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The main competition with Javy for shortstop jobs next winter are Tim Anderson and IKF. As long as Javy doesn’t have the worst year among the three of them, he’s probably gone.

I think it could be argued that 13/350 is way off 10/375, but it’s way, way off 3/87. Maybe even way, way, way off. Contracts are more than just their AAV.

The contract also maintains 4 as a top-end threshold that only one guy has blasted through so far for at least. If Correa would have gone through the barrier it would have emboldened other players/agents to insist on that and made it somewhat harder for teams to resist it. Ohtani has a shot at it next year, although I think Soto might be the best bet at this point to be the next guy to go through it, in 2025.

I think there’s a chance that sometime in the 2030s, whoever has his contract restructures the last few years of his contract a la Bobby Bonilla and sends him on his way, maybe with the money the Giants give them to take him off their hands in the late 2020s.

Not quite, but not quite way, way off.

Dansby Swanson has options now.

Sure is a lot better than 3/87.

The party that has told us for four-plus decades that government is evil is using government to perpetrate evil, and we just shrug and accept it because what are ya gonna do? Government is evil.

See ya on the table, Jake.

Can they actually stay in business relying only on self-important douchebags?

That’s what the whole redirection strategy is intended to draw people’s attention away from

Nothing there. What was it?

And the best part was, Greg still got all the money and didn't have to share any of it with the gays!

I started getting flu shots pretty regularly sometime during the 1990s and fell out of it during the 2010s when I missed it one year and got away with it. I was fine for a couple more years but then I got the actual flu a week before a winter plane trip, five or so years ago, and it hit me pretty hard. I thought I felt fine and was over it by the trip, but while the plane was landing I got screwdrivers in the ears. My ears were blocked for the rest of the day and they were ringing for months afterwards. I’m mostly over that, but I still wonder whether the occasionally plugged-up hearing I get can be attributable to that experience.

I have no idea what any of this means.

Yes. We know.

I am not a fan of Adam Frazier. I would be only if we signed him and only for as long as he's on the team.

Perhaps. I believe if it hypothetically were to come down to one of only the three position players named, I would think Rios would be the third choice.

It's a serious question seeing how you are asking the same question of someone else here who is being hopeful. Your question suggests you won't give the team three years, so how long will you give them?

How long are you going to give the Tigers until you quit the team?

It's still early and there's a lot of winter left, but the angst from some over not finding an impact bat in free agency puts me in mind of 2003-04. That's when we signed Ivan Rodriguez after he'd painted himself in a corner demanding 4/40. No one else, including the Marlins, was going to give him that, so once it became apparent we were the only team that was going to offer it, he basically had to take it. But once he got here, had a really good year, and was the face of a team that improved by almost 30 wins, I think that might have helped pave the way for more top free agents to sign with us, including Maggs and Troy Percival for the following season, and Kenny Rogers and Todd Jones for the season after that. They didn't all work out swimmingly, of course, but point is they were all toward the top of their free agent class, and I do wonder, had we not signed Pudge for 2004, would we have gotten those other free agents at that time?

Rios has never batted more than 92 times in a season in four years and he gets hurt a lot, so I don't know if he can be relied upon to provide hundreds of at bats effectively. Anderson has more pop but Frazier has way better bat-to-ball skills plus a better glove, and across the past three seasons their run-creation results were essentially the same. We need all of the main things either can provide. I could see the Tigers signing one of these two guys, but not both., so it may depend on whether they prefer someone to play primarily infield (LHH Frazier) or primarily outfield (RHH Anderson).

If we had to sign any one of these guys, Seth Lugo probably makes the most sense. We need starters this year and he wants to start. He’s been decent recently and will command at least two years. We could push him into the pen once the young guys still coming back. As for the other three guys, light-hitting infielders though they may be, Frazier and Anderson have evolved into guys who can play multiple positions both on the dirt and on the grass, so we could sign one and just move him around the diamond as we give the young guys around them an occasional breather. If that’s the goal, Frazier is the best of the named guys here, although he’ll also command at least two years.

Why? Because.