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That’s OK, I won’t miss him.

So will continuing to phase out the Avila pickups.

WTAF is going on today

And you'll probably get it if (1) you're not an ass about it and (2) you walk away if you don't get it at first.

feature not bug

And another lot just sold today!

I've been getting more messages from non-Tigers friends suggesting there must be something to the rumors since they keep seeing articles about it.

This is in part why I have cars custom built for me by the factory instead of driving one off the lot. I have no problem waiting a couple months for a car fresh off the boat with the exact specs I want.

I’m out of reactions, unfortunately, but definite Like.

I am out of reactions, unfortunately, but big Like for this one.

Trump’s highlighting how black/Muslim Mamdani’s middle name sounds, in order to to amp up the fear and loathing.

Update: the first three trailing stop limit sells have triggered, and we’re pretty close to the fourth one, which might happen today. I also have a 6% trailing stop sell on VOO that would sell 10% of my position in it. Given how much the mag seven makes up the index, once that bubble bursts, that’s coming down a bunch, too. Might as well clear some profits up here at the top.

I would love to see how many actual pages were viewed, to see how they scale against each other. I don’t know whether I’m surprised the Phillies have more views than the Braves, given the Braves’ legacy and their hold on an entire region. Cardinals are fifth in the NL Central in page views? My, how the mighty have fallen. Couldn’t happen to a nicer fan base.

I do take Skubal at his word that he would prefer to stay here. I can envision his choosing Detroit in a tiebreaker over Los Angeles or New York. I don’t think he’ll give the Tigers any kind of substantial hometown discount, but I bet what he really wants to see from Detroit is a commitment in years. If we try to lowball him on years, probably anything less than eight, I think he leaves.

I love Dearborn.

You make this sound as though this is a bad thing.

Avila's not responsible for them. He merely acquired them, and over three years ago. Harris is responsible for them. To the degree they are succeeding here, it's because of Harris, the new coaching regime, the improved developmental system, and newly found access to the best of analytical resources. Except Skubal, though. He got himself fixed all by himself.

I don't hate Avila. I'd bet he's a nice man, good husband, fond of his kids and grandkids.

Hiring Hinch is a good move, although I do wonder whether, had Avila known the kind of man he was truly getting, he would still have recommended the hire to Baby Doc. Also, remember: Hinch was not Avila's first choice. Only when Pedro Grifol came off the board did Hinch graduate into Avila's consideration set. All due respect, I don't take your loosey goosey "probably 80%" figure at face value.

Avila was terrible practically all the way around. I think the main problem was that Avila basically Peter-Principled his way into the big chair, which he clearly showed he was not competent to occupy. He was by acclamation a very good scout, and he was probably a decent lieutenant to Dave Dombrowski. But he was exactly the kind of guy we could have expected to see once Ilitch tabbed him without even talking to another soul about the job. Compared to that, Harris has already established himself as a relative wunderkind. (Note that I do mean "relative" and not "absolute".) He inherited an absolute mess from Avila and set about figuring out who we had who could still help us, at least in the short term, and getting rid of the others. He is still dumping Avila pickups left and right. It takes time to remake an entire organization up and down, and I get that people are impatient because they always want a winner NOW GODDAMMIT! And for his efforts, Harris has taken us to two LDSes in his first three years, and we are still nowhere close to his vision of peak Tigers yet. To be fair, Harris has whiffed on several of his pickups, but a 100% hit rate is not a reasonable goal. A much higher hit rate than the the previous guy is a reasonable goal, and Harris has exceeded that quite handily. And it's true, Harris has not made The Big Free Agent Signing and the Big Trade we all crave yet, but I believe that's in large part because Big Free Agents are still leery of signing here over coastal contenders, a perception that takes time to overcome; and we had not yet gotten to the position where one Big Trade in exchange for top prospects would be the thing that makes us favorites to go to the World Series. I believe we are better positioned for each right now, although I do think the Big Free Agent is still going to be a lot harder to pull off than the Big Trade. Either way, I agree with you and just about everyone else here that this is the winter Scott Harris has to made a very substantial improvement to the big league roster. I think the difference between me and just about everyone else here is that I've been willing to give Scott Harris the time he's needed to fix the aircraft carrier and get it turned all the way around toward perennial contention. If that makes me a Scott sniffer in your eyes, well, can't be helped, I guess. But I really do have trouble understanding the idea that Harris is a failure because he hasn't completed the job he has set out to do yet. But, hey, it takes all kinds to make up a fan base, amirite? 😃

You know as well as anyone, certainly better than most, that Riley was the clear top pick when his slot came up. All 29 other GMs, and you, and I would have made the exact same pick. Same with Tork and Casey, who were both consensus #1s. Every single GM would have made those same picks. Tarik Skubal was passed on by 30 teams eight or nine times before Avila picked him up. I don't see that as a genius savvy draft move that he plotted out and lie in wait to spring on the world. After all, Avila took Jeremiah Burks, Eric De La Rosa, Hugh Smith, Adam Wolf, and Kingston Liniak ahead of Skubal. How are those guys working for us? Plus, the issues that Skubal had with his pitching? He had to go off campus on his own volition to work on those because nobody in house here was good enough to help him. Avila didn't know anything special about Tarik Skubal before selecting him. He was 100% lucky to get Skubal in the ninth round. And, honestly, even Andrew Friedman would have been 100% lucky to have gotten Skubal in the ninth round as well. OTOH, taking Kevin McGonigle 37th overall is shaping up to be a legit genius move. That almost certainly was not a just a lucky pick. I'm guessing it also took a lot or nerve to sit at the draft table and cross their fingers hoping he passes all the way through.

Yeah, 0 for 3 is a bad result. There are more of them than there are Flahertys out there.

Wow ... this, from Axios: 4. 💒 Charted: Gen Z's marriage divide Reproduced from Pew Research Center. Chart: Axios Visuals The share of 12th-grade girls in America who are interested in getting married someday has dropped 22 points in the last three decades — from 83% in 1993 to 61% in 2023, Axios' Erica Pandey writes. The percentage of boys who want to get married has remained roughly the same, according to a Pew analysis of University of Michigan survey data. Why it matters: It's yet another data point illustrating the deep divide between young men and women — in politics, religion and life goals. This is incredible. I have hypotheses why this is happening, but I think the biggest part of it is that boys and men are simply becoming less attractive to girls and women—not because of lesbianism, but more because the negatives that are attached to men (e.g., being patronizing/condescending, being domineering, more prone to violence) are no longer being offset by the one big positive that carried us as a sex for millennia: our ability to provide and protect. Now that women are becoming much more educated than men, they have less reason than ever to look up to us. And since western culture still encourages women to date and mate "up" (i.e., older, taller/bigger, smarter, richer, more capable) rather than "down", that reduces the pool of prospects some. But now it looks as though, rather than settling, many women end up being fine with just living alone. This is bad.

That was a pretty good nut the blind squirrel found.

Well, that's demonstrably untrue. 😁