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OK, if you believe Harris wants to fate us to be the Rays at best, and I guess the Pirates at worst, then that's a subjective conclusion you have arrived at that makes sense to you, and I would never be able to just talk you out of it. I have made the choice to assume that Harris is here to build a sustained winner and that Ilitch is on board, and there is plenty of direct and circumstantial evidence supporting that conclusion, and I will continue to believe that until he demonstrates to us otherwise. I will not engage in proactive cynicism about them. Will I look like a stupid jerk when he actually does torpedo our playoff chances to save a buck? Probably. Almost it won't take something like Harris doing that to make me look like a stupid jerk. 😁 And I want to make clear my opinion that just because Skubal won't sign an extension before he goes to free agency, that won't necessarily mean Harris is a failure because of it. I'll assess the evidence at the time, but I won't leap to that conclusion. Anyone else who wants to conclude that better come up with the evidence, or I'm coming back for an argument! 😃

The front office pays the players. There is that. And if someone from the front office wants to implement a cheating scheme to help them win games so they can all make a ****-ton of money, then if they can't get the manager to make it happen, they'll get the players to do it. That's exactly what they said in the documentary I posted! I'm not sure why all this so hard to imagine.

Did we have the means to pay Correa? Yes, indeed we did. Did we want to actually pay Correa? No, we did not. So why did we offer Correa 10/275 when they knew absolutely he was going to turn it down because he was already on record with his much-higher contract minimum? I wasn't in on the discussions, so I can't say for a fact. But if I had to guess, I'd say the Tigers were trying to send some sort of message to the fans that we are on the verge of playoffs for the first time in eight years, we are serious about getting to the playoffs next year, so we are going after superstar free agents. If you want to assure yourself a good seat for next year's team, better get those season and advance ticket orders in, because they'll go fast. No, they didn't actually say those words. That's what I think they thought the offer would communicate to fans. Whether that did is subject to fair speculation either way. The one thing they did calculate right is that the fans would blame Correa for turning down the 10/275, and that happened repeatedly right in this very forum. It's just bad luck for the Tigers that Baez just collapsed so precipitously. Not even his greatest detractors were sure that was going to happen. But them's the breaks, and now it's Scott Harris's job to deal with the situation.

We could not have easily signed Correa if our offer topped out at 10/275, because he specified in the media that his minimum he would sign for was something like 310, and ours was the first offer at the time. So the offer was designed to fail from the start.

If the Tigers move Skubal at a time when the franchise and the big club are ascending, they are telling the fan base that payroll and roster machinations are more important than winning games, and that is a potentially fatal way to shoot themselves in the foot. And that goes double for, as you suggest, they do it right now.

Did Hinch recruit Correa in that meeting? Do we have any report about what they discussed?

I'm not even talking about baseball managers. I'm talking about middle managers in everyday employment situation, like in offices or factories or even academia. If you've ever been one and had your own boss go around you to work directly with your people without your approval or knowledge, you'd know what I mean.

As long as the Tigers are contending for playoffs, there is exactly zero chance we trade Skubal just to get something anything for him before he walks.

I don't know if the ringleadership would be a stronger reason, but I agree it's probably a consideration. Probably also why we tried suspiciously not hard enough to go after Correa.

I guess I meant "Long Duk Park".

Because he's personally going to pocket billions off it? That's my best guess, anyway.

Trump himself promised he would show up with a metaphoric magic wand, and that he would bring prices down on day one. https://nypost.com/2024/08/15/us-news/trump-blasts-kamala-harris-high-grocery-prices-and-maduro-plan-while-standing-in-front-of-cheerios-meat/ “So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one. We will end Kamala’s war on American energy, and we will drill baby drill. We’re going to drill, baby drill that’s going to bring down prices of everything, because energy brought it up,” Trump went on. Also: https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/donald-trump-rally-north-carolina/2024/09/21/id/1181213/ "Groceries and rent will no longer break your budgets, and you will have thousands of dollars of savings by the end of the year," said Trump. "We're going to get your energy costs down in one year. We're going to get your energy costs down by 50%. We'll cut it in half. We're going to cut it in half. It means young people will once again be able to afford a mortgage and a home."

This is why government is not a business, so running it like a business goes against the interest of its citizens on balance.

I assume they already have a plan in place to blame the Democrats and their voters for rising inflation under Trump.

The clear implication of your first post, especially, was that anti-vax is the default position for liberals. I am simply here to tell you that is false.

That's another thing, too. It's not all one thing or the other. But I wouldn't support permitting this to excuse allowing Nazi parents to privately train their kids to wreak violence on the world as a legitimate lifestyle choice.

Long Duck Park?

If you have never been a middle manager in that situation, I can see why you would not understand.

This is what busing in the 70s was intended to address.

It’s not just the kind of socialization where kids learn to play together at recess. There is also the kind of socialization in which schools teach children the proper range of social behavior and thinking consistent with American ideals, which is a legitimate educational function that serves us all well. I concede the idea that parents have a right to raise their children within certain beliefs and lifestyles as they see fit, but there has to be limits to that if the result could actually end up being harmful to society. Think of it this way: if a child grows up in a family in which the parents believe in providing hours each day of Nazi doctrine and paramilitary training for their kids for years on end in order to prepare for what they believe is the inevitable coming race war, is that merely a lifestyle choice they should have the right to pursue?

Apropos of nothing, I saw Sabrina Carpenter being interviewed recently, she was home-schooled, and man, is she sharp.

Again, not typical liberals. Garden-variety liberals don’t believe in anti-vax doctrine, and if you continue to insist they do, then you are being aggressively ignorant about the nature of American liberals, and not a little intellectually dishonest. As long as we’re going here, if you are a Nazi in America, 9/10 you are voting red.

You missed all the discussion about this here. It was firmly established in the documentary about this incident that the front office went around the manager and directly to the players to execute the scheme, and no manager could have stopped that. If you’ve ever been a middle manager and your boss went directly to your reports to do a project without your knowledge or consent, you’d know what that’s like.

They have Skubal for at least two more years.

This is true, although also, the Yankees and the Red Sox.