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Kind of like the first three months of this season? I don’t think that’s the last time we’ll feel that about the Harris Tigers.

I’m excited by this team because we are building it from within rather than from without. I like that aspect of it.

Nice performative dive by Barger on a ball he could have pretty easily caught standing up. Can’t blame him—it gets him lots of love from media and fans who don’t quite notice it.

I don’t necessarily buy #3, especially if we win a pennant with him in the driver’s seat.

I can’t see that.

Max A crushed it when it came to assists and putouts per game, with only two errors in 185 innings, or about MLB average.

True, they had two World Series and four consecutive playoff appearances. We’d never had that before. I will also say I was never as excited for the future at any point with that team as I am with this one.

Maybe, but Bill Gates did not intentionally starve his business for her. Come on.

People don’t remember this, but Tucker got off to an all-world start this year, which really helped his final numbers. He also missed almost all of September with a calf strain, which would make me a little nervous if we signed him.

I’ll be on board with your cynicism once I see Harris sell off Skubal and ends up making it significantly harder to compete in 2026.

Good luck selling him on Detroit over Los Angeles or San Francisco or Seattle.

I think so, too. Wenceel is either a fourth guy for a playoff team or a starter for a second-division team. Heck, if he were to settle into a career with the Angels or the Pirates of the game, I bet he could be a multiple-time All-Star.

I really don’t think Flaherty is going to pick up his option. He can do better elsewhere, especially in years. Unless we give him years, which, that would make me nervous.

Nice work if you can get it.

Do you know what their salaries are? Is it the big league minimum as long as they’re on the 40, or is there another tier of minor league salary they make that’s better than non-40 players make?

I’m guessing this is a cume number and not average quarter hour. It’s easier to accumulate nine million viewers across five hours than across two-and-a-half.

At least one guy is.

I could see us taking a run at Dylan Cease. Good strikeout guy, albeit with a slightly elevated walk rate, and his soft topline numbers are bolstered by some solid numbers under the hood. That might even save us a year. Given that he's coming out at age 30, I could see going for 4/100, although he'll probably want six years. His being a flyball pitcher might scare off teams with short parks, so that might help. As for the position players listed here, I don't know that we seriously go for any of them, even Bregman. I wouldn't mind seeing Bregman suit up for us for a couple years, but with Max Anderson taking reps at third (and looking good there!) and due to arrive next year, he might be the guy we're looking to step in there. We also have Hao Yu-Lee banging on the door. But if we throw 8/300 at Bregman instead, I'll gulp and support it.

Harris hoped to strike gold by picking up volume. It look like it might work for the first one or two starts, then it stopped working, so that approach did not bear fruit this year. But given that no one was eager to deal frontline starters, what should Harris have done instead? Merrill Kelly? It took the Rangers three top 15 pitching prospects to get him, it didn't work for them, and now Kelly is gone as a free agent. Shane Bieber? What do you suppose it would have taken the Tigers for get the Guardians to trade him to us? Dustin May? Lol. Zack Littell? He couldn't strike out a fly and his FIP was a run and a half higher than his ERA, and the buyers had to pull a third team into the trade to make it happen. Those are the top starters that moved in the market.

And his way is working. Building up to his team takes time, effort, and development. There simply aren't any All-Star hitters available for the picking on the shelf at Walmart.

Yeah, I think it can be discounted. More than that. Disregarded. It's bonkers to think he will torpedo a high-profile business just to spend the money on a broad instead.

I think we're gonna take a run at keeping Finnegan, and maybe Montero, although he doesn.t exactly control the strike zone. I can see us also picking up Urquidy's option, depending on how he looks behind the curtain.

Maybe it's a talent issue and not a philosophy or coaching issue. We're still working with a lot of Avila's signs, some of whom (a) are not inherently good talent fits for the eventual Harris peak team we will evolve to, and (b) were drafted and initially developed a under completely different hitting philosophy and structure than Harris has brought to bear in his time with the organization. I think once this team becomes primarily a Harris team, we will see his philosophy of controlling the plate really come into view. Example: Of the 20 hitters who logged plate appearances this year, 66% of the plate appearances were by Avila signs and 34% were by Harris signs. In aggregate, the Avila signs drew walks in 7.4% of their plate trips; Harris signs drew walks in 10.5% of theirs. That's the difference between a team of Avila signs ranking 28th in the majors in walk rate versus a team of Harris signs ranking 1st. Same thing with strikeouts: The Avila team strikes out at a 25.5% clip, which would rank them 28th, versus the Harris team at 20.5%, which would rank them 6th. That tells me that the philosophy is working—we just have to get the right players on board to execute it.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Boras told Harris, "sure, kid, go ahead and make us an offer now, we're listening" in order to get a benchmark to go to the market with, and Harris declined.

Baseball has always tinkered with the mechanics of the game to equalize pitching and hitting so one doesn't over-dominate the other. I don't think they'll do anything as radical as move the mound back—I can't imagine the chaos of them suddenly having to completely overhaul their mechanics during the course of a winter and successfully compete at the highest level in mere months—but I do think they need to consider changes to the ball. One idea I thought of many years ago that might help hitting is to make the ball heavier. My idea was to reduce ball movement on the way to the plate to make it cross the plate on a truer trajectory and hitters could square it up more often. And bonus, the ball won't get hit as far, which would reduce homers, keep more balls in the ballpark, and create more fielding and baserunning action which is more fun for fans. Turns out there's a recent study that indicates that a heavier ball (i.e., six ounces vs five) might also reduce UCL injury in pitchers, because elbow varus torque would be reduced naturally, putting less pressure on the ligament and thus reducing exposure to rupture risk. Whatever the answer is, I think it's better for the integrity of the game if it comes from changes in equipment over changes in dimensions.