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We don’t have the advantage of Skubal such that a guy would sign here for seven or eight years just to play one year with him, and then six or seven of who knows what.

That’s fair. I can grant that a handful of top talents would rather have the money than anything else, and that’s where their strongest competitive drives lie. But from our standpoint, just look at the money Artie Moreno has had to throw at guys to get them to come to Anaheim. That’s the position the Tigers are in, and we don’t have the advantage of year-round summer and Disneyland in our backyard.

Not so much if Skubal skedaddles. I don’t think anyone signs here long-term as long as there’s a chance he’s leaving, and it appears vast majority of people assume he’s leaving.

Spitting image of Bari Weiss!

FWIW, Act Blue has a 96% rating on Charity Navigator. OTOH, there is a warning box referring to the Paxton investigation and the NYT story. Personally, I know practically nothing about them, and not at all outside the few times I’ve seen them mentioned here.

We shouldn’t have to overpay in trade, yet that’s what the prior two regimes routinely did, the Miggy pickup notwithstanding. As for overpaying free agents, I agree with you that it depends who it is, but it also depends on how much more it is. For Detroit to win against any of the Big Six teams, or against Philly or Toronto or Atlanta as well, I think they would have to add at least a year plus higher AAV than those teams would, and who knows, maybe even that’s not enough—at least not until we get Skubal signed. I think the possibility of losing him after next year is what will keep the Bregmans and Bichettes away from Detroit. I can’t see how anyone would want to commit to a team that has a recent history of trading their top pitcher and tearing it all down. People here like to say how it’s all about the Benjamins, as if the winning is secondary. It’s not. By the time a guy becomes a top free agent, he already has more money than he’ll ever actually need. At that point it’s about the rings. Cash doesn’t wipe away the tears from losing. You can ask Mike Trout or Albert Pujols about that.

Also, I just noticed this X post by CBS got ratioed as f***. Like, 6 to 1.

CBS News, if not completely gone, is definitely wandering through the desert.

And when he goes, the conspiracy stories about how the Democrats engineered his murder will run rampant, and he will be a martyr, and it won’t even matter how he will have actually died.

I don’t know, maybe? I would think a batter can “meet the ball” almost as effectively on a 95 as on an 85, and Newton says the ball would come off the bat harder which should increase the chances of a hit. I would also think a batter could be more successful connecting with a pitch swinging from his heels if it’s coming in straight at 85 than at 95 since he has marginally more time to size up where the pitch is going to end up. OTOH, the decision to swing hard on 95 might be a function of, I have no time to figure out where it’s actually going anyway, so I might as well swing hard as I can and hope for the best. So I guess talking it through, I could see it going both ways.

Well, if the squeaky clean Trump government is investigating ActBlue, no way they're not guilty, amirite?

You misspelled "teh".

Would you be willing to substantially overpay in prospect capital in trades, and in years for free agents? There's no right answer here, just asking what your tolerance level is. Can we agree that it would take a substantial overpay to get certain players to come to Detroit, versus what the Yankees and Mets and Dodgers and Giants and Red Sox and Cubs could sign the same player for?

I think the bigger problem is the clear incentive to maximum velo and spin to obtain swing and miss. Nearly every pitcher chases it understanding that the probability of injury is very high, but they believe the gamble that they can stay healthy long enough to make enough in career earnings to create generational wealth for themselves and their family is worth it. That's why they do it even knowing that they might fail—but in their minds, they believe they can be the exception.

Hitters don't have to adapt any more. They have to go for The Big Fly, always.

Can't pardon a guy unless he's arrested first. That will clear the docket and make him nice and free to do his king's bidding.

Yes, teh leftists. That's why Trump won and America is falling apart. 🙄

Violent and scary is the America they want. That's what they think the "Great" part is.

I'm in the middle of rewatching Larry Sanders, one episode each weekday lunch. I'm in the middle of season five and I have got Chair Company on the docket next.

Hey, look, we're wearing him down! 😂

This is a defensible position—certainly far more defensible than batting eight guys in a batting order! 😉 It wouldn't kill me to have games end in ties—they already do that in the NPB in Japan, calling a game a tie after 12 innings, and I saw one while I was there. Maybe it's because it was September and playoff positions were basically already determined, but I knew by the end of the tenth that, based on the way the players on the field looked to be phoning it in, the game was definitely going to end up in a tie. I don't love super long extra inning games, and I gotta be honest, with the advent of the zombie runner, I don't miss those. I would say, though, that if Baseball truly believes in the integrity of the zombie runner rule, they should use it during the playoffs. If they table the rule during the playoffs, though, that tells me they don't really believe in the integrity of the rule, that instead they believe that no zombie runner is "real baseball". Otherwise, they wouldn't be making that change. Pick a lane, Baseball.

Starting with the tenth inning? I have long believed the tenth inning should be played straight, and the zombie runner starting in the eleventh inning.

If the Democrats do not use this and other posts like to hammer home the point that Trump wants to be an actual King, then they will be guilty of campaigning malfeasance.

Those MAGA women all knew what the gendered double standards baked into the ideology were—they simply hoped against hope that those double standards wouldn’t apply to them. You know, the same way oligarchs know what the law is, but also know the law doesn’t apply to them.

I am wondering whether there’s something more to all these Republicans suddenly threatening to retire mid-term than just they think they’re gonna get smoked in the election. There’s money to follow somewhere here and I’m interested in finding out what that is. The proposed ban on insider trading that might well pass very easily could be part of it, since no MAGA* in their right mind would voluntarily abandon that gravy train. * This is not to say only the MAGAs in Congress engage in this, but as soon as they started hammering Pelosi on it, I knew that was telling us what one of their primary goals of getting elected was.