chasfh

Get your affairs in order, Señor Pereira.

What, and he’s leaving three generations of the Maduro family alone? He’s not as good at the despotic dictator thing as he thinks.

I agree, several other posters do share that view. Numerous other posters have raked Harris for failing to sign the very biggest of free agents, or to successfully trade second-tier prospects for established big league contributors.

That’s true, we had prickly personalities on that team back them even as youngsters coming up through the system. Of course, I also believe players in general from that generation were more prickly in general than players are today. I blame lead in the drinking water and on the school walls. 😏 I meant only to liken that team and this to each other as being teams built into winners from within, nothing more than that.

Say your piece.

Bregman was and probably still is looking for a Big Six team, or perhaps a team near his home in Albuquerque, which would put D’backs, Rangers, and Astros in the mix. (Maybe not Astros much.) I also think he had a minimum number in mind—I don’t know, maybe 8/240 or something?—and when he didn’t, he pivoted to Plan B which was short-term/high AAV with opt out after year 1. Red Sox gave him that. Tigers offered him opt out after year 2 instead. You do the math. Funny thing: Harris offered Bregman 6/171.5, versus the FanGraphs crowdsourcing estimates that he would get 6/162, and yet Harris gets 100% of the blame for Bregman going to RHH-friendly Fenway instead. Take that for what you will.

I think it did. That and reducing the minor leagues to four levels from six.

I’m willing to give both those guys one more year. I am actually more optimistic—or less pessimistic, take your pick—about Sweeney than I am about Jung.

I agree that Harris probably didn’t expect this team to be in the playoffs in Year 2 and 3 of his tenure still carrying a high percentage of Avila signs. That puts a lot more pressure on him as he spools out his vision a s planned, and probably forced him to make a signing going into Year 4 that he wouldn’t have expected to, that of a Kenley Jansen to shore up the back of the pen. I wouldn’t agree with the thing you didn’t say here but has been implied, that failing to sign a Schwarber or a Tucker or a Bichette, or even extending Skubal this winter, would constitute gross dereliction of responsibility by Harris. We may or may not have enough pieces in house right now to make the next move in October. No one here thinks we definitely do, and I myself can’t be sure either way, but Harris is privy to information we don’t have, so until he takes his shot and fails due to provable incompetence, I’m giving him the leeway to prove it.

To ATF’s point, we are a team of kids, one of whose superpowers is the camaraderie and bonhomie of a shared vision to grow the franchise into a winner Bill Lajoie/1970s-80s style: from the inside. The Astros was a team of grizzled grown-ass men, not a few of whom were hired guns. Coulnd’t have been closer to a 180 difference than that. That said, I’d be up for a pitcher of Framber’s talents signing on here. I think there’d have to be some level of market collapse for him to agree to come here, but I’m not opposed on the merits.

Out of reactions, but Like

You might be right. I’m simply making the assumption based on the way we see them interact and the words they have used over the years to describe their working relationship, versus making assumptions based on the notion that everyone always hides their true negative feelings about everyone else.

I sure didn’t celebrate it. The closest I came to accepting it was admitting it was probably better to have Austin Meadows in the outfield in Detroit than have Isaac in rotting away in Avila’s doghouse in Toledo. But even you have to admit it turned out to be one of the worse trades Avila did, since he apparently neglected to do basic due diligence about Austin Meadows before he made the deal.

There is precedent for Baby Doc spending like Papa Doc—he gave 6/140 to Javy Baez on the mere say-so of Al Avila. Plus, it is well-reported that after hiring Harris, Chris invested millions into upgrading organizational infrastructure related to coaching, training, player development, and data science. These are not the actions of an industrialist who’s about to embark upon harvesting the business. On the other hand, perhaps it’s not unreasonable to speculate that one of the reasons Ilitch is investing so much in infrastructure now is so he can cheap out on players later, choosing to cycle through a process of identifying and developing great young talent and then flipping them before having to pay them their due? Becoming more or less a Rays North, sometimes playing baseball instead of golf in October but never able to close the deal in November? This is a baseless speculation that comes out of my own imagination, an exercise in nothing more than covering bases, but it does seem consistent with some folks’ defeatist vision of how they see the Harris regime playing out. In the end, though, I would think even you would have to admit that we can’t come to either conclusion as of today. The only way to know whether Ilitch/Harris will spend on talent at the moment of truth, or cheap out on it, is to live through an entire competitive cycle of build/compete/rebuild, and we are still only in the “build” portion of the current cycle. If we go through this window and learn, I’d guess by 2029 or 2030 or so, that Ilitch and Harris are content to cycle through talent, never pay anyone, never sign anyone or make audacious trades of potential for proof, and be content maybe making the playoffs every once in a while and winning a wild card series every blue moon, then I will sadly come to the same conclusion about Ilitch, Harris, and the Tigers that so many have already come to, and bonus, I will publicly admit right here that you were right all along and I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about. 😉

I flat-out quoted you saying people who debate critiques of Harris "get so sensitive". The "incredibly thin-skinned" comment was directed at me by someone else.

I too thought letting Candelario go was a mistake, although I also wonder how much Baby Doc pushed for that, since he was such a lightning rod in 2022. I feel the same way about Willi, too. They both had a good year or two after they left, but neither were worth squat afterwards. So, neither were going to be long-term solutions at third. Isaac, on the other hand ... that was a pure garbage trade.

I doubt he is, too. My impression is that in-game strategy is planned out by Harris and Hinch in advance, in strokes both broad and specific as needed, and that Hinch is given 100% latitude during actual games to execute it or call audibles as he sees fit.

I don't agree that's our fate, and we've debated this part before, and you should know where I stand on that by now, so we can part friends on this one. Unless you want me to clarify my position again. Just say the word.

And I don't understand why people who defend Harris's executing his well-documented plan are considered sensitive, or otherwise incredibly thin-skinned.

Are you saying it's Harris's fault for making the trades, thus putting the team with a 1% chance of making the playoffs on July 31 in a position where it was almost impossible to win? Or are you saying it's Harris's fault that the team had a 1% chance to make the playoffs on July 31 in the first place and Hinch saved his bacon? I just want to make sure I'm raking Harris for the right reason for endeavoring to screw up 2024.

I would bet that Harris has some input into on-field strategy, and i would further bet that he is doing it by Hinch's choice, rather than against his will.

I seem to remember that the main criticism was that Harris did not have a fallback plan and have a separate trade with another team all ready to go should the agreed-upon trade get torpedoed by the player with less than an hour to go. And of course, because what team wouldn't want to be part of some other team's fallback plan?

Class is dismissed on that one. The final exam answer was that it's wrong.

lol "misleading"

And, at the same time, blame only Harris for the collapse of ‘25.