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I think what we see far more often is people projecting their frustrations onto Scott Harris when they say he will never, ever spend on free agents, or that he is too craven or stupid or cheap or incompetent or negligent in how he has developed the roster so far because he has failed to sign the biggest free agents, and failed to trade for the best controllable players in the game. I do believe some of that angst is borne of fans being scarred by the gross incompetence of the Avila Reign of Error.

Tarik Skubal is being interviewed on MLB Network’s Cy Young Award show and oh my God does he have a hickey??

Yes, and I would posit that most guys with a habit of walking world can’t be simply coached out of it.

And when the rat finally does get cornered and sees no way out on his own, what do you think he does then?

Yeah teh Left and their stupid statistics reflecting stupid fats that are actually happening in the world. Tell you what: any state requiring specific ID to vote had better make that ID available free of charge to everyone eligible.

I don’t think the Tigers will be bailing on 1.5 WAR 107 OPS+ third baseman Colt Keith just yet.

Or he’s just plain unfixable.

Yeah, it is pretty ridiculous, especially considering that everyone knows Scott Harris is going to do exactly what I believe is right for the team. 😉😁

That’s make sense if all they do after the game is go home and go to bed. Lot of guys like to go out to da club afterwards, and that’s a lot cooler experience for someone in NYC or LA than in Detroit. Another difference about playing in NYC or LA vs Detroit: a guy like Alex Bregman could move about a lot more inconspicuously in cities teeming with celebrities. If he were to sign up to come to Detroit or a similarly backwater town, he would be the biggest recognizable celebrity in town for several months out of the year. As for Alex Bregman himself: he is a native of Albuquerque, so I will put a five-spot up against the first person who accept that if he signs a long-term deal, it’ll be for a team west of the Mississippi.

Particularly for a guy making $30 million or more a year. The difference between playing in Michigan and playing in Texas would be north of a million a year all by itself.

His 110 PA in Comerica might be telling him a lot. And I don’t know anyone who can hit home runs who would want to go someplace that suppresses his home runs for the rest of his career. But hey, stranger things have happened, I guess.

And the only thing they want out of all of this is for you to cry. That's it. Nothing else. This whole thing is about nothing else but making liberals sad. EDIT: When I say "they", I mean the red hats, not the MAGA elite. The MAGA elite don’t care so much whether you cry so long as they get superpaid.

And they will never, ever, ever stop supporting him because at this point, their only objective is for you to never be able to hang "I told you so" over their heads. They will support the abject destruction of America and even themselves just to avoid ever admitting to you, me, and people like us that they could ever have been wrong.

He is one or two of these Fox interviews from blurting out, "Who's side are you on? You're supposed to be on my side." He is also one or two from shunning Fox and going only with overtly Russian-backed RWM.

Nothing is coming up, probably because it's a link to "share.google" rather than "share.google.com", although when I add the .com nothing comes up there, either. What does it say?

Oh, that’s right, now I remember—we were talking about this and I didn’t help close the loop on it. Of course I get that WAR is, at its core, a business metric: if we lose our current major leaguer to injury or gambling or whatever, how many wins would we lose on a season-adjusted basis if we have to replace him with a freely-available replacement player? That is what the acronym stands for, after all: Wins Above Replacement. (Remember when Prospectus call their similar statistic “WARP”? I wonder what the P stood for … ?) I thought I saw this in this here thread, although maybe not, but I do remember seeing somewhere that inherently, the first base position is worth something like -12 runs (or -1.2 wins) defensively, and shortstop is worth +9 defensive runs (or +0.9 wins), versus the average player regardless of position. The numbers I’m using are probably not right, but that’s the principle, anyway. So, to fill the position to some minimally acceptable standard such that an organization can field at least a replacement-level team, they would be willing to accept up to, but not exceeding, two wins less at the plate (i.e., 1.2 plus -0.9 = 2.1) from a shortstop than a first baseman to even them out. OK, makes sense. However, we fans also have evolved (or devolved, take your pick) to using WAR as a rule-of-thumb overall benchmark stat to estimate the value of a player on the field, and not as much economically. As such, we see WAR as roughly summing up a player’s oWAR and dWAR, so if he has 5.0 oWAR and -2.0 dWAR, his overall WAR is about 3.0. OK. And I can accept the idea that on average, the league’s first basemen combine to lose, on average, -1.2 games in defense for their respective teams, whereas the leagues shortstops combine to win, on average, +0.9 on defense for their teams, all when compared to a league’s average player regardless of position. I can wrap my head around this. The disconnect for me is how the league’s DHs could be considered to lose, on average, -1.7 games on defense for their teams, since that’s what their dWAR suggests. Again, I get that WAR is an economic metric for front offices to evaluate the acquisition or deployment of a player to DH versus the average positionless player. But if first basemen and shortstops can be reduced to an average defensive value for economic purposes based on how many games the average one of them wins or loses for their average teams on the field, how can DHs be evaluated defensively in such a way when their contribution to a team’s actual defense on the field is N/A? Maybe the answer is that we need a different bottomline metric to evaluate a player’s on-field performance, as opposed his economic value, such that DHs’ defensive value is properly regarded as zero, so DHs spend zero time on defense. Maybe that’s what it comes down to?

No, thank you. I like Tucker, maybe, for 7-or-8/sub-300 with team options, but definitely not 10+/400+ with player options. Too injured too recently for Sotobucks and Sotoyears.

I love this post except for the final sentence. Harris has not yet been able to establish the limits he will go to in the free agent market to bring top talent aboard. Sure, he didn’t get Soto or Ohtani. But remember, Detroit has never been a top destination for those guys during his tenure. He’s still working on building us up to being at that level, as much as he can. The time has not been right, either in the team he could field around a top tier guy, or in the perception among top tier guys of Detroit as a real destination. I think we’re closer than ever, and maybe Harris makes the move this winter that gets us firmly into that conversation. But we just haven’t been that yet.

I don’t think Bregman would want to have to hit in Comerica Park 81 games a year for the rest of his life. His career slash line here is .242/.309/.475, which runs 17% below his career average. If he has designs to get into the Hall of Fame—and I don’t see why he wouldn’t—he’ll probably want better back nine stats than that.

Murakami is not coming to Detroit anyway, so that works out fine.

I understand the desire many fans have to want eight solid starters, always healthy and strong in every facet of the game for their positions, and five solid bench guys, good enough in all facets to spell the starters for a game or two, or maybe a couple weeks in case of injury. I would like that, too. I’m just not expecting anything like that. Practically no team in history has ever had that.* Players are human, which means they have flaws, including physical flaws that impact their professional careers. Also, baseball is an exceedingly complex game requiring many disparate talents and skills, and it will always be true that the majority of big leaguers will be good in one or a few of those areas and be suboptimal or even bad in the rest. The trick for a team’s general manager and field manager is to assemble a roster that covers well enough all the major facets of the game with enough talent and skills with the highest potential to win, and to deploy them properly and in a timely fashion during games to turn that potential into actual wins. That’s what George Weiss and Casey Stengel did with the Yankees, and what Harry Dalton and Earl Weaver did with the Orioles. Beyond the few Hall of Famers they had were flawed players really good in certain aspects of the game, who they cobbled together into teams that excelled in enough facets to make those franchises perennial winners. Those are the footsteps Harris and Hinch are striving to follow. All they need now are a couple future Hall of Famers to cobble that team of flawed players around. We have one in-house now, at least for the moment. * - I should look up which teams in history came closest to that eight really good regulars/five good bench guys ideal.

I'm not even talking about putting the guy on a pedestal. I'm talking about the top tier of worldwide fame. If Taylor Swift wants to come onto your show for an interview, you don't say no. If Tom Hanks wants to come onto your show for an interview, you don't say no. If Ronaldo wants to come onto your show for an interview, you don't say no. If Barack Obama wants to come onto your show for an interview, you don't say no. I could name dozens more, but you get the point. These are all among the most famous people in the world right now. They are better than ratings gold—they are ratings platinum. If you can manage to book them as guests on your show, you get to tout that, the eyeballs roll in, the ratings go up, you get to charge more for commercials—it's just too good for the business, and only a fool passes that up. The President of the United States is, de facto, in the same category. But even without the trappings of the office, Trump himself is in that same category. So if Trump says he wants to come onto your show, there is no way you are saying no. That would be derelict of your responsibility to the business at the very least.

Calling him "dude" is too kind. How is this not de facto evidence that America is not first for him?

That is pretty horrific and you are right to hold ESPN responsible by refusing to consume their streams. That said, I don't blame Pat McAfee at all, regardless of whether he is pro- or anti-Trump, which I have no idea about either way. The fact is, it's not up to a sports pundit to fact-check politicians live on air. But when the president of the united shaysh wants to be interviewed on your network, you simply don't say no. It's kind of no win as far as that goes, and again, I have no idea where McAfee stands on Trump anyway. But the responsibility falls 100% to ESPN for allowing it to go unchecked on their air. As for Trump, it's a huge win for MAGA to get this messaging out on previously virgin media territory. He probably converted thousands of guys to red hats with that interview. Huge customer acquisition win.