chasfh

TBF, Mike White did confirm in interviews that his first season of White Lotus was meant to be a deconstruction of class distinctions.

We are all learning that bomb-throwers are more likely to succeed in Congress than truth-tellers.

Kind of to his point, it's not particularly risky, either. It's fairly tedious.

Justin Amash must be right about the power of the Speaker.

People who want to destroy the constitutional democratic republic as we know it and remake it as Amerikkka are.

Have you heard any scuttlebutt that suggests this might be in the offing?

What risky move would you like to have seen by now?

Two or three mid-level guys would be great, but in the current players' market, we're not getting even one mid-level guy. Just about all the mid-level position players—whom I would peg as being those guys who could expect to sign for two to four years—are already gone, and most of the guys who were crowd-sourced on Fangraphs to get two or more years got more years than expected. There are a few reasons Detroit is at or near the bottom of everyone's list, but our recent record is probably the most visible. This team had been losing at a 98+ clip pretty consistently for four years, and even though we surprised with a 77-win season in 2021 and snagged three halfway decent free agents the following winter—all substantial overpays—we backslid into a 96-loss team anyway. Even removing the disadvantage that is the city of Detroit from the equation, no free agent would choose to throw in his lot with a team like that over other options, despite the firing of Al Avila and the hiring of Scott "Who?" Harris. I would not expect to sign any position-player free agents until after we start playing spring training games. I'm fairly confident we'll get somebody, but probably not a somebody that anybody here really wants on the team as of today. It's going to be somebody we're not talking about now, and who comes here because he needs a job. Think along the lines of Johan Comargo or Cesar Hernandez or Jonathan Davis or Jake Marisnick. As for trading for a player at the level of a mid-level free agent, do we have the trade chips to do it? This is still a rebuilding team, so trading prospects for a two-win guy to get us from 70-something wins to 70-something-plus-two wins is out, I'm sure. I'm thinking the best we can hope for is a trade in which someone will accept Gregory Soto and Alex Lange and maybe a depth guy, and who knows, maybe even and money. I know some fans think we could get a good player by relieving another team of the onerous contract, although I'm not sure that's on the front office's radar. What bad contract do we want to hobble ourselves with, that will move this organization forward? Honest question, because no one is coming to mind. I just think we're in a position in which the organization has been so thoroughly decimated that we are going to have to accept basically what we have on the team now, plus whoever's left that we can get here in March, and we will have to show and prove to the rest of baseball over the course of certainly this year, probably next year, and maybe even 2025, that we are serious about rising from the dregs of the game to become at least a middling contender on a regular basis. That's probably a reasonable goal to shoot for, given where we've been and where we are.

Is it still safe to shoplift there?

I blame that stupid STEM shit … 😏

I’m sort of in the … ahem … same boat: our first floor ceiling has had water stains for years and we recently learned that the cause was the second floor balcony being installed in a faulty way when the house was built, and now we have to replace it, to the tune of five figures at minimum. And that’s just for the balcony—who knows the extent of any other water damage lurking beyond that and what that might cost.

Remarkable how Dolly has ascended to the level of national treasure, and when I see historical things like this, it’s easy to see her laying groundwork for that.

For one year as our new Willi, sure, I’m down.

I missed that, thanks.

Deep MTS Cut: I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I suck! I quit!

What's the "racist" angle?

What, you don't trust patriotic Virginians to be responsible with the freedom to choose when they can pass a stopped school bus safely? 😏

Wasn't Steve Scalise doing that in his preamble leading up to one of the votes the other day?

That caucus has already demonstrated tat there are no number of concessions McCarthy can give them to get them truly on board. They apparently made those demands so McCarthy would reject them and they could point at him to their base and say "See? He's a secret Democrat." I would say McCarthy is wasting his time, but his time is worth nothing in the context of Congress, anyway.

If it's correlation you want, you will like this: correlation of attributes to weighted runs created, 2000 through 2022, n=690. Take from it what you will. AVG: 0.64 OBP: 0.65 SLG: 0.61 ISO: 0.39 BB%: 0.26 K%: -0.42 1B: 0.74 2B: 0.84 3B: 0.35 HR: 0.76 Again, this is correlation, not a regression analysis.

I think it’s partly about players who won’t learn to go around the shift, and also about teams not promoting players who can’t hit home runs over the shift. Analytics might be telling front offices that more runs are scored by a lineup anchored by low average-high strikeout-high homer pull sluggers than by high-average-normal strikeout-doubles-hitting spray hitters, so they focus on bringing up the former at the expense of the latter. But in the end, I think it’s about what the chicks dig. We’ll find out this season if we see a home run spike, assuming same or livelier ball.

First of all, who are Chash and Barnhardt? 😉 I’m not saying I agree that the Tigers should not give stopgap free agents two-year deals—I’m saying I believe the Tigers don’t want to give stopgap free agents two-year deals, which is why at least in part I think they haven’t signed any of those yet. I also believe we were caught by surprise by the free agent market being such a players market, the more that being the case, the less attractive Detroit looks as an option, especially to a hitter who sees our ballpark, sees how little support he would have from the rest of the lineup, sees how we lost 96 games yet again, and concluded, thanks, pass. I’m with TD on his implication that we should not sign a major league position player free agent just to get one on the roster. I don’t like the idea of Brian Anderson at all, especially coming straight from the National League, and I especially don’t like the idea of two years of him. And FWIW, I’m not on board with Tommy La Stella, either, especially if it means moving Jonathan Schoop out of position, which we did in 2021 to craptastic effect.

I agree with basically everyone here that the Tigers should not have been an active competitive player for free agents, of which I think of as two basic types: impact free agents requiring many years and dollars, and stopgap free agents who can be used to plug a hole in the short term and perhaps be flippable at the deadline. Good or great teams play in the impact sandbox, which is not us yet; and mediocre to bad ... or rebuilding ... teams play in the stopgap sandbox, which is us at the moment. I believe we fully expected to pick up one or two stopgap position players on the market, the way we picked up two stopgap starting pitchers. But, probably because of the new CBA, the market unexpectedly flipped over on top of us, the proof of which is Tucker Barnhart, coming off the worst season of his career, getting two guaranteed years from a mediocre team that can still challenge for its weak division. I think that's really the crux of the biscuit: the years. We didn't want to sign stopgap free agents for more than one year. We did that with Jonathan Schoop (which was an unforced error, for sure), and look how that's working out for us. This front office didn't want even two-year guys, apparently, or else couldn't make one-year deals work versus other teams. Every position player with a projected WAR of 1.0 or better who signed a one-year deal did so with a team with pretension to contention, with one exception: Jeimer Candelario. As mtu has pointed out, there's time left, although the pickings are getting slim. Given the likely perception of the state of our franchise, we may have to play chicken and pick up whoever is left who doesn't have a job in mid-March, or, go with what we have and concentrate mainly on rebuilding the foundation of the house.

Fact is, Chris McCosky is probably close to the truth on this—i.e., Tigers will probably be relying on in-house assets for offensive improvement this season—which is something I think most of us have come around to in the past couple of week.

Based on articles filed this morning, looks as though Corey might be ready to shine a harsh light on Harris: Although Chris seems a tad more eager to use the power of his pen to maintain his team access through good public relations: