was a partial idiot who didn't do the mildly advanced parts of his job that a 12th grader would understand, then yes, he deserves some of our scorn. Again we'll never know for sure what happened. My guess is that Harris did at least some work with ERod. What I don't know is if he got a 100% solid, firm "Yes, I will accept being traded to the Dodgers" or if it was more like "I'd have to think about it, but maybe... probably yeah." I don't know ERod personally, but based on his history here I'd guess that he may not be 100% trustworthy to follow through on vague promises so unless there was an iron clad promise there should have been alternate plans in place.

Harris, in my opinion, should have had numerous conversations with ERod. He should have pushed for a firm commitment on which teams were okay or not okay. He should have had the back of the house stuff done days before the deadline. Now as you said, we'll never know for sure what was or wasn't said or promised or agreed upon. If Harris did all that and then ERod pulled the carpet out at the 11th hour... then Harris gets little blame imho. But if Harris had anything less than a 100% guarantee from ERod that he would accept the trade to the Dodgers, plan B, C, and probably D should have been ready to go just in case.

Who's the poster here who always chimes in that the Salary Cap is a myth??

Regardless of your opinion on Avila/Verlander trade, NOT trading ERod was a fail. EVERYONE knew he was walking and he could have brought a potential good return. If your house is on fire the smart move is to get out of your house. If you stay in your house and turns out an asteroid happens to land in your yard and would have hit and killed you. But instead the wind from the decent and impact ends up blowing out the fire in your house and you survive by staying in your house... well that makes you extremely lucky, not extremely smart.

The ERod non-trade was a massive fail, no question on that. I don't think Flaherty has a no-trade clause so there's not the issue there. But even if he does trade him it could still be a fail. If he waits *too* long so many teams go for secondary targets then the price for Flaherty may fall a bit. I'll admit I haven't been closely following MLB at large but it seems like it's a sellers market so I don't think there's too much danger of this, but still... it's one area where waiting to very last might bite the team.

I go back and forth on it a bit... During June I was very pro-Trade, now I'm less so given we're starting to see production from some of the younger guys. So, explaining how I was feeling in June: It very much looked like it was going to be 3-5 years until the Tigers were close to competing again. Our pitching was reasonably successful and we've been shown that we can develop pitching reasonably well. So while I don't think we could replace Skubal with someone else perfectly, I also didn't feel like we'd be trading like Cabrera in his prime with only Don Kelly to take his place. I also figured it was long shot to sign Skubal long term. He's flirting with best pitcher in baseball and was going to get massive offers from the highest bidders. You think he'd take a home town discount to play with a team that was still trying to build up to a point of maybe sorta being competitive? So, keep Skubal and see him pitch for us 2.5 more years while our offense looks like ****, then see him get a huge pay somewhere else just as we're maybe getting competitive again. Or trade him for a MASSIVE return to bolster our minors and make sure that in 2.5 years we're getting competitive again with some more ammo in the minors.

Sometimes the best move is to make the deal like a month early. That way you're not confused by a bunch of offers at the last minute and only have to deal with one team.

I get the feeling that Flaherty isn't going anywhere until tomorrow. There seems to be a bit of a bidding war so I suspect Harris is holding out for the best offer as teams get more and more desparate.

Any thoughts of if Carson Kelly is moved? We may not get much for him, but with Dingler playing so well in the minors it might be worth it try see what teams might offer.

It's amazing to think that... I mean the starting rotation was supposed to be out major strength with lots of depth! We sent a guy to triple-A who could easily have been a starter in lot of teams rotations. Now we're struggling to field 3 guys.

I know, I know... small sample size and all that... but I didn't read this comment until relatively recently and thought "What do you mean below average? He's been hitting like crazy!" But obviously we need to see if is an anomaly or the new normal for Keith.

He's gonna start charging Colt an Uber fee for all the driving he's doing.

Here's a suggested rule change ('cause I know that MLB executives regularly roll through here looking for ideas): If an umpire needs to leave the game for an injury, each team gets an additional challenge, and this challenge is usable regardless of whether or not teams have used their challenge(s), or been successful or not.

Without trying to sound too cold... how does the NFL handle this if Jackson was signed? Do the Vikings get that salary cap space back? I'd think is a case like this the team should get that space back. I don't think it should count against the cap this year or any future years either.

Sometime I've gotta re-watch some of these super old sitcoms and just laugh at how the changing slang terms make certain phrases have very, very different meanings.

I choose: Milk under the bridge.

How much do we have to pay to have move Tork?

Time for Andrew Navigato? I'm sure he's probably not on the 40-man, but he plays SS and has an 890 OPS in Toledo. There are far worse options right now.

Did you know about Stafford and Kershaw? It's almost as unknown as the other thing.

I suspect the "hot take" logic here is that whatever you paid for Hooker is in the past. That's "money" spent and you're not getting it back. *IF* Hooker is just going to ride the pine for the next 3-4 years that's equivalent (in terms of on the field performance) as drafting a 3rd rounder who had a career ending injury in his first game and retired. The logic would be getting something... anything... for Hooker would be better than him just keeping the bench warm. Of course that logic assumes that Goff stays health and productive for the next 3-4 years AND that the Lions aren't going to extend Hooker if they see him developing into a potential star QB. We very well may look back in 2028 and say: Goff never was out for long (or ever) and Hooker doesn't look like the heir apparent... we should have traded him for whatever we could have gotten. I suspect that it won't play out just like that and I don't think we'll get enough value in return for trading Hooker, but it's certainly possible.